Does Culture need Humans?
Abstract: The pinnacle of evolution is culture which guides the evolution of humanity, by ruling genes through memes. The following text was published in what was to be Encyclopedia of Internet Memes and Phenomena and ended up as the Hungarian version of the same. Translation by the author.
If there's anything harder to accept than humans are descended from apes, is that we are descendants of apes and we are not the pinnacle of evolution. The assertion that on the top of the evolutionary tree we find culture, is peculiar not only because it de-biologizes the Darwinian system to some extent, but also works really well with the extremely biologized interpretation of memetics.
The phenomenon, which scientific terminology calls culture - and common language would rather use the word civilization - is key to human existence. This existence means the whole infrastructure of survival, from drinking water supply system down to individual level: that while on colder climate an animal grows thicker fur, man puts on a thick coat. The genetic answer expressed in fur was replaced with a complex object, composed of the technology manufacturing textiles with various qualities, patterns of construction, logistics, fashionable colours and brands. Coats created by culture are not only the result of their own evolution, they go beyond natural body covers in their space of application and their information/genetic background. Is it a real possibility, that humans were tailored to fit this coat, (or to be more general) this hyperevolutionary environment?
The fact that within human inheritance culture is of the most importance was pointed out by the father of immunology, Nobel-laureate Sir Peter Medawar. In his lectures titled The Future of Man we see vivid memories of the rise and fall of Nazism: Medawar states the primacy of culture, and warns of the reckless overuse of notions based on genetic analogies and the pseudo-scientific biologization of human beings.
"The conception I have just outlined is, I think, a liberating conception. It means that we can jettison all reasoning based upon the idea that changes in society happen in the style and under the pressures of ordinary genetic evolution; abandon any idea that the direction of social change is governed by laws other than laws which have at some time been the subject of human decisions or acts of mind. That competition between one man and another is a necessary part of the texture of society; that societies are organisms which grow and must inevitably die; that division of labour within a society is akin to what we can see in colonies of insects; that the laws of genetics have an overriding authority; that social evolution has a direction forcibly imposed upon it by agencies beyond man’s control—all these are biological judgments; but, I do assure you, bad judgments based upon a bad biology." (Medawar, 1959)
Our question now is how one of the latest theories of cultural evolution, memetics relates to the above mentioned bad judgments.
By today the meme concept has become a part of common vernacular, since despite its abstract nature it grasps the phenomena of high speed communication of the information age excellently. Memetics started its life as a playful interdisciplinary application of Darwinian logic. As the father of the concept Richard Dawkins, himself an admirer of Medawar, puts it:
"I am an enthousiastic Darwinian, but, I think Darwinism is too big a theory to be confined to the narrow context of the gene. The gene will enter my thesis as an analogy, nothing more. What, after all, is so special about genes? The answer is that they are replicators." (Dawkins, 1986)
It's immediately apparent that the only way to avoid - despite Medawar's warning - the direct and aggressive genetization of culture if we the analogy of genes "only" on the basis of replication. The way of memetics from here on seems to be taking a path to being a information theory burdened by phobias, while in public conscience, which tends to handle the abstractions of analogies most economically, remains view of the direct genetic operation of culture, including misconceptions like memes are alive, because they replicate like viruses - while viruses are not viewed as living organisms precisely because of their dependence on a host for replication.
Having not much to lose, at this point we take the liberty of meddling with Dawkins' concept and come out with a brutalized interpretation - slightly akin to the commonly held concept - , and see where it takes us if we view memes as simply cultural genes.
First of all, we need to take into account, that if we look at a DNA sequence we don't see any genes, since genes are abstract entities, sections defined by their function. Memes can be defined the same way - the efficient performance of their function and their cooperative benefit of which give them resistance against entropy. This also means, what we think of as a meme, encloses those not readily transparent details carrying psychological functions, which are the actual cultural genes.
If memes are a the part of cultural DNA, culture is literally alive, an informational organism, the environment of which consist of creatures capable of communication. We are now beyond the approach that sees culture as a construct invented by man to be able to fully convert his superb and energy expensive brain to actual survival. The viewpoint that culture is a secondary, artificial environment also changes: our connection to this environment is based on mutual benefit.
Multicellular organism is more than a bunch of cells. Evolution of cooperation requires adaptation by taking up communication, along with the differentiation of inner and outer environment, that is the definition of the borders of culture.
Biological adaptation to the circumstances of cooperation means that humans evolved adapting to culture moving ahead of them: by the way of memes culture forced the persistence of qualities keeping it alive, like the decrease of aggression, the drive for increasing efficiency of communication and other social capabilities. Thus being adapted to the symbiosis with culture means our origins are to be found in both monkeys and a cooperative informational organism - though we need to keep in mind that the above mentioned monkey is already a product of adaptation to culture to high-degree, since the evolution of information as a non-trivial direction for adaptation follows life all the way.
To put it another way: memes are primary and genes follow memes. The potential for the survival and reproduction of a cat (more specifically a modern internet connected cat) is directly proportional to the memetic potential of its eccentric, funny, or cute appearance. An even better example would be homing pigeons whose genes are expressed in superior navigation abilities, for which they had been domesticated to serve as a channel of - sometimes vital - communication.
Game theory views cooperative evolutionary solutions as an ethological question, instinctive reactions to external circumstances, and while it's role in evolution is acknowledged, it would hardly view culture - be it either an abstract or an actual living entity - as a sovereign, non-genetic part of evolution. Thus our present train of thought certainly appears to fall on the esoteric side, however to its defence we can say that even if it genetizes a bit here and there, the integration of culture within evolution is not one sided, and also doesn't go against Medawar's warning, being based on the priority of culture.
Let us introduce some questions to our suggested new life form.
Can man have a direct influence on culture? Our limits conform the laws of reproduction of memes, and the survival of the culture. What makes it even harder is that the function and consequences carried by the memes are presently not exactly known. Memetic complexes that have deeper influence on culture, such as ideologies (particularly failed ideologies) are considered to be very important by humans. The historical knowledge of the average person usully far more exceeds their knowledge of natural sciences - also in the general sense knowledge of history and identity are considered to be cultural knowledge.
A unique group of these memetic complexes are religions, the vital function of which is balancing hyperevolutionary pressure and human biological existence, serving as an interface, enabling the human evolutionary needs to appear in culture, in coordination with the political goal of collective survival.
How long does culture live? Does it get old? Can it break a leg? We have ample information about disappearance, disintegration, or fragmentation of cultures. We mostly describe their fate in biological metaphors. Culture and all known cultures can be seen as self-correcting scalable network immune to human tampering, however it could be the case that Nazism was not be the last example of a culture viewing human destruction as necessary, having been poisoned by memes of scientific origin.
Is there culture without humans? From the viewpoint of culture humans can be replaced by the any life form having the appropriate qualities. Even though potential sentient life in the universe would not necessarily have a humanoid form - in case of a contact we'd find a lot of social functions, mechanisms, and values that would look human to us.
Based on all this what is the future would we like to see? Humans avoiding obsolescence would be a nice thing, and the ability to coexist in culture with non-human - probably artificial - intelligence, and before that acquiring the ability to coexist in a culture with other humans.
