Idea No. 3101: The Drive for Sameness, Difference, Continuity and Change (SDCC)
Short Essay
It seems that one of life’s and man’s prime drives is the urge to perpetuate and continue through time specific patterns and principles while permitting and/or requiring others to change. As part of the same drive, or in a parallel manner, life and man are driven to expand and spread through space certain sameness and homogeneity while allowing or requiring particular differences and/or diversity. Both could be seen as highly regulated intentional motivations for a distinctive blend of similarity and differences over space and time.
Accordingly, the hypothesis is that life in general, and man as an extension of it, are highly driven by a very basic preference for a particular combination of continuity and change across time and sameness and difference across space.
From the primacy and domination of this propensity, we can speculate that it was a critical principle of life and/or an important part of the genetic drive, which if missing-life, or a particular form of it, would simply vanish. Nevertheless, regardless of the evolutionary presumption, the hypothesis is that many of our drives, urges, motivations and inclinations rise out of this basic drive and thus it can explain and connect many seemingly unrelated human historical and current tendencies, actions and phenomena.
At first impression, the above statements might seem highly odd or rather generic and obvious. However, when closely investigated, this type of perspective happens to provide highly interesting, fresh, and helpful new insights into our understanding of evolution, life, and human history. It connects and explains previously disconnected phenomena that are taken for granted, as the perpetuation of life itself, sexuality, human love and socialization, education, political attempts for expansion and perpetuity, communication, as well as mummification, the building of pyramids, Hitler’s horrifying wish for a Reich of a thousand years and Mau’s blue dress code throughout China.
This is not a new attempt to offer a universal “explain-all” theory like the Big Bang or String theory, but a novel way of looking at life, human history and psychology. It provides a new common denominator for many of life’s and man’s realms of activity as well as a very basic motivation and thus a partial explanation for a number of man’s peculiar but profound and recurrent tendencies throughout history. It is also not another reductionist attempt to portray all life and man, as purely instinctual algorithmic organisms behaving solely according to primeval primitive drives. Nevertheless, the suspicion is that even though these forces do not control all, or even most of our historical dynamics, they influenced it heavily and can explain more than previously thought.
Various forms of life might interpret this drive differently and it might have very diverse manifestations. However, if we take for example survival and reproduction as some of life’s most basic motivations, it is easy to see the push for continuity as one of life and man’s basic drives or principles. The same could be said for our education, socialization, and many other urges for perpetuity such as the yearning of most men, institutions, empires, ideologies, as well as artists and intellectuals, to permeate through time, be remembered or even immortalized through monuments, works of art, social structures, ideas, or language.
At the same time, we all know that life and human organizations also allow and even demand certain changes. For example, in mammals, life requires sexual reproduction of two genetically different members of a species instead of having identical replication by cloning. It also allows and even utilizes certain genetic mutations and alterations. In fact, most of our biological and cultural adaptations are built on principles of compatible change. In human culture we actually witness a strong push for various forms of change and diversification in the name of development whether they are intellectual, spiritual, technological, or economical. Accordingly, we can widen our claim and conclude that life, and now man, requires or promotes, a very particular combination of continuity and change through time.
In the same manner, it is possible to see that life and man have very specific preferences for similarity and change across space. For instance, many organisms and obviously people attempt to multiply, spread across space and try to reproduce certain similarity wherever they go. People don’t only attempt to maintain certain homogeneity within their spread-out communities, but they often fight to dominate and force their practices on other communities and areas. There are endless examples for of this tendency all the way from the expansions of empires, to man’s common attempts to spread various ideas and ideologies such as Christianity and Islam or communism and democracy.
Simultaneously, life and particularly man, encourage certain changes and differentiation across space. For instance, most species have internal competition between members as well as between various communities. Most organisms also allow or even promote certain types of localized differences and adaptations which all represent a complimentary urge for particular spatial differences. The diversity of languages, cultures, wealth and life styles only emphasizes this tendency among men. Again, we will provide many more examples for these propensities, but we can already see why it is possible to claim that life and man have certain specific tendencies and preferences for unique combinations of similarity and differences across space as well.
Beyond the new parallels among diverse realms as survival, sex, education, socialization and politics, this perspective can also generate novel and very different viewpoints for seemingly unrelated phenomena. For example, our communication could be explored as a form of mental resonance or replication of code across space and time. In many ways it is yet another ability or attempt to proliferate and reproduce mental constellations across space and time. We can view our ideologies as “recipes” for alternative combinations of similarity, difference, continuity and change according to their level of controlled homogeneity vs personal freedom for diversity, by their conservatism vs openness for change, and the particular aspects they want to preserve or change (i.e. social formations, GNP). The same could be said for technological development which is typically seen as a form of novelty, but often actually enhances particular replication and similarity across space and time by improving communication and transportation or providing improved digital duplication and memory. Recently, there is even scientific credible research that points to the parallel and possible origin of these propensities and drives in non-organic matter and processes. Namely, this life’s push for particular composition of similarity and change across space and time could possibly be traced to natural inorganic processes and thus connects man and some of his most basic drives, not only to other organisms as evolution does, but also to some of nature’s more general primary tendencies and patterns.
There are many studies and discussions of continuity and change. For example, many biological studies look at life’s biological diversity throughout evolution and its presumed decrease in recent years. In a similar manner, globalization studies try to investigate whether human society becomes more homogenous or differentiated across space and time (internet and communication, global village, etc.).
Differently from most of these studies, this essay is less interested in measuring such trends and their end-result and is more focused on exploring which of these historical processes and patterns are a product of man’s primary biological, psychological and social drives (conscious or not), and thus are actually intentional and related and not coincidental or circumstantial.
In order to find those patterns and the drives and forces which lead to them, this essay draws examples and theoretical support from such diverse areas as theories of science, physics, chemistry, biology, politics, communication, and psychology. It also looks at many of the known and established patterns in our historical development and see whether they might be an outcome of the particular human drives and tendencies mentioned above.
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