Human Competitive Advantage through the Transmission of Culture

As we learned through reading Michael Tomasello’s The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition (as listed on Chapters.ca), humans have thrived as a species and were able to evolve due to our capacity to share information with purpose and teach other. It is through the transmission of culture that humans have a competitive advantage and are able to progress as quickly as they did as a species on Earth.

Our ability to transmit culture and purposefully pass on lessons and tools from generation to generation has allowed humans to elude nature’s survival of the fittest that other species face. An interesting example that we discussed in class was Dr. Plumb’s mention of the fact that humans have been replicating caves since the days our ancestors lived in them full-time. I had never pondered why classrooms, boardrooms, and so on are usually set up with tables that seat everyone in a u-shape or a circle. I assumed that it was so all parties could engage in eye contact and to encourage open communication (which I’m sure is at least partially the reason). But what I hadn’t realized is that a conference room or classroom is a reproduction of a cave setting. All parties can sit in an enclosed space together without distraction of having to worry that there is danger or a predator behind them.

When you consider this notion further, you realize that human ability to transfer meaningful information and culture has literally helped us live longer. The advances in modern medicine and healthcare have increased an average human life expectancy at birth in America from 58 years for men and 62 years for women in 1938 to 74 years for men and 80 years for women in 2001 (http://www.prb.org/pdf06/NIA_FutureofLifeExpectancy.pdf).  As noted in the article, life expectancy for the other G8 countries is following the same trend.  People in developed countries are living longer, healthier lives. New drugs are being developed to aid in the recovery from diseases and various ailments based on research that has been built upon and shared from one laboratory to the next over many decades.

This graph is a little blurry but you can read the full article this graph came from and view a clearer image on the StatsCan website: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/82-229-x/2009001/demo/lif-eng.htm

 As humans, we are also unique in our use of tools in everyday life. As Johnson-Frey discusses in his minireview (http://pdn.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=MiamiImageURL&_cid=272195&_user=10&_pii=S0896627303004240&_check=y&_coverDate=2003-07-17&view=c&_gw=y&wchp=dGLzVlB-zSkzV&md5=1ef131adeeca1c16dccf90a1f50e295d/1-s2.0-S0896627303004240-main.pdf), human and nonhuman primate brains are similar but it is human ability to reason about an “objects’ physical properties and interactions” that likely explains humans ability for complex tool use (p. 2, 2003). I think Tomasello would agree. It is this same ability to understand an item’s multiple properties and how it can purposefully interact with other items that allows us to pass the information to our fellow humans. This cognitive benefit along with Tomasello’s “joint attentional scene” (p. 96, 1999) allows humans a huge competitive advantage as a species; we share best practices of complex tool use, innovate the tool use and pass it on for the next generation to improve on further.

In a basic context, reflect for a moment on the number of tools and utensils you currently have in your kitchen for preparing food.  We have sharp knives to cut our food, pots and pans to cook our food over heat, and numerous dishes to serve the prepared food in, not to mention the numerous kitchen gadgets to do just about any other task you desire (my favourite is a Magic Bullet – it helps you make the easiest smoothies, salsa, and guacamole http://www.buythebullet.com). All of these things have made us more efficient in preparing the food for our sustenance than our ancestors. Gone are the days of using sharp rocks to cut food, preparing everything by hand from scratch, and cooking over fires for our survival.

My favorite kitchen tool, the "Magic Bullet".

From our use of tools, came the development of weapons. As we know, early humans used weapons to hunt animals for food and to protect themselves from falling prey to animals. Knowledge of using objects for tools and tool use was an important part of culture that was passed from generation to generation (for an interesting quick read on the Ngadjonji aborigines of Australia’s tool and weapon use: http://earthsci.org/aboriginal/ngadjonji%20history/food/weapons/Weapons%20and%20Tools.htm).

Over time as societies have developed and progressed, so have weapons. Weapons for hunting prey became more robust and automatic in the form of shotguns and rifles, and personal weapons in the form of handguns are now commonplace.  And let’s not forget the emergence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and biological warfare. Weaponry has now advanced so far that sophisticated artillery is used in conflict and wars against each other. According to the NATO website, “The use or threatened use of weapons of mass destruction significantly influenced the security environment of the 20th century and will also impact international security in the foreseeable future”  (http://www.nato.int/docu/briefing/wmd/html_en/wmd04.html). As you can see, the advancement of weapons is so robust that we may end up harming the progress of the human species if the full capacities of weapons are unleashed against one another.

Have we gone too far in the development of weapons?

I’m sure we can agree that the culture that was passed on to us (including the tools and traditions in that culture) as we developed and the culture that surrounds us shapes our lives. The use of our advanced communication and cognitive skills as humans to collaborate with each other and transmit culture helps our species move forward. However, we are still fragile beings like every other living organism on Earth and are affected by others’ use of tools and weapons. As such, we need to ensure that major devastation to the species does not occur due to the use of weapons and super weapons. Hopefully our world leaders will continue to use their inherited reasoning and communication skills to prevent the use of weapons causing major devastation so the human species can continue to innovate and progress.

The Ratchet Effect and Day-to-Day Life

When I began reading Michael Tomasello’s The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition (as listed on Chapters.ca), I quickly became interested in a concept that he briefly mentions early in the book. On page 5, Tomasello discusses human how practices are improved to the point that they cannot be reversed and then passed from one generation to another, modified by an individual or group of individuals over time, producing a “ratchet effect”. This was the first time I had heard about such an effect and thought the idea of “cultural ratcheting” was extremely interesting.

The first example of this form of social transmission that popped into my mind was the modern tradition of the Christmas holiday and a video a friend of mine had posted on Facebook in December regarding the history and origin of Santa Claus (click here to view the video in YouTube). Through this video I learned that the jolly old man I believed in as a child originated in Europe and is the result of North American culture merging a number of Christmas and winter characters into one persona. When the red and white-clad Santa went mainstream in America in 1930’s in Coca-Cola ads (http://www.thecoca-colacompany.com/heritage/cokelore_santa.html), the ratchet was set in place and there was no going back for the modern-day Santa Claus. I had a light bulb moment when I connected the two and started thinking about all of the things I take for granted in my day-to-day life that are the result of the ratchet effect.

A depiction of Santa Claus in a 1931 Coca Cola ad.

When you reflect on modern human life you come to realize that current North American lifestyles and daily life is shaped by ratchets in many contexts – traditions, technology, food procurement, shopping (the exchange of value for goods), education, and so on. To examine this further, let’s consider a normal day in my life: I wake up to a digital alarm clock that automatically plays the radio at a time I’ve programmed it to turn on. I shower in a bathtub that has hot running water with a turn of a tap, using cleansing products I purchased at a drugstore. I wear contact lenses to improve my vision and brush my teeth with an electric toothbrush. I eat cereal from a box with milk from a carton that I purchased from a grocery store. I walk to work in rubber-soled boots or shoes and a coat that I bought at a shopping mall. Walking to work, I wait to cross streets until I’m given the okay by automated stoplights and crosswalk signals. When I arrive at work (after taking an elevator up eight floors) I turn on my computer and check for a blinking light on my phone that will tell me if I have messages waiting or not. My computer automatically connects to the internet and I check my email inbox to see how many electronic messages I have received, then send a number of emails out. On most days, my work day will include the use of an online webinar program which I set up with a laptop that has a built-in webcam. A number of people from across the Maritimes, and sometimes from across the country, log into the webinar program and they take part in a seminar or we have a meeting. In the evenings, sometimes I meet my friends for dinner in a restaurant that prepares food from another country. I get to and from the restaurant by driving my four-door, automated transmission car that has a built-in car stereo and can play my iPod. Some other nights I’ll connect to Skype and talk to family and friends from different parts of the country or other countries.

I'm sure you get the point I'm trying to illustrate. When you really examine your daily life, you realize that life as we know it is the way it is due to our forefathers’ innovations and the ability to share knowledge with each other in order to keep building on these achievements because we’re human. Or we can say that daily life is a culmination of ratchets that were set throughout human history to the point that we are so dependent on the innovations that life wouldn’t be the same without them.

When I think of my parent’s generation (they were both born in the 1940s), they wouldn’t have been able to fathom as a child how different their children’s lifestyles would be from theirs. Or that they would be corresponding with their children over computers with something called “the internet”. When you really think about it, the amount of human advancement in terms of lifestyle and technology and how it forms daily life over the past 60 years has been incredible. However, although these advancements have been to the betterment of human society in the Western world, I can’t help but wonder how these advancements have been a detriment to the earth and its environment. Over time, humans have created an “easier” and “more convenient” lifestyle in the Western world, but in many cases, it has been to the detriment of the earth (think corporate-driven industries with no regard to how they affect the environment, mass production, over-harvesting). I couldn’t find any scholarly publications exploring this question but I think it would be an interesting topic for future research.

Will the harm that human advancement has caused the environment be reversible?

It will be interesting to see what advancements will be made over my lifetime and how the ratchet effect will affect my generation. Aside from technology, I hope that there will be further social movements that will provide positive change in sustainability efforts for a healthier planet to undo some of the harm mankind has imparted on the earth. Maybe if more people learned about the ratchet effect they could see how their life has been shaped by their forefathers and how their actions will affect the day-to-day lofe of those to come that we will share our history, our human race, and our planet with.