First Unitarian Universalist Church “We Are A Welcoming Congregation!” 2434 East Battlefield, Springfield, Missouri  65804-3980 phone: 417-883-3922     fax: 417-883-7680 e-mail: springfield@springfieldunitarians.org

NonZero: Social Evolution and the Logic of Human Destiny
presented at the 1st Unitarian Universalist Church of Springfield by Paul Mignard

Let me introduce to you Robert Wright, former senior editor of the New Republic and a best selling author. He has put together a lot of current thought on how we got where we are, and perhaps where we may be going, in a book with the rather off-putting title, Non Zero and the Logic of Human Destiny. Wright’s thesis is that Darwin’s theory of natural selection, as it is refined and understood today can explain everything that we are and how, more of less, we got that way . That is a pretty big order, but he makes a good case.

The single driving force of evolution is the necessity of the genes to survive into the next generation. Impaled upon this simple fact, like a bug on a pin is all life on earth, and all human culture that is now or is going to be. In essence this is the reality, as he sees it, that Robert Wright is selling in his provocative book, Non Zero -- etc.

How do you get from amoebas to man; from cave dwellers to super powers and pre-emptive wars solely because of genes wanting to be immortal? Well, Wright, who is an excellent journalist, takes several hundred pages to tell you how and it is quite a ride! How much of this can I sell to you in fifteen or twenty minutes? We’ll see!

Part of his story is that cultural evolution - our progress from isolated family units to today’s complex societies - is just as Darwinian as biological evolution and obeys about the same rules as biological evolution.

The “non zero” in the title is a phrase he has borrowed from the branch of mathematics called “game theory” and he uses the term as a convenient catch phrase when talking about cooperation between entities that results in an evolutionary gain. Such as wolves hunting in a pack instead of alone. To help see where he is coming from he retells a little tale called the “Prisoners Dilemma”

Two men are being held at the police station on suspicion of robbing a bank. They had been arrested earlier in the day after holding off police for several hours. They are taken to separate rooms for interrogation. Prisoner A is told; if he turns State witness against his partner he can avoid prison and his partner will get a ten year sentence. What if he doesn’t talk? In that case, if his partner squeals on him HE will get the ten years and his partner will go free. But what if they both talk? Then they will both get five years. Or, if neither betrays his partner; and neither talks, they will both get only two years for resisting arrest. . Maybe you have heard this before, if you have, bear with me. We are going to get to evolution in a minute. This little mind game “the prisoners dilemma” is used by game theory people to explain the difference between what they call zero sum games and non zero sum games “Zero sum” means one winning side and one losing side. The police win and the thieves both lose. Non zero sum means at least something is won on both sides. The prisoners could both win if they could agree not to talk and betray the other but they lose because they can’t communicate with each other -- and because, being crooks, even if they could talk together, they probably couldn’t trust each other. For non-zero sum outcomes communication and trust are required ingredients. Remember this, communication and trust are essential to any cooperation - even if the trust and communication are not conscious to the participants.

Lets get to evolution-- consider the slime mold. Normally slime mold is a scattering of cells on the forest floor, they feed alone and multiply by cell vision. But when food gets scarce some of the cells in the colony send out a chemical signal and the cells (who are all genetically related) pack together and form a small slug that moves across the forest floor to a good spot where the cells begin to differentiate and the slug turns into a “fruiting body” with many cells becoming tissue for a stalk that rises up and others becoming spores that exit from the top of the stalk and are carried by the wind to become the mothers of new colonies .

Here is an evolutionary reality that involves the trust and communication we just talked about for a non zero outcome. We sometimes act like only people communicate, but of course all life communicates. In this case by chemical signal. And the trust - most of the cells give up their right to procreate by division and all die after the spores are spread. But this makes good Darwinian sense because all the cells have the same genes, all are clones of each other and all evolution cares about is getting the genes to the next generation. But this drive for the genes to survive has produced, guess what! Besides trust and information processing, altruism, self sacrifice. Most of the cells sacrifice themselves for the good of the spores. Of course, none of this is conscious behavior on the part of cells or genes. It is just what survived millions of random small variations of behavior because it is what worked for the survival of the genes.

So now evolution; the blind drive for the survival of the genes, has produced, altruism, trust and information processing. It isn’t just better teeth and claws that lead to survival. It is also, as life moves beyond single cell beings, trust and communication and altruism. Trust and communication and altruism between organisms that have a common gene package such as an ant colony where all the sterile workers are children of the queen. Or between the cells that cooperate to make us. We are also, you will remember, a collection of cooperating cells that all have the same the genes and that sacrifice themselves in great numbers every day to keep the collective that is you or me operating.

On this slim scaffold of survival of the genes leading to the evolution of trust, communication and altruism, all life and all cultures on the planet rest. Employing the logic of nonzero games Wright isolates the drive behind life’s basic direction. The drive, that through biological evolution created complex intelligent animals and also the drive that through cultural evolution, pushed humanity toward deeper and vaster social complexity.

Lets look at a primitive social structure.

One premise of the Darwinian view of cultural evolution is the unity of all humankind - the idea that people everywhere are genetically endowed with the same type of mental equipment, that there is a universal human nature.

The arrow of human history begins with the biology of human nature. That arrow points toward larger and larger quantities of non-zero transactions. As history progresses, and environmental conditions allow, human beings find themselves playing non zero games with more and more and more other human beings. Interdependence expands , and social complexity grows, in scope and depth. Here is a small example. The Shoshone Indians of the Great Basin - desert country-were called by Mark Twain “The wretchedest type of mankind I have ever seen” They have no villages and no gathering together into communities” They just scrabbled around in the desert for what little food they could find to stave off starvation. Were they stupid or deprived? Well, consider this, when jack rabbits were plentiful the Shoshone employed a tool too large for one family to handle. They used a net hundreds of feet long into which rabbits were herded before being clubbed to death. On such occasions a social structure would materialize. More than a dozen autonomous families that normally lived alone would come together briefly and cooperate under a “rabbit boss” and suddenly the wretched Shoshone of no organization brought out latent social skills and social complexity grew. Some of them made nets, some worked the nets, some chased the rabbits into the nets and all shared the food. Trust, communication and altruism. Do you hear a faint echo of the slime mold experience we talked about earlier? As an aside --Let me mention that the Shoshone that produced Sacagawea, the heroine of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, were a different bunch. They lived in the Bitterroot mountains and, though still poor by contemporary standards had horses and hunted buffalo.

To say that reaping non zero benefits elevates social complexity borders on the redundant. The successful playing of non zero games AMOUNTS to a growth of social complexity. (Some people make the nets, some people man the nets, some people chase the rabbits.) Teamwork has arrived. Civilization is around the corner maybe? Anyway Mr. Wright finds a myriad of examples of growing complexity through zero sum interactions in societies around the world and through time. It leads him to confidence that he can see an arrow of history pointing to greater and greater complexity in man’s future.

He lays out his argument in great detail. How, for instance, concern for your own genes could spread to concern for the family’s genes, called KIN ALTRUISM, and spread to concern for the community‘s genes, called RECIPROCAL ALTRUISM, where you share your kill with my family this week and I will share mine with your family next week.

So that there is a direction to both biological and cultural evolution. And, if there is, as Wright thinks, a repeatable pattern to the way life has evolved, where did the pattern come from? Was there a pattern maker? Stephan Jay Gould, the famous anthropologist and science writer from Princeton says there is no pattern. All is random chance. Mankind is a one time accident of nature and if he dies out the universe will never see a conscious being again. Wright says that is baloney. Evolution keeps coming up with the same solutions over and over again. Eyes, for instance have been reinvented several times in completely unrelated creatures. So have wings. Usually, but not always, natural selection heads in the direction of more and more complexity. If man died out, why would some other creature, given enough time, not be expected to take his place? So Wright comes to the conclusion that there is a direction to evolution. And if you want to you can consider a Director there is no logical reason not to.

Mr. Wright has similar thoughts about cultural evolution. Social organization has evolved from family to clan to tribe to City State to Nationhood many times, in many parts of the world. Always reaching (but not always making it) toward wider circles of membership and greater complexity . --always by the way, against “the others” the outsiders, the not you. And this is the dark side of human evolution. Whenever we are working together “for us” we are working against somebody else.

But, for all its shortcomings, advancement goes on. Always driven by the same engine - advancement of the genes. First your genes, then the family’s, then the clan’s. And always using the same tools. Communication, leading to trust, which will lead to kin altruism and to reciprocal altruism. All require non zero sum games, which lead to better and more complex organization. And so it goes. And now we have reached the edge of a global community where communication has reached such global levels with video and the internet that we have reached the possible evolution of a global society where there will be no “other” Not because we are noble enough to put it in place, but because evolution will push us there.

It isn’t assured, says Mr. Wright, but the logic of human destiny as we observe it in history makes it an evolutionary possibility. Do you think he is right? In the past as communication techniques improved, civilizations expanded. Will the universal potential of communication today someday result in a universal culture? There are huge roadblocks. It won’t happen through pre-emptive strikes of one Nation State. It won’t happen in our lifetime; but, says Mr. Wright, the arrow of cultural evolution points in that direction. What do you think?

 

Last update: 05 May 2005
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