Evolution does lead to greater complexity simply because it leads to greater diversity.
I don’t pretend to have the intellectual clout of people like John Gray or Stephen Jay Gould, but I disagree with their contention that evolution has no tendency to move towards greater complexity. It seems to me that discounting the forward progress of evolution is a form of intellectual mischief, a fashionable rejection of optimism. Species or institutional proliferation seems to suggest a richer, more complex environment; the species that will evolve in such an environment have the opportunity to be more complex as well.
I am reading John Gray's new and fascinating book, Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia. In spite of the fact that he seems to simply make claims as often as he argues points, the book is provocative and contains big ideas.
He writes,
"If anything defines ‘the West’ it is the pursuit of salvation in history. It is historical teleology – the belief that history has a built-in purpose or goal – rather than traditions of democracy or tolerance, that sets western civilization apart from all others.”
Yet history – or social evolution - does not need to be teleological in order to move towards greater complexity and more possibility. One can be optimistic about the direction of history without embracing the notion that today’s present was foreordained by our past.
Even more importantly, evolution in biology and society are beginning the transition to intentional processes. Genetic engineering and social change are both in their infancy, but seem to me inevitable. (Undoubtedly, unintentional evolution will continue in both arenas as well, and might even accelerate as intentional evolution is attempted.)
To me, the important point is that entities like society or history or the environment are abstractions. What matters is that individual species and people have options, have room to thrive. In terms of social evolution, the purpose is not a particular type of society. Rather, the purpose ought to be a sustainable world that creates the opportunity for a diverse set of individual to thrive.
What this means is that an institution emerging in today’s world has the possibility of adapting to and exploiting technologies as different as the stock market, legislation, and the Internet. Newly emergent institutions in such an environment need not exploit all this possibility, but some will. This means that increased complexity, if not inevitable, is highly probable.
This means that individuals in these institutions have more possibilities in terms of skill sets to tap into or develop. Given enough time, it almost seems as though possibility means inevitability. Given that a more complex environment offers more opportunity for complexity of species or institutions, it seems inevitable that it will occur in some fashion.
Gray’s insistence that social evolution has no forward direction is about as dangerous, it seems to me, as the notion that social evolution has already realized its potential, has already reached its apex in today’s world.
While history may have no purpose, we can imbue our future with one. And given that we seemed to have moved into the post-DNA period of intentional evolution, this seems rebuttal enough to arguments against increased complexity or purpose.
I might be wildly optimistic, but given how much of today is colored by how we feel about tomorrow, I’ll choose optimism.
R World (Ron Davison muses aloud)
Showing posts with label john gray. Show all posts
Showing posts with label john gray. Show all posts
28 June 2008
Heil Leader
Richard J. Evans writes in The New York Review of Books:
I can't help but wonder if we aren't doing something similar at this stage of elections.
The election is, for me, coming into the boring period. Gone is the plethora of choices that I found so interesting. Even when they weren't choices that I liked, I liked the fact that, for instance, the Republicans had such a wide variety of characters, I mean candidates, who represented very different segments of the American right.
But even worse than the sudden lack of variety is this deification stage of the election process. The right has to continually defend an old conservative who likes to pretend he is a maverick; the left has to defend a young liberal who likes to pretend he's led something before. These are real people and real choices (not even bad choices), but Obama and McCain are as far removed from flawless as the rest of us. And yet their supporters see fit to elevate their candidates, gather in circles around them, and then chant like primitive natives before the god of volcanoes.
"Modern politics is a chapter in the history of religion," John Gray writes in the opening line of Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia. Sadly, it doesn't seem as though we have to put in place true despots to feel compelled to deify leaders. There is something more tribal or religious about this stage of elections than rational and open.
We carry our psychoses into every arena we play in - from family to business to community; I suppose that there is no reason that politics should be excluded from this weight. But does politics have to be based on such psychoses? It just seems to distract from the larger and more important question about what kind of world we want these leaders to help us to create.
I suspect that one of the reasons we do this is that if we could convince ourselves that these leaders really are omnipotent, we won't have to take responsibility for our world. And in this cycle - deification, disappointment, and vilification of leaders - we have the electoral process that never once forces communities to be accountable for creating the world that we all love to complain about.
Almost as soon as the Nazis came to power in Germany, they made the greeting 'Heil Hitler!' a compulsory part of national life. Civil servants were legally obliged to sign documents with it, and anybody writing a letter to officialdom would have been well advised to do the same. Schoolteachers had to greet their classes with a 'Heil Hitler!,' raising their right arm stiffly in the 'German greeting' as they did so; train conductors had to use the greeting when they entered a compartment to collect tickets from passengers.
I can't help but wonder if we aren't doing something similar at this stage of elections.
The election is, for me, coming into the boring period. Gone is the plethora of choices that I found so interesting. Even when they weren't choices that I liked, I liked the fact that, for instance, the Republicans had such a wide variety of characters, I mean candidates, who represented very different segments of the American right.
But even worse than the sudden lack of variety is this deification stage of the election process. The right has to continually defend an old conservative who likes to pretend he is a maverick; the left has to defend a young liberal who likes to pretend he's led something before. These are real people and real choices (not even bad choices), but Obama and McCain are as far removed from flawless as the rest of us. And yet their supporters see fit to elevate their candidates, gather in circles around them, and then chant like primitive natives before the god of volcanoes.
"Modern politics is a chapter in the history of religion," John Gray writes in the opening line of Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia. Sadly, it doesn't seem as though we have to put in place true despots to feel compelled to deify leaders. There is something more tribal or religious about this stage of elections than rational and open.
We carry our psychoses into every arena we play in - from family to business to community; I suppose that there is no reason that politics should be excluded from this weight. But does politics have to be based on such psychoses? It just seems to distract from the larger and more important question about what kind of world we want these leaders to help us to create.
I suspect that one of the reasons we do this is that if we could convince ourselves that these leaders really are omnipotent, we won't have to take responsibility for our world. And in this cycle - deification, disappointment, and vilification of leaders - we have the electoral process that never once forces communities to be accountable for creating the world that we all love to complain about.
05 July 2007
Is the Story of History the Story of Progress?
The philosopher John Gray is out with a new book, tantalizingly named Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia. This is not a review (I've not read the book, due out today in Britain), but a comment about what he says is one of his central points.
Progress is chimerical, he says. It is delusional to think that history has a direction. This is reminiscent of the late Stephen Jay Gould's argument that complexity is not the direction of evolution.
It seems to me that both ignore a central point of evolution. Species adapt (or, in the case of social evolution, institutions and peoples adapt) to their environment. It may be true that the adaptation that will prove advantageous is random rather than teleological, but the environment to which the species is adapting is continually more complex. What this means, practically speaking, is that there is a direction in evolution - towards greater complexity.
John Gray may argue that such a direction does not constitute progress, but it would be hard to imagine a scenario in which species (or institutions and processes and cultural norms) didn't become more intricate, more complex, and more able. To my simple mind, that's close enough to progress.
Progress is chimerical, he says. It is delusional to think that history has a direction. This is reminiscent of the late Stephen Jay Gould's argument that complexity is not the direction of evolution.
It seems to me that both ignore a central point of evolution. Species adapt (or, in the case of social evolution, institutions and peoples adapt) to their environment. It may be true that the adaptation that will prove advantageous is random rather than teleological, but the environment to which the species is adapting is continually more complex. What this means, practically speaking, is that there is a direction in evolution - towards greater complexity.
John Gray may argue that such a direction does not constitute progress, but it would be hard to imagine a scenario in which species (or institutions and processes and cultural norms) didn't become more intricate, more complex, and more able. To my simple mind, that's close enough to progress.
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