2b. Seeking Safety: the Social Environment

2b. Friend or Foe: Determining Safety in the Social environment

2b. Friend or Foe: Determining Safety in the Social environment

The Social Environment

The higher we climb on the ladder of complexity, the more input we have to deal with. The more detail we get about our environment, the richer the experience. There was a point VERY early in evolution when organisms discovered the benefit of forming groups. When I say early on, I'm not talking about governments or churches or even agriculture. I’m talking about single cells organizing into a cooperative group for greater food capture. But more than just gathering in one place for statistical advantage, these organisms actually began changing their individual Code to better function as a group.

In other words, they altered the parameters for interpreting incoming data to bias them toward working as a cooperative whole. They altered their evaluation of safety to include a community! Crazy, right!

As we, all cooperative critters, found group life to have higher likelihood of survival, our “environment” expanded. Beyond the physical navigation of hot or cold, snake or extension cord, now we have to navigate a second dimension of survival chess: the social environment. 

Survival now requires more than just the success of the individual physical body in the physical environment. Survival now requires success within the group. Who eats first in the pack, who stands guard? Who keeps order? What happens to transgressors? 

Social order is a survival strategy. Social welfare is also a survival strategy. It had to become clear fairly early on in our evolution that we couldn't keep up with evolving our physical tools to fit the environment. In other words, the environment would change faster than our bodies could change. It would get hot or cold faster than we could grow or not grow hair. Change our skin color to regulate the balance of UV rays versus sufficient Vitamin D. Change our nutritional requirements as fast as the menu would change since as the climate changed, our favorite food sources would also wink in and out of existence. 

Instead of changing ourselves with the environment, we learned to change the environment to suit ourselves. We developed tools. We gradually learned to walk upright to carry and use those tools. We fed the unique caloric needs of our bigger and bigger brain with cooked meat and so fed the cycle of manipulating the environment. We birthed our big brained babies earlier and earlier in gestation so it became imperative to have a social network to keep the incapacitated mother and newborn alive. To see the infant through the grub stage into a walking, talking juvenile and so increase the odds of continuing the species. All of this specialization required greater levels of cooperation.  

Natural selection favored those of us with the temperament to get along with our fellows. If we didn't, we got kicked out. Ostracized. Banished. Those banished did not survive. 

But not only did the one banished lose the safety and nourishment of the group, the group also lost a member. The team was short a player. We became such a cooperative priority that our actual nervous systems changed. The banishment from the group became worse than the prospect of death itself. On a deep level, it is more favorable to the psyche to be killed within a group (think noble death in battle) than to die alone.

We find this today in our desperation to find acceptance with our group. The desire for acceptance is deep in our social survival register. Our current tools, however, are largely inappropriate to fulfilling this need. (I say with utmost diplomacy!)

But this is only half of the coin.

If we were all wired to be a part of a group, we would have very little conflict. We would be Borg. Everyone would do the obvious task for the cooperative promotion of the group as a whole. Unfortunately, if that's all there was to it, we would have died out as a species millennia ago. 

We need the odd duck, if we are going to innovate.

The human condition can be viewed as a simultaneously inspired paradox: cooperation is the key to survival as an individual as well as a group and a species. However, equally necessary to the survival of the group as well as the individual, is the need to individuate! You, as an individual, are crucial to the survival of the group.

Evolution is the product of mutation. Without innovation, biological, social, technological, cognitive (philosophical) mutation, the species would not be able to adapt. We would die out.

You must be seen as an individual by the group in order to be fed by the group. You have to be seen to have prettier feathers by the group to get the best mates. But, if you function too far outside the group norm, you get perceived as a threat and ostracized: banished.

So we have the paradox. We must find ourselves functioning within the group dynamic, and we must be able to stand out from the crowd. 

Navigating the survival cues in the social environment must be learned. Social cues must be recognized and appropriate responses determined and executed in addition to the survival navigation of the physical environment. 

Not only do I need to determine if the black coil in the corner is an actual death threat or not, now I have to consider if it is a joke. If it is a joke, who played it. Was it intended to be mean or just funny? Am I being exposed as weak to a greater social network? Do I need to laugh or retaliate? 

Learning, recognizing, and executing appropriate responses to the growl behind the rosebush is sufficient to manage the physical world. With entry into the social environment, the array of input, combinations of Code, and the Historical Record Database has vastly expanded. 

And yet, the job of the central nervous system has not fundamentally changed. It still sorts, prioritizes, references and mobilizes. It still simply determines the situation and the situational requirements for survival. Just in an overlaid dimension. 

Though there is a much wider array of input and potential response, we are still working with navigating the external world. There is still no debate about worth, or goodness, or value. There is still a go, no-go directive as it applies to behavior.

For example: as herd animals, horses find security in numbers. A lone or ostracized horse is vulnerable to predators. “Punishment” in the equine world involves being kicked to the edges of the herd. The juvenile horse that starts to bully the younger ones will get reprimanded. He will get kicked to the outskirts of the group by the lead mare until he comes back submissive and asking to be allowed back in. He doesn’t question his value as a horse, he questions his likelihood of survival. It isn't guilt that brings him back and changes his behavior. He is just learning the rules. 

Humans, at this level, are the same. We are just learning what works. How to get along. It's at the next level of complexity where the trouble begins., The level unique to our big-brained human capacity for self-reflection and abstraction: The cerebral environment.