for - transition - in individuality - from genetic to cultural

for - gene-culture coevolution - paper - prepress - Cultural inheritance is driving a major transition in human evolution - author - Timothy M Waring - Zachary T Wood

for - gene-culture coevolution - definition - Evolutionary Transition in both Inheritance and Individuality (ETII) - authors - Timothy M Waring - Zachary T Wood - paper - Cultural inheritance is driving a transition in human evolution 2025

for - paper - 2025 - Cultural inheritance is driving a transition in human evolution - author<br /> - Timothy M Waring - from - U of Maine News - Culture is driving a major shift in human evolution, new theory proposeshttps://hyp.is/7sMSFteXEfC_tNvhW0UTPA/umaine.edu/news/blog/2025/09/15/culture-is-driving-a-major-shift-in-human-evolution-new-theory-proposes/ - Zarchary T Wood

for - cultural evolution - overtaking - genetic evolution - Waring & Wood - to - paper - Cultural inheritance is driving a transition in human evolution - https://hyp.is/OPBwzNeYEfCiTgP0i-iBhQ/academic.oup.com/bioscience/article-abstract/75/10/803/8230384

for - evolutionary transition - from genetic to cultural - progress trap - cultural evolution

for - cultural phase transition - from feudalism to industrial age

cultural phase transition - from feudalism to industrial age - involved the interplay of a number of factors - cultural exchange of ideas between European and other cultures such as Islam and ancient Greek - colonialism and the Atlantic slave trade - new technologies such as steam engine rendered slaves obsolete by replacing them with more efficient factory systems of production - new human rights movements coincided to abolish slavery

for - quote - Sarah Stein Lubrano - quote - self as cultural construction in WEIRD culture - sense of self

quote - (immediately below)

• It's just a weird fascination of our weird culture that
  • we think the self is there and
  • it's the best and most likely explanation for human behavior
• Other people in other cultures do not think this
• and that suggests that our sense of self is largely culturally constructed

discussion - sense of self is complex. See the work of - Michael Levin and - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=michael+levin - Major Evolutionary Transition in Individuality - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=major+evolutionary+transition+in+individuality

for - multi scale competency architecture - Michael Levin - evolutionary biology - rapid whole system change - adjacency - multi scale competency architecture - rapid whole system change - stop reset go - Deep Humanity - Indyweb - Indranet - major evolutionary transition in individuality - MET - superorganism - cumulative cultural evolution of individuality

adjacency - between - multi scale competency architecture - rapid whole system change - progress trap - stop reset go - Deep Humanity - Indyweb - Indranet - major evolutionary transition in individuality - MET - superorganism - cumulative cultural evolution of individuality - adjacency statement - The idea of multi scale competency architecture can be extended to apply to the cultural level. - in the context of humanity's current existential poly /meta/ perma crisis, - rapid whole system change - (a cultural behavioural paradigm shift) - is required within a few short years - to avoid the worst impacts of - catastrophic, - anthropogenic - climate change, which is entangled with a host of other earth system boundary violations including - biodiversity loss - fresh water scarcity - - the driver of evolution through major evolutionary transitions in individuality has given rise to the level of cultural superorganisms that include all previous levels - progress and its intended consequences of progress traps play a major role in determining the future evolutionary trajectory of our and many other species - our species is faced with a few choice permutations in this regard: - individually regulate behaviour aligned with a future within earth system boundaries - collectively regulate behaviour aligned with a future within earth system boundaries - pursue sluggish green growth / carbon transition that is effectively tinkering at the margins of rapid whole system change - BAU - currently, there doesn't appear to be any feasible permutation of any of the above choices - There is insufficient worldview alignment to create the unity at scale for report whole system change - individual incumbent state and corporate actors still cling too tightly to the old, destructive regime, - creating friction that keeps the actual rate of change below the required - Stop Reset Go, couched within the Deep Humanity praxis and operationalized through the Indyweb / Indranet individual / collective open learning system provides a multi-dimensional tool for a deep educational paradigm shift that can accelerate both individual and collective upregulation of system change

• for: cultural evolution - diverse movements, cultural transition - diverse movements

• summary

  • Bill Reese and Rubin Nelson believe that the dynamic / relational quadrant of indigenous culture is the most viable futures

• for: major cultural paradigms, modernity - leaving, cultural transition, cultural evolution, MET, Major Evolutionary Transition, kiey insight - 4 major cultural paradigms

• comment

• key insight: 4 major cultural paradigms

  • This matrix doesn't quite capture what Ruben is proposing because he later talks about neo-indigenous, which means taking elements of modernity but within an overall indigenous framework, so a hybrid
  • It would be worth exploring implications for an evolutionary framework of Major Evolutionary Transitions (MET)

• for: social superorganism - vs human multicellular being, social superorganism, Homni, major evolutionary transition, MET, MET in Individuality, Indyweb, Indranet, Indyweb/Indranet, CCE cumulative cultural evolution, symmathesy, Gyuri Lajos, individual/collective gestalt, interwingled sensemaking, Deep Humanity, DH, meta crisis, meaning crisis, polycrisis

• comment

  • True, there is no physical cohesion that binds human beings together into a larger organism, but there is another dimension - informational cohesion.
  • This informational cohesion expresses itself in cumulative cultural evolution. Even this very discussion they are having is an example of that
  • The social superorganism is therefore composed of an informational body and not a physical one and one can think of its major mentations as collective, consensual ideas such as popular memes, movements, governmental or business actions and policies
  • I slept on this and this morning, realized how salient Adam's question was to my own work
    • The comments here build and expand upon what I thought yesterday (my original annotations)
    • The main connections to my own sense-making work are:
      • Within our specific human species, the deep entanglement between self and other (the terminology that our Deep Humanity praxis terms the "individual / collective gestalt")
      • The Deep Humanity / SRG claim that the concurrent meaning / meta / poly crisis may be an evolutionary test foreshadowing the next possible Major Evolutionary Transition in Individuality.<br /> - https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=MET+in+Individuality
        • As Adam notes, collective consciousness may be more a metaphorical rather than a literal so a social superorganism, (one reference refers to it as Homni
          • https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140701-the-superorganism-engulfing-earth
        • may be metaphorical only as this higher order individual lacks the physical signaling system to create a biological coherence that, for instance, an animal body possesses.
        • Nevertheless, the informational connections do exist that bind individual humans together and it is not trivial.
        • Indeed, this is exactly what has catapulted our species into modernity where our cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) has defined the concurrent successes and failures of our species. Modernity's meaning / meta / polycrisis and progress traps are a direct result of CCE.
        • Humanity's intentions and its consequences, both intended and unintended are what has come to shape the entire trajectory of the biosphere. So the impacts of human CCE are not trivial at all. Indeed, a paper has been written proposing that human information systems could be the next Major System Transition (MST) that could lead to another future MET that melds biotic and abiotic
          • https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=MST+-+information
          • or https://hyp.is/go?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.frontiersin.org%2Farticles%2F10.3389%2Ffevo.2021.711556&group=world
        • This circles back to Adam's question and what has just emerged for me is this question:
          • Is it possible that we could evolve in some kind of hybrid direction where we are biologically still separate individuals BUT deeply intertwingled informationally through CCE and something like the theoretical Indyweb/Indranet which is an explicit articulation of our theoretical informational connectivity?
          • In other words, could "collective consciousness be explicitly defined in terms of an explicit, externalized information system reflecting intertwingled individual/collective learning?
      • The Indyweb / Indranet informational laminin protein / connective tissue that informationally binds individuals to others in an explicit, externalized means of connecting the individual informational nodes of the social superorganism, giving it "collective consciousness" (whereas prior to Indyweb / Indranet, this informational laminin/connective tissue was not systematically developed so all informational connection, for example of the existing internet, is incomplete and adhoc)
      • The major trajectory paths that global or localized cultural populations take can become an indication of the behavior of collective consciousness.
        • Voting, both formal and informal is an expression of consensus leading to consensual behavior and the consensual behavior could be a reflection of Homni's collective consciousness

• insight

  • While socially annotating this video, a few insights occurred after last night's sleep:
    • Hypothes.is lacks timebound sequence granularity. Indyweb / Indranet has this feature built in and we need it for social annotation. Why? All the information within this particular annotation cannot be machine sorted into a time series. As the social annotator, I actually have to point out which information came first, second, etc. This entire comment, for instance was written AFTER the original very short annotation. Extra tags were updated to reflect the large comment.
    • I gained a new realization of the relationship and intertwingularity of individual / collective learning while writing and reflecting on this social annotation. I think it's because of Adam's question that really revolves around MET of Individuality and the 3 conversant's questioning of the fluid and fuzzy boundary between "self" and "other"
      • Namely, within Indyweb / Indranet there are two learning pillars that make up the entirety of external sensemaking:
        • the first is social annotation of the work of others
        • the second is our own synthesis of what we learned from others (ie. our social annotations)
      • It is the integration of these two pillars that is the sum of our sensemaking parts. Social annotations allow us to sample the edge of the sensemaking work of others. After all, when we ingest one specific information source of others, it is only one of possibly many. Social annotations reflect how our whole interacts with their part. However, we may then integrate that peripheral information of the other more deeply into our own sensemaking work, and that's where we must have our own central synthesizing Indyweb / Indranet space to do that work.
      • It is this interplay between different poles that constitute CCE and symmathesy, mutual learning.
      • adjacency between
        • Indyweb / Indranet name space
        • Indranet
        • automatic vs manual references / citations
      • adjacency statement
        • Oh man, it's so painful to have to insert all these references and citations when Indranet is designed to do all this! A valuable new meme just emerged to express this:
          • Pain between the existing present situation and the imagined future of the same si the fuel that drives innovation.

• quote: Gien

  • Pain between an existing present situation and an imagined, improved future is the fuel that drives innovation.
• date: 2023, Nov 8

• for: human impacts, MET, major evolutionary transition, progress trap, human responsibility to life, CCE, cumulative cultural evolution, playing God
• comment
  • Very true, in fact our species is in the unprecedented position that
  • human activity, and specifically our cumulative cultural evolution (CCE) now determines the biological / genetic evolutionary future not only of our own species, but of all life on earth.
  • In other words, of evolution itself! -This is an awkward position as we have nowhere near the wisdom to play God and determine the future direction of evolution!
• References
  • Cumulative Cultural Evolution
    • https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=100&expanded=true&user=stopresetgo&exactTagSearch=true&any=cumulative%2Bcultural%2Bevolution

It has been suggested that - the human species may be undergoing an evolutionary transition in individuality (ETI).

there is disagreement about - how to apply the ETI framework to our species - and whether culture is implicated - as either cause or consequence.

Long-term gene–culture coevolution (GCC) i- s - also poorly understood.

argued that - culture steers human evolution,

Others proposed - genes hold culture on a leash.

After review of the literature and evidence on long-term GCC in humans - emerge a set of common themes. - First, culture appears to hold greater adaptive potential than genetic inheritance - and is probably driving human evolution. - The evolutionary impact of culture occurs - mainly through culturally organized groups, - which have come to dominate human affairs in recent millennia. - Second, the role of culture appears to be growing, - increasingly bypassing genetic evolution and weakening genetic adaptive potential. -Taken together, these findings suggest that human long-term GCC is characterized by - an evolutionary transition in inheritance - from genes to culture - which entails a transition in individuality (from genetic individual to cultural group). Research on GCC should focus on the possibility of - an ongoing transition in the human inheritance system.

• key observation
  • human culture may represent a key evolutionary milestone
  • culture may be the next evolutionary transition state
    • pre-single self organisms like mitochondria increased fitness by sharing the environment with other life forms and formed the single cell
    • then multi-cellular organisms set the stage for the next big evolutionary paradigm
    • splitting into plants and animals
    • sexual reproduction
    • transition to land
  • we are possibly undergoing the next major evolutionary transition
  • in which we will still evolve genetically,
  • but genetics may not determine human survival as much as culture does

!- future global fragmentation : by culture - Michaux believes people will fragment in the future along cultural boundaries as we move through tumultuous transition. This makes sense as ingroups will naturally form - this should be further explored to explore implications: - will we get political polarization? At what level? National, regional, city / community scale? - what implications will this have on cooperation and sharing? will it create policy gridlock? Will it become even more urgent to educate everyone on a Deep Humanity type of open praxis that finds common human denominators (CHD)?

!- for : Cultural Evolution - the findings of this paper point to culture is displacing genetic adaptive potential as the main driver of evolution. This is a very profound finding!

The Palette of Being is a very useful idea that is related to Cumulative Cultural Evolution (CCE) and autopoiesis. From CCE, humans are able to pass on new ideas from one generation to the next, made possible by the tool of inscribed language.

Peter Nonacs group at UCLA as well as Stuart West at Oxford research Major Evolutionary Transitions (MET) West elucidates that modern hominids integrate the remnants of four major stages of MET that have occurred over deep time. Amanda Robins, a researcher in Nonacs group posits the idea that our species of modern hominids are undergoing a Major Systems Transition (MST), due specifically to our development of inscribed language.

CCE emerges new technologies that shape our human environments in time frames far faster than biological evolutionary timeframes. New human experiences are created which have never been exposed to human brains before, which feedback to affect our biological evolution as well in the process of gene-culture coevolution (GCC), also known as Dual Inheritance theory. In this way, CCE and GCC are entangled. "Gene–culture coevolution is the application of niche-construction reasoning to the human species, recognizing that both genes and culture are subject to similar dynamics, and human society is a cultural construction that provides the environment for fitness-enhancing genetic changes in individuals. The resulting social system is a complex dynamic nonlinear system. " (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3048999/)

This metaphor of experiences constituting different colors on a Palette of Being is a powerful one that can contextualize human experiences from a deep time framework. One could argue that language usage automatically forces us into an anthropomorphic lens, for sophisticated language usage at the level of humans appears to be unique amongst our species. Within that constraint, the Palette of Being still provides us with a less myopic, less immediate and arguably less anthropomorphic view of human experience. It is philosophically problematic, however, in the sense that we can speculate about nonhuman modalities of being but never truly experience them. Philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote his classic paper "What it's like to be a bat" to illustrate this problem of experiencing the other. (https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/iatl/study/ugmodules/humananimalstudies/lectures/32/nagel_bat.pdf)

We can also leverage the Palette of Being in education. Deep Humanity (DH) BEing Journeys are a new kind of experiential, participatory contemplative practice and teaching tool designed to deepen our appreciation of what it is to be human. The polycrisis of the Anthropocene, especially the self-induced climate crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic have precipitated the erosion of stable social norms and reference frames, inducing another crisis, a meaning crisis. In this context, a re-education of embodied philosophy is seen as urgent to make sense of a radically shifting human reality.

Different human experiences presented as different colors of the Palette of Being situate our crisis in a larger context. One important Deep Humanity BEing journey that can help contextualize and make sense of our experiences is language. Once upon a time, language did not exist. As it gradually emerged, this color came to be added to our Palette of Being, and shaped the normative experiences of humanity in profound ways. It is the case that such profound shifts, lost over deep time come to be taken for granted by modern conspecifics. When such particular colors of the Palette of Being are not situated in deep time, and crisis ensues, that loss of contextualizing and situatedness can be quite disruptive, de-centering, confusing and alienating.

Being aware of the colors in the Palette can help us shed light on the amazing aspects that culture has invisibly transmitted to us, helping us not take them for granted, and re-establish a sense of awe about our lives as human beings.