Could Cultural Ratcheting = Social Ratcheting ? (Thoughts on a Scientific American article)
Heather Pringle writes in the current Scientific American article, "The Origins of Creativity", about cultural ratcheting.
The background - chimpanzees and humans share some common cultural traits. We both have the ability to pass on knowledge from one individual to another or from one generation to another. And we both use tools. The big difference she notes is that only humans build on that knowledge.
While chimps share a skill, it remains static. Everyone does it the same way. Humans on the other hand add to the skill set over time to innovate, improve and adapt it. i.e. we change culturally. Anthropologists call it cultural ratcheting.
From her article -
"Modern humans, in contrast, suffer from no such limitations. Indeed, we we daily take the ideas of others and put our own twist on them, adding one modification after another, until we end end up with something new and very complex. No one individual, for example, came up with all the intricate technology embedded in a laptop computer: such technological achievements arise from the creative insights of generations.
Anthropologists call this knack of ours cultural ratcheting. It requires, first and foremost, the ability to pass on knowledge from one individual to another, or from one generation to the next, until someone comes up with an improvement."
So, it got me to thinking. Could there be a similar process in our social lives? Something called social ratcheting?
I thought of the social process here in the US that resulted in overturning, changing, the bans on interracial marriage.
Surely it was built over time, incrementally, as social attitudes changed and were shared among others until interracial marriage was seen as part of a social norm and legislation against it was overturned, abandoned or ignored.
Could there be a similar process for same sex marriage and general acknowledgment of homosexuality as part of a social norm, happening today?
And could there be a critical mass point of no return to the old social standards?
I think so. The pessimist in me realizes it may happen on a generational time-line. The optimist thinks it is inevitable.