Racism As Evolutionary Check On Humanity?

Reposted:
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With this post, I am thinking out loud as I write. The ideas I am about to discuss are still developing.

There is no doubt that humanity is the dominant life form on Earth. There are no longer any predators that pose a true threat to us, if we are properly equipped (meaning, a bear can kill you, but not if you have a big enough gun). We do not have any real food shortages. The shortages we have are created by political circumstances, by conscious choices regarding the allocation and distribution of resources.

In nature, when an animal reaches a point where it has an abundant food supply and no natural predators nearby, you will usually see a population boom for that animal. This will continue until that animal puts such a strain on the local environment that the environment becomes inhospitable, frequently through food or water shortages. Then that animal will experience a sharp population decline. If one looks at the ecosystem as a self-sustaining structure (which it appears to be, according to current science), these cycles of surplus followed by scarcity can be seen as a natural method for preventing one animal's population from getting so large that it threatens the viability of other animals.

Man, because of our particular evolutionary advantages, is no longer subject to the surplus/scarcity cycle, at least not as it is imposed by nature. We have a global system of communication and transportation that can end any localized food shortage in a matter of days, if not hours. So, in one sense, nature can no longer hold us in check. We hold ourselves in check.

When I speak of our evolutionary advantages, I am thinking primarily of our ability to form complex, enduring social structures. It is not our individual intelligence that has allowed us to assume the dominant position. Several of the higher primates, including chimpanzees and gorillas, are capable of displaying intelligence that is very near human level (and may, in fact, be every bit equal to ours, but not perceived as such because of communications barriers). What put us at the apex of the pyramid is twofold: 1) our ability to collectively build upon the knowledge and insights of individuals; and 2) our ability to leverage the economies of scale.

With regard to that first point, think about two of the first major leaps for mankind: the development of speech, and the development of the written word. With speech, we gained the ability to convey knowledge from person to another, and eventually the ability to convey knowledge from generation to generation. The epic poems, the myths, all of the folklore of ancient times was a means of aggregating and distributing accumulated knowledge. With the written word, the complexity of the ideas that we could preserve and build upon increased exponentially. It was no longer necessary for each generation to repeat the intellectual achievements of its predecessors, because those achievements were stored in written form, and could be used as the leaping-off point for new achievements.

As to the second point, we see it first with the transition from solitary hunter-gatherers to hunting parties. One man, alone, can only fend off so many predators, can only kill so much prey and carry so much meat and gathered food (berries, nuts, etc.). A group of men, acting in concert, dramatically increases the ability to survive against predators, the number of prey that can be killed, and the amount that can be carried. Add in such primitive tools as liters, and that increase is more than just a linear increase in capacity. It's an early example of the advantages that come from the economies of scale.

Look then to the development of agriculture. Again, one man alone can only cultivate and maintain so much land. Two men can do more, and a group of men can do significantly more. Long-term, sustained agriculture developed as much through early economies of scale as through the invention of the plow. Stable agriculture was possible only with the usage of spoken language (how else to convey what needed to be done, and when?), and tremendously enhanced by the written word (storing accumulated knowledge about growing seasons and times, cultivation methods, etc.)

It was the development of sustained agriculture that allowed us to create permanent cities, and allowed the advent of a new "leisure" class: scholars. When our living conditions were more uncertain, so much time had to go to hunting, gathering, and preparing food, there was little time for anyone to sit down and think abstractly. There certainly wasn't time to do so as one's primary activity. The efficiencies of mass agriculture, plus the added safety of city dwelling, made it possible for some people that would otherwise have been out hunting to divert themselves away from daily survival activities and focus on purely intellectual pursuits. This in turn allowed for the technological growth of mankind. When food is no longer your most pressing concern every day, you can devote yourself to invention and innovation.

With technology came our eventual disconnection from natural cycles of surplus and scarcity. This development was gradual, to be sure, and did not reach its apex until we had the ability to communicate with one another over great distances and the ability to quickly move foodstocks between far-flung locations. But think about it: people in Ireland did not starve during the potato famine because of the localized food shortage. They starved because other human beings decided not to re-allocate food resources to the area of greatest scarcity. It was within humanity's technical capabilities to severely mitigate, if not outright solve the famine. Yet we did not do so.

Why? As much because of tribalistic tensions between the Irish and their nearest neighbors the Scottish and English as for any other reason. To the people who had enough food, and the means to move it if they wanted to, the Irish were "other", part of "them" instead of "us." And so the famine continued, localized scarcity causing local population depletion just as you see with a herd of deer that has grown to large and eaten all of the nearby vegetation. Only it wasn't "nature" as an external force that caused this, it was the human tendency to subdivide and differentiate ourselves, to be loyal to kin and tribe, all others be damned.

This is why I believe that in some senses racism, which is another variant of the same tribalism described above, may be an evolutionary check on humanity. If we did not keep ourselves separated on the basis of race, our ability to cooperate, and to collectively achieve our goals, would logically increase to a significant degree. Too much cooperation, too much efficiency in how we allocate resources, could, ironically enough, lead to a population boom that would be truly unsustainable. There are no natural predators who can keep us in check anymore, and the forces of natural calamity do not (so far) threaten our viability as a species (the loss of 250,000 in the 2004 tsunami was devastating locally but did not threaten mankind as a species).

Perhaps our tendencies to resist cooperation, to balk at collective action, to define ourselves in narrow group terms and view other groups with suspicion, are a natural deterrent against us truly going too far as a species. If you look at the industrial revolution and its child the computer revolution as examples of high-order cooperative thinking and action (requiring both the accumulation and disbursement of knowledge and significant economies of scale), and you observe the fact that the bulk of the environmental harm we have done as a species is connected to those two revolutions, you can see how it is possible for our own ability to collectively build upon knowledge and labor can become a threat to our survival. Absent a large asteroid striking the planet, the only foreseeable threat to our survival is our technology getting to the point where it makes the Earth uninhabitable for humans (it would remain habitable for a great many other species, e.g. cockroaches).

Obviously, I am not writing this as an endorsement of or defense of racism or tribalism. This whole train of thought was the result of my trying to figure out why it is that our species seems almost as hard-wired for conflict as it is for cooperation. Who knows...maybe, just maybe, if mankind ever really did the "Kumbaya" thing, bought the world a Coke and taught it to sing in perfect harmony, we would be so unfettered by natural restraints we would ultimately end up destroying ourselves with our own progress