Cultural Evolution and its Discontents: Cognitive Overload, Parasitic Cultures, and the Humanistic Cure

331 Pages·2019·3.328 MB·English

by  Robert N. Watson

Cultural Evolution and its
Discontents
People worry that computers, robots, interstellar aliens, or Satan himself –
brilliant, stealthy, ruthless creatures – may seize control of our world and
destroy what’s uniquely valuable about the human race. Cultural Evolution and
its Discontents shows that our cultural systems – especially those whose last
names are “ism” – are already doing that, and doing it so adeptly that we seldom
even notice. Like other parasites, they’ve blindly evolved to exploit us for their
own survival. Creative arts and humanistic scholarship are our best tools for
diagnosis and cure.
The assemblages of ideas that have survived, like the assemblages of biological
cells that have survived, are the ones good at protecting and reproducing them-
selves. They aren’t necessarily the ones that guide us toward our most a dmirable
selves or our healthiest future. Relying so heavily on culture to protect our
uniquely open minds from cognitive overload makes us vulnerable to hijacking
by the systems that co-evolve with us.
Recognizing the selfish Darwinian functions of these systems makes sense of
many aspects of history, politics, economics, and popular culture. What drove
the Protestant Reformation? Why have the Beatles, The Hunger Games, and
paranoid science fiction thrived, and how was hip-hop co-opted? What alliances
helped neoliberalism out-compete Communism, and what alliances might
enable environmentalism to overcome consumerism? Why are multiculturalism
and university-trained elites provoking working-class nationalist backlash? In a
digital age, how can we use numbers without having them use us instead?
Anyone who has wondered how our species can be so brilliant and so stupid at
the same time may find an answer here: human mentalities are so complex that
we crave the simplifications provided by our cultures, but the cultures that thrive
are the ones that blind us to any interests that don’t correspond to their own.
Robert N. Watson received his B.A. summa cum laude from Yale and his Ph.D.
with Highest Honors from Stanford, and was Associate Professor of English at
Harvard before moving to UCLA, where he has been Chair of the Faculty of
Letters and Science and Vice-Provost for Educational Innovation, and is now
Distinguished Professor of English. He is the author of prize-winning scholarly
books, and poems in the New Yorker and many other journals. He has been
awarded Guggenheim and NEH fellowships, as well as visiting fellowships at
Trinity College, Cambridge, and Christ Church College, Oxford, and prizes for
excellence in teaching and public service.
Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory
The Waste Fix
Seizures of the Sacred from Upton Sinclair to the Sopranos
William G. Little
Figures of Finance Capitalism
Writing, Class and Capital in Mid-Victorian Narratives
Borislav Knezevic
The Other Orpheus
A Poetics of Modern Homosexuality
Merrill Cole
The Individual and the Authority Figure in Egyptian Prose Literature
Yona Sheffer
The Pictorial Third
An Essay into Intermedial Criticism
Liliane Louvel
Making and Seeing Modern Texts
Jonathan Locke Hart
Cultural Evolution and its Discontents
Cognitive Overload, Parasitic Cultures, and the Humanistic Cure
Robert N. Watson
For a full list of titles published in the series, please visit www.routledge.com
Cultural Evolution and its
Discontents
Cognitive Overload, Parasitic Cultures,
and the Humanistic Cure
Robert N. Watson
First published 2019
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an
informa business
© 2019 Taylor & Francis
The right of Robert N. Watson to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-03024-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-01993-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by codeMantra
To:
Dana Cairns Watson
for thirty years of true contentment
and constant reminders of human goodness

Contents
List of Figures ix
Acknowledgments xi
1 Culture vs. Anarchy 1
Interchapter: Modern Medievalism 29
2 Agency in the Human Hive 33
Interchapter: Software is Hard on Humanity 57
3 The Evolution of Memeplexes 58
Interchapter: The Crow Tribe in Flight 109
4 The Blue Guitar and the Uses of Art 110
Interchapter: Party Politics 144
5 The Red Scare and the Idea of the University 146
Interchapter: Digital Humanities 195
6 Past and Present Humanism 197
Interchapter: Why Aristotle Would Have Won Plenty of
Drachmae Betting on College Football Bowl Games 229
7 The Technological Singularity and Artificial Unintelligence 232
Notes 259
Bibliography 287
Index 307

List of Figures
Figure 1 “Study Hard, Party Hard” bar flyer;
Munich, Germany 144
Figure 2 The Young Goodwin Watson 149
Figure 3 President Assails Congress “Rider”; New York
Times, July 14, 1943 149
Figure 4 Fair Play is the issue; Editorial, New York Times,
July 15, 1943 150
Figure 5 Court invadiates Lovett discharge; New York
Times, June 4, 1946 150
Figure 6 Robeson riot inquiry called “Whitewash”; New
York Times, May 30, 1950 150
Figure 7 Dr. Watson upheld by guidance center; New York
Times, July 23, 1954 150
Figure 8 “College Scorecard” from the Obama White House 183
Figure 9 Michelangelo’s Colonna Pietà; courtesy Isabelle
Stuart Gardner Museum, Boston, MA
(mid-16th century) 203
Figure 10 “Woman Mourning Dead Birds” by Jacques
de Gheyn (mid-16th century) 203
Figure 11 “Mona Lisa” by Leonardo da Vinci
(early 16th century) 248
Figure 12 “Mona Lisa” for painting by numbers 248
Figure 13 Chromosomes 255
Figure 14 Library Shelf 255
Figure 15 Lecture Hall 255