RIDLEY : An rational optimist by Ihering Guedes Alcoforado

Nesta micro nota chamo atenção para o livro Rational Optimist: How prosperity evolves de Matt Ridley, uma obra que se orienta contra a corrente pessimista contemporânea, e posiciona o autor como um otimista racional.

Sua premissa é que, no todo, as mudanças ao longo do século foram positivas e, que teve como base o descolamento da evolução humana da dos outros animais, o que atribui a evolução, sem descartar a dos indivíduos, enfatiza a associada a espécie humana.

A explicação para a evolução relevante do ponto de vista social se efetivou graças a interação entre cérebros individuais, ou seja, foi um fenômeno coletivo de fertilização das idéias pelas idéias, ou seja, o sexo entre a idéias cria as condições para a mutações e, a consequente de novos tipos.

Uma lacuna no tratamento na difusão e fertilização das idéias, ou melhor,a desconsideração de uma outras possibilidade de adentrar neste “mercado” de idéias postos por Ronald Coase (1974:385), no rastro de A. Director (1964) sobre o mercado das idéias, no qual chama atenção, para “ […] the fact that belief in a free market in ideas does not have the same
roots as belief in the value of free trade in goods.” (1), a despeito da sua precedência histórica sobre o mercado dos bens.

A seguir, apresento alguns extratos do livro de Matt Ridley no qual ele apresenta sua tese, na expectativa que que motive aos leitores desta pequena nota , não só a leitura do livro, mas também dos artigos de R. Coase e A. Director,

“ This book is about the rapid, continuous and incessant change that human society experiences in a way that no other animal does. To a biologist this is something that needs explaining. In the past two decades I have written four books about how similar human beings are to other animals. This book is about how different they are from other animals. What is it about
human beings that enables them to keep changing their lives in
this tumultuous way?” [RIDLEY, 2010:2]

“ Clearly, big brains and language may be necessary for human
beings to cope with a life of technological modernity. Clearly,
human beings are very good at social learning, indeed compared
with even chimpanzees humans are almost obsessively interested in faithful imitation. But big brains and imitation and language are not themselves the explanation of prosperity and progress and poverty. They do not themselves deliver a changing standard of living. Neanderthals had all of these: huge brains, probably complex languages, lots of technology. But they never
burst out of their niche. It is my contention that in looking inside
our heads, we would be looking in the wrong place to explain
this extraordinary capacity for change in the species. It was not
something that happened within a brain. It was something that
happened between brains. It was a collective phenomenon”[RIDLEY, 2010:4]

“ To argue that human nature has not changed, but human culture has, does not mean rejecting evolution — quite the reverse. Humanity is experiencing an extraordinary burst o f evolutionary change, driven by good old-fashioned Darwinian natural selection. But it is selection among ideas, not among genes. The habitat in which these ideas reside consists o f human brains.”[RIDLEY, 2010:5]

“[…] I believe, is that at some point in human history, ideas began to meet and mate, to have sex with each other. Let me explain. Sex is what makes biological evolution cumulative, because it brings together the genes of different individuals. A mutation that occurs in one creature can therefore join forces with a mutation that occurs in another […] And so it is with culture. If culture consisted simply of learning habits from others, it would soon stagnate. For culture to turn cumulative, ideas needed to meet and mate. The ‘crossfertilisation of ideas’ is a cliché, but one with unintentional fecundity..” [RIDLEY, 2010:6/7]

“ I shall argue that there was a point in human prehistory when big-brained, cultural, learning people for the first time began to exchange things with each other, and that once they started doing so, culture suddenly became cumulative, and the great headlong experiment of human economic ‘progress’
began. Exchange is to cultural evolution as sex is to biological
evolution. By exchanging, human beings discovered ‘the division of
labour’, the specialisation of efforts and talents for mutual gain.” [RIDLEY, 2010:7]

NOTAS

(1) To quote Director again: “The free market as a desirable method of organizing the intellectual life of the community was
urged long before it was advocated as a desirable method of organizing its economic life. The advantage of free exchange of ideas was recognized before that of the voluntary exchange of goods and services
in competitive markets.” [COASE, 1974:385]

BIBLIOGRAFIA

COASE, R. H.,The Market for Goods and the Market for Ideas The American Economic Review, Vol. 64, №2, Papers and Proceedings of the Eightysixth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association (May, 1974), pp. 384–391

DIRECTOR, A., The Parity of the Economic Market Place,” J. of Law and Econ., Oct.1964

RIDLEY, M. (2010). The rational optimist: How prosperity evolves. New York, NY: Harper