Human Attitude and Environments, Essay Example

Description of the Location

Exploring the known world is one of my favorite things to do, so when my aunt called and invited me to a casino I went on the basis of living experientially as well as following what Hill et al. (2011) describe as “cumulative culture and cooperation” (p. 1286) in which our ancient ancestors lived, meaning a shared experience. I wanted to experience this “cumulative culture” with my aunt, and make some fun memories in a new place. Since the casino was located by the beach I knew that there would be more experiences than just the gambling.

When I got to the casino the first thing I noticed was the opulence of the lobby. It made me feel as though I were royalty or part of an elite group. The casino’s workers were very friendly and comparable to Tomasello et al.’s (2012) idea of human cooperation coming from altruistic tendencies. I knew that they workers were being pad to perform their various service acts, but they did it with such sincerity and genuineness that it felt like I was being included in a small tribe of kinsmen (p. 12). They were serving me as either a new member of their “group” or their expectant “reciprocity” from me in either money or something else valuable (p. 12). This feeling made me notice how oddly at home the workers made me feel in an otherwise foreign and exotic setting (a setting that would normally have put me on edge because of its strangeness).

The rooms in the place were just as grand as the lobby. There was a feeling of us being privy to a life we never knew existed because even down to the fine linens, everything we touched has a feeling of luxury and quality.

Description of the People

The hotel/casino’s staff further emphasized Tomasello et al.’s (2012) idea of “collaborative foraging” (p. 15) as they would often say that if they couldn’t find an item my aunt or I desired, they knew someone who could get it for us (e.g. tickets, drinks, food, etc.). My aunt and I gambled together at the casino. It was a learning experience that I could easily juxtapose with my first day of kindergarten. I didn’t know how to behave, how to place a bet: gambling is a subculture. There are rules to how you interact with the people at the black jack table and their expectations of you in accordance with their own game. If you place a bad bet that in turn effects their cards and their bet in a negative fashion, the subculture turns against you according to its own rules and mores. I felt like I was experience whatBoyda et al. (2001) term “improvisational intelligence” (p. 37).Boyda et al. (2001) go on to describe this “intelligence” as a system of cognitive abilities that is adaptive in nature, and allows the subject to acquire local knowledge and behavior in order to blend in to their new environments. The authors go on to say that this allows people to adapt to the “cognitive niche” (p. 37). This was certainly true at the black jack table where I made mistakes left and right (having never played the game) but eventually, after observing how my aunt, and other more skilled people at the table were handling themselves I caught on.

Reaction to Observation

One reaction I remember very vividly. When one of the guests thought that the dealer at the table was cheating him, him became irate. The dealer tried to calm the man down but he said not only was the dealer cheating him, but the house was somehow cheating him as well. He said the automatic shuffle machine was against him. This was reminiscent of Marlowe et al.’s (2011) ‘spiteful’ vs. altruistic human behavior. The man who thought he was being cheated was angry not only at the dealer but at “third parties” (p. 2160) but in turn, the people at the table were telling the man that he was crazy and there’s no way a card shuffling machine can cheat him because it’s a machine. Eventually management had to get involved and kick the man off the premises. The people at the table were happy when he left which fully comprises the notion that Marlowe et al (2011) established in their research: that the small “society” of the casino, like a tribe, establishes its own rules and within those rules we adhere to a social construct. The man got angry with the second party offender (p. 2160) and the table was altruistically protecting the house and the dealer. Thus, human cooperation was exhibited by the small culture of gamblers at the table and the larger society of the casino management.

References

Boyda, R., Richerson, P., & Henrich, J. (2001, 11 Feb.). “The cultural niche: why social learning is essential for human adaptation.” Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 108(2), 36-49.

Hill, K.R., Walker, R., Bozicevic, M., Eder, J., Headland, T., Hewlett, B., Hurtado, A. M., Marlowe, F., Wiessner, P., & Wood, B. (2011, 11 March). “Co-residence patterns in hunter-gatherer societies show unique human social structure.” Science331(6022), 1286-1289.

Marlowe F., Berbesque, J., Barrett, C., Bolyanatz, A., Gurven, M., & Tracer, D., (2011, 27 Oct.). “The ‘spiteful’ origins of human cooperation.” Proceedings of the Royal Society 278(1715), 2159-2164.

Tomasello, M., Melis, A., Tennie, C., Wyman, E., & Herrmann E. (Dec. 2012). “Two key steps in the evolution of human cooperation: the interdependence hypotheses.” Current Anthropology 53(6), 12-36.