Merlin Donald was born and raised in Montreal and received his Master’s in Psychology from the University of Ottawa, and his doctorate in Neuropsychology from McGill University in 1968. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Psychological Association, the World Academy of Arts & Science, and the Royal Society of Canada, he is the author of two influential books: Origins of the Modern Mind and A Mind So Rare His early work on human cognitive evolution was unique in its incorporation of both technology and culture into a theory grounded in brain function and brain evolution. He is currently working on an issue that concerns us all: the potentially radical effect of high technology on human cognitive evolution.
MERLIN DONALD
We are getting further and further away from the way of life that people had 150, 200 let alone 500 years ago. And it's odd that in some ways, certainly for the middle class, it could be that people had a more satisfactory lifestyle in the 19th century than we have today with all the love the luxuries and comforts we have which they do not have. Of course, there is less poverty, that's a good thing, but we need a revolution of sorts, a mental revolution, a revolution in our expectations of life. I am mostly concerned with analyzing the structure of the change.
Lots of people have written books both optimistic and pessimistic about the Internet. It's a wonderful thing, it gives an opportunity to broaden our experience. I think in many ways the Internet is the only hope if you want to eliminate racism and want to raise the bar across the world, but at the same time, the inequalities are completely ridiculous. They've reached a point of insanity, and we have a moral issue. Is one person ever worth twice as much as another person? Can you justify one human being owning 10 times as much as another person? I don't think you can. I don't think that the president of the biggest cooperation in the world is worth 10 times the poorest person in the world, but that's not what we have. Sometimes he may be “worth” a million times more, a hundred thousand times more. That’s crazy.
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I started off in a very different space. I was given a classical education, so that means a very big focus on the classical humanities. At that time, I never studied psychology or neuroscience, but I did study biology in some detail, and I was very influenced by a number of people, including Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Marshall McLuhan, and Northrop Frye. I was curious about psychology and so I studied it and after three months I thought this is ridiculous. It was superficial, it was demeaning, it reduced humans to butterflies, as far as I could see, and did not appreciate the nuances of culture. I saw it really as the language of the enemy. Then gradually I realized that I had to learn about it because there are truths in that are it that are necessary.
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Can you think of how slowly human beings changed for a long time, and what we're doing now it's like a spinning top. Colin Renfrew an eminent archaeologist in England once wrote a book about European people and the spread of agriculture. Agriculture spread, he estimated, at the rate of 30 miles per generation. 30 miles. I go that sometimes to go shopping. And during that time, of course, the environment was transformed. On one side, you had hunter-gatherers and, on the other, you had a densely populated agricultural zone. We have more changes in our mentation every day than they had every generation, by far. Now it's true we have plastic brains. We acquire information and are good at acquiring new skills. But is this a sustainable way to change? No, of course not. Coping with that is tearing us apart.
The main thing is to keep your humanity. Don't allow yourself to be kidnapped by corporate robots. Many of the people who work for corporations, I feel sympathy for them because they have no choice. They are compelled to do the things they do, but at the top, there is a lot of selfishness and relentless greed. We have to get away from the materialism of this world. We have to get away from consumerism and acquisitions. We have to get back to more modest ambitions in life and more basic things.
This interview was conducted by Mia Funk & Marley Hinschberger with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Marley Hinschberger. Digital Media Coordinator is Phoebe Brous.
Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).
