CONSUMPTION PATTERNS --- NEEDS, WANTS, DESIRES – PART 3

As one proceeds up the SUPPLY CHAIN, and from the human animal thru the human social animal and sociocultural system, we find that the paradigm, NEEDS, WANTS, and DESIRES, repeats itself on each level[1]. This paradigm reflects changes in the power relationship between Buyers and Sellers in the transaction space. The power relationship can be divided into two parts – survival and replication.

Survival and replication takes place in all living systems. 

Humans have evolved two basic exchange systems that take place between individuals and/or social systems. These are a barter system and a monetary system, Exchange systems have a cultural significance that derives from the meaning and value of the products exchanged to the Buyer (recipient) of the product and the Seller (offeror) of the product. These exchange systems are barter and monetary, discussed below. In either system, the buyer seeks to acquire a good or service that meets a personal or social NEED. The seller offers to exchange a good or service in order to acquire a product that fills his/her NEED.

A barter system is a social system of exchange that creates the status/role set of a “buyer and seller” that both parties to the exchange occupy In a barter situation each party acts as both a Buyer/Seller. The value of the items exchanged is relative. The value is determined by the ratio of supply and demand at the given moment in the given place where the exchange takes place. Each party engages in a search process to find an interested BUYER for their good/service. And they act as a SELLER of the product they seek to exchange.
   

A modern exchange system involves a unique commodity, Money. Money serves as an intermediary in an exchange system and separates the roles in the system, by separating the Status of Buyer from Seller. Money is the physical and ideational manifestation of a cultural expression of value for a good and/or service. The value of a commodity is determined by the buyer and seller acting as members of a sociocultural exchange system.

Value is expressed as a ratio between the supply of the product and the consumer demand for it.  Money, in this instance, is just another commodity. In and of itself, Money has no intrinsic value. It only derives its value based on what individuals and cultures give to it. It is symbol and may be represented in physical form or an entry in a journal.

Money, as a cultural commodity, becomes a store of value for expressing this ratio. When a willing Buyer offers and the willing Seller accept a quantity of money in place of a good or service, money becomes the medium of exchange that captures this relationship. Money, by serving as an intermediary commodity, gives cultural meaning to the value (ratio) of the exchange by serving as a “neutral” unit of account shared by and equating the Buyer’s willingness to pay and the Seller’s willingness to accept a transaction.

The monetary situation separates the Buyer and Seller roles. The Buyer has specific needs, wants, and desires while the Seller has a specific product, (a good or service) to offer that may satisfy a particular need. The Buyer is thus engaged in a search for the “best deal” or an exchange rate that gives him/her the best or greatest future return or benefit (utility) for his/her investment in a Seller’s offer.

The Seller is focused on the “best deal” from selling the product of his/her investment in time and effort to produce and sell the product. This “best deal” is defined in terms of finding the Buyer or situation where she can find the greatest Need (demand) for the product and gain the "best price."

Finding and creating the “best deal” is an uncertain event. The difference between the best deal and a good deal is risk each actors assume by accepting a deal. Here is where a monetary system captures the uncertainty (or risk) of a “best deal”. Money, in exchange for a current good or service, enables the Seller the opportunity to concentrate on production and sell it when it is ready.

Money allows the Buyer to acquire the product in the amount and at the rate she/he wishes to consume it, rather than depending a single producer or single opportunity. The differences in the risk of holding or using the product is transferred by the monetary  system. The risk value of holding (storing) or using (consuming) a good can be measured in terms of the discount rate, or interest paid for holding the money between transactions.

The Agricultural example

The good example here is agricultural production. Here the farmer requires seed at the beginning of the growing season to begin production of a crop. In a barter system, he would have to reserve some of last year’s crop production for seed to use in the next season. This exposes him to the risk that not having enough for food or trade between harvests. In a monetary system, the farmer can borrow Money from a “bank”today, at a known interest rate or risk premium, to use to buy the seed needed today. Assuming that the farmer has a good season both he and the bank prosper when the farmer pays the loan owed plus interest, from the proceeds from the sale of the future harvest.

If it is a bad year, some of the risk has been transferred to the Bank and might be postponed for another season via another loan and interest rate. The Bank becomes an intermediary between the planting and the harvest, i.e. the capital investment  and the investment's return. The Bank shares the risk and would lose its investment should it  chose to foreclose on the loan.

By transferring risk, the farmer is taking out “insurance” today against the potential failure in the future. Here failure is a metaphor for the risk to “survival” and the “insurance” a metaphor of the potential for “replication.” These are cultural tools that humans have developed to spread risk and to bind social groups through an exchange system.

The questions facing every Buyer and Seller are: “How do I manage my consumption to maximize my chances of survival?” and “What steps do I take to insurer that I can replicate and/or improve my survival?” These are the two different questions we will address next.

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[1] See my earlier essay Consumption Patterns: Needs, Wants, and Desires

EVOLUTION: REPLICATION AND SURVIVAL

“Survival of the fittest”, “Law of the jungle,” “To the winner goes the spoils.”

These are expressions that encapsulate the basic goal or product of evolution and the core of the Darwinian revolution of modern science. Wherever we look today, we observe that the universe operates on this principle. Discovered in the writings of Darwin and rediscovered in the writings of earlier and later writers, the idea is that life and time follows patterns. These patterns can be reduced to cycles that form the basis of the human experience. To view life as a series of cycles would seem to be routine – birth, maturation, death. This is the cycle of an individual’s life. In the broader context, a life is a mere step away from the larger cycles that connect us to the world that we experience and depend upon for our existence.

In its simplest form a cycle is binary event, It is either exists “yes” or does not “no.” i.e. “Existence” or “Nonexistence.” The question for human's has been how to bridge the gap between “existence” and “non-existence.” How does nature promote continuity. For some 3 plus billion years, Nature has sorted through infinite variations of this simple binary formula and produced a near infinite number of variations in forms or  the continuity of we call "life."  Nature also "found" a method that brings about continuity, the process of evolution, 

In the Judaeo-Christian Bible, creation begins in the book of Genesis with an infinite spirit who starts the process of evolution over a 7-day period. As anthropologists, we found that every sociocultural system studied has a creation story, or myth. These, as Joseph Campbell and other folklorists have demonstrated, differ widely in the specifics yet conform to the same general pattern. A creation story describes an arch or cycle The specifics reflect the history and place of the people who hold to the myths, legends, etc.  All stories attempt to bridge the divide between the known "Yes" and unknown “No” reality with a “Maybe.”

“Maybe” what?

The “What” is some form of continuity that bridges the cycle. It explains or leaves open to interpretation the “from where” and “to where.” Because we live within the cycle, we must rely on others to explain how this continuity happens.To explain what we experience, Humans have invented the concept of the supernatural or religion . 

Religion draws upon the human animal’s ability to conceive of an event which is considered to be possible, but not actually experienced. It is our ability to think of time in terms of past, present, and future and to our place ourselves within time.

Humans rely on a kind of emotional response to events, We experience events individually, but interpret them through the meanings of others give to it. We call this “faith.”  “Faith” enables humans to assume that ta meaningful cycle will repeat. It is by “faith” that we assume and explain the fact that the cycle does repeat. Faith is one answer to the question of “maybe.” “Maybe there is life after death”. “Maybe the event is part of a recurring cycle.” “Maybe the recurring cycle has a rhythm.”  The other answer is “doubt”. “Maybe this is all there is.” “Maybe people are wrong.” "Maybe this is random noise."

The modern idea of evolution is a human formulation of  “faith and doubt.” As concepts, they are the objective value we give to the event. It is the value that gives objects conceptual meaning. The value and meaning derive from the emotional feeling one experiences when confronting or thinking about the event. “Meaning” partitions the emotional experience from the situational context and assigns a positive or negative value to the meaning.

“Value” is the emotional orientation of "meaning in context". In anthropological terms, we can think of “value” = “function” and “meaning” = “structure.” Faith is the  assumption that the “meaning and value” is real and make up the ideational dimension of Culture.  “Doubt” is culture's failure to relate the meaning and value of cultural symbols to.personal experience. 

  Biological evolution, demonstrated by Charlies Darwin and confirmed by Wallace, opened the door for us to understand the reason for “maybe.” It provides a model of order and sequence for the  biological events we observe. Evolution, however, is much broader that simple biology. And today we use the concept to describe a process where and how “maybe” events occur.

 What is the “maybe”?

An event is defined as a bounded period of time. A “Maybe” emerges from the simple process of defining an event in terms of its “life-cycle.” A life-cycle is the period of time that an observer identifies or experiences, the event. An event is nothing more than the binary sequence “No” or Yes.” That is, No, there is nothing happening and Yes, there is something happening. “ Between each “No” couplet, there is a “Yes” and between each “Yes” couplet there is a “NO”. We can translate the two basic processes that are at the heart of life as  Survival and Replication. Survival (Yes!) is measured in time between two “No” events. And Replication is the emergence of a Yes, either through the creation of a new YES, or the creation of a unique variation of a “Yes”.

In evolutionary terms, Survival is measured by how long an individual or life-cycle event lasts. Replication, on the other hand, is the generation of a repeated event patterns. A single note from a piano survives as long as the string struck by the hammer vibrates. On the other hand, replication takes place every time the same string is struck by the same hammer.  

Individuals, whether they are notes on a piano, or individual human are linked through a replication process. Such events are linked through a physical or conceptual “cause and effect” relationship. As anthropologists our job is to understand how   Survival (beliefs and practices) and Replication (beliefs and practices).helps humans to configure their universe in terms of Culture.

Culture, the fluid “Maybe”:

            The human biological evolution is and has been the central question of anthropology. Today the differential rates of cultural survival and replication might be hard to see given the rapid radiation of Western and Neo-western society.[1] Yet, as the human species has becomes more socially homogeneous, it is becoming more specialized in its cultures, It has also become more diverse in its physical and technological forms. The emergence of a global society plays a more and more significant role in the lives of ordinary people. Their daily lives are material influenced by the changing nature that the survival and replication functions of the species. 

Anthropology is the study of the human species, its complexity and evolution through time and place. At its core is the role played by cultures (local ideational systems of faith) and Culture (the bio-social-psychological system of species survival and replication). Modern anthropology is a child of Darwin and those who have followed. Anthropology is the search for the Yes’ and No’s in the vast expanse of Human “Maybe’s”. That is, the goal of anthropology is to challenge universal “doubt” and seek universal “faith.”[2]

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[1] I am defining as “Neo-western” those societies created out western European colonialism and have adopted the western European philosophical ideals of scholarship and science. This does not mean that all individuals in a given society hold to the philosophy. As described earlier, “faith” is the human emotional answer to “maybe.” Western ideals are only one of a multi-complex set of philosophies and methods for addressing “maybe.” Anthropology is the field of study that has emerged or evolved in Western European culture. It seeks to bridge the gap of “faiths” and find a holistic understanding of humankind – its origin, survival and replication as the dominate species on the planet Earth.

[2] Anthropology is the blend of scientific method and humanistic meaning. Our discipline seeks to know how we fit into the natural world, and how we have progressed to the top of the evolutionary ladder. We also want to understand what this means and how long it might last. We want to understand the why and how we (as a species) come to occupy this position and what it means for us, our environment and our future. What “value” is there in humanity? That is, can we give meanings and values to our “faith” and “doubts.”? And if so, can we use the knowledge to avoid extinction.

The Context of Creativity

The Question was asked " Considering the importance of creativity and avoiding repetition in science researches for the fundamental advancement of science, How do you provide a context for creativity"

I am not certain what one means here about "creating a context for creativity".

The goal of science and scientific research is to find that which is repeatable, and if not, "Why?'

Creativity can be based on the discovery of an existential reality or an ideational theory constructed to explain some phenomena. Science advances by discovery and replication, they go together. Creating a method to discover an existential reality is one way to advance science. This is the experimental branch. Creating logical/mathematical model is another way when science predicts an existential phenomenon or behavior.

Luck plays a big role in the process. Talent and initiative are important but when forced can actually become a barrier to creativity. Kuhn's "parametric shift" idea points to the role of luck when an investigator or inventor or artist has that "Eureka moment" breaking through the established or orthodox point of view and opens new avenues for study or application.

To become too specialized can be a bad strategy. Invention and creativity comes from many places and specialization tends to hide ideas that have been developed in another disciplines that can be applied to a immediate problem.

TRIZ, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ , is an example of basic methods and principles that have appeared all patent applications that cross disciplinary boundaries. These principles can provide insight into the creativity process.

Analogy and metaphor are valuable tools for creativity and comes from reading widely and being aware of one's environment. These are tools I have used and applied to consult with a wide range of organizations and businesses.

There is one basic context in all creative events --- a problem that requires a solution.


Based on an answer originally published in response to a question that appeared on the Researchgate in April, 2018. https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_do_you_think_of_creative_ideas_How_to_provide_a_context_to_create_it?view=5ac005c2ed99e13eef397e0b