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Why Imitation Is at the Heart of Being Human
Imitation and culture
Imitating and performing impractical actions is the key to learning complex cultural skills.
Over-imitation enables us to maintain a distinctively human culture.
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Key Ideas
We copy others
A growing number of cognitive scientists and anthropologists think that human beings survive and thrive because we imitate others and don’t think for ourselves.
The benefits of imitation
Inexperienced learners can't judge which steps are relevant and must rely on the wisdom of more experienced elders and peers.
- The tendency for over-imitation makes it possible to develop skills and technologies over generations.
- Rituals that aren't connected tangibly with practical outcomes, bond people and demonstrate cultural affiliation.
Imitation and culture
Imitating and performing impractical actions is the key to learning complex cultural skills.
Over-imitation enables us to maintain a distinctively human culture.
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Describing wonder
Wonder is said to be a childish emotion. However, as adults, we experience it when gaping at something unexpectedly spectacular.
Adam Smith, an 18th-century moral philosopher, describes wond...
Bodily symptoms
The bodily symptoms of this strange appearance point to three dimensions:
- Sensory: The marvelous things take hold of our senses - we stare and widen our eyes.
- Cognitive: We are perplexed because we don't have a past experience to understand them. It leads to a suspension of breath, similar to when we are startled.
- Spiritual: We look upwards in veneration, which makes our heart swell.
The scale of wonder
At the mild end of this emotion, we talk about things being marvelous. More intense emotions might be described as astonishing. The extreme of this experiences is met with expressions of awe.
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Homo Narrativus
We, humans, seek stories.
We are essentially ‘story finders’ looking for meaning, narrative and shape in everything around us. We tend to not believe in improbable...
Bias Towards The Individual
Stories built around individuals provide relatability and a sense of being in the shoes of the people involved, living in the narrative.
Our tendency to give a ‘face’ and a story to a group or collection of people made us invent a dominant leader of the group, like the President, or the Team Captain, or the Monarch.
How Fame Alters Our Perceptions
- The popularity or fame of an individual or a piece of art (like a painting, song or a movie) alters how we perceive it.
- The characteristics and behaviour of the people among whom fame spreads matters more than the actual merit or quality.
- A study showed that more people liked the songs that were topping the charts, copying the behaviour of other listeners, and if the same songs were arranged randomly, they were not chosen or liked that much.
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Baby advice industry
The baby-advice industry targets people at their most vulnerable - at the start of the weightiest responsibility of their lives - and suggests that they have some information that will ensure the f...
The two camps of parenting advice
- Baby Trainers urge parents to get their newborn on to a strict schedule to integrate him into the rhythms of the household.
- Natural Parents emulate the earthy practices of indigenous tribes in the developing world.
Nobody really knows
- For a start, nobody can remember what it was like to be a baby.
- Most parenting gurus only have direct experience of parenting two or three babies, which isn't much better as a sample size. They can't assume that whatever worked for them will work for everyone.
- When you have read all the parenting books, your baby will possibly follow an entirely different manual of instructions.
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