Cultural Commentary

[cultural-commentary]

Blurring the Line Between “Others” – A Practical Application of Cultural Multilevel Selection Theory

Through a cultural multilevel selection perspective, seeing an individual “other” as human can shift the level of selection from within subgroups at a lower level to between groups at a higher level.

If we're going to address the climate crisis, along with the myriad of other challenges society faces, we'll have to blur the lines between ourselves & "the other." Not just in our places of government, but also in our master planning efforts, design charrettes, and construction progress meetings.

[cultural-commentary]

Can Kansas state leaders help pull us back from the climate precipice?

A few decades remain to pull ourselves back up over the edge. If we don’t, our children and grandchildren will curse us and abandon us in our old age — and they will be right to do so.

No more meaningless debates. It’s time for us to get collectively serious. The clock’s ticking.

[cultural-commentary]

Designing for School Safety – Don’t Forget the Elephant in the Classroom

The AIA recently posted an article about architects prioritizing design as a school security solution. I completely support the AIA’s efforts for a) working to develop the best education designs relative to safety, health/wellness and learning, b) involving educators, students, their families and co

When discussing the design of schools for safety/security and their need for adequate mental health/wellness support, it's important that we don't forget the larger societal role of gun control legislation.

[cultural-commentary]

The 2018 Cultural Evolution Society Conference (plus OPRs and Why This is Important)

One of the most interdisciplinary conferences I’ve ever attended occurred last week – the Cultural Evolution Society’s 2018 Conference in Tempe, AZ. Cultural anthropologists, archaeologists, engineers, educators, ecologists, economists, political scientists, sociologists, mathematicians, biologists,

The 2018 Cultural Evolutionary Society Conference, OPR research, and the society’s new Sustainable Working Group

[cultural-commentary]

What BranchPattern means to me

I imagine there are few out there a bit perplexed about our firm’s name change and rebranding. Perhaps even after you’ve heard from several of our leaders (Rick Maniktala, Nate Maniktala, and Pete Jefferson), read about our purpose, or even seen some of what inspires us, you’re still not quite sure

The rebranding of the high performance building consulting firm previously known as M.E. GROUP

[cultural-commentary]

Integrating biophilia into school security measures is a great way to address security while also achieving aesthetically pleasing environments that promote health and wellness. But there is more the AEC Industry can do to help remove the burden public hashtag#education faces relative to gun violence.

Sandy Hook Elementary School redesign, Newtown, CT

[cultural-commentary]

Constructing Our Niches: The Application of Evolutionary Theory to the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) Industry

The architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry has the ability to mindfully orchestrate the direction our built environments push us with regards to climate change, occupant wellbeing, and the evolution of life on this planet. But it requires we construct our “niches” in a manner tha

Our built environments represent a major human phenotypic adaptation, part of our collective cultural toolkit for adapting to the world around us. But because they form a major part of the environmental contexts we live, play and work within, and because their construction and operations have such a global impact, they also shape humanity’s ongoing evolution as well as that of other species on the planet. The architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry has the ability to mindfully orchestrate the direction our built environments push us in with regards to climate change,occupant wellbeing and the evolution of life on this planet. But it requires we construct our “niches” in a manner that consistently provides environments aligned with our individual and group level needs, including long term needs associated with social stability and environmental sustainability. Doing so requires an understanding of how our evolutionary past has shaped our physiological, psychological, and social/cultural needs with respect to the built environment. It also requires an understanding of how we can guide the decision-making process during design and construction to avoid the domination of short term, annual drivers like the profit margins of a smaller group of people. This “Constructing Our Niches” publication outlines how deliberately operating within an evolutionary theoretical framework would better position the industry to make all of this happen.

[cultural-commentary]

If we don’t solve this, gun violence and gun deaths will continue at needlessly high levels

[cultural-commentary]

We need to view ourselves as members of the same species occupying a single planet with other species we depend on in one form or another. We need a form of global patriotism.

[cultural-commentary]

Constructing Our Niches with the Future in Mind

The threat posed by climate change to the future of our species is primarily of our own making. And the solutions will be of our own making as well if

Applying evolutionary theory within the building/construction industry.

[cultural-commentary]

Constructing Our Niches: Introducing the Importance of Cooperation and Ultimate Vs. Proximate Design Features

Collective and sustainable behavior is partially dependent on maintaining higher levels of cooperation among those involved, from the boardroom to the global stage.

Part 3 of this series looking at how evolutionary theory can be applied to the building/construction industry in order to design, build and operate more sustainable, healthy and successful built environments.

[cultural-commentary]

Constructing Our Niches: Evolution’s Relevance to Modern Human Society

Human behaviors, the physical objects we create and use, as well as their associated intellectual traditions are part of our collective toolkit for adapting to the larger social/cultural and physical environments we live within.

"This means that human behaviors, the physical objects we create and use (such as the built environment), and their associated intellectual traditions (including those of the design/construction industry), are part of our collective toolkit for adapting to the larger social/cultural and physical environments we live within, individually and as members of nested groups of ever-increasing size. Given this, we can use Darwinian evolutionary theory to not only understand human biological change, but also human cultural change and transmission. To illustrate this, let’s examine the use of forced air as the dominant modern method in the U.S. to heat and cool buildings. In such systems..."

[cultural-commentary]

Creating a functional, equitable, stable and sustainable Global Village won’t be easy. But a blueprint can be found in our evolutionary past. It will take those with the most power recognizing the realities of white supremacy, finding what’s needed to upscale this blueprint, and having the courage and vision to do so.

[cultural-commentary]

The Hope for Avoiding an Uninhabitable Earth

For those who haven’t had a chance to read David Wallace-Wells' recent New York Magazine article, The Uninhabitable Earth, it is fairly depressing

Avoiding the most devastating impacts of climate change will require better alignment of our self-interests, needs and goals from the local to global levels. And evolutionary theory offers a framework for doing this.

[cultural-commentary]

Constructing Our Niches: How Evolutionary Theory Is Useful for the Building Industry

Evolutionary theory is very applicable to contemporary humans and our social/cultural worlds, including the world of the building/construction industry.

The first in an anticipated seven part series of articles focusing on this topic.

[cultural-commentary]

Using science, research and evidence to shape policies and best practices in the private and public sectors

“Policy, whether a small business’s new employee on-boarding policy or a nation’s economic policy, based on ideology at the expense of evidence is simply folly. At best it’s a short term success by accident. At worst it can lead to an organization’s downfall. Policy makers have a duty to make decisions based on the best evidence available to them...”

[cultural-commentary]

"And as we’re still subject to the forces of evolution, these adaptations don’t always prove beneficial, depending on the time frame or scale of interactions in question. Our ability to successfully cooperate in the extraction of natural resources, aided by the cultural reservoir of knowledge relevant for a given time and place, can lead to unsustainable outcomes for those outside of the group in question, or for the group itself after a period of time. Over the course of human history this has resulted in negative environmental impacts and the depletion of local resources, contributing to the disbanding of communities or weakening of civilizations. Individuals may have benefited in the short term, but the long term viability of the larger group (and/or outsiders) was negatively impacted."