by Hugh M. Lewis

Acquired human behavior is environmentally rooted and the process of acquisition is largely a symbolically structured one, serving symbolic purposes and functions as well. Symbolic acquisition of behavioral response pattern serves purposes of internalization of control structures, sublimation and channeling of libidinal impulse and aggression to more constructive forms of behavior, motivating action and initiative, and providing a context for creativity, imaginative play and constructive behavior. Unlike biological control mechanisms which are largely set, automatic, and sometimes triggered by specific kinds of stimuli, the symbolic control mechanisms that  surround culturally defined and shaped behavior needs to be regularly reinforced and reemphasized in order to remain strong and powerful. It requires an external context for effective demonstration and ritual reinforcement. It requires as well regular participation, inculcation and the use of mechanisms for inter-subjective evaluation and rehabilitation. Educational institutions are some of the forms of socio-cultural institutions that have been developed specifically serving these sets of needs in human beings.

I refer to the phenomenon of symbolic transformation as the somewhat revolutionary cultural consequences that the acquisition of symbolic behavior has had for human beings, both upon individual and  group levels of articulation. Symbolic transformation refers in a gross sense to the sense of displacement of symbolic reference and attachment to forms that may be disconnected or otherwise dissimilar to the original causes or referents to which they are attached through a process referred to as symbolic transference. As an example of the consequences of symbolic transformation, we may refer to the capacity to set entire nations of people to make war and to risk their lives in the process, based upon what are entirely ideological symbolisms that are not directly tied to the problems of survival of the organism or reproductive success of the individual as a biological entity. 

In other words, symbolic behavior affects the capacity in human beings to acquire alternative, variable forms of human behavior, in consistent ways, that are not the immediate result of biological factors of determination or biological control mechanisms, and which serve either directly or indirectly any sense of biological interest of the organism, either in terms of response to immediate circumstances or adaptive behavior to local or general conditions. Human beings can be in fact quite readily induced into consistent forms of behavior that actually may hurt individual or group capacity for survival, or run deliberately against the grain of their biological well being as a organism in the world.

Of course, the fallacy of symbolic reification, that serves somewhat as a symbolic mediation device that serves to naturalize and make seem normal and inherent what is otherwise and in a fundamental sense arbitrary and artificial, and that serves frequently as a system of defensive rationalization maintaining the integrity of life-experience, can often take the form of biological naturalization of behaviors or acquired patterns of behavior, that can therefore be acted upon as if natural or instinctual and construed that way.

Money is a great symbolic device--it stands for many things--wealth, power, freedom, well-being. Making money, often by whatever means, is received commonly as a principle objective of human behavior, whether it proves to be by hook or by crook. Though the value orientation towards making money is regarded largely as a "materialistic" value system, the concept and function of money in the world, in state societies with large scale market economies, is almost entirely symbolic.  This is not to claim that money cannot buy things that are necessary, or that it cannot lead to survivorship and affluence. But it is to say that money may be used for the purchase of things needed for survival, like food or water, etc., but it is more often than not used for a much wider range of purposes, most of which have little or nothing directly to do with human survival. We can frequently trade in kind for food, and we can even hunt or gather our own food, as our ancestors once commonly did, or grow our food and cultivate it by our own efforts. But money can allow us to buy food, clothing, etc., eliminating the necessity of acquiring or making it for ourselves.

Thus we can see that it has been by means of a basic and common symbolic form, a device like money, that we have effected a basic transformation of human social organization from that of a cultural pattern rooted in hunting and gathering, to that of one that is rooted on the market exchange of commodities, ownership of property and capital, and the organization and appropriation of productive labor. This has been a symbolic transformation that has been accompanied by a transformation of our social organization and of the way we adapt in our material world. 

If we make the claim that money is a tool, an object of material possession, then we can say that a tool is a symbol, and a symbol is a tool as well. The fact that the earliest stone tools used by Hominids were generalized to a range of functions, and were deliberately shaped and adapted to special functions, came thereby to acquire cognitive and symbolic significance for the tool maker/tool user, and this does not thereby render insignificant the symbolic value of tools or the functional value of symbols as tools, or the requirement for an enlarged cerebral-cranial capacity to learn to use and adapt tools more effectively, as symbolisms and as tools. 

It may be argued as well, especially by cultural or historical materialists, that the economy and material means of production and social organization changed before the need for money arose as a common, standard medium of exchange was introduced. This may well be true, but certainly the rise of situations that demanded such a standard medium, particularly in state societies, also created the context for the symbolic importance and function of money, and the pattern of organization and adaptation itself became possible as a result of this symbolic transformation in the use of money as a standard medium of exchange.

The symbolic transformation of humankind from a species of animal bound by the constraints of nature, to an individual and a social entity that is capable of arbitrary, intentional and independent behavior, in the process becoming thereby bound to the constraints of symbolic behavior and culture instead, has been both a boon and a bane to human kind. It has permitted an unprecedented level of evolutionary success, the rise of sophisticated civilizations based upon scientific knowledge, the cultivation of the arts, refinement of values and sensibilities. It has permitted the realization of alternative realities through the development of human constructive and creative capacities that are the outcomes of they symbolic adaptation and acquisition. But at the same time, it has been a mixed blessing, as it has assured us of well of almost equally destructive and violent capacities, capacities for individual and social deviancy and perversion of behavior, for cheating and manipulation and exploitation of both people and nature.

By means of symbolic transformation, we are capable of behavior in ways far out of proportion to our natural biological limitations, needs or capacities. By such means as well we are capable of modifying our behavior quite flexibly, and are capable thereby of learning new forms of symbolism and acquiring new kinds of adaptive behaviors. 

If we observe wolves, for instance, we can observe one troop of wolves, and pretty much describe the entire behavioral repertory of all members of that wolf species. We can generalize from a single pack of wolves to all packs of the same kind of wolf. We can do the same for almost all species of animal, except perhaps for a few species of primates for whom rudimentary cultural patterns of acquisition and transmission has been documented, and possibly as well for some pods or family groups of cetaceans, who may also have acquired learned, proto-cultural patterns of behavior. 

It is primarily and especially in human beings that we cannot easily generalize or explain behavior from one group to the next, or even from one individual to another, and the problem of comparison and comparative analysis of behavior becomes especially complex and problematic. And this is primarily because almost all of human behavior has been symbolically transformed and culturally acquired and transmitted. If we hypothesize anywhere from 7,000 to more than 30,000 distinct languages that once occurred within the past millennium, we can specify at least that many if not more distinctive cultural systems that were associated with each of those languages, and this does not include the dialectical patterns of variation found within and between traditional culture areas, or the sub-cultural groupings, marked by distinctive style patterns and behavioral sets unique to particular groupings in particular periods and places. 

We cannot expect so much variation of pattern among human groupings to be accounted for on the basis of genetic variation alone, as the human species simply is not that genetically variable. We are all basically of a single common species with but minor sub-species and iso-clinal variations. We are no where near the genetic variation encompassed by the household dog, Canis familiaris, that has been the result of cultural selection and breeding regimes for many centuries, and that has led to at least 150 unique types of distinct canine breed, each with their distinct patterns of appearance and associated dog behaviors.

What we can say, beyond any reasonable doubt, is that human cultural patterning and behavior, often quite conservative in form and structure, is quite variable and permits of a wide range of alternative possibilities that lead to possibly an infinite number of possible cultural configurations. No two cultural patterns in the history of humanity have been alike, though there have been many cases of parallel or analogous development of aspects and traits of culture, and frequent cases of homologous development due to shared heritage or as the product of acculturative transmission. 

The fact that cultural acquisition and transmission is non-genetic, occurs as the result of learning and environmental relation, entails that cultural traits and patterns can be transmitted widely and very quickly, and cultures can change rather dramatically over short periods of time.

It becomes the case therefore, clearly, that there is a wide range of variation of pattern of response behavior associated with different cultural backgrounds and trajectories, and that we can speak of symbolic differentials of such behavior as characteristic of all human beings and as reflecting in a rather particularistic and relative manner the cultural and sub-cultural differences occurring between groups of people, as well as the psychological differences between individuals. 

The basis of my dissertation thesis was that such differentials were probably less random and idiosyncratically variable, and more systematic and indicative of multi-level sharing between different groupings, than might otherwise be thought to occur if we are looking at surface patterns alone. It was hypothesized that structural isomorphisms and consistencies of pattern, often not directly available to immediate observation, would emerge and become available through comprehensive and detailed analysis and logical deduction. I believe this is pretty much what we uncovered, in spite of the challenges of conducting such research, such as issues of statistical significance & random sampling, issues of interpretation, biased response, distinguishing between psychologically idiosyncratic and culturally nomothetic responses, etc.

Understanding such differentials in a systematic way, and being able to correlate these differentials strongly to basic groupings, provided not only an empirical handle for measuring cultural pattern, defined in terms of symbolic behavior, as well as a means for systematically comparing different patterns of cultural and symbolic behavior, but it provided as well a vehicle for investigating the structure of human symbolic behavior and cognition, patterns of deviance from normal symbolic function, and finally it offered what proved subsequently to be a very productive set of tools for both rehabilitating and facilitating the acquisition and adjustment of symbolic behavior.

If we are to get at a true sense of the organization of diversity in human reality, then we must do so in an ordered and systematic way that allows us to make sense of so much complexity. We must find the structural reasons and variables for such diversity and for its capacity for adaptive organization, and then we must learn to apply these reasons in our schemes for constructing a better world that can not only handle and tolerate such differences, but promote such pattern variation in a way that it can be truly productive and adaptive for all humanity.

There is every justification for wanting to do so. The reasons, though complex, resolve to a simple set of central issues that have always affected humankind in the most dramatic and tragic of ways. If these kinds of symbolic cultural differentials underlie the kind of parallax frequently occurring between people, psychologically and behaviorally, and between groups of people socially and culturally, that lead, among other things, to destructive aggression and perpetration of acts of violence against people or the coercive use of the threat of violence in order to exploit people, then understanding these differentials in a precise, measurable and systematic manner may provide us the means for designing symbolic-cultural systems that effectively mediate human adaptation and serve to prevent or at least inhibit the occurrence and prevalence of human violence and exploitation in the world. If we wish to create a more secure and peaceful world, provide an effective framework for the mediation of differences and the resolution of conflict leading to war and violence, then we must consider the scope and possibilities afforded by such an approach to human cultural adaptation.

General Systems Essays, Vol. I