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FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 2009

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|NEXT STORY »

OPINION

Globalization Is Changing Our Brains

By Drew Nelles| Posted Mar 29, 09 6:20 PM CDT|

(Newser) – Having boogied in 70 countries on all seven continents, Matt Harding concludes that “globalization is forcing our brains to evolve." Known via the Internet for dancing poorly with locals in far-flung locations, Harding argues that our brains were designed for social interaction within a small tribe—but we now inhabit a “single, impossibly vast social network," he writes on NPR.

The problem “isn't that the world has changed, it's that my primitive caveman brain hasn't." But when Harding dances with people, “I see them smile and laugh. The world seems simpler, and my caveman brain finds that comforting.” Because the next generation will develop brains better-suited to globalization, they will "look into eyes of strangers" and, rather than differences, see "the things that are the same.”

[Images (2)]

[Videos (1)]

[Quotes (3)]

Matt Harding, left, writes, "I believe my children will have brains ever so slightly better suited to the vast complexity that surrounds us." (Flickr)

"My tribe has grown into a single, impossibly vast social network, whether I like it or not," Matt Harding writes. (Shutterstock)

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The original "Where the Hell is Matt?" video. (YouTube)

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When I dance with people, I see them smile and laugh and act ridiculous. It makes those differences seem smaller. The world seems simpler, and my caveman brain finds that comforting. - Matt Harding

People want to feel connected to each other. They want to be heard and seen, and they're curious to hear and see others from places far away. - Matt Harding

« Prev« Prev | Next »Next » Slideshow

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18 comments

VIEWING:

proxieme2
Mar 29, 09 7:11 PM CDT

As nice a thought as this is, I'm not sure that Lamarckian ideas of evolution would apply here... Reply

| 0 minutes ago

NutsInNY
Mar 29, 09 7:15 PM CDT

PU!.. What is that stench?...Is that a flaming pile of rubbish I smell? Reply

| 0 minutes ago

shonangreg
Mar 29, 09 9:03 PM CDT

Matt's short article shows some insight, but he flubs it up on the details. We are "hard wired" by our evolutionary development to live in small groups. However, we've been out of the "tribal" society for 6,000 years, give or take here or there. We are now going from a national to a global society, yet our instincts remain largely fixed in the pre-national stage. That pattern is not going to change even slightly in the next generation. OTOH, the racism that has been so prevalent in the last few hundred years, more of a cultural, learned thing than hard-wired instinct, that will continue to change ever more quickly over the next generation or two, by quite a bit, I think. Matt does not separate out these two phenomena. Reply

IN RESPONSE:

shonangreg
Mar 29, 09 9:04 PM CDT

PS shonangreg is gregconquest.

IN RESPONSE:

NutsInNY
Mar 29, 09 10:00 PM CDT

shonangregconquest: You say "we've been out of the 'tribal' society for 6,000 years"... Can you explain what you mean by that, or qualify it? Myself, I came to understand tribalism by (long story short) becoming acquainted with assorted South African tribes. But once I did that, I began to see tribalism is rampant everywhere, in the sense of group loyalties preempting or overriding logic and rationality. And white Americans -- my tribe -- are certainly no exception. (Read: I'm concerned about an ethnocentric and/or xenophobic sense of that word.)

IN RESPONSE:

shonangreg
Mar 29, 09 10:28 PM CDT

NutsInNY, Sure. My statement was already heavily, though vaguely, qualified by the "give or take, here or there" *qualification*. I know there are places even today where tribalism remains the dominant principle of social organization. I'm not belittling that. I'm referring to the history of civilization/urbanization and its spread and conquest of less massively stratified societies (Eropean colonization of America, Austalasia, Africa; current national trends in Brazil, Indonesia, etc.) -- Why are there no paragraphs in newser??? -- Human culture changed fundamentally when we began to join/forced to enter cities and then nations. Yet, that was only 6,000 years ago (Mohenjo Daro I'm thinking, but this is a general trend...) Our non-cultured, unlearned human instinct has not significantly changed since then. Witness our inability to deal with the food choices we have in modern society and all the illnesses we have as a result. The next big stage after the age of nations is the current global society. Yet still, our genes are appropriate to life 10,000 years ago. We still want to live in tribes, as you alluded to in the rampant tribalism everywhere today. Our inner genetically determined social organizing principles lag the society we are in. Gangs, cliques, in-groups and out-groups, . . . these all represent problems to what larger society is trying to accomplish. Matt fundamentally failed to distinguish between the genetic and the cultural evolution we are undergoing.

IN RESPONSE:

Rob
Mar 29, 09 10:28 PM CDT

Yeah tribalism is still with us. Every time you go into a small town and everyone stares at you, every time HS football teams bash each other, every time people collect in small groups that are inside a hierarchy of group sizes, we see the tribalism. Global population size is much too large and diverse in social groups for evolutionary changes with Darwinian rules to take place in a few short generations and Lamarck was just wrong.

IN RESPONSE:

shonangreg
Mar 30, 09 3:00 AM CDT

PS and there is genetic evolution happening morphing our instinctive behavior and physiology to living in cities. The breeding out of alcohol intolerance in Europe is one example of this. (Europeans used fermentation to purify water once civilized; Asians boiled the water and made tea.) Other genetic changes are happening too, but I'm not well-versed in such. It is cultural evolution that is the big factor -- the thing that has more flexibility and the thing we can change intentionally. Regarding Lamarckism, eugenics, even subtle propaganda can shape human breeding patterns and effect similar results as Lamarckism. And there was something recently about there being evidence of Lamarckism, though as I remember it, I could not see how they eliminated a more robust cultural evolution corrupting their data. *I* think culture is more widespread than we humans generally believe.

IN RESPONSE:

Rob
Mar 30, 09 6:37 AM CDT

There was an article that attempted to revive Lamarck however the primary literature still does not support it. And quite frankly, even if it did, it would still not open any doors to human evolution on a global scale since the requirement to have limited exchange of transfer information would still be violated and most people do not live in a “globalized” world. Lamarckism’s a defunct version for explaining Evolution and was derived without considering Mendel's work. I'm not sure what you mean by fermentation to purify water. I don't see how that would work.

IN RESPONSE:

shonangreg
Mar 30, 09 8:57 AM CDT

Fermentation to purify water? I'm talking about the European tradition of adding yeast or whatever to water to create an alcohol that was safer to drink than the septic water that was otherwise available. Europeans adapted to this. If you were alcohol intolerant, you more likely died. In Asia, water was boiled instead of converted to an alcohol, and then the water was flavored with tea leaves. Asians did not have the history of depending on alcoholic drinks like the Europeans did. That is why there is a higher intolerance to alcohol among Asians -- and Native Americans. European populations evolved to tolerate alcohol.

IN RESPONSE:

Rob
Mar 30, 09 9:47 AM CDT

Do you have a reference to this? I would think that adding yeast to water would not create an antibiotic. Beer remains “alive” and active and so not really purified, same with wines. Increasing levels of alcohol would have just created alcohol tolerant bacteria as much as alcohol tolerant people, given the rapidity of bacterial generations as opposed to human generation time the speed of developing tolerance would go much faster for microbes. And water with distilled alcohols mixed in would not have provided a substitute for water, given the amount that would have been added to act as a bacterial cleansing agent. Maybe I am misunderstanding this. But I want to know.

IN RESPONSE:

shonangreg
Mar 30, 09 8:07 PM CDT

Rob, this is not my original source, I think it was archeology magazine, but I forget. Here is what I just found: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_beer#Medieval_Europe Beer was one of the most common drinks during the Middle Ages. It was consumed daily by all social classes in the northern and eastern parts of Europe where grape cultivation was difficult or impossible. Though wine of varying qualities was the most common drink in the south, beer was still popular among the lower classes. Since the purity of water could seldom be guaranteed, alcoholic drinks were a popular choice, having been boiled as part of the brewing process. Beer also provided a considerable amount of the daily calories in the northern regions. In England and the Low Countries, the per capita consumption was 275-300 liters (60-66 gallons) a year by the Late Middle Ages, and beer was downed with every meal...

IN RESPONSE:

Rob
Mar 30, 09 8:12 PM CDT

OK that makes sense to me. It's the boiling not the alcohol. Thanks for digging.

IN RESPONSE:

shonangreg
Mar 30, 09 8:18 PM CDT

So, you may be right about bacteria being able to evolve and become alcohol tolerant; the wikipedia article says it was the boiling of water involved in making beer that actually did the disinfecting. It is strange for me to think of people drinking beer throughout the day, but a look at history of alcohol/beer/ale consumption in medieval Europe shows per capita consumption at levels of all liquids we drink today. You'd think someone would have been selling barrels of boiled water. Nonetheless, alcohol consumption was widespread and apparently necessary in medieval Europe. Europeans with an intolerance to alcohol were at a disadvantage and thus that phenotype (?) was breeded out.

IN RESPONSE:

Rob
Mar 30, 09 9:03 PM CDT

Well it could have been weak beer, or it could be that Europeans had a pre-adaptation for metabolizing alcohol. That's not eliminating the possibility of a selective process removing an alcohol intolerant genotype/phenotype, just offering some alternative possibilities. There are many animals that use alcohol for recreation, including Indian elephants. Since the trait is present in diverse taxa it would suggest that the genotype for metabolizing alcohol was already present in humans and those populations that don’t tolerate alcohol lost the ability rather than Europeans developing one.

| 0 minutes ago

Collusive
Mar 29, 09 9:17 PM CDT

Globalization, is that euphemism for Americanization? Reply

IN RESPONSE:

Rob
Mar 29, 09 10:32 PM CDT

Well it might be. Whoever is best suited to export culture, and right now that the US, exports culture. Enjoy it while you can cause: Don’t it always seem to go -- That you don't know what you’ve got ‘til it's gone. With apologies to Joni Mitchell.

| 0 minutes ago

Rob
Mar 30, 09 9:05 PM CDT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgAU5XQ2HnY Reply

| 0 minutes ago

View all 18 comments »

evolution • globalization • brain • tribes • NPR • cavemen • social behavior

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