The homogenisation of diversity: Processes selecting for biocultural generalism in the Anthropocene

This paper is an experiment in applying an evolutionary perspective to the semiotic selection processes inherent in modernity, globalisation, and capitalism. The ongoing global loss of biological diversity is not only paralleled by the loss of cultural and linguistic diversity, but also related to it in complex ways. The social condition of modernity promotes cultural homogenisation as unremittingly as capitalism promotes biological monocultures. However, whereas globalising capitalism has also encouraged the spread of biological generalists such as rats and dandelions, the homogenisation of cultural values and worldviews has progressed in tandem with an ecological specialisation of the human species, increasingly reliant on a handful of domesticants. Modern humans can thus be characterised as cultural generalists but biological specialists. Cultural selection processes in modern societies inexorably benefit the ideas, artifacts, and personalities that are least dependent on context, whereas the ecological niche of modern humans is alarmingly narrow and specific. Following Eriksen's example in applying Hoffmeyer's concept of "semiotic freedom", we must conclude that, for most of the world's population, modernisation and globalisation have meant a loss of complexity, freedom, skills, and semiotic depth. The propensity toward abstraction and decontextualisation that is fundamental to modernity is epitomised in the artifact of all-purpose money, which promotes and mystifies global social asymmetries. The peculiar semiotic properties of the money artifact continue to undermine both the cultural and biological diversity of the biosphere from which it emerged.