I’m reading A Hunter Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st century, by Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying. I regularly listen to their podcasts and always appreciate their views, so I bought the book. Perhaps the central theme for them, as evolutionary biologists, is that the rate of change- which they have termed hyper-novelty, is coming at us so fast right now, that we don’t have time to adapt evolutionarily. That means that things have arisen in our culture that aren’t productive adaptations to our environment.
Chapter 11, on Becoming Adults, had some really interesting observations.
“Rites of passage are useful as markers of transition- now you are a man, or today you become a woman.”
Adults should know how to feed and shelter themselves, be constructive and productive members of a group, and think critically. This knowledge doesn’t magically accrue with age, it must be earned.
“Rites of passage coordinate society with respect to what is expected of individuals at various stages of development, and they exist in two forms: temporal (age) and, loosely, merit (earned). Age is a rough guide to what a person should be able to do, and merit is a specific guide for what an individual is capable of.”
Unfortunately, across the WEIRD (an acronym for Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic) cultures, many of these rites have been corrupted- loosely or inconsistently applied in the case of temporal rites, and largely gameable in the merit rites.
People who would call themselves adults can observe themselves critically and ask themselves: am I are taking responsibility for my own actions, am I outsourcing my thinking about my worldview? Am I ceding my responsibilities and making excuses when I do?
Merit rites teach us to think for ourselves, and convey that to society so that it knows what to expect of us.
(these inset sections contain both quotes and paraphrases)
For more reasons than I can possibly go into right now, these highlights speak to me in a bunch of ways that I have thought over the years. I love the formulation of rites being divided into two forms, temporal and merit. We have time markers- at 18 you become an adult. It’s about where physical growth stops, so it’s a decent temporal marker.
But then we hear so many complaints about people learning how to “adult” even into their 30’s. This is a merit marker that seems to be telling us many of those well into legal adulthood are NOT particularly prepared or adept at it, and have not legitimately earned the right to be considered “adults”. Their bodies have reached maturity, but their emotional preparedness is retarded. At the same time, we’ve decided 8 year old’s should be able to make life altering decisions about their bodies and their sexual identity….. unless it comes to consenting to sex, where they are still considered completely unable to understand the dynamics and therefore still ‘children’.
These are the corrupted rites spoken of: loosely and inconsistently applied.
The Market and Advice
The hyper-novelty, particularly the reach of economic markets, is making it more difficult to be an adult. The market is full of con-artists, who want you to ignore your responsibilities and instead spend money on their products. Delayed gratification isn’t rewarded in the market, so junk everything shows up. “The aggregate of the market is therefore selling infantile values, which make you a desirable consumer but a poor adult.”
The primary way marketers do this is to create dissatisfaction, and at the same time create the impression that others are more satisfied. This is facilitated by our natural obsession with narratives being addressed by a narrative-generating mechanism that is tailored to sell product- towards what advertisers want us to believe rather than what we need to know.
This ultimately means our children are growing up in a world designed to hurt them.
There is a lot of advice, and a lot of voices telling us they know the way. People selling advice typically fall into four categories: Con artists, the confused, those that are correct but of finite applicability, and the universally useful.
Con artists and the confused appear to have dispensed with core beliefs altogether, preferring to navigate in an entirely social mode without reference to external reality. They have generated their ideas based on how they are received by their audience, not with how those ideas fit with reality.
Those that are correct in their claims, but with limited applicability, you’ll need to distinguish between what works for you and what doesn’t.
Adopt the advice of those that are giving you universally applicable wisdom.
While I have typically considered myself a pro-markets guy, I have to admit that there is much truth to this. Sometimes I wonder how much influence advertisers really have- because it seems to me that people adjust and adapt to them too- learning to ignore and tune them out. I think most of have learned to ignore advertising when we’re online.
Some of it just comes down to common sense too.
I remember looking at buying a house back in the early 2000’s as the market was starting to really take off. Banks were telling us we were qualified for 3 times the amount we were paying monthly for rent at the time. I had friends of mine that bought, rationalizing that ‘things would work out’.
I knew that we occasionally struggled to make the rent as it was, and it would be foolish to sign up for payments 2 or 3 times that amount just because a bank qualified us. So I used my brain and didn’t sign on. Some of those friends lost their homes when the bubble crashed, and we came in and bought a home that was literally half the price it had been a year earlier.
The lesson here was that just because someone tried to sell me something, didn’t mean I was at their mercy. I still had the ultimate say as to whether I would sign on or not. Yes, there are plenty of marketers selling all kinds of things, but that doesn’t mean we are forced to buy any of it.
Nor do I begrudge a company trying to sell their products.
That said, I also recognize that this IS having an impact on us as a society, and perhaps in a younger generation raised on these newer technologies, it’s much harder to escape their grasp. I also recognize the difficulty in avoiding it.
I did really appreciate the articulation of the four types of sources for advice and how they operate. I have heard something like this from them during their podcasts, but seeing it written down makes it easier for me to retain. I like the exposure of people who are giving advice that only finds validation in the social sphere too. I wouldn’t have thought of this on my own, but I have noticed a plethora of ideas that are only validated because a bunch of other people agree with them, even when they fly in the face of physical reality.
Types of Reality
Many modern people seem to believe that changing people’s opinions or perspectives is the same as changing reality. They see reality as a social construct. Con artists and the confused operate in this social plane, as opposed to an analytical one. How can you avoid becoming someone who assesses the world based on social responses rather than analysis? 1) Regularly engage the physical world, and 2) understand the value of close calls.
Engagement with the physical world
There is a merit to some postmodern approaches- understanding where our senses blind us and how we are mostly unaware of those biases. But how do you move from that to believing all reality is socially constructed? Have little experience in the world. Carpenters and electricians would never believe all reality is socially constructed. There are physical ramifications of physical actions. "Every opinion is not equally valid, and some outcomes don’t change just because you want them to. Social outcomes may change if you argue or throw a fit, but physical outcomes won’t.“
"Everyone, no matter how trapped they are in their body, with its particular flaws and strengths, has the opportunity to experience the world of actions and reactions in the physical world.” “The more you move, therefore, within whatever your particular limits are, the more integrated, whole, and accurate your perception of the world is likely to be.”
“You can fool a person, and they can fool you, but you can’t fool a tree or a tractor, a circuit or a surfboard. So seek out physical reality, not just social experience.” “The more time you spend pitting your intellect against realities that cannot be coerced with manipulation or sweet talk, the less likely you are to blame others for your own errors.”
The benefits of close calls
If we look at the statement: My success is due to my hard work and intelligence; my failures are due to the system being rigged against me and bad luck…. we see the flaw. But most of us are motivated by some version of this in our lives. But believing in bad luck, and not good luck, makes it difficult to learn from our mistakes.
Take every close call- even the ones that went your way, and ask what you learned… what the lesson could teach you.
Most of the time, we are taken back if someone dares ask us this after something went wrong. It will usually be understood as accusatory, when what we want is sympathy. But it would be more productive to learn from what just happened in order to decrease the chances of it happening again.
“Having these close calls is part of the experience necessary to grow up. If your child is made totally safe, living a life with no risk, then you have done a terrible job of parenting. That child has no ability to extrapolate from the universe. If you, as an adult, are totally safe, you are probably not reaching your potential.”
Since I’m an artist, I can probably accuse myself of operating in a realm dependent more on social acceptance than physical feedback. What really determines how much my art is worth? How much others like it.
But I wasn’t always an artist. I worked in construction before that as a mason- both concrete and brick, block and stone. In construction fields, you have to build stuff that works. A retaining wall can collapse if the work isn’t done correctly. The validity of the construction isn’t dependent on whether someone in front of a room thinks it works. The validity of the construction is dependent on physical rules, and these things aren’t socially constructed. I wouldn’t want my house built by someone who had “other ways of knowing” as their guide for construction, I want the house constructed according to the physical rules we know.
The benefits of close calls was actually a new thing for me, and I found myself having to ask IF I too have engaged in that type of thinking. I probably have, but I don’t think it’s been very much. Nonetheless, I like the idea of taking stock after a close call- even one where things worked out, to see how I got so close to the edge and how I can avoid having another close call as I go.