I admit "History being guided" is a trick phrase. It
stands for my view that there is no causation, but only probability. So,
technically, it is correct that History is not in anyone's control in
the larger sense of "do this, get that." Nonetheless, in the "macro"
world of our existence, there are regularities compounded from
statistical randomness; "bodies in motion stay in motion." The seeming
contradiction is resolved in the notion that the immediate chances of
something happening are reduced or improved by the setting. It is the
same with relativisitic gravity, which is a warping of space-time; not
someone grabbing things and forcing them into an orbit. That there is an
appearance of order, of causality, in our world is the result of subtle
limitations - perhaps quirks - in its Quantum structure. For example,
the Pauli Exclusion principle (some kinds of things cannot be at the
same time and place) underlies the solidity of matter. But other things,
such as light, are not solid because Pauli Exclusion doesn't apply to
them.
There is an escape valve for intelligent beings: thoughts. Ideas are not
bound by any physical limits; in principle they can be anything at all.
(For example, we can pose contradictions.) This fact makes our
intellectual activities very powerful. Thus, we can create movies that
depict what never was and probably can never be; say,
King Kong or
the Star Trek
transporter. What appears on the silver screen is the flickering of
light, often accompanied by motions of air (sound). What it means is
left to the audience.
King Kong is
a picture in our heads, suggested by lights on the screen and waves in
the air, but does not exist anywhere else. Creatures lacking our
interpretive abilities do not respond to the movie as we do; perhaps
they do not respond at all. What do our cousins, chimpanzees, make of
Hamlet's soliloquy?
The computer and other modern machines make possible representations
that go beyond nature. It does not matter that what is represented is
impossible, because what is actually processed are only instructions or
lights or sounds. We have to make a distinction between the process and
its interpretation. What something means to us depends on our
interpretation of what is presented to us. Our brains organize sounds
into music, or a bunch of numbers into an experimental result. Then, we
respond to those organized things, as if they were present in the world,
not just in our heads. Causality is a sensible human experience exactly
because of that process, even if the Universe has no causality in it
anywhere. We believe the illusion that A causes B, because we organize
experience that way. Our moods are affected by the music we hear, so we
assign meanings to it, including those feelings, as if the music had
that meaning.
Culture is another form of the same trick. There is no "culture"
anywhere. There are only people observed to do this, that and the other
thing. I organize my observations of behavior into habits [personal
behavior] and rituals [social behavior]. Because the observed behavior
seems to follow instruction, and rarely happens
de nouveau
without
instruction, I attribute the behavior to beliefs. Beliefs explain why
someone does the same thing repetitively without further instruction;
i.e., beliefs are the repository of instruction (including
self-instruction). As with a computer, we need only install a program
(belief) once, after which it becomes available on demand.
Why do women wear dresses while men wear pants? It starts with early
childhood training. For example, I was brought to a barber at an early
age who cut my hair a certain way. I have almost always had it cut that
way ever since. I don't think about it. I just mumble "standard business
cut" to the barber. (Of course, barbering has changed: they are much
quicker and charge a lot more money.) I wear my hair as determined by
cultural values for males ca. World War II. I have changed it now and
then - I actually prefer it longer - but that requires a lot of
thought. Changing a style means
standing in front of the mirror, considering this, that and the other
thing. It means considering why I am doing this, for myself or others?
What criticisms will I get from my mate?
On the other hand, women change their clothes and hair all the time, as
that is expected. It does not require a lot of thought to make a change,
as women are often pleased well enough by the current fad. Women who do
not conform to the style are the ones who have to
think about it.
It is going against the flow that requires thought. Doing the expected
is easy. Being culturally programmed is easy. Most people just let their
programs run, because that is the easy. Unquestionned culture determines
social evolution, because it masters individuals.
Now, it may seem strange to propose that an unseen non-force non-thing
directs social evolution, until it is realized that "social evolution"
is itself just a set of concepts. It is the pattern we make of what we
observe. To the extent that culture is an observable, it operates on
real people, individuals, through their beliefs. In turn, these beliefs
are part of a complex series of mental processes which can be observed
as perturbations of brain tissue. Put the other way around, human brains
are capable of learning (being programmed) and then executing those
programs as required. The programs are observable either as patterns of
brain activity - something currently at the frontier of brain research -
or as overt actions (such as, my fingers are typing). Repetitious
personal behavior is habit; stereotypical social behavior is ritual. All
that is "guided" by culture, which is the class name we give to the
assembly of these various behaviors.
It is possible to examine culture as a program, as a set of concepts or
instructions collected together by a certain logic. One of the
advantages of the program concept is that it need not be limited to
syllogistic logic. In programmed structures, it is possible to assert
both Black and White simaltaneously because there are no physical
limits; i.e., what is being asserted is coinceptual, just as novels are
about fictional characters. It is this possibility that underlies the
notion of cultural direction; i.e., we may think of culture as a script
or a story. It need not be "provable" in the sense of a mathematical
theorem, nor "mechanical" in the sense of gears or pushrods that make
things go.
Just because it is possible does not mean it is so. There are other ways
of describing human behavior and societies. The operational question for
"culture," as proposed, is whether it is not only descriptive, but
predictive. If we can tease out the story of a culture - its logic - we
can predict what will happen next, even if that behavior is not
presently known to cultural participants. It is in this sense that
culture controls evolution; i.e., "culture" is a set of
our concepts which we use in
explaining the course of events. In that way, culture is an hypothesis,
just like any other hypothesis, about the way things work; specifically,
about the way socialized human beings work.
To the extent that a cultural hypothesis is correct, it will describe
and predict the behavior in its purview. That is the same sort of status
we grant to physical theories about our world. We believe in Newton's
proposed force of gravity and its associated inverse square law, because
it works in almost every time and place. To date, Einstein's Relativity
corrects all the anomalies in the Newtonian theory. In addition,
Relativity assures us that we don't need its corrections most of the
time, thus affirming our local belief in Newton's physics. In fact, in
our everyday experience, we believe the world works more or less like
Newton's description of it. Within that naive description, it makes
sense to talk about cause and effect; as in, "I'm sorry, I knocked the
cookie jar on the floor" (sotto voce:
after I ate its contents).
In the "real" world, the world as observed, people do things alone and
with others. We need not make any causal explanation of their
activities. We need not make any explanation at all. Offering an
explanation is only of interest to
intelligent observers who propose patterns in what they see. The
rudest explanation might be gathering seemingly related behaviors into
classes; e.g., classes ordered by statistical probability. Statistical
groupings put together things observed together and, at a secondary
level, things not observed together. Thus, x% of the marbles are red, y%
are blue, and z% of red marbles are next to blue ones. Such an ordering
is an explanation in so far as it is more than just a record of
observations. Culture, as an explanation, is at a higher level of
abstraction, since it offers hypothetical reasons for what is observed.
Thus, 'these people pray five times daily because they are Muslims.' It
is the Muslim religion which is taken to explain behavior, not some
mysterious force that causes people to pray alone or with others. The
same kind of explanation can be put forward about Imperialist behavior;
i.e., Imperialism and other political, social and economic belief are
just as explanatory as, say, religion.
The power culture has over people is exactly in unthinking performance.
Older people who were trained in the Catholic tradition as existed in
their childhood may still have qualms about not eating fish on Fridays.
Early training stays in people's lives, even if it is later overcome and
abandoned. Those who make no attempt to change their practices, who are
satisfied to go along, sustain the culture not only in their behavior,
but in raising another generation of practioners. For example, I was
surprised to learn an acquaintance who had long ago abandoned childhood
religion nonetheless required her children to learn and participate in
those same practices. She offered the same reasons for doing so that her
mother (who followed the same life pattern) had given. This and many
similar examples illustrate how strong culture is. It is imbedded in
millions of small behaviors, not just in top level conscious beliefs.
This suggests culture can be considered as composed of many, highly
correlated observations. That is, even if one rejects the existence of
culture, and relies only on statistics, it is still a useful term in so
far as it refers to the correlations between and within statistical
groups. Moreover, the correlations persist over very long periods,
anywhere from significant fractions of a human lifetime to hundreds of
generations. (There are extant, identifiable, continuous Australian
Aborigine, Chinese and Japanese cultures stretching back 2 millennia or
more. Western and Islamic civilizations are around 10-13 centuries old.
Modern technological civilization is just 200 years old. Post-modernism
is maybe 20-40 years old.) Even if one dismisses the notion of culture,
the fact is that human behavioral patterns are deeply imbedded and
persist over many time scales. Thus, it is very difficult to change
those behaviors. If one accepts the cutural hypothesis, it shows that
cultural has a powerful hold on people.
This also shows that people do a lot less thinking and choosing than
they claim. In fact, most of what we do is strongly programmed. Thinking
is a difficult act. Changing one's behavior is even more difficult.
Nonetheless, it happens. The Modern Revolution - to give it a name -
started about 500 years ago. It became entrenched and picked up speed
with the advent of the Industrial Revolution. It went into warp drive
starting in World War II. The 20th century marks a second
major watershed since the beginning of Modernity. When a watershed
happens, there is no going back short of total collapse. That's because
the integrated total of the changes brings about new groups and classes;
i.e., this is a qualitative change. Modern culture and societies based
on it are completely different from what transpired in the Victorian
era, during the Enlightenment and before the Renaissance. This suggests
Islamic and Christian fundamentalists are not just out of kilter with
Modernity, but are developmentally at least 3 steps behind. This makes
attacks on Modernity by those cultures extremely dangerous. It might
take several centuries for those cultures to catch up. Of course, there
is no guarantee that Modernity will survive: it is well documented that
humanity has fallen into Dark Ages many times before. (In the last
European Dark Ages, people even forgot how to make the arches like those
left by the Romans.)
The upshot of this discussion should also be that
thought can change culture. I
believe pre-existing culture controls, and controls strongly, unless a
determined effort is made to change it. Such changes do not happen
overnight, and are always the cumulative result of many efforts. The
development of modern technology illustrates the process. We always
stand on the shoulders of the giants who went before, unless we are
capable of making the leap to new ground.
08:59:33 - Friday, 06/09/2006