The Cultural Evolution Society, Tempe, Arizona, Day Three

En passant, in a book devoted to showing
How cumulative culture made us, remade us,
And made us successful, at least as the young,
Runaway, outbreak species that we are so far,
Joe Henrich tossed out the aside, “In fact,
Cultural evolution can produce sticky social
Norms that are bad for everyone, from female
Genital cutting to consuming the brains
Of dead relatives at funerals.” Yesterday,
Pete Richerson, one of the godfathers
Of gene-culture coevolution theory, presented
A talk listing “maladaptive” cultural practices,
A hodge-podge amounting to trends, such as
To get more education and have fewer kids
While endangering the global environment.
A mixed bag, vague at best, contradictory
At the least, tossing individual reproduction
In with speculative group selection. A switch,
After all, back to natural fertility would only
Make the environmental degradation worse.
Not much else said in other sessions of this.
Kevin Hong produced a graph predicting
Educational attainment as a phenotype
That might eventually implode after altering
The genotype underlying it. Someone spoke,
After a presentation on “great” and “little”
Religious traditions, to suggest that maybe
The little traditions, shamans, magic, spirits,
And superstitions were “parasitic” on human
Psychology. The comment wasn’t taken up.
Otherwise, it was a three-day festival totting
Up the ways that culture evolved to work
For groups or individuals. I’m suspicious.
How was it genes and culture coevolved only
To the benefit of certain genetic assemblages?
I want a better list of those maladaptations,
A data bank of clear-cut, demonstrable ways
Cultural patterns have endured or can endure
That “are bad for every one,” bad for the genes,
The mean biological fitness of the people
Practicing them. Look around. Look around.
One needn’t embrace the fantasy of a final
Apocalypse, fantasy itself a cultural deception,
Adaptive or not, but probably not any longer,
To see a dark time coming, a shudder as this
Conference concludes under a Hunter Moon.