Sunday, April 17, 2011

Do the world's contemplative religious traditions demonstrate a path to sustainability?

Within nearly all the great religions of history we find contemplative traditions which espouse the curious principle that foregoing excessive wealth and consumption (and therefore energy use) will actually make one happier. As a general rule these traditions advocate eating only what one needs to be healthy; exercising to maintain physical vigor (but not excessive strength); studying to attune oneself to the subtleties of nature and of the mind; and shielding oneself from the distractions of daily life. All this, they claim, will result in a fuller, more joyful existence.

How is this possible when, evolutionarily speaking, humans are relentless energy-gathering machines? If we didn't take in more energy than we expend, we couldn't have survived. In prehistoric societies finely balanced between enough and too little, it made sense to gather as much energy as one could and store it. The calories from gorging on a beast felled in the hunt were stored as fat. (Fat was good in those days!) As techniques for preserving food such as smoking and salting arose, these became ways to store calories outside the body. And, with the advent of agriculture, surplus grain became a very efficient way to store calories needed to make it through the winter.

We are beings attuned to a world of scarcity, or at least, periodic scarcity. Now comes industrial society with its industrialized agriculture that produces so much food that it can now support 7 billion people and perhaps as many domesticated animals. In fact, the amount of food is so great and predictably available that a human population genetically designed for scarcity has become obese by the hundreds of millions in wealthy countries. It is our natural instinct to gorge when extra food is around--in case there isn't any later on. But, at least in wealthy countries, there always is.

And yet, the contemplative religious traditions live on. Some people point to the best lived examples of those traditions as "the next step in human evolution." They might mean the Christian saints. Or the Sufis in Islam. Or the Zen monks in Buddhism. But clearly members of these contemplative orders are not "the next step" because such people have been with us for a very long time. In evolution-speak, they have been selected for. My question is, What purpose do they serve in society from an evolutionary point of view?

It seems as if they are almost a separate branch of the human evolutionary tree. Yet, given that many of these traditions foreswear family life, how can they be considered more "fit" than others outside such traditions? And, still they reappear with every generation, as if humankind carries some recessive gene for the contemplative life that shows up again and again.

Some will certainly argue that contemplative religious traditions are strictly cultural phenomena. But every cultural phenomenon is at its base a genetic and therefore evolutionary one. Non-adaptive behaviors disappear after a few generations. Behaviors exhibited by adherents to these traditions must somehow be adaptive.

And, that's why I ask if we have anything to learn from these traditions about a possible path to sustainability. Certainly, they have much to say about the current frazzled spiritual state of humankind, a state engendered at least in part by excessive energy consumption. Now, don't get me wrong. I don't think the great mass of people is going to adopt the disciplined life of the monk. But I see the monk's life as a sort of model of energy conservation. And, it's one that celebrates the result of self-restraint rather than lamenting it. Such a path finds that life is made more vibrant through restraint rather than excess.

This path, however, is not necessarily just associated with religious traditions. The materialist philosophers of ancient Greece known as Epicureans demonstrate a non-religious path to a life of self-restraint. Today, we wrongly identify the Epicureans with excess, when this view of life's aims actually comes from the Cyrenaics who were, to our way of thinking, pure hedonists. They believed that life should be devoted to pleasure derived from sensation. They did not deny that pleasure could come from mental activity. But such activity was secondary.

The Epicureans also believed that maximizing pleasure is the goal of life. But this goal should be pursued through self-restraint in mind and body. Excessive eating only leads to discomfort and disease later. Preoccupation with sexual gratification only leads to disappointment and frustration. Epicureanism--contrary to popular conceptions--was actually a sort of asceticism. But it was not based on devotion to a deity, but rather a frank evaluation of the human condition, particularly its material aspects without reference to religion per se.

Is there is a message in all this for those who will live in an energy-constrained world? Any such message does seem like it would be a hard sell. But, perhaps no selling will be necessary as energy constraints bear down on us and force us into simpler lives. Still, there are ways to live simply and badly, and there are ways to live simply and well. Some make fun of a sustainability movement that tells people that a simpler life is actually better in many ways. Perhaps that message merely reflects cultural traditions that have been with us since the beginning of history. Or perhaps it represents an evolutionary pathway that is ready to reassert itself when the right conditions arise.

9 comments:

  1. But every cultural phenomenon is at its base a genetic and therefore evolutionary one.

    Rubbish. Really obvious rubbish if you stop to think about it for a moment: cultural phenomena are far too dynamic to be explained by the relatively slow processes of evolution, except in the most basic and general sense. You certainly can't draw a line from genetics to specific forms of very complex behaviour. For example, you could argue that there is a genetic basis for displays of fitness in the most general sense, but not for a specific preference for miniskirts.

    Non-adaptive behaviors disappear after a few generations. Behaviors exhibited by adherents to these traditions must somehow be adaptive.

    No, no, no! Maladaptive behaviours usually vanish (if they're costly enough) but lots of behaviours (and other traits) are adaptively neutral.

    Panadaptionism and a particularly expansive version of evolutionary psychology: two shitty tastes that taste even more shitty together.

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  2. Okay, I should have said maladaptive. So, Dunc, you do agree that if the religious contemplative traditions were maladaptive they would have died out. I suppose its possible they are neutral. But it's hard to imagine any trait being neutral with regard to survival in the very long run since every trait extracts an energy cost, no matter how small.

    So you don't buy my view of how evolution works. Fair enough. Too bad we can't observe it over millions of years to see who's right.

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  3. So, Dunc, you do agree that if the religious contemplative traditions were maladaptive they would have died out.

    No, because I don't accept the first premise that these specific behaviours are genetically determined and thus susceptible to selection in the first place. There are studies which show some influence of genetic factors on religiosity in general, but I'm not aware of any that even hint at a genetic basis for specific forms of religion like you're suggesting here. If you can find any, I'd be most intrigued.

    But it's hard to imagine any trait being neutral with regard to survival in the very long run

    In evolutionary terms, "the very long run" is tens or hundreds of millions of years. These religious traditions are very recent by comparison - a mere few thousand years at most.

    So you don't buy my view of how evolution works. Fair enough. Too bad we can't observe it over millions of years to see who's right.

    Tell you what, why don't we see what the professional evolutionary biologists have to say about it, rather than having two laymen argue in blog comments? It's not like the subject hasn't been studied in quite some depth...

    http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=&sourceid=navclient-ff&rlz=1B3GGGL_en-GBGB338GB338&ie=UTF-8&q=panadaptationism

    One doesn't need to invoke genetics and evolution to find a reason why such traditions might survive and thrive - in many situations, they are culturally very successful, although frequently not in the way you seem to be implying here. For example, whilst the Cistercian monks of medieval Europe were individually poor and (initially at least) lived very ascetic lives, the institutions to which they belonged rapidly became extremely wealthy and powerful. You don't need to invoke genetics to explain why a someone living in the High Middle Ages might consider living under the Rule of St Benedict to be an acceptable price to pay for a decent place to live, a reliable supply of good food, and freedom from the sort of feudal obligations that often resulted in a messy death in a foreign field.

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  4. I posted another reply earlier today - perhaps it's been caught by a spam filter or something?

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  5. Dunc,

    Got your comment out of the spam filter and posted.

    You make many good points. I am not saying that specific culturally bound behaviors are genetic. I'm saying that the general category of the contemplative existence is so persistent and widespread across cultures that it seems possible that there is a genetic basis for it. And,this contemplative existence doesn't have to be overtly religion, either, as my example of the Epicureans who were ardent materialists attests.

    When I say that every cultural phenomenon at its base is genetic, I mean the general type of behavior, not the specific manifestations in any culture. Seeking food and eating it is a genetic impulse. But the cultural traditions around hunting, farming and preparing meals are an outgrowth of that impulse. This is more what I mean.

    I think your point about the contemplative life in medieval Europe is well taken. Still, I wonder why that type of life persists to such a great degree in wealthy societies today when physical protection and basic sustenance can be found easily in lay life. This is why I posit an underlying impulse for the contemplative existence that seems to go deeper than just culture.

    Again, I don't dispute that the cultural forms of this impulse are not "genetic" per se. But it still seems that impulse has a more profound evolutionary basis.

    I wrote this piece more as a thought experiment. Well, you've given me a lot to think about. So, I think I succeeded.

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  6. In animals, selection for personality traits have been shown to have a marked effect in just a few generations.

    If you have hundreds of generation to work with, then the changes can be quite dramatic.

    The human race has experienced maybe ten thousand years of civilization that we know of so far. This has been explained with a wide variety theories. But perhaps a necessary step to humans living in cities was also an evolutionary one. Perhaps humans had to evolve to be comfortable dwelling in the midst of so many neighbors?

    And as our patriarchal societies become more predominant, humans that didn't do well, were discarded, and those that were more domesticated were rewarded. This pressure to be a better worker for the king, would've been very similar to the breeding programs that have been traditionally used for livestock.

    Once enough human became domesticated their numbers would've exploded, producing civilizations everywhere, pushing out their less domesticated cousins, and selecting them for extinction.

    In this view, religions can also have an evolutionary impact. Religions determine who you can marry, who you can take as concubines, who you can kill, and quite often, what fate befalls infidels and heretics.

    A society based on religion, would reinforce the evolution of traits that made life within the religious context easier, and discourage those with personality traits that don't fit. Misfits lose out on breeding privileges and may be killed or banished. Over time, a group with a strong religious identity should evolve the necessary personality traits to make the worship of that religion second nature.

    Note that the same person if adopted as a baby into a different religion with similar traits would likely fit into that one just fine too. In this view, an adopted baby could likely be transplanted from one strongly orthodox society to another and enjoy similar status.

    If this is true, then people who can trace their ancestry back into the oldest continuous civilizations would tend to be more conformist and tend to align themselves with a group identity, than people who can trace their ancestry to less structured societies. Case in point could be the Japanese and Chinese cultures which had strong disincentives to non-conformity. As the Japanese say, "The nail that sticks out, gets hammered down." If I were looking for a recipe for domesticating humans, there are a number of societies that could serve as a template.

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  7. When I say that every cultural phenomenon at its base is genetic, I mean the general type of behavior, not the specific manifestations in any culture.

    Fair enough - that's largely what I was getting at. Although there is, of course, some debate possible about just how general is "general"... ;)

    Still, I wonder why that type of life persists to such a great degree in wealthy societies today when physical protection and basic sustenance can be found easily in lay life.

    People do all kinds of weird stuff for all kinds of weird reasons. This is the great stumbling block for all theories of history, archaeology, or human behaviour - people are just weird.

    This is why I posit an underlying impulse for the contemplative existence that seems to go deeper than just culture.

    Ah - now we might be getting to the roots of our disagreement... I think culture goes way deep.

    Weaseldog makes a good point about selection for personality traits in (certain) animals (I believe wolves / dogs are the most studied in this regard), but I'm not sure how well it generalises - I tend towards the view that human behaviour is markedly more flexible and adaptable (and hence culturally determined) than that of almost any other animal, and certainly more than any domesticated animal. It would be interesting (although practically difficult and ethically dubious) to look at the matter in highly intelligent species with very flexible behaviour, such as chimps or elephants.

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  8. Kurt, a very interesting piece. Looking at it from the Christian side, I think your “recessive gene” analogy is the right one. The call for a less materialistic lifestyle is one that should apply to all Christians, but few take it to the “purist” extent of the monastic tradition. The same goes for the other aspects of it too. Following on from Weaseldog's thoughts, Christianity was dominant in Europe for centuries, but the idea of everyone living in contemplative orders was never on the table. Or indeed everyone reaching a genuinely high level of anti-materialism or spirituality. (The same appears to have happened in the Islamic and Buddhist traditions.) I suspect this answers your minority culture/next step question in favour of the former.

    One way to think about it perhaps is that human beings are good at having ideals, but not always so good at the self-discipline and sacrifice needed to live up to them. The monastic traditions have kept going where they promote the right religious ideals and where enough people are willing to (positively) make the step to the higher point or (more negatively) wish to make a break with the overall ideals of the culture which conflict with the religious ones. This probably explains the drop but then rise in interest in this movement in the Christian tradition. As western culture diverged from Christian lifestyle ideals, initially the step required is greater and so harder. But now, the gap is sufficiently large that many find it easier to remove themselves from culture altogether than previously.

    Probably what we can best learn from these traditions is to be reminded of a set of ideals, and show that it is possible to live them out with enough discipline and community cohesion. This will at least inspire others to go some way towards the same kind of changes.

    I'm less convinced by those who see a future in which everyone lives in this kind of community though.

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