THE EVOLUTION OF THE PERSON.

............................by Stanley

.....Like children, the best scientists have always asked silly questions like: ‘why does an apple fall down instead of falling up?’ Or ‘Is white really a colour?’ Evolutionary psychology is still at this stage, asking questions like: ‘Why do we like sweet things?’ ‘Why do we hate the smell of rotten meat?’ or ‘Why are we so afraid of snakes and spiders?’. ‘Why do we smile?’ ‘Why are babies cute’?
.....Of course, these questions are asked against a background of a suspicion that there might be an evolutionary reason why these universal human traits exist. The fact that they do not have to be learned, but are innate, gives a clue for us to suspect that they are genetically inherited – and that can only happen as a result evolutionary adaptation long before we were ‘civilised’.
.....From the birth of Christ to our day is only 35 generations; the Pleistocene era, during which we humans developed all our human faculties, lasted 80,000 generations – a somewhat lengthy but neglected period of our history. So, when you find a modern human trait that can be found across all cultures it means that it is part of a universal human nature developed during that long period.
.....I suppose this essay is really an exercise in developmental psychology big-time.
.....But now, I want to ask a question that is close to the heart of our work: does every human being, no matter what their culture, consider themselves, or even want to be, ‘a person’, someone with choice, a self with a sense of unique existence? Maybe not. Maybe this capacity is a late development not built into our human nature, but more like the ability to read or write, abilities that have to be learned. The capacity to speak a language is inherited – a baby will begin to speak without coaching. But it has to learn how to read and write; these faculties are learned on top of the genetic pre-disposition to speak a language, any language, an ability that was developed long before writing and reading. ‘Unlike its component parts such as vision and speech, which are genetically organised, reading (and writing) has no direct genetic program passing it on to future generations.’ 1
.....I’m thinking maybe it’s the same with the ability to be a person. Maybe we are not primed to be conscious, subjective agents, but rather to be super-aware of external agents. 2
.....Being a person doesn’t come naturally; you could say that it's unnatural. If we manage to do it we build it on top of our genetic pre-disposition to be aware, not of ourselves, but of external agencies, dangerous external agencies that would like us for breakfast.
.....In child development an awareness of external agencies comes before an awareness of the self as an agent. Self awareness as a separate person is a later development and comes when the child realises that they can deceive. In ancestral times, in the 1.6 million years we were hunter-gatherers, it was vital to be super-aware of external agencies. There were always predators lurking, waiting to strike; and there were no houses or fences to protect us. We are genetically powerfully predisposed to be wary of other agencies and their intentions. Beyond our immediate family and group, trust doesn’t come easily.
.....Evolution means slow incremental development. Nothing springs from nothing. Every biological change is built on a pre-developed structure. An imaginary proto-human in the Pleistocene didn’t just sit down one nice day, whereupon it was suddenly revealed to him that he was a person. First and foremost he would have had to be aware of other agencies, sources of nurturing, food and danger – always focused on their intentions towards him.
.....So total was this orientation that there was no notion that storms, floods or lightening were natural phenomena. These had to be living things with their own devious purposes; and so evolved demons, spirits, gods and finally religion; not to mention our whole rich world of the imagination.
.....As we know, children the world over are able to spontaneously create imaginary worlds and to populate them with all kinds of friends and enemies. Mythologies are the stories of our culture’s late childhood. We should remember that the basic instincts upon which all this is built are the very real circumstances that our distant ancestors experienced in the pre-historic years of our early childhood on the African savannah .
.....You might argue that in these early days the instinct for self preservation would surely have been strong enough to give a sense of ego, a sense of oneself. Certainly the instinct for self preservation is strong, but this is not the same as being a conscious agent. To be alert to the unpredictable behaviour of predators or game is not the same as to be alert to one’s own existence. In hunting or being hunted, for example, one doesn’t have to be afraid of what one’s own next move is. You are not unpredictable in the same sense. The intentions you have to keep your eye on are whoever or whatever is out there.
.....I am suggesting that our awareness of being a person is not biologically natural, but is built on top of an instinctive awareness of others as intentional agencies. Because of this powerful instinct a modern human, I think, struggles to be a person, a self-motivated, responsible, thinking agent. Our overriding concentration naturally goes to what others want, what others are doing, what the other’s intentions are, what they are up to.
.....For those who do struggle to be a person and, as the oft repeated phrase goes, tries to ‘find who I am’, the tendency is always to revert to an awareness of others before oneself. This emphasis is conducive to social cohesion, but it is also responsible for our susceptibility to be too influenced by leaders, stars, dictators, helpful bullies and manipulators of the mob, drowning out our attempts at individual and personal existence. Also, politically this makes democracy vulnerable and tenuous; and psychologically it makes religion, directed as it is towards the BIG OTHER, more popular than therapy which is directed towards the inwardness of the self.
.....I am suggesting that because of this most basic and powerful instinct it is understandable why people can be so easily conned and manipulated. It also makes understandable why the superego is so powerful in modern humans. We are never quite sure whether the superego is our friend or our enemy; is it punishing or giving good advice? The superego is the representative dangerous ‘other’ we keep in our heads. The influence of our parents in forming the superego is secondary – important but secondary as Freud knew. It's likely that its shaped primarily by our evolutionary inheritance – which Freud didn’t know.
..... In trying to overcome and lessen the influence of the superego so that we can become more authentic as persons it is as well to acknowledge what powerful factors we are up against; I mean by that, of course, our upbringing – our very early upbringing. The good news, apparently, is the miraculous plasticity of our inheritance. We are all born with the ‘capacity to change what is given to us by nature ... We are, it would seem from the start, genetically poised for breakthroughs’. 3
[1] Wolf, Maryanne. Proust and the Squid; the story of science and
reading brain. Icon Books, Cambrigde, 2008
[2] Dennett, Daniel. Breaking the Spell: religion as a natural phenomena, Viking, 2006
[3] Wolf, Ibid.