One
of the central points that has been made in this column is that humans cannot biologically
evolve as fast as technology can change.
In particular, the human nervous system cannot evolve fast enough to
keep up with the changes in the configurations of stimuli created in the human
field of experience by technology.
Modern technological environments tend to eliminate the organic stimuli
found in nature – the flowing blendable continual stimuli that come from
natural phenomena, the kind of stimuli that are relatively easier for humans to
absorb. Instead, a typical modern human
alternates between experiencing, on the one hand, the overstimulation of
abrasive bundles of defined discrete stimuli – tension pockets created directly
and indirectly by many modern machines and their waste products –and, on the
other hand, the understimulation that comes from experiencing the vacuum spaces
filled with infinite continuous emptiness stimuli, the spaces that humans use
to rise above the organic perishability found in natural environments.
This
being said, it does not mean that humans aren’t evolving at all, as a result of
their interface with modern technology.
However, many of the changes are behavioral rather than physical. It has been discussed many times in this
column how complex modern machines have acted both as mirrors and models,
particularly for young people. And
people are becoming gradually more robotic as a result. What hasn’t been discussed is what humans are
losing as a result of becoming more robotic.
A
very useful concept for discussing what has been lost is the notion of
vestigial structures and functions. I
became very interested in this notion after reading J. Howard Moore’s book Savage
Survivals. Some of his ideas I find
very intriguing; others I don’t agree with.
It seems that during evolution, some parts of the bodies of organisms evolve,
while others go into disuse and then either degenerate or remain
underdeveloped. Examples of parts of
humans in disuse are the appendix, the ear muscles, the tail and tail muscles,
wisdom teeth, and the hairy covering of human bodies. All of these were body parts that had a very
important function at some stage of human development. Now they don’t, but they continue to exist in
a diminished form anyway.
Humans
also have behaviors that are vestigial.
An example of involuntary vestigial behavior is when people get goose
bumps when they are cold or afraid. This
form of behavior goes back to when human ancestors were covered with fur. Ruffling out the fur could keep one of our
ancestors warm. It was also the way a
mammal could make himself look bigger than he actually was in order to frighten
away an enemy. Porcupines ruffle out
their spines to scare away potential predators.
Then
there are forms of more voluntary vestigial behavior. Hunting has become a
vestigial behavior in modern technological society. It is done only by a certain group of
enthusiasts. However, I don’t think that
one of the behaviors Moore talked about as vestigial is in fact quite as vestigial
as he said it was in his book published in 1934. Fighting is a very common form of behavior
today, whether among school kids, martial arts enthusiasts, isolated criminals,
urban gangs, soldiers, revolutionaries, or terrorists. I think that in modern technological society,
fighting is, underneath the more surface reasons, a defense against sensory
distortion. It represents an expression
of conative acceleration, of the speeding up of the human will, so that a
person can create his own world of abrasive tension-pocket stimulation to block
out the abrasive tension-pocket stimulation and the vacuum stimulation that
surround him. When he creates his own
field of experience through fighting, he gains control over his field of
experience. He is no longer buffeted
around by sensory distortion over which he has no control.
This
is distinct from fighting in more traditional natural living environments,
where fighting has been used particularly for men as a form of
self-differentiation, as a way of developing strong figure boundaries to
protect oneself from being swallowed up by the strong enveloping grounding of
the organic habitat. Men fighting men,
figures knocking against figures, becomes a way of separating from organic
natural fields of experience. Fighting
in more traditional natural environments is an instinctive way not only of
defending oneself but of defining oneself.
Anyway,
for many people, certain televised sports such as soccer, American football and
hockey do take on the role of vicarious vestigial forms of fighting. This is a way that modern technology has
contributed to making physical fighting a vestigial component of the personal
lives of many of us. Many people from
modern technological society with their modern values of cooperation and peace
would look on this spectator violence favorably. Yes, these sports lead to concussions and a
lot of other injuries, but that does not directly affect the people watching
these sports. So television viewers can
watch violence without getting involved themselves.
The
main counterargument to making physical conflict vicarious and vestigial is
that unless this transformation occurs with everybody, the peace loving people
leave themselves vulnerable to other people whether bullies, criminals or
people in gangs, warlike countries, or terrorist groups. The peace loving people lose their capacity
and their desire to stand up to those people who threaten them.
There
are many people in civilized industrial societies who do not have a visceral
feel for how dangerous the threats are from many of the groups in the Middle
East. Unfortunately, trying to reason
with members of these groups, trying to negotiate with them, just doesn’t seem
to work. They want victory and not
compromise, not peace treaties.
The
vacuumized conflict of sporting matches on television, or even movies and
television programs about war, crime and adventure, blurs into real life, so
that, on one level, we don’t experience the full sensory impact of real life
threats. Real life threats become
vacuumized, become unreal. While stories
on the screen show us the effects of violence, they make us numb to it at the
same time. That is unless or until
something might happen to us.
I
have recently been considering that modern technology not only makes human
behavior vestigial, but it even makes human emotions vestigial. Machines are made of defined discrete parts
that are frequently screwed into place or fitted into place. The parts are relatively easily disconnected
from one another, easily interchangeable, easily replaced. We can say that most of the parts are shallow-bonded
to one another, and this is what allows mechanics and computer specialists to
repair machines.
To
the extent that humans allow modern technology to mirror them and model for
them, they pick up the modalities of connectedness that they use with each
other from these machines. Our
relationships with each other become more shallow-bonded, more contingent, more
transient. For many of us, deep-bonded
connectedness, real intimacy, exists in an undeveloped vestigial state. This is one explanation for why people live
together today rather than get married.
They want a more contingent relationship that allows for an easier
escape. The high divorce rate in most
modern technological societies is also one indication that for a lot of people,
intimacy exists in a much diminished vestigial form.
To
the extent that we still have some control over the future evolution of our
behavior and our emotions, we may ask ourselves if we really want to move in
the directions that have been established regarding our behavior and our
emotions. Becoming robotic means not
only evolving towards a new way of being, it means diminishing the importance
of certain traits that are important as foundations for our traditional concept
of what it means to be human. It means
diminishing the mental attitudes that allow us to truly defend ourselves
against the people who would hurt us, on the one hand, and to truly bond with
the people that we love and care about, on the other. We, as humans, may have to try and find a way
of activating again many of the behaviors and emotions that are becoming
vestigial as a result of modern technology.
Becoming robotic means becoming numb in both our positive and negative connections
to other people. It means becoming numb
to ourselves. We maintain these
connections to others and to ourselves on a vestigial basis. For now.
In the future, as is the case with many vestigial organs, even the
vestiges may disappear.
