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Smarten Up or Die

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We face an evolutionary impasse: the ways of thinking that in the ancient past guided our innate ecological intelligence were well suited to the harsh realities of prehistory. It was enough that we had a natural urge to gobble as many sugars and fats as we could find to fatten ourselves against the next famine, sufficient that our olfactory brain would ensure that toxins triggered nausea and disgust in response to spoiled food, and that our neural alarm circuits made us run from predators. That hardwired savvy brought our species to the threshold of civilization.

But ensuing centuries have blunted the survival skills of the billions of individuals who live amid modern technologies. Career pressures drive us to master hyperspecialized expertise and in turn to depend on other specialists for tasks beyond our realm. Any of us may excel in a narrow range, but we all depend on the skills of experts -- farmers, software engineers, nutritionists, mechanics -- to make life work for us. We no longer can rely on our astute attunement to our natural world nor the passing on through generations of the local wisdom that lets native peoples find ways to live in harmony with their patch of the planet.

Ecologists tell us that natural systems operate on multiple scales. At the macro level there are global biogeochemical cycles, like that for the flow of carbon, where shifts in the ratios of elements can be measured not just over the years but over centuries and geologic ages. The ecosystem of a forest balances the entwined interplay of plant, animal, and insect species, down to the bacteria in soil, each finding an ecological niche to exploit, their genes evolving together. At the micro level, cycles run their course on a scale of millimeters or microns, in just seconds.

How we perceive and understand all this makes the crucial difference. "The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing which stands in the way," wrote the poet William Blake two centuries ago. "Some see Nature all ridicule and deformity, and some scarce see Nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, Nature is Imagination itself. As a man is, so he sees."

When it comes to seeing nature, these differences in perception have huge consequences. A polar bear stranded on an ice drift or a vanishing glacier offer powerful symbols of the perils we face from global warming. But the inconvenient truths don't stop there -- only our collective ability to perceive them does. We need to sharpen the resolution and broaden the range of our lens on nature, to see how synthetic chemicals disrupt the cells of an endocrine system as well as the slow rising of ocean levels.

We have no sensors nor any innate brain system designed to warn us of the innumerable ways that human activity corrodes our planetary niche. We have to acquire a new sensitivity to an unfamiliar range of threats, beyond those our nervous system's alarm radar picks up -- and learn what to do about them. That's where ecological intelligence enters the picture.

The brain's survival centre

The neocortex, the thinking brain, evolved as our most versatile neural tool for survival -- what the hardwired reflexive circuits of our brain cannot help us understand, the neocortex can discover, comprehend, and marshal as needed. We can learn the now hidden consequences of what we do, and what to do about them -- and so cultivate an acquired ability to compensate for the weakness of our pre-programmed ways of perceiving and thinking.

The variety of ecological intelligence humanity so urgently needs demands that this generalist zone work along with the brain's prededicated modules for alarm, fear, and disgust. Nature designed the olfactory cortex to navigate a natural universe of odors we rarely encounter today; the amygdala's neural web for alarm innately recognizes with effectiveness only a limited -- and largely antiquated -- range of danger. Those hardwired areas are not easily reprogrammed, if at all. But our neocortex -- through what we intentionally learn -- can compensate for our natural blind spots.

Smells are just combinations of volatile molecules wafting from some object and reaching our nose. Our olfactory brain assigns a positive or negative valence, separating the desirable from the repulsive, the putrefied meat from the fresh bread. But life now requires learning that the scent of newly applied paint or that distinctive aroma in a just-bought car comes from volatile, man-made chemical compounds, which act like low-grade toxins in our body and should be avoided. Likewise we need to acquire a learned early warning system for toys laden with lead and gases that pollute the air we breathe, and to dread toxic chemicals in our foods that we cannot taste or see. But we can "know" these are dangers only indirectly, through scientific findings -- a different order of knowing. What may eventually become a learned emotional reaction must begin with intellectual comprehension.

Ecological intelligence allows us to comprehend systems in all their complexity, as well as the interplay between the natural and man-made worlds. But that understanding demands a vast store of knowledge, one so huge that no single brain can store it all. Each one of us needs the help of others to navigate the complexities of ecological intelligence. We need to collaborate.

Seeking collective intelligence

Psychologists conventionally view intelligence as residing within an individual. But the ecological abilities we need in order to survive today must be a collective intelligence, one that we learn and master as a species, and that resides in a distributed fashion among far-flung networks of people. The challenges we face are too varied, too subtle, and too complicated to be understood and overcome by a single person; their recognition and solution require intense efforts by a vastly diverse range of experts, businesspeople, activists -- by all of us. As a group we need to learn what dangers we face, what their causes are, and how to render them harmless, on the one hand, and, on the other, to see the new opportunities these solutions offer -- and we need the collective determination to do all this.

Evolutionary anthropologists recognize the cognitive abilities required for shared intelligence as a distinctly human ability, one that has been crucial to helping our species survive its earliest phases. The most recent addition to the human brain includes our circuitry for social intelligence, which allowed early humans to use complex collaboration to hunt, parent, and survive. Today we need to make the most of these same capacities for sharing cognition to survive a new set of challenges to our survival.

A collective, distributed intelligence spreads awareness, whether among friends or family, within a company, or through an entire culture. Whenever one person grasps part of this complex web of cause and effect and tells others, that insight becomes part of the group memory, to be called on as needed by any single member. Such shared intelligence grows through the contributions of individuals who advance that understanding and spread it among the rest of us. And so we need scouts, explorers who alert us to ecological truths we have either lost touch with or newly discover.

Large organizations embody such a distributed intelligence. In a hospital, a lab technician does one set of jobs well, a surgical nurse another, and a radiologist still another; coordinating all these skills and knowledge allows patients to receive sound care. In a company, the sales, marketing, finance, and strategic planning departments each represent unique expertise, the parts operating as a whole via a coordinated, shared understanding.

The shared nature of ecological intelligence makes it synergistic with social intelligence, which gives us the capacity to coordinate and harmonize our efforts. The art of working together effectively, as mastered by a star performing team, combines abilities like empathy and perspective taking, candor and cooperation, to create person-to-person links that let information gain added value as it travels. Collaboration and the exchange of information are vital to amassing the essential ecological insights and necessary database that allow us to act for the greater good.

The swarm rules

The way insects swarm suggests another sense in which ecological intelligence can be distributed among us. In an ant colony, no single ant grasps the big picture or leads the other ants (the queen just lays eggs); instead each ant follows simple rules of thumb that work together in countless ways to achieve self-organizing goals. Ants find the shortest route to a food source with simple hardwired rules such as following the strongest pheromone trail. Swarm intelligence allows a larger goal to be met by having large numbers of actors follow simple principles. None of the actors needs to direct the group's efforts to achieve the overall goal, nor is there any need for a centralized director.

When it comes to our collective ecological goals, the swarm rules might boil down to:

  1. Know your impacts.
  2. Favor improvements.
  3. Share what you learn.
    4. \

Such a swarm intelligence would result in an ongoing upgrade to our ecological intelligence through mindfulness of the true consequences of what we do and buy, the resolve to change for the better, and the spreading of what we know so others can do the same. If each of us in the human swarm follows those three simple rules, then together we might create a force that improves our human systems. No one of us needs to have a master plan or grasp all the essential knowledge. All of us will be pushing toward a continuous improvement of the human impact on nature.

Signs of the dawning of this shift in collective consciousness are amply visible globally, from executive teams working to make their companies' operations more sustainable to neighborhood activists distributing reusable cloth shopping bags to replace plastic ones -- wherever people are engaged in creating a way of interacting with nature that transforms our propensities for short term trade-offs into a long-term, saner relationship. High- profile investigations into the innumerable dangers human activity poses to our planet's ecosystems, like the growing study of global warming, are a bare beginning. Such efforts help raise our sense of urgency. But we can't stop there. We need to gather the on-the-ground, detailed, and sophisticated data that can guide our actions. That takes a thorough and ongoing analysis, determined discipline -- and the pursuit of ecological intelligence. [Tyee]

Daniel Goleman is author of the new book Ecological Intelligence published by Broadway Business, an imprint of The Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc. This was reprinted with permission. © 2010 Broadway Business All rights reserved.

30 Comments:

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  • Takuan

    2 years ago

    do humans have what it takes?

    no.

  • Dungeness_Crab

    2 years ago

    Further

    Hell, no! Is this a trick question?

    The only game left in town is, "try not to die."

    Best o' luck, suckers!

  • bluerev

    2 years ago

    Some Humans have what it takes

    We do need to understand our ecosystems better and rely less on what our technology can do for us. About 1000 years ago around the four corners region of the US there were two cultures living side by side, the Anasazi and the Navajo. The Anasazi's economy relied on agriculture and the Navajo mainly on foraging the local landscape. The agricultural system of the Anasazi allowed them to build large towns, permanent structures and quite a sizable population very fast. However (still being debated) when the local climate turned dryer than usual, the Anasazi had to abandon their towns and left the area, while the Navajo are still living in this territory. The Anasazi were too reliant on their technology, which did help them flourish while the climate was good, but they could not shift when the climate changed. Similarly the Vikings who settled on greenland, who were themselves farmers, managed to farm there for some time, similarly when the climate shifted, they did not now how to respond. THe inuit in the area knew the local landscape better and again are still living in the area.

    The people who have the knowledge of the landscape will be best able to cope with a changing climate, the others, well I am sorry, will not. (I am sure others can show similar stories)

  • miguel

    2 years ago

    Smarten Up...

    No one in an urban environment has enough self sufficiency to survive anything challenging, and in many instances enough smarts to figure out solution to a problem.
    A very recent example is the issue with Toyota vehicles with sticky accelerators.Your car out of control? Just put it in neutral, don't call the highway patrol.

  • Takuan

    2 years ago

    an asteroid

    big enough to wipe us out is coming. This is an absolute fact. No one can dispute this. It doesn't matter how well we manage this planet if we ignore that fact. Considering that humans spend billions on things like say, advertising clothing and cosmetics or on professional sports viewing, and pennies on a simple thing like watching for falling rocks (never mind building an asteroid defense system) it is very obvious the species isn't worth saving.

    The universe is an ongoing intelligence test, you have already failed. Better luck to whatever comes next.

  • Takuan

    2 years ago

    have a nice day

    http://szyzyg.arm.ac.uk/~spm/neo_map.html

  • Fiat lux

    2 years ago

    Unfortunately nothing is

    Unfortunately nothing is mentioned in the article, although it might be in the book, about the deadly effects of religions, ideologies and economic theories that have always replaced logic in human history.

    All forms of life are programmed to fulfill certain ecological needs and purposes, except humans.

    We have brains with opposing halves, the conscious and the subconscious.

    The subconscious is a steady state and according to some psychologists, always knows the "truth",
    but the conscious half can be warped and twisted into pretzels to accept and follow the most outrageous faiths, beliefs and theories, while committing disgusting crimes against others and the ecology.

    The problem has always been "licence" to commit stupid and criminal acts, issued by faiths and in our times by the "creation" of non existing money from the air, that has to be converted into resources to maintain its artificial value, fraudulently called "wealth creation". .

    Until this idiocy through the teaching of the criminal theory of neoclassical market economics is questioned and stopped, there's no hope for humanity.

    Ed Deak. Big Lake.

    '

  • Dr Alexander

    2 years ago

    Not worth reading until

    Ed Deak's comments are dealt with. Otherwise, it is a coffeetable article.

  • RickW

    2 years ago

    You beat me to it, Ed!

    I was going to say that the "Big Three" western religions - RC, Protestantism, Islamism, all preach that this world is just a thing to ensure until the adherents "get to heaven".

    Most of the examples of sustainability presented in this article are not of these religions.

  • Van Isle

    2 years ago

    If one wants to read 2 books

    If one wants to read 2 books on this very subject try 'Ismail' and 'My Ismail' by Daniel Quinn. The human race WILL NOT survive, in the present form of our social structure, we're definitly on the road to destruction. Saw an article not to long ago that made the statement that humans are wired to fail. Have a friend who taught socialology for over 30 years and he still can't figure out how our society functions. When our society dies off there will be pockets of humans who will survive such as some aboriginals in Australia who rejected the whiteman's ways and still live and survive in the outback. Same thing with some people in the isolated areas of Kenya, Botswana, South Africa and Namimbia.

  • Fiat lux

    2 years ago

    Having ended up as teenage

    Having ended up as teenage refugees, I as a wounded veteran at 18, and my wife with her parents at 17, after WW2, we've never believed any ideology, or economic system again.

    So we have been preparing for the greatest degree of self sufficiency all our working lives and then stopped the world and got off 31 years ago, growing and making for ourselves as much as we possibly can.

    It paid off in a big way, we've never been happier as now in our 80s.

    The only thing I can say is: Buy land and tools and learn how to use them!

    Ed Deak, Big Lake.

  • Noggy

    2 years ago

    I feel better !

    Even though I am not the sharpest academic knife in the kitchen, I, for the better part of my 60 years have understood the follies of religious institutions, wealth creation, excessive and mindless consumption. Maybe I should give myself more credit; I believe I will.

  • barney

    2 years ago

    Cole's Notes version...

    Humans have a survival instinct that operates on individual and collective levels, and this instinct is linked intricately to human intelligence, which in turn is linked to our evolutionary abilities to adapt. (this is my extraction from the book's thesis)

    I don't want to downplay the thesis of Goleman. It's fascinating, very topical stuff in this day of peak oil and climate change. But I wonder if much of this intellectual probing into what we all know on an instinctual level is just another effort by our species to deny the obvious: unless you are foolish enough to place your bets with some cosmic higher power who has it all planned out for you everlasting - which I do not - our existence is what it is in the vast, endless universe. I know this sounds cliche and trite, because maybe our existence is cliche and trite. We are inconsequential in the grand chaotic anti-scheme of things. Species on this planet, and likely on billions of other planets, die off, and other resurface through some soup mess, only to die off, and the cycle repeats....

    Our survival instinct has no correlation, that I can see, to actual endless survival. The dodo bird also had a survival instinct. What makes humans different? Or abilities to reason, plan and envision a future? Our opposable thumb? Gimme a break!

    What humans have further demonstrated in our relatively minute time in this universe is a propensity for collective delusions of grandeur. This imagination is what makes us both good and bad simultaneously. But in the end, our instinct to survive contains no guarantees, no rights to the future and is completely at the mercy of a chaotic universe that cares not one nano-iota whether we live on or die off. This wondrous universe, and this little planet we inhabit have zero concern about your sign on the back window of your hybrid SUV that reads, "Baby on Board."

    Yes, let's do our best to hang on for dear life, but let's not delude ourselves into believing, in our collective arrogance, that our survival instinct must necessarily meet a happy end. Maybe if we accepted this, we could relax a bit and get on with doing the real important things that require doing for current generations to co-exist peacefully and fairly.

  • frank2

    2 years ago

    Interesting article. It

    Interesting article. It makes lots of use of understandings from modern brain science. Ditto for writing in many other fields, including the arts. Such attempts to apply glimmerings from a science which is exploding is well placed. If we don't come to grips with how we operate -- and make appropriate changes in behaviour -- we won't survive.

    On Ed's points about religion and ideology. Religions have played an important role by providing "authority" for values and behaviours which aided survival. The rate of change of technology makes it unlikely that traditional religions mechanisms (basically, believing outside forces and their expert interpreters) can generate survival skills at species level. As the article points out, we need to devote more attention to and widespread respect for science AND evolve some coordinating mechanisms which enable increased knowledge to be applied to survival -- and, I hope, enabling folks to live more joyful lives.
    As for Ed's "solution," buy enough land to subsist without major dependence on others, that would only work with one fifth (if that) of the human population. If we try to go that route, of course, we'll get the population down fairly rapidly.

  • Fiat lux

    2 years ago

    Economic theories have

    Economic theories have always been pseudo religions without any contact with realities.

    The only solution for survival is the acceptance of physical laws to govern economic theories and systems.

    Then change, when certain physical laws are foud to be wrong.

    In my opinion the world's cooperative, and not competitive, economic systems should be based on the First Law of Thermodynamics and Newton's laws on speed and reaction.

    That's all ! It could be done and would be the beginning of a global recovery.

    It is very true that "Faith conquers all", and unfortunately logic is always the first victim.

    Ed Deak.

  • RickW

    2 years ago

    Jared Diamond's Contention....

    ....is that people become stupider the more techologically "advanced" a given society becomes.

  • Diane McN

    2 years ago

    Growth worship will kill us

    "For centuries Sher's population has stayed at about 300 people." We have bought into the "growth is good", the need to expand, "progress", all that stuff that supports the current economic system. Growth isn't good. And check the salient fact: they stopped making more than replacement people.We will never figure that out.

  • Dr Alexander

    2 years ago

    Well, living in quaint communities and Shangri-Las

    is all fine and dandy.

    Until you get appendicitis.

  • Dr Alexander

    2 years ago

    The gist of this article was already covered 200 yrs ago

    Quite ironic that Goleman quotes William Blake.

    Just ask any proper Englishman to sing "Jerusalem" and you will find that out.

  • max von smartt

    2 years ago

    after the crash

    w'ell pick up the pieces. hope the tigers and orangutans survive too.

  • greengreen

    2 years ago

    Action-challenged

    Well, looks like we will have to do a 180 re capitalism and "me" thinking.
    We have the knowledge to do much better but not the will to turn this into action. A massive and severe economic and/or ecological catastrophe may be the only impetus that will bring forth much action. (Kind of like quitting smoking after one gets lung cancer, even though the "knowledge" was around for thirty years.

  • Frank

    2 years ago

    Evolution? Seriously?

    More and more people needing more and more resources is considered a good idea by most of us on this finite planet.

    Thus we keep electing pollyanas as our leaders because we don't want to face reality.

    As an example of what the thinking world is up against, the youth of BC (and the word "youth" somehow now includes people in their 30's) would rather spend two weeks partying downtown than find 15 minutes to go vote.

    Not exactly what one would call hope-inspiring.

  • RickW

    2 years ago

    Dr. A

    Bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites can be responsible agents of an infection that leads to swelling of the tissues of the appendix wall, including Yersinia species, adenovirus, cytomegalovirus, actinomycosis, Mycobacteria species, Histoplasma species, Schistosoma species, pinworms, and Strongyloides stercoralis. Also, swelling of the tissue from inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn's disease may cause appendicitis. It appears that appendicitis is not hereditary or transmittable from person to person
    http://www.emedicinehealth.com/appendicitis/article_em.htm
    All of which are, and have been, successfully treated so that a hospital visit is unnecessary. I believe it's called "preventative medicine" -- something which any "quaint" shangri-la would practice.

  • KWD

    2 years ago

    natural vs unnatural

    No matter how hard we try, or how much we pretend, we seem unwilling to accept that “we are part of nature, not outside it”.

    Even Daniel Goleman, as much as he claims otherwise, fails to maintain this view when he claims, “Ecological intelligence allows us to comprehend systems in all their complexity, as well as the interplay between the natural and man-made worlds.”

    If man is part of nature, so are man’s creations. There is no interplay between two different worlds. To pretend they exist is simply diversionary semantic argument.

    In order to understand and expose the hidden impacts of our behaviour, we need a better grasp of why we behave in certain ways. In order to understand our behaviour, we need to understand why we think the way we do … we need to look beyond hard wiring and beyond cognitive intelligence.

  • John Greg

    2 years ago

    KWD ...

    said:

    Quote:
    In order to understand our behaviour, we need to understand why we think the way we do … we need to look beyond hard wiring and beyond cognitive intelligence.

    Okay, so if hard-wiring is Nature, and cognitive intelligence is Nurture, that leaves what?

  • KWD

    2 years ago

    good point John Greg

    Poorly expressed on my part. We can't really get beyond the cognitive stuff. What I intended to say was that we need to look deeper into the "Nurture" component.

    After all, we aren't born thinking the way we do: we are taught ...

  • doggone

    2 years ago

    Smarten up and Die

    The sooner the better.
    We (including the Royal We) are the enemy.
    I'm not going to off myself tonight or any time soon but basically there seem to be be too many affluent human folks in this world and they really do not make sensible decisions about special (or other species) survival.
    Too many, too soon
    and too late
    Population BOOM
    Population CRASH
    Just the way it works

  • dorothy

    2 years ago

    we got it, OK, but some won't have it...

    "The only thing I can say is: Buy land and tools and learn how to use them!"

    The only problem with this idea is that it is not even now available to everyone. People who settle in Canada from some parts of the world, and who have met with the finiteness of resources in some either brutal or instructive way, have no problem. That is why we breed under replacement rate here. However, our corporations will not have that. They pressure for continued immigration of either just lots of people, or maybe people from parts of the world where large families are the custom, because the quick big buck can only be made under conditions of expansion. Failing to cram enough people into Canada to make the labor cheap enough, they 'outsource'. We cannot set ourselves on a better course as long as these reivers are operating aided by lame laws and we are all choking on political correctness, even those who would flash the 'inconvenient truth' in all our faces for their own self-satisfaction. These people are the first to scream 'racist' at even the suggestion that we should look to be more conservative in importing more people.

    Ed Deak is right, when he speaks of land. In my humble opinion, a country starts going down when it first accepts that there are some people in it who will never own their own land. Try to offer that viewpoint in mixed company that includes a few academicians, and they won't even answer you. They'll look right over your head as if you were an obnoxious piece of furniture.

    I feel very gratified that people who obviously have some status in the place are now starting to say some of the stuff that has only netted me contempt, when I have offered it over the past thirty years. I don't care who gets the credit, just as long as the insight wins headway. So, I want to thank Ed Deak and Gwest and other such people of substance for putting their weight behind the truth. We need it so badly, for Canada still has the potential of being great for "all her sons", and we are in the process of f@#$^ing it up. Something needs to change.

  • RickW

    2 years ago

    Or the converse, dorothy...

    Quote:
    a country starts going down when it first accepts that there are some people in it who will never own their own land

    ...where land is not one of those things that ANYONE owns. It is, after all, the easier premise, as we begin our lives without the entitlement of ownership.

  • dorothy

    2 years ago

    OK, if you want it to be about semantics...

    I was trying to not be too sermonizing ad super-philosophical. I believe that the land owns us, to tell the truth. I should have said 'have stewardship of a piece of land' rather than 'own', OK, but to answer you objection to the main argument:

    Beginning 'without entitlement' is strictly a notion of the revealed religions and their boot in the face to personal worth, i.e. we are nothing without God, Allah, or Jehovah, or whoever. The paradigm continues with the pattern that we then enter a rat race to achieve entitlement, some kind of pretty cruel musical lifespaces, where the losers end up on the DES, or perhaps dead, or both.

    I believe this is the thinking that has led to the mess we're in. There's nothing wrong with entitlement, if it means your parents and tribe must make sure there is a space for you, without it being taken from someone else, who is then 'out of luck'. Tribal communities at best work this way, and makes for pretty solid communities, which we spectacularly don't have.

    I still say communities start to fall apart when there are people in them who cannot stand on a patch of soil and lay claim to it as their inalienable home. Think about what difference it makes to the state of one's soul, and don't rush to defend the worthiness of all your renting and apartment-dwelling friends. It's not about dumping on them, it's about how we all together, will realize our humanity better than we do now.

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