From: cass0167@elan.rowan.edu (DEL CASSIDY)
Subject: Communications explosion and cultural progress
Summary: Television and inadvertently positive consequences
Keywords: television evolution
Organization: Rowan College of New Jersey
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 16:38:19 GMT

COMMENTS ON THIS ESSAY WOULD BE APPRECIATED



EVOLUTION, TELEVISION, AND A BRIGHTER FUTURE FOR HUMANKIND

There's a hole in the ozone layer. The ice caps may be melting. Agricultural
lands are shrinking, deserts growing, and refugees are on the move around
the world. The list of ills facing humankind is long, yet amid these growing
disasters a dramatic change is occurring, and as a result, THE WORLD IS
GETTING BETTER!

In the last century, Darwin sent a shock wave through western society with
his theory that humans were not a separate creation of an almighty god but
simply one creature among the myriads inhabiting the globe. More than a
hundred fifty years later, while some people still disagree, biologists feel
comfortable in tracing our human ancestry back to, and beyond, a point
where the designations, "human" and "humanoid" become fuzzy.

Scientists today believe life began on earth in a rather hostile environment
several billion years ago. With that environment in a constant state of flux, to
survive generally meant to change. Initially, adaptation occurred through
chance recombination of the basic building material of living matter as it
passed from one generation to the next. In this wasteful process, thousands
of organisms routinely failed for any that survived. Nonetheless, for eons
chance was the sole force driving the engine of life, with useful adaptations
"hard-wired" into an organism's system through its DNA. This information,
acquired over the millennia, remains locked within the genes of all living
things today.

A major evolutionary change occurred as brains developed, permitting the
storage of information outside the DNA. Animals could alter their behavior
immediately in response to changes in the environment. Through education,
this information could be passed on the next generation.

Today, many humans pride themselves on being separate from, or at least
greatly superior to "animals". Scientists are cautioned against
anthropomorphism. The problem however, isn't a tendency to attribute
human traits to non-humans, but rather a general failure to admit the extent
to which we share "animal" characteristics. We like to think for instance that
love, marriage, and devotion, are uniquely "human," while ignoring the
evidence of wolves, geese, seagulls, and other non-humans that also join in
life-long relationships. We fail to see that things like the drive to language
aren't learned but are innate in humans. We could no more prevent a child's
learning to speak than we could keep him or her from eventually walking
upright. Underlying all our behavior, this set of encoded instructions
influences our range of choices. We laugh, cry, climb, throw stones, chase
small animals, mimic our elders, make love, and kill, all without the necessity
of parental instruction. To a great extent, we are free to alter our behavior,
but only within the limits imposed by millions of years of genetic
development.

Rather than being superior beings possessing some few traits in common
with "lower" animals, humankind is simply one among many. Like all our
fellows, we adapted specific characteristics which permitted us to carve out a
niche in the environment. We possess an opposable thumb, a driving
curiosity, a complex social structure, language, and a brain capable of
abstract thought. None of these is uniquely human.

Anthropologists believe humans evolved several million years ago on the
African continent where we shared a common ancestor with chimpanzees
Initially arboreal, we left the trees for the greater dangers of the growing
plains. As relatively weak creatures, we should have been easy prey for the
large carnivores there, but our communications skills, social structure, and
ability to make and use weapons permitted us to thrive instead.

As Darwin noted in the last century, any geographical area can only support
a limited number of individuals, too many and they will outstrip the food
supply. Throughout most of our history as a species, the amount of food
available, and thus the size of human communities, was defined by the
distance we could travel on foot in a few days. The further from our home
base, the greater the chance that another group could install itself and
successfully defend its borders. The young men in each village were driven
to spend a good deal of their time patrolling the community's territory in an
 effort to remove humans and other animals presenting serious competition
for the area's food supply.

About ten thousand years ago, our ancestors developed the concept of
deliberately cultivating desirable plants rather than relying on chance to
provide them in sufficient quantities. Agriculture permitted a much greater
number of individuals to survive within the same territorial boundaries and
changed the nature of human societies. Large numbers of people
permanently attached to specific parcels of land could not afford to simply
pick up and move in response to pressure from other groups. To lose control
of the land meant starvation for a significant portion of the population.
Societies increased in complexity as farming communities organized to
defend themselves against neighbors eyeing their land, and nomads who
would take their growing riches. Border skirmishes became true warfare with
catastrophic ramifications.

Today, only a blink in time away from the ape climbing down from the
african trees, humans straddle the globe. Those early communities,
numbering in the hundreds at best, have grown to millions. Genetically
however, we have changed little. It has been suggested that if we dressed a
Cro Magnon in a three piece suit and set him down on Wall Street, he would
be indistinguishable among the crowd of bankers and stock brokers. Inside
that suit however, we retain the drive to protect our territory.

When we try to overcome the push of our genes through education, the
result is ambiguous at best, and a dismal failure at worst. "Thou Shalt Not
Kill" is an imperative of many of the world's religions, but we need look no
further than our own city streets to see how successful we have been at
suppressing that ancient drive! Los Angeles for example, is estimated to have
some seventy thousand gang members. These young men, driven in part by
their genes, roam their "territories", protecting them against encroachment by
neighboring tribes! Nations too feel this same need to protect their borders
and will kill and maim on a massive scale to doso. Indeed, even racial suicide
isn't beyond consideration, as can be attested to by the "Mutual Assured Destruction," or "MAD," doctrine that was the strategy behind warfare for
more than a generation.

Biologically, humans tend to divide the world into "Us" and "Them." The
proscription against killing "Us" is compatible with our genetic imperative.
We are driven to protect our own group, our village, against encroachment
by "Them". Who "They" are however, is culturally determined. If we extend
the "Us" to include an ever larger, more diverse group, we can eventually
achieve the cultural admonition, "Thou Shalt Not Kill" on a global scale. The
story of "The Good Smaratian" is an early attempt at this. Progress toward
this goal has been greatly accelerated during the present generation,
and the driving force behind it is television and its world-wide linkage
through satellites. The communications explosion of the late twentieth
century is an evolutionary development comparable to that of the brain.

A few years ago, this incredible network brought pictures of starving
Ethiopian children to a significant fraction of the human race, and suddenly
"They" became "Us". During the Gulf War Americans could identify with
grieving Iraqi relatives as they watched the bodies of women and children
being pulled from the wreckage of a Baghdad bomb shelter. Thanks to
television, millions of people saw Scud missiles blasted from the skies over
Israel even before the national leadership could confirm the event. Sadaam
Hussein and Dick Cheney watched with millions of others around the world
as events unfolded on CNN.

Meanwhile, crushed under the weight of waging an economic war against
the West, the Soviet Union began disintegrating. Eastern Europe was
permitted to break away and the Berlin Wall to collapse. Today, the mind of
the Cold War veteran is boggled by the sight of "the West" turning to lift
"the East" to the higher economic platform on which it stands. One more
step has been taken in humankind's expanding vision of "Us".

With the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the crushing of the world's fourth
largest army during the lightening war in the Persian Gulf, the United States
stands as the undisputed heavy-weight champion of the world, the five
hundred pound gorilla that can sleep wherever it wants to. But while we beat
our collective chest, Japan and the European Common Market are emerging
as the world's new economic superpowers.

The Cold War" was a war of economics. A contest to see which side could
waste more if its resources preparing for a conflict that, if fought, would
have destroyed us all. In the end, capitalism proved superior to socialism at
producing guns and butter.  Now, with the end of the Cold War, and world
wide communications blurring the ditinction between "Us" and "Them," we
are witnesses at the beginning of the end of war itself. As the "Third World"
watches Dallas and Dynasty, its people clamor more and more for cars,
refrigerators, and CD players. "They" are rapidly becoming "Us" with an
increasingly shared vision of what constitutes "the good life" and how to
achieve it. Absent the need to slaughter "Them", we now have the freedom
to bring "the good life" to all. We are at a pivotal point in human history with
the turn already begun.

THE WORLD IS GETTING BETTER!

"They" are rapidly becoming "Us" with an increasingly shared vision of what
constitutes "the good life" and how to achieve it.


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ardrey, Robert, The Territorial Imperative, Dell Publications, 1966

Darwin, Charles, The Origin of Species & The Descent of Man, Modern
Library, Random House, 1977

Dundes, Alan, Every Man His Way: Readings in Cultural Anthropology,
Prentis Hall Inc., 1968

DeFleur, Melvin L., D'Antonio, Wm. V., & Defleur, Lois B., Sociology:
Man in Society, Scott Foresman & Co., 1971
 
Fossey, Diane, Gorillas in the Mist, Houghton Mifflin, 1984

Goodal, Jane, In the Shadow of Man, Stephen J. Gould, 1983

Gribben, John, Genesis: The Origins of Man & the Universe,
Delacorte/Eleanor Friede, 1981

Jordan, William, Divorce Among The Gulls; An Uncommon Look at
Human Nature, North Point Press, 1991

Leakey, L. S., & Bestor, Wm. S. Ed, Adam or Ape, A Sourcebook of
Discoveries about Early Man, Schenkman Books Inc., 1986

Leakey, Richard, E., & Roger, Lewin, Origins: What New Discoveries
Reveal about the Emergence of our Species and its Possbile Future, Dutton,
1982

Lily, John C. The Mind of the Dolphin: A Nonhuman Intelligence, Avon
Books, 1967

Lorenz, Conrad, On Aggression, Translated by Marjorie K. Wilson, Helen
& Kurt Wolff Books, 1974

Thomas, Lewis, Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher, Bantam
Classics, 1984

Watson, James D., The Double Helix, Mentor, 1969

Phillips, J. B., The New Testament in Modern English, The Macmillan Co.,
1958


Xref: sparky soc.culture.usa:10135 soc.culture.japan:14331 soc.culture.british:19458 soc.culture.canada:10418