As we have evolved, so to has our ability to use language and create meaning for others. Evolution is governed by one fundamental principle; “Survival of the fittest”. And if these abilities have been able to develop and last to now, then it’s because they have helped us as a species become fit enough to survive. So how exactly have they helped our survival?
I’m in Starbucks…Or Am I?
Right now, I’m sitting in Starbucks, in Xuhui district of Shanghai, drinking a Latte and typing on my Apple iPad Pro. But if you asked a pigeon where I was and what I was doing right now, they wouldn’t give the same response (assuming they could speak English). They don’t know what Starbucks is, nor what Xuhui or Shanghai is. They don’t know what a Latte is, what Apple is, let alone an iPad Pro.
A pigeon would tell you that I am sitting in a man made structure, touching a black thing that’s connected to a white shiny thing, and drinking something from a round thing. That’s about as much as it would tell you, because the Pigeon lives in the real world, whereas we live in a virtual world.
Starbucks, Xuhui, Shanghai, Lattes, iPads and Apple are all myths. They exist only because we people say they exist. But they are not things that exist in the real world, they are things that exist in our collective imaginations.
Take money, for example. Right now, I have about 1200 Chinese Yuan in my wallet. I could go to the shopping mall across the road and purchase 1200 Chinese Yuan’s worth of goods with that money, because all of the people in that shopping mall also believe that those paper notes in my wallet are worth 1200 Chinese Yuan.
But imagine if a zombie apocalypse were suddenly to break out, and society crumbled. Cities came to a standstill, and people fled to the countryside to escape the horde of hungry zombies. If I were to take my 1200 Chinese Yuan to one of their campsites, and offer it to them in exchange for the rabbit meat they were cooking over the fire, they would laugh at me. Money would have lost it’s value because people would no longer be able to benefit from it (they could not cash it in at banks, invest it in stocks, or use it to buy Lattes from Starbucks) and therefore would stop believing in it. It would return to what it really is; pretty sheets of paper, best used for fuelling camp fires.
Many of the things we believe are real (e.g. money, nations, brands etc.) are actually not real, because we can very suddenly stop believing in them. We don’t live in the real world. We live in a virtual world.
We live in a virtual world. Is that a bad thing?
Yes and no.
On the downside, our minds are shaped by the virtual worlds that the cultures we grow up in pass down to us. Some people grow up believing in God, or believing Cristiano Ronaldo was a hero, or that 9/11 was the worst terrorist atrocity in US history. Others don’t believe in God, prefer Messi to Ronaldo, and believe that the US military response in reaction to 9/11 was a bad time for the US. These different beliefs become solidified as we constantly search for proof in our environment. We pray to God for good fortune in our exam, and we pass and that’s proof God exists. We see Messi’s team beat Ronaldo’s, and that’s proof to us that Messi is better than Ronaldo. And we see the emergence of ISIS as a result of the US’ “War on Terror” and see that as proof that the US made a mistake. Regardless of whether we’re right or wrong, it doesn’t matter, we believe we’re right, and that’s all that matters. And then, when conflicting beliefs collide, we have heated arguments, fist fights, or full scale wars.
On the flip side though, I can go to any bank in any major city in the world, and give them sheets of paper in exchange for them increasing digits on a computer screen. I can then go to any shop in any major city and use these digits to buy things. Like I did just now with the Latte I’m drinking at Starbucks. That Latte required a person to make it, and my digits contributed to their salary. This virtual world that we both live in helped us both help each other.
But Starbucks also needed coffee beans shipped from other parts of the world. They also needed milk from dairy farms in other parts of the country. They also had machines to make the coffee that were designed by some people in one country, manufactured by other people in another country, and then put on a truck in China and driven by a person to the Starbucks that I’m now sitting in. Everyone works together to make this incredible global economy that we live in. Our collective imaginations enable cooperation on a colossal scale, and that is what separates us from all other species.
All other species live in the real world
Our closest ancestors, apes, are incapable of cooperating on anywhere near the scale we cooperate on, because they only live in the real world. They live in communities of a maximum of about 50. In order for a community to survive, there must be trust and bonding between all individuals, otherwise they would fight and constantly compete for resources.
If a monkey meets another monkey that they don’t know and have never spent any time with, then how can they know if they can trust each other? How can they know if it’s beneficial to help each other? The only way they can know is if they’ve spent a significant amount of time building trust and bonds with each other. And to build that trust and those bonds, monkeys spend about 30% of their day eating bugs off of each other.
When was the last time you ate a bug off someone? Probably never. I hope. Because you don’t need to. And the reason you don’t need to is because you don’t need to go through a prolonged bonding process with each individual. But it wasn’t always like this for us.
In the earliest days of our history as a species, we lived as nomadic, hunter-gatherer tribes. We travelled the land, moving from cave to forest to grassy plain. But the tribes we were in, quite consistently, always stayed within a certain, magic number; 150.
Whereas our ape ancestors could only manage to maintain bonds with about 50 individuals at any one time, and spent a great deal of time grooming each other to maintain those bonds, we humans can only really go up to 150.
But think about that for a moment. 150 individuals, and if we wanted to maintain close bonds with them we would need to spend time grooming each and every one of them. That’s so much time spent grooming that we would have too little time left over for anything else. So in order to grow to groups of that size, we needed a faster way of building these bonds, and that faster way is gossip.
We’re all Gossip Queens
As our language ability evolved from single grunts, to combinations of words, to full on syntax, this unlocked our ability to describe things other people didn’t know, such as; who was sleeping with who, what so and so did to so and so, and how impressed or unimpressed everyone else is with the new leader.
This sharing of information probably became a shortcut to bonding. I may have heard many good things from people I trust about John the Caveman, even though I’ve never met him before. So when I finally do meet him, I know I can trust him. And thankfully, I no longer have to spend hours and hours eating bugs from his chest hair.
From Tribes to Civilisations
So, thanks to gossip, I no longer needed to spend my days rummaging through John the Caveman’s chest hair. But still, I cannot use gossip alone to build trust so quickly with strangers from far away lands. My friends don’t even know these strangers, so they have no gossip to share with me.
But, in this age of globalisation, I can travel to most parts of the planet, and pretty quickly build trust with most people thanks to one simple fact; we believe in common myths.
By believing in common myths, we are able to work together towards common goals, or at least mutually beneficial goals. And if we believe the same things, we must think in the same way. If we think in the same way, we can predict how each other will behave, and therefore, we can trust each other.
Take money, for example. As I established earlier, money doesn’t exist in the real world, it only exists in the virtual world of our collective imaginations, and is therefore a common myth. If I go to a bank here in China with my 1200 Chinese Yuan in cash, I could exchange it for roughly 2.5 million Indonesian Rupiah. I trust the bank, because every time I have gone to this bank before they have always allowed me to take out my money. And I trust money, because every time I have used money in the past I’ve been able to exchange it for things that other people say are the equivalent of value. So if they give me 2.5 million Indonesian Rupiah, then it must be real money.
I could then fly to Bali, probably Indonesia’s most famous island, where I know nobody at all. I could then walk into a restaurant, with my 2.5 million Indonesian Rupiah notes, and offer some of them in exchange for food. As the waiter in the restaurant believes these Indonesian Rupiah are real, and therefore can be used to buy things that would benefit them (like clothes or more food), they accept and give me food in exchange.
Let’s change this scenario though. It’s now 1000 years ago, and by some bizarre turn of events, I, a British man, have washed up on the shores of Bali. It’s also been some time since I last ate. So, starving, I stumble around the jungle for hours looking for food until I find a small village. As I sneak into the village, I see a small group of people roasting a pig over a fire, and so I approach them. But they chase me away with spears!
How could these people trust me? They’ve probably never seen a white man like me before. How can they trust something they don’t know? I might be an evil spirit. I might have other evil spirits hiding in the jungle, and with one call I could bring them all to this village to steal their precious resources and take their families as slaves. And what would the possible benefit of trusting me be? What can I give them? How can I help them? We don’t even speak the same language! If only I had some Indonesian Rupiah on me!
By believing in common myths such as money, countries, or even brands, we believe we can help each other, and therefore we form bonds and trust each other.
It is important though, that these common myths have a link to the real world that can be used to confirm the beliefs.
I believe I am in China, because everywhere I go within this land, I am greeted with the Chinese flag, the Chinese characters “中国” (meaning “China”), and would be told by any individual that I asked that I am in China.
I believe in cash, because I can look at it, touch it, and give it to other people in exchange for things. But recently cash has lost some of its value in China as more and more people start using mobile payments such as WeChat and Alipay. Some shops I go to no longer accept cash, they only want payment via WeChat or Alipay. I’m starting to lose faith in cash!
So what is the meaning of “Starbucks”?
Last week, during a discussion in one of my workshops, I pointed to a paper cup on the table in front of me and asked the group “What is this?”.
“Starbucks” they replied.
In reality, it was just a paper cup, with a bit of milk, a bit of water, and some coffee powder, with a Starbucks logo printed on it. But to us humans, it is much more than that. It is a symbol (and only one symbol of many billions of symbols that can be found all around the world) of how we as a species have used the power of storytelling to break free from the limits our evolution has placed on our physical brains, and evolve made up worlds that enable the existence of societies.
