How We Got Here

The most fashionable explanations of social evolution are based on the materialist assumption that man is really an animal, even though a strange one, so that social evolution is basically driven by his physical needs. Closely linked with this materialist philosophy is the belief that social, as well as biological evolution, can be explained by Darwinian theory because this is supposed to be so simple and so powerful that it can be extended far beyond the realm of biology to human society. Darwin’s theory explains biological evolution by two simple ideas – random genetic variation, and the selection of successful variations in the competition for survival.

In the same way, it has been suggested, why can’t we treat new variations in doing and thinking, inventions, institutions, customs, ideas, and so on, as appearing randomly, like genetic mutations, so that those novelties that are best adapted are then selected in the vigorous competition of daily life? They will survive and be imitated in large numbers, while the failures will dwindle and die out.

When trying to explain the evolution of culture, the Darwinist uses the idea of blind variation as a simple and convenient way of representing change and innovation. But it actually has very little to tell us about social change: we do not find, on the whole, that people try out vast numbers of different ways of doing things, and that the most efficient is ultimately selected by a process of competition, in which inferior variants are eliminated. There is usually only a limited range of choices, and people generally opt for the one that is the easiest or most convenient – it would be very odd if they didn’t. So, for example, just about every verbal number system in the world is based on 10. Are we to believe that this was the result of some trial-and-error process in which thousands of societies tried out all sorts of other numbers, and that only those systems based on ten survived? Or, did people almost always go for ten in the first place, without any trial-and-error, simply because we have ten fingers, and that was the easy and obvious choice?

But once we accept that people tend to do what is easiest, this contradicts the whole notion of blind variation, because what is easiest – physically, psychologically, technologically, socially and so on – will be very restricted and the complete opposite of what is random. Trying to account for change by talking of random variation is in fact a camouflage for ignorance, that excuses us from investigating how the significant innovations in human history have really occurred.

The other pillar of Darwinian theory is selection, the assumption that competition for survival between different ways of doing and thinking in human society has always been very severe, weeding out the maladaptive and selecting the fittest. In our modern capitalist world of rapid innovation, financial rewards for commercial success, and advanced communication there is obviously a very high level of competition; this is true not only of goods and services, but of the market place of ideas and our notions of how we should live. These conditions, however, are highly unusual. In earlier periods, and especially in small, technologically primitive societies, the rate of innovation is very slow with few alternatives to choose from, and, just as important, a number of different ways of doing things may all be viable, so that the competition between them is actually very weak. The level of competition itself, then, can vary greatly, but if this is so, then widespread customs or institutions, such as magic or the vendetta, may not necessarily have proved themselves in the rigorous struggle for survival – it may be that there are simply frequently recurring features of human nature and society that produce them. And if conditions are undemanding, then it will be easy for the inefficient to survive indefinitely because competitive pressures are low.

We must therefore escape from the mind-set that believes history has been a continuous struggle between the better and the less adapted. Rather than the survival of the fittest, we often have the survival of the mediocre.