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.