Natural Inclusion
What does Natural Selection tell us about social cohesion?
Sometimes, the words we use can be very revealing. Sigmund Freud had a field day analysing why his patients used particular words. I wonder what he would have made of Charles Darwin’s description of evolution as “Natural Selection”.
Natural Selection
The principles of Natural Selection are well known. Individual members of a species compete with each other for supremacy. Only the strongest survive. This is nature’s way of ensuring a species favours the individuals who are fittest to survive, assuring the success of the species.
Adolf Hitler was one of many people who have used this concept to justify eradicating what they deem to be weaker members of society. The Black Lives Matter would not need to exist if white supremacists did not perceive their pinky skins as an indicator of supremacy. But why stick to skin colour? Why not skin texture or skin wrinkles? Or why not choose any other number of attributes for a hateful sense of superiority such as gender, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, political affiliation, hair colour, freckles, too much intellect, not enough intellect, friendship group, postcode, name? You get the picture.
The indicators of supremacy are largely arbitrary. They almost never stand up to scrutiny. This is because the idea that evolutionary success is determined by “survival of the fittest”, a form of physical supremacy was based less based on his findings and more on the political imperatives of the time.
The Reality of Successful Evolution
Very few species rely for their success on an internal competition that eliminates the weakest member. It is far more important for evolutionary success for members of a species to become better adapted to their environment. It is true that strength can be a key adaptation. But it is very, very rare for this to be the dominant feature of evolution. If it were, humans would never have been able to compete with gorillas, bears or sharks. If strength was the dominant feature in the success of the human species, we would all be gorillas, bears or sharks.
No, what unlocked the key to our success was our ability to adapt to our circumstances, collectively where it confers an advantage. Part of our natural adaptation is physical. We evolved dextrous fingers and thumbs that empowered us to use tools. We evolved a fork in our tongue that allowed us to develop an advanced language to communicate advanced concepts. We evolved physical strength and fitness to climb trees and escape from predators. But we evolved an equally important set of adaptations that allowed us to leap from the middle of the animal chain to the very top. It was certainly not our physical strength. It was our intellect. It was our ability to understand how the world around us works, to create and use tools, to devise new solutions to problems that our bodies were not able to solve without having to wait a number of generations for evolution to solve it for us. We developed building skills, weapons skills, health skills. Our vast skill set soared as our growing intellect allowed us to develop new techniques, to remember them and pass them on to our family, friends, neighbours and to new generations.
But there was one other adaption that was arguably even more important than our intellect in the successful evolution of humanity. Other species employ this adaptation to great effect too. It is fairly certain we would never have achieved our success without it, and it is even more certain we will never be able to hold on to our gains without it.
What is it?
Social Cohesion
We evolved as social animals. It is the feature of humanity that allowed us to gain advantage collectively. We evolved to live and work together, to specialise, to co-ordinate our activities together, to achieve outcomes that would have been impossible without this cooperation. A hospital can never work without thousands of people all playing their part — from the most learned doctors to the least academically qualified cleaners. A road can never be built without planners, diggers, tar manufacturers, people to lay the roads and administrators to coordinate everyone’s activities. Even the value of the road itself only comes into its own when used by the fast and generally reliable vehicles of today which are themselves the product of collective effort.
Social cohesion itself is just a sub-set of a more significant evolutionary marker of success. Collaboration with others is not limited to working with other humans. We have long worked with dogs and horses to advance our fortunes — and for our chosen companions, often theirs too.
It turns out that each one of us, individually, is a collective. We are all composed of billions of cells, trillions of electrical connections, hundreds of trillions of animals that live within us, dependent on a variety of water, metals and nutrients without which our cells, organs and bodies can not survive. The bacteria we host in our gut, for example, help us digest our food properly. This awareness places a whole new perspective on what it means to be an “individual”.
More important than strength, more important than social cohesion, more important than any other single attribute of evolution, probably the most vital component of evolutionary success is mutuality. Beyond the most primitive life forms, all life is dependent on two or more sub-entities working together to achieve something neither can achieve alone. We feed and protect horses in exchange for their helping us to plough more fields. We join together to lift and move a fallen tree that is blocking the road. This form of togetherness allows life to create a sort of combined “machine” that has a functionality all of its own. Each of the participants fuses their efforts together to create new functionality or capacity. Given its most fundamental importance, it is strange that we do not have a single word to describe this “machine” of contribution. It is a mistake because it has such a profound role in nature, such a profound component in understanding the true foundations on which our human success has been built. It needs a name. So until a better one comes along, I am calling it an “enfusion”.
Enfusions
Every human individual is a type of enfusion. We are enfusions: of cells, organs, bacteria and a variety of inert materials. Hospitals are enfusions: of people, materials and scientific know-how. Roads are the product of enfusions. Society itself is an enfusion: of anywhere from two to two billion people or more, formed into any number of “organs” of production and social support. The key feature of a human enfusions is the coming together of individuals to create new functionality, one that is otherwise beyond the reach of the individuals who co-operate in its activities.
This is the primary basis of successful evolution.
What’s in a Name?
So why did society choose to place such a big emphasis on an almost inconsequential part of Charles Darwin’s theory? When the Victorians talked about Natural Selection, its overtones were filled with the subsidiary concepts of superiority and destructive competition. They were so disinterested in the enfusionary process of mutuality, they saw no need for a word for it.
Charles Darwin worked on his theory of evolution during the 1860s. One hundred years earlier, the Industrial Revolution was born in the UK. Between 1760 and 1840, its economy had grown at rates never seen before. It grew so fast that it could barely keep up with itself. In monetary terms, the economy grew from £80m to £800m between 1760 and 1860, a growth of 1,000%. Life expectancy in 1860 had barely changed from the late 1500s. As an indicator of nutritional health, the average height of military recruits barely changed throughout the entire period. The conclusion is that the huge wealth generated by the Industrial Revolution largely bypassed the people.
The Industrial Revolution was a supreme success in wealth generation built on technology that was powered by people. So how does a wealthy elite run a country that becomes so hugely wealthy without sharing the wealth with the people who power the growth? These are the factors that shaped the prevailing thinking of the time. It was this thinking that shaped the overtones of Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Survival of the fittest! Focus on the strongest surviving whilst the weakest die off. Ignore the role the weaker members of society play in delivering economic production and growth. It has to be, otherwise there is no justification for the people deemed to be strong to suppress the weak, there is no justification for accepting the death of people deemed weaker as simply inevitable.
Survival of the fittest is not a description of the flourishing of humanity, it is a tool of exploitation. Because at its logical conclusion, once the strongest person has eliminated everyone who is weaker, no-one is left to dig the mines, plough the fields or reproduce the next generation? A species whose success is based on survival of the fittest is destined not to survive.
Natural Inclusion
Dr Alan Rayner uses a different term for Darwin’s evolutionary processes. He focuses on the aspects of the process on which our flourishing depends. He calls it Natural Inclusion. Humans, like most other species, benefit by being inclusive, not by adding to the burden of the people who are most disadvantaged; by being supportive of each other, not by killing off people who are characterised as unfit to survive. Human resilience and success is based on inclusion, not elimination.
Economics is currently undergoing a complete transformation. It is maturing. We are rethinking how we measure measuring economic success. We are just starting to move away from widely discredited monetary measures to a newly emerging set of measures based directly on the human experience. We are developing a new understanding of wellbeing, both for now and for the future. A definition of sustainable wellbeing recognises our ability to flourish is entirely dependent on our taking care of the natural world that provides everything we need to live.
And our newly emerging awareness is telling us is that the old ways, the ways that focus on exploitation and absence of compassion for others, will never deliver our potential for human flourishing.
Conclusion
If we want to create a healthier, safer, more flourishing society for humans, we need to develop new ideas about how the world works that are more in tune with what actually contributes to our long-term flourishing. The concept of Natural Inclusion seems as good as anywhere from which to start.
