(Note: This meeting and presentation took place online, via Zoom platform technology, due to social-distancing protocols prompted by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.)
At 7:00 pm, President Ken Chaya called the meeting of the Society to order. He introduced himself and thanked the attendees for joining the meeting. He announced there were currently 60 people in the meeting and that more were joining as he spoke.
Commencing with the business portion of the meeting, President Chaya announced the result of an online vote to approve the minutes of the October members’ meeting: it passed with 150 votes of approval, none of disapproval, and no abstentions.
Next, he announced the result of an online vote on the approval of new members. It passed with 148 votes of approval, none of disapproval, and no abstentions. President Chaya welcomed the following 11 individuals as new members:
Name, Membership Level, Sponsor
- Elysia Tan, Active, Kristin Ellington
- Beth Goffe, Supporting, Carine Mitchell
- Lisa Kroop, Active, Ken Chaya
- Seymour Rothman, Active, Kevin Sisco
- Carol Schwartz, Active, Mary Beth Kooper
- Amy Ronis, Active, Alice Deutsch
- Daniel Picard, Supporting, MaryJane Boland
- Xinyi Zhang, Active, Ronnie Almonte
- Linda Mary Morry, Life, Reece Hunt
- Charles Sklar, Active, Amanda Bielskas
- Rima Mathias, Active, Debbie Mullins
President Chaya then invited non-members in attendance to join the Society, explaining that they could learn how to do so by visiting the LSNY website, www.linnaeannewyork.org. He also pointed out that he or any of the other LSNY officers listed on the website would be willing to sponsor anyone who would like to join, emphasizing that an organization is only as healthy as its growing and diverse membership. He declared that the LSNY welcomes all to become members regardless of race, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, background, ability, or geographic location.
As the final item of business, President Chaya announced the Society’s need for volunteers, referencing his recent email communication asking for additional field trip registrars. He asked all to consider supporting the organization by volunteering to be trip registrars. He also announced that LSNY is seeking the assistance of someone with technical expertise related to combining in-person speaker meetings with live-streaming Zoom broadcasts, which will be needed once in-person meetings resume at the American Museum of Natural History.
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At 7:10 pm, President Chaya introduced the evening’s speaker, Mark Moffett, Ph.D., an entomologist at the Smithsonian Institution, and a visiting scholar in anthropology at Harvard. Ever since doing his Ph.D. under environmentalist E. O. Wilson, he has been studying how societies stay together and fall apart historically and right up to the present day, and comparing species, including humans. His most recent book, “The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall,” brings together biology, modern psychology, and anthropology with surprising insights. In addition to his research, he is known for global exploration and many articles in National Geographicmagazine.
His talk was titled “What Are Societies, and What Keeps Them Together and Tears Them Apart.” If a chimpanzee ventures into the territory of a different group, it will almost certainly be killed. But a New Yorker can fly to Los Angeles—or Borneo—with little fear. Psychologists have done little to explain this: For years, they have held that our biology puts a hard upper limit of about 150 people on the size of our social groups. But human societies are vastly larger, as are the societies of some animals. How do such species manage—by and large—to get along with each other?
Dr. Moffett discussed the social adaptations that bind society members together and explored how the tension between identity and anonymity defines how those groups work—and sometimes don’t.
What are societies? He pointed out that “society” can mean many different things (i.e., “high society,” the Linnaean Society, etc.). In the literature, they are often defined as a “cooperative group.” He finds this definition strange, because he sees a lot of non-cooperation within groups around the world. Further, cooperation also occurs between separate groups. When scientists speak of societies, they often mean social networks—for example, kinfolk and other alliances that occur both within and between societies. These networks are shifting subsets of the society as a whole. Also, people may be members of a society without cooperating or interacting with other members; an example might be a hermit who is a member of American society.
Dr. Moffett defines a society as a group that shares a strong allegiance and that lasts for generations. He emphasized the word “group,” saying that at their core, societies are about social identity. Societies are a certain kind of “in-group” with clear, enduring relationships. Schools of fish can come and go; there is no membership; but meerkat clans and honeybee hives are societies. If one looks at humans throughout history, one realizes that humans have always lived in societies.
He then spoke about his book and what drove him to write it. Showing a photo of people in a Starbucks coffeeshop, he said the main incentive that got him started with this work is a unique feature of humans: one can go into a restaurant and get a cup of coffee without encountering someone who wants to kill him. This kind of experience would be impossible for a chimpanzee, as they do not tolerate strangers, whereas humans do. This simple characteristic was important to our evolution.
There are two forms of societies—individual recognition societies and anonymous societies—and each is formed differently.
Chimpanzees, for example, form individual recognition societies. This type of society must be small so that everyone knows one another. They typically have fewer than 200 members.
In anonymous societies, members are distinguished from outsiders through shared features or behaviors (“labels,” “markers,” or “symbols”). He cited ants and some species of birds (i.e., the Pinyon Jay) as examples of animals forming anonymous societies. Pinyon Jays can form flocks of 500 yet stay together as a distinct group. Two groups can come together, but when they separate, members will revert to their original groups. The premier examples of anonymous societies are those of ants. Some ant species can form societies of infinite size. He discussed the Argentine Ant, an invasive species now found throughout much of California. He described how one could take an individual Argentine Ant from San Francisco, drive it to the Mexican border, and release it without any harm coming to it, because ants in both locations are part of the same supercolony that extends from the Bay area to Mexico. In San Diego, however, there are four geographically smaller supercolonies adjacent to one another. Thus, there are places in San Diego where an Argentine Ant will be promptly killed by other ants if moved only a short distance.
In another example, he showed a Jumping Spider, which hunts and feeds on ants. After killing an ant, it drags it across its body to get its scent—enabling it to safely enter the ant’s colony, where it can kill more ants. Turning to humans, he pointed out that while we don’t use scent, we do use markers that are hard for others to replicate. Humans have many ways of judging who belongs and who doesn’t. Language is a common marker, and our flags and rituals also convey who we are.
Even small things that we don’t consciously recognize can signal identity. Studies have shown that often an individual can be identified as American from the way he walks or even waves a hand. A smile can also identify someone as American—Americans seem to have a distinct smile—even if we don’t know what it is.
Dr. Moffett then raised the subject of discarding or merging societies. He used the European Union as an example of an unsuccessful merger of societies, pointing out that it has no time-honored symbols, no shared traditions, and no origin stories. While the EU can be a valuable economic tool, it is also “disposable.” Another example might be the tribes composing the Native American Iroquois Confederacy; they all had roles within the confederacy, but maintained their differences as separate societies.
Our groups give us meaning and validation. Modern humans that were once part of different societies have become assimilated, and are now alike but at the same time different (i.e., American, but maintaining their ethnic and racial identities). This dichotomy is a source of struggle these days. Dr. Moffett has found that healthy societies do not freely merge. Immigrants to a new society are expected to be of lower status and participate without threatening the dominant members. When the dominant society feels threatened, there is a backlash against immigration. Citizenship, legally defined, does not match how our brains register who belongs, resulting in social stress. Membership, mentally speaking, is a way of being. We determine belonging by how others walk, talk or smile. Immigrants can know all kinds of facts, but that doesn’t integrate them. Full integration takes a while. Citizenship can give someone the claim of being a full society member, but what is meant by “full”? Not everyone is treated similarly.
He then turned to the breakdown of societies, describing breakdowns of identity as “turning the familiar into the foreign.” He said that all societies go through this, but the process of how our minds shift to see people as “other,” and not members of the group, is a mystery. Social stress occurs as a society grows, followed by the emergence of subgroups who no longer like each other. Years later, a division into separate societies occurs. Markers help bind our societies together, but they also tear them apart. He noted that societies tend to break along geographic lines reflecting pre-conquest borders. As an example, he cited conflict along the original borders of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
He concluded his talk by saying that while the tolerance of strangers was a huge breakthrough for humans, it came with “all kinds of baggage that we’re still trying to work out.” Referencing the current social stress in America, he said that “hopefully we’re going to be able to see our way through this.”
At 7:50 pm, Vice President Gabriel Willow thanked Dr. Moffett for his talk and facilitated the Q&A portion of the program.
At 8:21 pm, Vice President Willow passed the floor back to President Chaya, who also thanked the speaker, as well as the audience, and invited viewers to return for the next speaker program on December 14.
8:22 pm—The meeting was adjourned.
Respectfully submitted by Amy Simmons, Recording Secretary