"Learning To Navigate Context" ... vs "New Culture Is Always Putting An End To Much Of Older Culture"

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)



A really interesting article here (below).

In general, this navigation essay touches on how much of the cultural-baby to throw out with the cultural-bathwater, with every, asynchronous step in generational turnover. Yes, there's always more ritual than most appreciate, which can theoretically be shed, but differentiating cultural baby-fat from a pound of cultural flesh, and when to shed it ... can easily get to be rather dangerous.

One has only to study embryology to appreciate the 2-stage art of recombination PLUS fabrication. We all know that lemons occur, despite all efforts at assembly line control.

That's before some people even realize that human culture is in a state of continuous, interleaved cultural-embryology. 

Many things not necessary for adults are QUITE necessary for different stages of development, whether during early embryogenesis or during childhood. In general, the more you know, the less you need ... but ONLY after you've learned that much. :)

Then, finally, you realize that WE need recombinant kids just to parse the unpredictable things your aggregate will need next.  That occurs even though you no longer personally need kids, and you eventually realize that at some point, your aggregate no longer needs YOU!

Get over it.

Hence, "oops" occur every generation within groups, and every singe time groups meet and merge. That's why large, current cultures spend as much or more time looking back as we do looking forwards. Recovering from our own mishaps is a large part of cultural as well as individual survival. Eventually, every individual metaphorically hammers their own thumb hanging a picture ... and every culture shoots a million of it's own feet. It's how we recover & adjust that counts.

In the end, we're all still Context Nomads, individually & culturally, and there are endless, unique tricks & shortcuts to optimally dealing with every context. The glory of survival really does go to those who re-orient and re-adapt soonest. That process goes on regardless of which individual or distributed thumb was hammered, or which pound of component or cultural flesh was usefully or harmfully shed.

Of Metaphysics and Polynesian Navigation

(hat tip Kevin, in a prior comment)

For Those Who Can't Grasp Democracy - Consider the 2nd Derivative of Disruption

   (Commentary by Roger Erickson)

No Central Planning, No Central Control

There is plenty of evidence that large human "democracies" of this sort existed in multiple sites worldwide, in between cultural "development" cycles.

Evidence: large population or temple sites showing outcome of large-population labor, absence significant, long-term evidence for present-day combinations of agriculture, weaponry and/or warfare - e.g., Stonehenge, Catal Hyuk, Harappa, and many paleolithic & neolithic sites in South/North America, Asia, Africa & Europe.

One simple, unproven hypothesis is that it is our rate tool invention itself that stresses us.

When a subgroup of humans invent a new tool, practice or process ... they invariably misuse it (typically against their neighbors) for a long time, before settling into an optimal pattern of adaptive, distributed use (i.e., common sense slowly becoming common & obvious, through reverberating feedback).

Then another game-altering tool/practice/process is invented, which allows some parasites to bully the system again ... just 'cuz they can ... until we all wise up again.

You'll even hear this from experienced businesspeople: "I finally learned that just because you can ... doesn't mean that you should."

A core question for ORGANIZED systems is how to invent new tools, and AVOID misusing them before adaptively using them. This boils down to be the 2nd derivative of disruption. Just because some entire system has to be rebuilt per an altered design, doesn't mean that burning it down and starting from scratch is ALWAYS the most adaptive procedure. 

Rather than eradicating prior clans and clones before repopulating a new niche, a key advance invented by social species is to RAPIDLY scavenge, rescue and reuse existing populations, for immediate application to new tasks while accelerating exploration of new options in new niches. Whether you call it re-deployment or reorganization doesn't matter.

There are ways to titrate that path which produces the most new options, soonest. That titration method requires FULL-GROUP FEEDBACK, and we call it Democracy. Following that path requires continuous, real-time, statistical evaluation of the complex moment of adaptive power in a distribution of lost-vs-gained, net+local option-exploration.

Such titrated evaluation requires a statistical evaluation of a 2-stage optimization process. Keep the components well fed PLUS grow the net systemic options. Neglecting either stage feeds disparity, but not net adaptation.