Adapting to the Environment or Changing It

Natural selection is a much slower mechanism of adaptation than the cultural shifts with which our species quickly faces changes in the environment (as well as causing them), or becomes more efficient and effective in a given environment. This efficiency is not Nature's imperative, rather the contrary:

Cultural evolution is our way of adapting to different ecological niches. Better: it is the way of changing our niche quickly, without waiting for the biological mutations that make other species bodily adapt to the (slowly but ever changing) environment through natural selection through the generations: “Once man's behavior and mode of existence are determined primarily by his culture, then he is able to make adaptive changes to meet his environmental conditions by modifying his culture” (Wilkinson 1973, 9).

In natural selection, as in human culture, there is a preeminent force that relates to the fulfillment of the fundamental life needs. In basic agreement with Marx and Harris, Wilkinson (1973, 11) wrote: “Both individuals and societies will give priority to the maintenance of subsistence activities at a level at least adequate for survival. […] The demands of production have a preeminent position which allows them to ride roughshod over other elements of a culture.”