Evolution and and the Cultural Relativist

As I wandered through my collegiate education, I encountered the discipline of philosophy. One of the courses I took in this discipline concerned itself with the question, "What is art?" These three little words strung together in the form of a question entertained our thought processes for an entire semester. One by one we were introduced to various hypotheses as to how this question should and could be answered. Each time, I raised my hand, and said, "What if the people who created the object we call art, didn't think of it as such?" My professor, chuckled with a smile after I presented him with a picture of a Hopi Katchina while indicating that it's original purpose was ideological, not artistic. With a smile and a nod, he informed the class, that I was a Cultural Relativist. I smiled in return and replied, why of course, what anthropologist isn't? A cultural relativist takes the ethics of anthropology quite seriously - they view the world through the eyes of the culture or society in question. Everyone's world view is shaped and colored by what we are taught - by our parents, our community, our teachers, our friends, our religion, our government, books, TV, and radio. In other words, the world view of the Buddhist monk in Tibet will differ from that of the business man working on Wall Street. The cultural relativist tries to appreciate and respect the views of all peoples from around the globe.

Evolution. "Raise your hand if you're a cultural evolutionist," my professor asks. Two of us raise our hands. I receive glares from the student sitting in front of me. The professor then asks why we think the way we do. He started with the anti-cultural evolutionists. I heard arguments that it is a racist view.

Then, it was my turn. I smiled at the glaring faces and requested a piece of chalk - yes, in those days, we still used chalk and chalk boards. I then approached the board, drew a circle and several dots within it. I turned to my classmates and spoke, "Evolution simply means that change happens and that the way of being that is best adapted to any given situation survives." I pointed at my drawing. "Let me demonstrate. This circle is the Teotihuacan Valley in Mexico prior to the rise of Teotihuacan. These dots are small villages." I drew another circle, fewer outlying dots, and one dot in the center - slightly larger. I turned back to the class, "As time progressed, Teotihuacan's influence increased within the valley. People from surrounding villages moved into Teotihuacan, hence, there are fewer surrounding villages." I drew a third circle, a large dot in the center, and four outlying dots. "This is Teotihuacan at its height. The surrounding population is absorbed by this city which now has a population estimated at up to 200,000 people. The surrounding dots mark key resources such as obsidian. Teotihuacan has full control of this valley." I then draw a circle filled with many little dots. "This is the valley after Teotihuacan's fall. There is a power vacuum - so the people revert to a previous way of life - one that is simpler. This is the evolution of the Teotihuacan Valley. When Teotihuacan was powerful; it controlled the area - like Rome in Europe. Probably like Rome, there were armies for protection; life was predictable while Teotihuacan held sway. When the central power falls, a vacuum ensues. Society then evolves to fill or adjust to this vacuum - in this and many other cases, society reverted to a simpler way of being. You see this as well after the fall of Rome." I put the chalk down, wiped the dust from my hands and spoke, "Nothing in this world is static - including society. All things change, that is, they evolve. Whether those changes survive is due to its success in adapting to the situation at hand." No one continued to glare at me.