“Evolving Forward”
by Micaela Edelson
As humans, we are innovators. We have transformed fire into lightbulbs, wheels into factory cogs, cave art into graphic art. We are adaptable. Having transformed our existence from bands of hunter-gatherers to early farming communities that enabled the freedom for free thought, to advanced cities numbering in the millions, we have proven our versatility to respond to changing needs throughout time. We are resilient. We have persisted despite and responded to large-scale ethnic cleansings as many times as too many; we have developed medicine and technology to respond to societal hardships and ailments; and we have endured through changing global hegemonies, colonialism, and global pandemics. To survive on this tumultuous planet and still lay claim to our species supremacy over the rest of Earth’s organisms, we have held to the virtues of innovation, adaptability, and resilience as invaluable characteristics to the human species that have allowed us to prosper and propagate.
However, there existed several characteristics essential for Homo sapiens’ survival that now act as impediments to the societal functioning of humanity. Mainly, our innate aggression that was used to stave off predators now results in disruptive social and ecological domination; our ingrained tribalism was essential to thwart off competitor bands and secure the limited resources for the posterity of one’s own tribe and one’s own genes, but is now manifested through nationalism and identity politics; and while communalism and gathering in tribes were inherently human, providing necessary emotional and social comforts, we now blindly follow the neoliberal virtues of individualism, denying ourselves the social, mental, and emotional benefits of a community.
Until recently, when forced rest has allowed for a re-examination of our life priorities and values, when individualism results in the deadly decision to resume business-as-usual, and when the unjust and publicized deaths of George Floyd, Elijah McClain, Ahmaud Abery, and Breonna Taylor, highlight the dark side of our evolutionary aggression and indifferent reactions legitimize tribal identity politics, where one can’t decipher the moral difference between property destruction and lives lost. Our evolutionary creed has become criminal and we can only hope but to evolve forward.
Aggression Abounds
Only as little as 300,000 years ago did we diverge from the Homo heidelbergenesis species and embark on the sapiens claim towards supremacy over the earth. From the start, the long-term viability of our species was threatened. To survive and transcend the ecosystem to the Anthropocene, we needed to be selfish, aggressive towards one another to ensure only our fittest passed along the best genes. Like our fellow primates in the jungles, our males competed for dominance and security to be chosen as the rightful mate. Aggression was and is quick to come, and slow to dissipate as the patriarchs remain territorial over their geographical and sexual claims. We needed aggression to survive and outcompete other primates, other species in the Homo genus, other tribes of Homo sapiens to ensure the security of and satiated needs for our own community and our own genes.
The competition for survival is significantly less pressing today, yet we still seek domination. We still seek to outcompete our neighbor via accumulated goods and prestige, despite a resource-abundant environment. We still have aggressive genes permeating our society, pushing to the top, and asserting supremacy-fuelled actions imparted on others: pursuing war for oil, diminishing prospects for the financially unfit, killing Black men (“thugs”) in the street—praised practices by the dominators, barricades for the dominated.
In the animal kingdom, grand patriarchs ensure that the aggression and rash actions undertaken by the sexually charged and inexperienced males are mitigated. Like apes in the wild, looking towards the grand patriarch for guidance and direction, we too have placed value in strong leaders for our society. Unfortunately, “strength” is no longer a necessary virtue for leadership anymore, and the most aggressive, often male, individuals are primed for the top, pursuing policies and leading their community and society by aggression rather than compassion. The ruthless are rewarded and propagate their genes—Darwin’s natural selection at work.
Our aggressive push beyond survival, for power and claims, has also caused us great internal suffering. Many philosophers will argue that suffering is inherent to humanity, and perhaps, an evolutionary state from which we cannot escape. Suffering may have initially motivated us to seek and ensure security in our primal state as we stressed over the safety of ourselves and the tribe. Now, suffering has arguably provoked our quest for dominance, pushing us for control within our own advanced societies and over others’, always in search of more comfort, more freedom. Suffering is a great motivator for innovation, motivation for domination, and ultimately motivation for our transcendence from the primacy of the natural world.
What happens when we can’t have more? When we’re forced to have less? What happens when we no longer have the “freedom” to go clothes shopping or dine in our favorite eating establishments? Many dawn their AK-47s, arrive at a State Capitol building and demand their right to infect. Can we not see humanity’s aggressive nature when full-grown adults throw armed temper tantrums at the steps of our politicians? Can we not see the aggression of a Capitol insurgence when one’s preferred presidential candidate has lost?
Undoubtedly, our innate aggression and propensity for domination have mal-implications for our natural environment as well. America’s relationship with nature was tainted the moment Columbus stepped on the soil and erased the existence and culture of Indigenous peoples who had been sustainably stewarding the land for millennia prior. Rather than learning how to sustainably cultivate the continent and give what we take, the colonists slaughtered the people and slaughtered the land.
We have seen iterations of this aggressive human superiority over the past several centuries, through the damming of the Columbia River, which prevents salmon spawn from reaching their migratory pathway and severely threatens the great orcas awaiting their annual feast. We have seen this through our overexploitation of oysters in the Chesapeake Bay, which denies the bay of its natural filtration system, allowing algae to proliferate and oxygen to deplete, destroying livelihoods of fishermen and oyster harvesters along the way. We have seen this through the clear-cutting of millions of acres of forested areas—habitats to more species of birds, rodents, reptiles, insects, fungus, and microorganisms in one-square meter than could fit on Noah’s Ark. We have continued to dominate over our fellow beings all while denying our own origins and existence within nature.
Our eyes mired by the prospects of self-actualization, humanity’s penetration into the soil, sea, and air have done little but threaten the sustainability of our species and our global ecosystem. How can the elephants fall to the fate of the sapiens who are just a sliver of their mightiness and being? How can we incite extinctions with sheer indifference? How can we survive when the forest and freshwater resources have all been exploited? Our abuse of and dominion over our environment does not have to be inherently human. Indigenous groups have and continue to steward the land in equilibrium with their needs, acknowledging our sameness with the natural world and treating the Earth as our mother.
Not until recently when our skies and waters have cleared in quarantine, emissions stalled, and we have the opportunity to reconnect with nature, albeit through daily walks around the neighborhood or otherwise. Not until recently when wildfires ravaged the West and ice storms desecrated the South, have we so visibly seen the impacts of our fossil-fuel-friendly lifestyle and been so directly confronted with the need to change.
The endurance of our aggression over the past handful of millennia did wonders to ensure our survival, technological advances, and a quality-of-life unbeknownst to our fellow animals, but despite and likely as a result of our primal transcendence, the dominant Western worldview has caused us to lose sight of the importance of a balanced planet. We no longer need to continue on our path away from equilibrium towards reckless dominion and can use our year-plus as a reminder of the value in community and equity both with one another and with the natural world.
Tribalism Triumphs
Genetically and socially, we are tribal beings. We evolved to live in tribes and exist socially and dependently. We thrive from community, albeit a sports team, a religious congregation, a parent-teacher association, a gang, or a bowling league. However, with the generational decline in such community organizations accumulating atop forced isolation from one’s work, school, and friend community, our thirst for communal inclusion has not been adequately met in the slightest.
Opportunistically, our political leaders appeal to our inherent tribalism to secure their own power, and in so doing, our tribes have become much less beneficial to society at large. The rise in populism is one of the best examples of tribalism gone too far. Throughout history, morally-controversial political figures have ascended to power by appealing to our tribalist tendencies and labeling a common enemy, oftentimes an outsider posed to harm the tribe economically, physically, or otherwise, garnering political support for the wolf-crier in an effort to unite the country against the “other.” Unity among citizens may create a stronger nation—but nations are not in our DNA. They are constructs, and our tribalist tendencies to preserve our own and shun the “other” is blinding our understanding of our sameness. Why are we prioritizing nationhood over humanhood? Why are we caging brown immigrant families and children for wanting a better life? Why are we letting police kill Black people without any consequences? Why are we letting the elderly and the sick die for the comforts of normalcy? Why should anyone be punished for our privilege in the birth lottery, for our privilege in life?
But our tribalism has proliferated across demography. While in the past the racial divide partitioned the masses, only few (albeit a loud few) still cling to the brashness of white supremacy. Instead, alternative manifestations of illegal existence take form, denying rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness based on religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or socioeconomic class as health insurance and paid sick leave have been branded “privileges” rather than rights, privileges often denied to the most exposed on the frontlines of the pandemic. Instead, media-fueled tape drawn down political lines leaves both sides shouting, “you compassionless fool,” disqualifying the others’ worldview out of misunderstanding and differing informational exposure. Instead, new slices take advantage of the growing societal dissent. “Ok boomer” and “Millennials are destroying fill-in-the-blank” place undue blame on the shared side of the oppressed. Flattening the curve for the vulnerable, supporting small businesses at risk of bankruptcy, both are valid motivators but when dialogue is cut short, there is no room for compromise, no room for unity. The Trump supporter whose post-recession economy is already not booming and whose roads are certainly not paved with gold is told that their lives should be up-ended, the remaining lone, local businesses closed to make way for complete corporate takeover of the local economy. The vulnerable, the risk-averse, the privileged who can keep the privilege of job security from the comfort of their home, have no qualm in blaming anti-Maskers for their selfishness in the spread of the virus, they have no problem not seeing the others’ view.
We are meant to help our community as they struggle, and they are meant to help us; but with the political tribalism permeating our society, we are turning our heads against thy neighbor due to differing perspectives or competing beliefs. We are forgetting we are all of the human tribe.
Communalism Succumbs to Individualism
While our tribalist aggression has left quite a polarized populace and an abundance of populism, the pandemic has done little put perpetuate the cultural trend of community disengagement, causing a mental health crisis unbecoming to the human species in its existence.
This trend had begun far before this past year’s pandemic. Neoliberalism, the current manifestation of capitalism and the dominant global political-economic system since the 1980s, preaches the virtues of individualism. To care for yourself and your nuclear family, you need to compete against thy neighbor ruthlessly for promotions, material gains, and accumulated wealth—the paradigm falsely rings that one man’s downfall is imperative to another’s prosperity. But this competitive, economic individualism fallacy has also been coupled with a cultural shift over the past several decades, priming our neoliberal society for the greatest loneliness epidemic as our viral upheaval forces us further apart.
Before the pandemic, the U.S. life expectancy declined for the first time since World War I, predominantly due to an increase in suicides and drug overdoses. There is an increasing outcry from Millennials and Generation Z for more mental health support as anxiety and depression are seeping into our public schools in a (brain) chemical warfare assault on our youth. The increase in mass school shootings had also ignited unfulfilled demands for funding for psychological support on both and all sides of the political spectrum—the paucity in school shootings is undoubtedly a light in the darkness of the year.
Our vulnerability to the mal-effects of social seclusion is not fortuitous. While our neoliberal individualism preaches economic competition, spewing empty promises and internalized economic failure at our country’s (increasing) poor, almost everyone has been experiencing some toxic legacy of individualism. With the rise in cellphones and our ability to connect instantaneously and entertain and distract, we place less and less emphasis on the value of relationships, we lose track of the importance of community, and while we might find shallow relationships at work or in the cul-de-sac, our societal individualist mentality and ego of pride prevent us from obtaining the communal and mental health support we have evolved to need. While in the past, the youth of the community typically stayed within close proximity to their roots, having guidance from and providing support to their elders, we have joined with the globalized shift to leave our homes, our families, and opt to live in urbanized, isolated areas.
When we defy our evolutionary imperative, we reap the consequences manifested through an isolated and mentally ill populace. With one in five millennials report not having a close friend, there is no doubt that we are in the wake of a loneliness epidemic starting from before the pandemic and extremifying which each new case.
Like the virus, the mental health crisis has rapidly propagated in our schools. Pre-COVID, one in five children (aged 6-17) had a diagnosable emotional, behavioral, or mental health disorder, estimates ranging from one-half to up to 80% of these children did not receive the mental health support they require. Over half of students with emotional and behavioral disabilities over the age of 14 drop out of high school. In 2017, 7% of high school students (9% of females and 5% of males) attempted suicide at least once over the course of the year. In 2016-17, one mental health staff member was accountable to an average of 260 students. In college, 36% of students had lifetime diagnoses of mental health conditions in 2017, compared to just 22% in 2007. Of surveyed students in 2018 and 2019, 60% felt “overwhelming” anxiety, while 40% experienced depression so severe that it inhabited daily functioning. This does not look like evolutionary success.
Of course, the mental health picture across the board sounds significantly more somber as individualism succumbs to isolation. During late June 2020, 40% of US adults reported that they were struggling with mental health or substance use, and 11% were seriously considering suicide. The state of past winter’s mental health is still not understood, but COVID likely compounded on the annual mental ills of the season to create a storm of sickness.
Fortunately, the taboo surrounding therapy and mental health treatment is slowly dissipating as we reject the neoliberal model of individualism and ego. But as suicide rates reach higher and the impacts of COVID will likely not cease with vaccination, actively working towards communalism and our natural state of kinship and compassion is more pertinent than ever. Seeing our children suffer, reconnecting with family every day, stewarding a new generation that has personal experience with the weight of mental illness into adulthood and our societal leadership, we can only hope that the taken lives have not been in vain and that renewed focus will come.
Perhaps this is the cause for the tribal aggression that anti-Maskers pursue, needing the comforts of community, of church groups and weekly poker and book clubs, utilizing their outdated human characteristics to uphold another, more essential need for community and inclusion. Perhaps their aggression masks another so humanistic quality of fear, and through denying the threats of an invisible murderer, their primal nervous system need not stress.
Evolving Forward
Aggression and tribalism served us invaluably several hundred thousand years ago, but now, in times of stress, these characteristics splinter our society and plague the prosperity of our species and our planet now and into the future, especially as we are denied our evolutionary need for community.
Have we not evolved forward as humans to recognize that we all have skin, bones, and the same internal organs? That we all have the same desires, we all have the same fears? Can we not see that collective cooperation can result in benefits for all, that a concerted quarantine would slow the spread and shorten the seclusion, enabling a faster return to “normal”? Why can’t we transcend our racial/religious/sexual/political differences and unite as humans to tackle climate change, tackle inequalities and social injustices, tackle a deadly pandemic?
Fortunately, like Darwin’s finches and the Homo genus hundreds of thousands of years before our arrival, we are able to evolve, we are able to transcend our penchant to assert and to divide, and we are able to re-join our global community in kinship and acceptance to halt aggression, identity politics, individualism, and COVID-19. Our evolutionary demands have written our past and present. We still have time to write the future.