WEB 4 -  ARCHIVE

Commentary 24 - Page  1

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CULTURAL EVOLUTION

A slightly disjointed Commentary suggests that - as is now beginning to be generally accepted - humans are specialised in an information-handling faculty which gives hem exceptional memory, learning ability and communication capacity, and that this creates in human beings a unique situation in which - as individuals, and as a species - we face two alternatives.

• The first is that if this 'learning ability' is suppressed, humans are more vulnerable to the problems of specialisation than are other animals, since almost the whole of their ability to adapt is invested in this ability. But the human psyche falls outside this rule, having an alternative possibility on which all Christian hopes depend.

In the language of the biological sciences, the human being is a specialised animal, and certain biologists have claimed that specialisation normally becomes an evolutionary blind-alley. It makes sense that, in a continually changing world, overspecialised creatures are sooner or later likely to be inadequate to deal with some problem. 

• The second alternative is an exception to the almost-universal rule of biological nature that specialisation reduces adaptability. The exception, in fact, is the human. Although it is true that as long as a creature is ruled by the instincts of its animal nature, it is subject to the penalty of natural specialisation, which is that because instinct acts where no learning occurs, the better an instinct serves one purpose, the less often it will be able to meet other needs.

Since the human psyche differs from that of animals in being only partly formed at birth, many classes of activity which are innate in other animals are not instinctive in humans. It seems likely that unformed or uncultivated individuals therefore find themselves seriously disadvantaged: they are often unable to solve problems which 'ordinary' animals can solve instinctively, and  this is the cause of many of the psychological problems that are becoming increasingly endemic in the Western world.

It then suggests that this combination of intelligence and information sharing can be describe as a specialisation in adaptability. Man's specialisation is based on extending the capacity of memory and  intelligence through information-sharing. This the unique specialisation of our human nature can in fact allow us to develop our specialisation so as to increase our adaptability to change instead of decreasing it. The more we develop in this direction, the more we become able to adapt.

CULTURAL

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Spiritual crisis of the West  

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