Month: December 2021

Pollution & Purity

Pollution & Purity

Posted on by jabittan
“Throughout history, and in almost all societies, concepts of pollution and purity have played a leading role in enforcing social and political divisions and have been exploited by numerous ruling classes to maintain their privileges,” writes Yuval Noah Harari in his book Sapiens.
 
 
Humans are amazingly good at identifying the in-groups and out-groups to which  they belong or do not belong. We are also capable of incredible acts of in-group kindness and generosity as well as out-group nastiness and unfairness. I think that JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books can be read as an example of our incredibly powerful in-group versus out-group nature, and within those stories we can also see how purity and pollution play a role in how we understand our in-groups relative to our out-groups.
 
 
In the books, an evil and powerful wizard, the son of a magical witch and non-magical (muggle) man, attempts to rule the world on the premise that magical individuals are inherently superior than non-magical individuals. Purebloods, those whose family line is entirely magical rather than half-bloods or mud-bloods, those whose family line includes muggles or is entirely muggle, are seen as superior and more valuable. Mud-bloods and half-bloods are viewed by the evil wizard and his supporters (and tacitly accepted by many characters) as somehow polluted, or at best diluted. That becomes the basis for out-group hostilities, biases, discrimination, and general nastiness.
 
 
Harry Potter may be a fiction, but the books reflect real world struggles that do take place between arbitrary groups and real world discrimination that occurs based on appearance, social class, talent and skill, religion, and other factors. The United States was founded as a country that discriminated against black people because of the color of their skin and their seemingly savage or backward tribal lifestyles in Africa (and also because white plantation owners stood to benefit from the free labor and exploitation of captured Africans). People born with mixed race parents were called mulatto, and were quite literally seen as less pure than people born to white parents. Ability, skill, and intelligence did not differ in a material way between black slaves and white slaveowners, but in-group and out-group dynamics founded a country based on an imagined hierarchy and real world discrimination between white and black people – a hierarchy and system of discrimination that was legally upheld and perpetuated long after slavery ended.
 
 
Other countries have had similar challenges. In India, a caste system was built almost entirely on ideas of purity. A certain segment of the population was referred to (and still is  to some extent) as “untouchables” for fear of contamination. This group was (and still is) isolated and outcast within the larger society and the results of the discrimination shown to such people has later been use to justify the unequal treatment they receive.
 
 
In some ways fears of pollution and desires for purity are rooted in biology. Pigs can carry dangerous parasites that can infect humans. For early Jews – before sanitary cooking methods were developed, dietary restrictions possibly helped ensure there was less parasite and disease transmission. Isolating sick individuals, people with sores, or people who were hired or charged with handling dead bodies, possibly helped reduce disease transmission among early humans. However, from these reasonable precautions came the biases, fears, and unjust discrimination which became part of our in-group and out-group dynamics and ultimately contributed to the ideas of pure ruling classes and polluted lower classes. Something that was biologically prudent took on a narrative that was exploited and abused over time for political ends.
 
 
When we sense ourselves being fearful of ideas of pollution, whether it is genetic, racial, sanitary, or other forms of pollution, we should try to be aware of our thoughts and feelings. We should try to recognize if we are simply acting out in-group versus out-group biases and prejudices, or if we do have real health and sanitary concerns. If the latter is the case, we should find ways to uphold health and safety while minimizing and reducing bias and discrimination as much as possible.
Inequality of Opportunity

Inequality of Opportunity

Posted on by jabittan

In the United States we like to pride ourselves on the idea of equality of opportunity. Anyone in our country could become president, just look at historical examples of Andrew Jackson and Barack Obama to see how outsiders from poverty can rise to be president. Our political and economic systems are based on the idea that anyone hard working can exercise their talents and abilities to become the best at what they put their mind to. Unlike communist ideas, we don’t believe in equality of outcome, but rather of equality of opportunity.

 

But the reality is that the United States, and truly every society across time, has been limited by inequality of opportunity. A little while back I heard someone explain that LeBron James, an incredibly successful basketball star, could not have possibly used his physical skills and hard work to become as successful, rich, and famous as he is if professional sports were not rewarded as highly as they are. If we lived in a society that didn’t have any type of professional sports league, LeBron James would not have become the LeBron James that we know and love (or hate) today. He may have still become successful, but the advantages that he has from his incredibly athletic body and skills (advantages that I clearly lack as a 5’9″ 150 pound guy) would not have translated into the same kind of success he has experienced. This idea came to mind for me when reading Yaa Gyasi’s book Homegoing. In the book, a physically strong and impressive black man named H becomes trapped in a system of near slavery in an Alabama coal mine. In my mind, H has the body and strength of a LeBron James level athlete. But as a coal miner (effectively a slave) his opportunities for accumulating wealth or any form of luxury was essentially nonexistent. This example is meant to demonstrate how even something as random as the timing of our birth can influence the opportunities available to us. 

 

In Yuval Noah Harari’s book Sapiens, he writes, “most abilities have to be nurtured and developed. Even if somebody is born with a particular talent, that talent will usually remain latent if it is not fostered, honed, and exercised. Not all people get the same chance to cultivate and refine their abilities.” Simply being born to be naturally good at something doesn’t mean that you will rise to the top. We almost always need encouragement, mentoring, and someone else to help spot our talent. Without the support of others, few of us can actually reach our full potential, even if our full potential is President of the United States or an incredible sports star. Quite often, social and economic status can play a role in whether we meet the right people to help us nurture our talents and abilities.

 

Harari continues, “even if people belonging to different classes develop exactly the same abilities, they are unlikely to enjoy equal success because they will have to play the game by different rules.” Perhaps a child had the perfect natural abilities to become a dentist – they were particularly interested in oral hygiene from a young age, had dexterous fingers, and excelled with mental abilities to visualize and rotate shapes in their mind (important for building crowns and placing them on teeth). If that child’s parents died at a young age and that child ended up in an unsupportive foster environment, they may end up failing classes early on and being shut out from becoming a dentist at a more stable point in their life later. Contrast this child with another who was never particularly hard working or well suited for being a dentist, but who had numerous dentists in the family. The second child’s family may be able to offer a buffer, and when their grades don’t go well, instead of having doors shut, their family may be able to help open new doors at the schools they attended. For both fictional children, different rules exist for whether their natural talent matters in their ultimate outcome. Equality of opportunity sounds great, but is hardly ever realized. Simple factors like the timing of our births, the support and coaching around us, and whether we can get a second chance all matter in whether we have real equality of opportunity.

hierarchies and unjust discrimination

Hierarchies & Unjust Discrimination

Posted on by jabittan
In his book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari writes, “unfortunately, complex human societies seem to require imagined hierarchies and unjust discrimination.” This idea seems grim, and my first response is to begin thinking about a just utopia that I hope the United States is working toward. The idea that even my idealized utopia would still be based on imagined hierarchies and tacitly accept unjust discrimination is an idea I would want to reject.
 
 
However, political science theories such as Social Construction and Narrative Policy Frameworks seem to suggest that Harari is correct. Our understandings of how we relate to others within society is often based more on narrative than something objective. Movie stars may entertain us a lot, but few would argue that their work is truly more important and valuable for the future of humanity than the work of a teacher, but we clearly reward movie starts with much more money and status than teachers. Additionally, our world has limited resources, meaning that we cannot provide everyone with everything they want. We have different concepts for dividing things in an equitable manner, and we often argue over what values are used when making such decisions.
 
 
In the United States, children have no political power, because they don’t vote. Veterans are celebrated, but are relatively few in number and similarly lack political power, though they are a powerful rhetorical tool and audience. Business owners are also celebrated while drug users are denigrated. While we say that all men are created equal and strive toward equality among all people, our imagined hierarchies make true equality impossible. We may have good reasons for valuing retirees and small business owners more than drug users and community college students, but at the end of the day, the hierarchies in place are based on a host of social and cultural factors, not entirely on objective differences in merit and value between people. Within complex societies with limited resources, hierarchies seem inevitable, with some people being advantaged and others being discriminated against.
Hierarchies that Disavow Fictional Origins - Joseph Henrich - The WEIRDest People in The World - Yuval Noah Harari - Sapiens - Joe Abittan

Hierarchies that Disavow Fictional Origins

Posted on by jabittan
In Joseph Henrich’s recent book The WEIRDest People in the World he discusses a study he performed where he offered rural tribal people in South America a choice between getting a spice block today, or two spice blocks at a later time. This type of delayed gratitude study is common, but what was uncommon was Henrich’s subject. Most delayed gratification studies are conducted in WEIRD (western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic) societies and provide insights about who is going to be successful as an investor, in going to college, or generally in being less impulsive throughout life.
 
 
In Henrich’s study, tribal people living with little contact with people from more WEIRD regions of South America were less likely to take more spice blocks tomorrow compared to one spice block today. However, Henrich argues this was not due to an inability to delay gratification, an inability to think about the future, or some sort of personal shortcoming that has left people in rural areas stuck behind people in WEIRD areas. The reason, Henrich argues, that people in rural areas were not willing to delay gratification was that the institutions of their tribes didn’t provide any real incentive for them to do so. The individuals Henrich studied lived in communities where it was expected that surplus resources would be shared back with the larger tribe. The individuals themselves were not delaying their own gratification, they were simply choosing to accept one spice block they could use today, rather than accept a surplus tomorrow that they would be expected to share with the rest of their tribe later.
 
 
I like this anecdote because it shows that sometimes we reach wrong conclusions. Sometimes we assume we know what it means for someone to behave a certain way, but we fail to recognize all of the complex incentives and motivations that may be driving the person’s behavior. We often fall back on relatively simple and reductive explanations. The people in rural villages are “backward” because they cannot delay gratification and that is necessary to catch up with WEIRD societies. People in poverty are poor because they are lazy and don’t work. Rich people got to where they are by making smart choices and working hard. Each of these examples is overly simplistic, and possibly wrong. They are also all examples that can be, and have been, used to justify hierarchies that are ultimately based on little more than imagination.
 
 
In his book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari writes, “it is an iron rule of history that every imagined hierarchy disavows its fictional origins and claims to be natural and inevitable.” Kings in Medieval Europe argued that they were naturally and divinely chosen to lead their peoples. Slave owners in the American Antebellum South argued that they were naturally superior to their slaves. Hitler argued that the Aryan race was naturally superior to all others. The rich today, in basically any country, argue that they are naturally superior (or more deserving of their wealth and fortune) than poor people. But in each case, the hierarchy is imagined. No one wants to admit that they are unfairly at an advantage, that they have more resources, leisure, power, or wealth than others simply by chance or at least partly due to some amount of random luck in success.
 
 
As Henrich’s study shows, wealth disparities don’t have to be considered “natural.” In the tribal villages he studied, village elders were the leaders who made decisions regarding resources. There were no individuals or households that had dramatically more resources than anyone else. Households and individuals responded to the incentives of the system accordingly. In the United States, we respect our elders, but don’t place them in leadership positions just because they are old and wise. We have institutions and systems in place that encourage individual accumulation of resources, and we stash our old people in storage in retirement homes – basically the opposite system of the tribe that Henrich studied. The institutions, cultures, and incentives around us matter a lot, and they determine what we find natural. We often ignore those factors, however, when we think about the hierarchies in place within our society, and chose to disavow the fictional origins of our hierarchies and believe that they reflect a natural and unavoidable aspect of humanity. 
Remembering Numbers

Remembering Numbers

Posted on by jabittan
A common theme throughout Yuval Noah Harari’s book Sapiens is the argument that Homo sapiens changed so quickly thanks to our brains that our evolution, both physiologically and psychologically, couldn’t keep up. Evolution is a slow process, but human technological and sociological change has been incredibly rapid. Our minds and bodies are still adapted to live in a world that Homo sapiens no longer inhabits.
 
 
As an example, Harari writes, “no forager needed to remember, say, the number of fruit on each tree in the forest. So human brains did not adapt to storing and processing numbers.” Math is hard, and part of the reason it is so hard is that our minds didn’t evolve to do lots of math.  Our foraging ancestors had incredible brains (as we still do) capable of keeping track of the social and political alliances within groups of 50 to 250 individuals – a huge number of potential combinations of friends, enemies, or frenemies. But foragers were not collecting taxes, were not trying to hang multiple pictures of different sizes equally on a wall, or trying to quickly remember which basketball player made a jump shot at the same time that another player committed a foul and tabulate a final score.
 
 
The human mind was not evolved for remembering numbers, and that is why recording and calculating numbers is so difficult. It is why we can be so easily confused by graphs and charts that are not well organized and put together. It is part of why it is so hard to save money now to retire later, and why credit card debt can be such an easy problem to fall into. We are good at remembering about 7 digits at once in our short term memory, but beyond that we easily become confused and start to lose track of information. The Agricultural Revolution made numbers more important beginning about 70,000 years ago, but our brains have not caught up. To make up for the difficulty of storing numbers in our heads we write numbers down on paper (or stone tablets in the distant past), use calculators to crunch numbers quicker than we can by hand, and rely on tools that can save numbers and data so that we don’t have to hold it all in our heads. Our brains simply are not up to the task of holding all the numbers we need to remember, so we have developed tools to do that for us. Don’t feel bad if you can’t remember tons of numbers, and don’t make fun of others who can’t do the same. 
There is no Escape from Imagined Orders

There is No Escape from Imagined Orders

Posted on by jabittan
In his book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari argues that humans are forever trapped in imagined orders. Whether it is the American Dollar, human rights, or nations, we are trapped within agreed upon institutions for organizing our lives. The reason we are stuck with the imagined orders we have created is because they are what enable billions of humans to cooperate and interact without dissolving into lawless violence. What exists in a single person’s head is combined with what exists in the minds of others to form real institutions, practices, and patterns that shape our interactions and understandings of the world. Our imagined orders are social constructs, and they cannot be eliminated – they can only be replaced.
 
 
“In order to change an existing imagined order,” writes Harari, “we must first believe in an alternative imagined order.” Harari’s quote is not completely accurate. We can dismantle an imagined order without replacing it through lawless chaos, but it is unlikely that a state of lawless chaos will remain for long. In order to get many humans to cooperate together, especially to commit violence and destruction which is likely not in their own best interest, you often need some sort of imagined order to serve as the motivating impetus for the violence and destruction. You might get a sufficient number of people to riot and burn the system down without really knowing what will replace it, but eventually, a new imagined order will take over. More common, however, is the situation Harari explains, that one imagined order is slowly replaced by another.
 
 
“There is no way out of the imagined order,” writes Harari. Escaping one imagined order simply leads to a new imagined order. The divine right of kings was dismantled and replaced by ideas of human rights, which encouraged and supported the development of representative democracies. Imagined orders exist together and can build upon one another, but they cannot be escaped altogether. One way or another, for humans to live and cooperate together, we need large-scale imagined orders which prescribe and  proscribe certain behaviors, responses, and relationships across the billions of people living on earth.
Inter-Subjective Linking - Tying Star Wars, Marvel, Sports Rankings, Democracy, and Marriage Norms Together - Yuval Noah Harari - Joe Abittan - Sapiens

Inter-Subjective Linking

Posted on by jabittan
In my own mind I like to play out lots of fictional scenarios before I go to bed. If I have recently watched a Marvel movie, then I might be teaming up with Iron Man or Captain America in my own superhero story while I brush my teeth. If I was listening to a Star Wars audio book, then I might be engaged in a space battle while my day winds down. Since I was a kid I have had my own running fantasies with me as a main character in some of the science fiction stories I like the most. In my own mind, these stories are as real as the stories that appear on the big screen.
 
 
My individual stories, something the nerd community might call my own “head canon,” are subjective. They exist only within my own consciousness, and as a result I can change them or abandon them and they will no longer exist. They are subjective to my own individual consciousness, not dependent on the subjective consciousness of others and if I want I can completely ignore the rest of the world or certain aspects of the larger story.
 
 
Contrasting my individual fictions are the larger narratives that I engage with in my mind. The stories that make it on the big screen, onto a streaming platform, or into official books are inter-subjective. In the book Sapiens Yuval Noah Harari describes the existence of the inter-subjective by writing, “the inter-subjective is something that exists within the communication network linking the subjective consciousness of many individuals.” Iron Man has died in the current Marvel story line, and his death is now part of the inter-subjective communication network linking all the fans of the Marvel movies. In my own mind Iron Man might come back to life, but my individual consciousness doesn’t change the larger story which is inter-subjectively linked.
 
 
Outside the world of science fiction, inter-subjective linking is an important part of human societies. We see it in sports rankings, political organization, and marriage and family norms. We debate which sports team is better and have our individual opinions about who is a great player and what teams are the best. We can individually believe that our team will win the championship, should be ranked #1 in the country, or got screwed out of the playoffs without our subjective beliefs influencing how the sports season actually plays out. We can also have inter-subjective beliefs about sports that drive the narratives around the season and can lead to coaches being fired, players being traded, and coordinated booing at bad officiating calls.
 
 
Within politics and marriage and family norms we can have our individual beliefs, such as beliefs that one political system would be better than another, beliefs that polygamy is better than monogamy, or that kids need to leave the house at 18. There is nothing that makes representative democracies inherently better than divine monarchies, nothing that makes monogamous relationships inherently better than polygamous relationships, and no reason kids should be afforded the option to live at home after they turn 18. In each of these areas our inter-subjective beliefs have come to shape the way we understand the world, our relationships to others within the world, and our subsequent beliefs about how the world should ultimately be ordered. Representative democracies fit with other inter-subjective beliefs which have come to discredit divine monarchies. Monogamous relationships have certain advantages in helping ensure more men find romantic and life partners which blends with other inter-subjective beliefs that form the backbone of modern stable societies. The idea that one becomes and adult and full citizen at 18 and not 17, 19, or 21 is also an inter-subjective belief that we support together. It makes no difference if I decide that a young man is an adult at age 17 rather than 18. Inter-subjectively, our culture has agreed that full citizenship begins at 18.
 
 
Thinking about the relationship between the subjective and inter-subjective is helpful for understanding the world. It is helpful to see that our individual beliefs are often little more than our own twist on a fictional story. It is helpful to see that larger institutions and structures in our worlds are based on little more than shared fictions. Recognizing this dynamic can change the way we interpret and approach debates and arguments about topics for how we all should live and coordinate our lives together.
A Few Dominant Myths

A Few Dominant Myths

Posted on by jabittan
“Friends giving advice often tell each other, follow your heart. But the heart is a double agent that usually takes its instructions from the dominant myths of the day,” writes Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens. What we want, what we believe is possible for us, and how we experience the world is often dominated by the larger culture that we are a part of. This means that how we relate to and understand the world is constantly changing both through our own lifetimes and across the lifetimes of individuals of our entire species. What we believe, what we think is good and worthy of our time and energy, and how we go about pursuing our goals and desires changes based on the dominant myths of our time and the resources available to us.
 
 
To demonstrate this point, Harari shows how two myths, Romanticism and Consumerism can be found in the idea of follow your heart. Regarding Romanticism, Harari writes, “Romanticism tells us that in order to make the most of our human potential we must have as many different human experiences as we can.” The value of being human, within this framework, is the experience of being alive. Doing the same thing each day, becoming really good at one particular thing, living in the same spot, and having a few consistent experiences each day is not valuable. Uniqueness, openness, and diversity are praised within the individual.
 
 
Regarding Consumerism, Harari writes, “Consumerism tells us that in order to be happy we must consume as many products and services as possible. If we feel that something is missing or not quite right, then we probably need to buy a product.” Within this view, things, possessions, and services are of inherent value, as is owning things and consuming services. A lack of possessions is seen as failure, and the goal is to continually obtain more, bigger, and better possessions.
 
 
It is easy to see why Harari is able to lump these two myths together. Being unique compliments buying lots of different things. Having many varied possessions, purchasing many varied services, and utilizing possessions to engage in new and diverse activities tie Romantic ideas of the individual pursuing a diverse and exciting lifestyle with the consumerism urge to possess and own things and experiences. “Romanticism, which encourages variety, meshes perfectly with consumerism,” Harari writes.
 
 
But there is no reason that our culture needs to favor these two myths over others. It is nice to have a diversity of experiences. It can be helpful to see and view the world from different perspectives and to understand how others live and the full potential of humanity. It is also nice to be able to purchase comforts, and a helpful byproduct of consumerism is an advancing technological landscape that rewards innovations which improve life satisfaction. But Humans can be satisfied in life with a few possessions. We can be satisfied with a stable and predictable routine. We can find joy in becoming very good at doing the same things each day and mastering those tasks. There is no reason that Romanticism or Consumerism has to be understood as better than Stoicism or Minimalism, or any other myth that we might adopt. Within the United States, few of us truly challenge the ideas of Romanticism or Consumerism. They are the dominant myths of the day, and eschewing them is strange. Even when we do try to give up one myth, it is hard to give up both. Deciding not to purchase many products and services is seen as a way of being unique and self-sufficient, a Romantic framing of non-Consumerist behavior. Minimalism often still rewards carefully curated purchases and possessions. If you are not going to have a lot of things, then you better have the absolute best of the few things you do have, many Minimalists might argue.
 
 
How we understand ourselves, the values we pursue, and how we exist in culture is often determined by myths that work well when we all embrace them in a collective manner. That doesn’t mean that one myth is inherently better than another. Additionally, myths can be complimentary to each other, and even contradictory myths can be understood as complimentary and not conflicting. We do not exist in isolation or in a vacuum, and it shows in the ways in which cultural myths influence us. Follow your heart is a message to tap into the dominant myths of the day, and it is a saying that is influenced by those same myths.
Accepting Imaginary Orders

Accepting Imaginary Orders

Posted on by jabittan

“Most people do not wish to accept that the order governing their lives is imaginary, but in fact every person is born into a preexisting imagined order, and his or her desires are shaped from birth by its dominant myths,” writes Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens. There is an incredibly wide range of possibilities for how we could live our lives. Throughout history, humans have lived in many different ways – in small tribal bands on tropical islands, in kingdoms ruled by divinely anointed tyrants, and in large cities across representative democracies. Truly thinking about why people have lived in such different ways and how it would be best for people to live today is difficult. It is much easier to accept the imagined order that directs modern society than to constantly question every decision and every possible way of life.

However, none of us want to appear as though we simply accept the way things are and only marginally change the world around us for a better fit. We want to believe that we have agency, that we chose to live in the world the way it is, and that the society that our families exist within are not organized in a random way, but are organized by rational and reasonable principals. We want to believe that we are constantly striving for a better way of living and that we have carefully thought through what needs to be done to reach the best social and economic order possible for humans.

There is substantial evidence to suggest that Harari is correct, and that we accept the myths we are born into rather than reach conclusions about the nature of reality and society after careful consideration and investigation. Most people adopt the religious or political beliefs of their family. This isn’t to discount people as unthinking or uncritical, but instead it demonstrates that there are many pressures and advantages to maintaining beliefs that are consistent with ones family. Additionally, terms such as conservative or liberal really don’t have any meaning. People do not have a consistent answer for what those terms mean, and it is easy to take those terms and demonstrate that many items within the platforms of Republicans, Democrats, and random people from the street seem to contradict the ideas of conservatism or liberalism.

It is much more plausible that people are signaling to the dominant group of their time and trying to fit in than to assume people are carefully thinking about the order that guides their societies and lives. The evidence does not suggest people are actively choosing how to live or what order to support based on careful judgment. It does happen, however most of us accept the myths we are born into and are ultimately shaped by those myths. Our lives are organized and our actions our mobilized by myths such as religious ideas, political systems, human rights, and other institutions that we may not even be aware of.

Cyncial Greed - Yuval Noah Harari Sapiens - Kevin Simler Robin Hanson the Elephant in the Brain - Joe Abittan

Cynical Greed?

Posted on by jabittan
Why do humans push so hard to amass as much wealth, fame, influence, and recognition as possible? Why do people who have become incredibly successful continue to push for more, and why do they often fight so hard to control the narrative around success? For many of us, the answer may seem to be cynical greed. That individuals who are incredibly wealthy are greedy, and they use cynicism to put others down while continuing to prop themselves up. They don’t really believe in the system and narrative they promote – they only believe in their own gain. However, Yuval Noah Harari suggests this may be an incomplete answer in his book Sapiens. Further, Robin Hanson and Kevin Simler offer a better explanation in their book The Elephant in the Brain to explain our insatiable appetite for more wealth, power, and influence.
 
 
I think it is pretty common these days to see the super wealthy as a flaw in the system or as cynical and greedy people who take advantage of the less fortunate. We imagine the super wealthy to be Scrooges who don’t believe in anything but their bank account, who they get to go to dinner with, and by the number of people who know their name. We see them as empty narcissists. But Yuval Noah Harari challenges this view by writing, “a cynic who believes in nothing is unlikely to be greedy. It does not take much to provide the objective and biological needs of Homo sapiens.” So if we can satisfy our basic biological needs relatively easily, why do so many people, not just the super wealthy, push to have so much? Cynical greed doesn’t seem to be the answer.
 
 
The pursuit of status to enhance our chances of passing our genes along, and then ensuring that subsequent generations of our genes are passed along, may be the answer. Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson make this argument in The Elephant in the Brain. Much of what we do, they argue, is some form of signaling to indicate our virtues or the advantages that mating with us or teaming up with us would offer. Having incredible wealth and material resources shows to other partners and the potential future partners of our decedents that we have resources to take care of them and ensure their genes are passed along successfully. Being incredibly famous and well connected shows that we are a powerful ally and that we have many compatriots that will help and protect us if needed. Again, this demonstrates that our genes are likely to be passed along for several generations since aid will be provided in emergencies or difficult situations.
 
 
We evolved these instincts when living in small tribal bands and small communities where a drought could leave our ancestors without enough food. A flood could have dislocated our tribe, and we would have been dependent on the help of others to live. Or, we could have had a feud with another member of our tribe or a neighboring tribe, and if we had enough allies that could rally to our defense, then we might survive rather than be killed. To pass their genes along, our ancestors had to show that they had resources to survive periods where resources were scarce. They had to show they had the right connections to be worthy of saving. And they had to be a strong ally to others so that they would also be protected if needed. We continue to push beyond our biological needs because our ancestors evolved to signal their worthiness and ability to pass their genes along. That is why we buy massive homes, electric hummers, and attend cultural events where we may see other important and powerful people. It is more than cynical greed that drives our desire for more.