The next Great Transition in Evolution
Will be the cultural movement from Tribalism to Togetherness
I was at a pub last night with a new friend who is German.
“What’s it like to be a German living in America?” I asked.
“Frightening,” he said.
“Why?” I asked.
“I see many parallels between the pre-Nazi Germany and present day US, like the rise of nationalism. People who are center-right don’t have anyone to vote for.”
This conversation got me thinking about tribalism. Hitler capitalized on a tribal circuit in people’s brains. This brain circuit says: “Our tribe is better, let’s smash the other tribe.”
At one point, when tribes were living in jungles in competition with each other, this circuit was likely adaptive. It could help your tribe unite against another tribe in competition for limited land and resources. But nowadays, we no longer have spears and bows, we have atom bombs. The tribal circuit will lead us to the existential threat of nuclear war if we let it run unchecked.
Even if countries don’t go to war, if they only think about their interests, this will lead to exploitation of the earth and another existential pickle: environmental collapse.
My friend Ethan Maurice made this simple bumper sticker:
I bought 100 of them and have been giving them out. I’ve become somewhat of a missionary, promoting this Togetherness lens on reality.
Why am I so into this?
Well, we literally are “in this together” — tiny stick figures on the surface of a pale blue marble suspended in space. Yet we haven’t integrated this scientific knowledge into the way we live our lives and craft our culture. There still are wars. There still is talk of “America First.”
In college, I studied evolutionary biology, and one of the most influential books that I read during this time was a relatively unknown, skinny volume called The Origins of Life.
The central thesis of the book is that there are “Major Transitions” in evolution.
Here are a few:
Going from self-replicating RNA molecules to cells. This required the innovation of cell membranes, and the specialization of DNA for the storage of genetic information, and proteins for use as enzymes.
Going from prokariotic to eukariotic cells. This required, at one point, one prokariotic cell to start living inside another — as a mitrochondria or chloroplast.
Going from cells to tissues. This required free-living eukariotic cells (protists) to give up reproducing as fast as possible, and to specialize into tissues and organs.
Going from organisms to communities. This required individual organisms to give up purely selfish behavior, and to do their part in a community (think of a beehive or a pack of wolves).
Going from primate societies to human societies. This required the evolution of language. This means that now, in addition to genes being able to evolve, culture can too.
At each transition, the characteristics that make the simpler organisms successful often become an impediment to “living together” in greater complexity.
For example, a single protazoan cell that replicates quickly is going to be successful when competing with other such cells in a freshwater lake.
But within a multicellular organism, a cell that divides without restraint gets a special name: cancer. In order to achieve greater complexity, in order to get to the other side of the “major transition,” the selfish impulse of the cell to divide has to be checked.
Humanity has evolved to a point of great complexity. We have language. We can work together in very sophisticated ways to create things like airplanes and the computer I am typing on to bring these words to you. Yet, we haven’t developed the cultural technology to get different human tribes to live in peace on our one and only spaceship earth. This cultural innovation, is, I think, the major transition that we will need to make, if we are to survive.
It’s all so very new. E. O. Wilson said that “Modern humanity is distinguished by paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology.” When I think about the span of evolution, from replicating RNA molecules all they way up to the present, I am filled with awe. And I’m also filled with acceptance. We haven’t figured out this “in this together” business out because it’s a very new, unprecedented problem.
No other animal has had such a problem before. No other animal has invented such god-like technology. And therefore, no other animal has needed an “in this together” bumper sticker or a United Nations.
Will Homo Sapiens make it past this major transition of evolution and learn to live in harmony on our limited planet? I don’t know. Maybe we will, and maybe we won’t.
But realizing just how unprecedented this moment is fills me with many beneficial emotions:
Awe, that we have even gotten to such a place of complexity
Acceptance, that we may very well fall short, because living like we’re “in this together” is an unprecedented cultural transition that has never been done before, in the many eons of evolutionary time
Motivation, to promote the “in-this-together” perspective on life
Do you want to join in promoting this perspective?
There are so many things we can do. We can get involved globally (e.g. with the UN) or locally (e.g. with an environmental group) or politically (e.g. with climate changemakers).
Every action, every conversation, every cultural nudge towards togetherness, helps. We are hairless apes who have gotten to a place of God-like technology. Will we be able to survive on this planet for many more millenia, or will we fall prey to a crisis of our own making?
It’s on us to innovate our culture like our children’s lives depend on it (because they do).
Consider displaying an “in this together” bumper sticker on your car. I hope, one day in the future, to be driving on the road and see another such bumper sticker on someone else’s car.
But even better than that, I hope to reach a day in the future when this perspective is so common that these bumper stickers become unnecessary.
P.S. If you have other ideas of ways we can shift our cultural lens from tribalism to togetherness, I would love to hear them (reply in the comments or by email).
P.P.S. Thanks to Thomas for the E. O. Wison quote.