Goerwitz

By Richard Goerwitz

My aim in this short piece is to tie together two seemingly unrelated questions: "Why do we have head hair?" and, "Why is environmental sustainability so hard?"

As far fetched as the connection might sound now, I hope we'll both shortly agree that the answers to these questions come down to what evolutionary biologists call sexual selection, or something similar to it.

I hope we'll also agree that people have the ability, if not the duty, to make decisions that go beyond simply furthering personal sexual and reproductive ends, and look to what's really good for us as a species, and for the world we inhabit.

We'll also explore why doing this can be so hard.

Conspicuousness

O ver a century ago, Thorstein Veblen coined the term conspicuous consumption (Veblen 1899). In Veblen's view, people consume resources far beyond what's needed for survival, and do it in a public way, to signal social position, influence, and what biologists would call fitness. Basically people are snobs and show-offs, even though we pretend not to be.

This brings us to the subject of head hair.

So Why Do People Have Head Hair?

T he short answer to why people have a conspicuous mass of hair on top of their heads—the kind that grows long enough to require braiding, styling, or cutting—is just that: We have it because it's conspicuous and showy.

But what kind of answer is that? I mean, isn't it just a tautology, i.e., a restatement of the question, "Why do we have a conspicuous mass of hair on our heads?"

In a way, yes. But only because I asked the wrong question to begin with. The question I should have asked isn't why we have a conspicuous mass of hair on top of our heads, but rather why a seemingly silly, impractical, high-maintenance appendage like that would end up building itself into our basic genetic code.

Based on what I've said above about conspicuous consumption, you probably already know the answer to this question. But just to make sure we're all on the same page, let's work through the logic together.

Heat, Sweat, Shelter

A lot of discussions about human hair end up dwelling on the fact that most of the heat dissipated by our bodies is lost through the head, and assert that the purpose of head hair is to help retain that heat.

There's nothing wrong with this assertion. Just note that it doesn't fully explain why human hair behaves as it does:

1. If head hair is just for keeping us warm, why don't we have summer and winter coats, like a cat or a dog, or a Japanese snow monkey?
2. If head hair is supposed to keep us warm, why do people from very warm climates have as much as those from cold ones?
3. And why does it grow, and grow—until we do something like braid it or cut it? What's the point in that?

Similarly flawed arguments are often made with respect to sweat. Although we typically don't realize it, our heads sweat a lot. Other sweaty areas of the body, like genitalia and underarms, grow hair. So maybe we have head hair for the same reasons we have hair in those other places, right?

1. But if head hair exists for the same reason as pubic and underarm hair, why do children have it?
2. And if head hair exists for the same reason as pubic and underarm hair, why do so many older males get along just fine without much of it?
3. And again, why does head hair grow long, unlike these other kinds of hair?

So while it's possible that sweat or pheromone conduction is part of the reason why our head hair behaves the way it does, it doesn't explain everything.

Similar observations might be made about the notion that head hair is there to shelter our heads, necks, and backs from the sun:

1. If long head hair is for shelter, why don't people from hotter or sunnier climates always grow long masses of straight hair?
2. Why do so many adult men and babies get along fine without it?
3. And why doesn't it grow over more of our bodies?

Once again, this explanation is at best only partial.

The Suburban American Lawn

T o understand why people have the kind of head hair we do, let's look at another area of human life where we have to deal periodically with something that, if left ungroomed, will become unruly: the suburban American lawn.

Before you laugh, think about it for just a moment. An un-mowed lawn will grow wild. There is, of course, nothing intrinsically wrong with a wild lawn. But people still feel they need to mow it. And every Saturday you can go out for yourself and watch millions of people mindlessly attesting to this need, as we push dangerous, and usually loud, gas-guzzling mowers around our yards (or pay others to do it for us), killing wild plants, insects, reptiles, and basically anything but grass, and often adding toxic chemicals—all in the name of making our homes look conventional and, let's face it, unnatural.

So why do we really do it? We say we do it because it a mowed lawn looks "nice." By "nice" we mean that it fits some arbitrary standard of grooming. We also do it because if we don't, people will think we're not coping, or that we're allowing the neighborhood to disintegrate, or that we're just lazy. We mow our lawns, therefore, because it sends out culturally relative social signals about our fitness and about how, and whether, we fit in (Goerwitz 2008).

You can tell a lot about a person's status, energy, and aesthetic sense from what's happening with his or her lawn.

The Backs of People's Heads

I n efforts to tie the question of why we mow our lawns back in with the question of why we have head hair, let me offer up a story from my adolescence that illuminates the connection.

When I was a teenager, I spent most Sunday mornings in church. Depending on who was preaching, and my own spiritual state, I was often bored and passed the time playing a game in which I tried to see how much I could tell about the people sitting in the front pews, just from the backs of their heads.

What I found was that I could usually tell whether a person was male or female, old or young, or whether they belonged to one or another culture or subculture. I could often predict whether a woman I didn't know was going to be attractive when I saw her after the service (just the sort of thing you want a young man thinking about in church). And I found I could usually identify individual people I knew, like my teachers, coaches, friends, and relatives. (All this from the backs of their heads, and mainly from their hair.)

Given that humans are the most social of all primates, and perhaps the most social of all mammals generally, it's not hard to see how hair might have evolved in a way that makes it easier for bored young men to pick out friends and attractive females from the back of their heads—or, more generally, as a useful tool for pinpointing gender, age, health, and social affiliation (Barnett 2006; see also Goodwin 1986). Nor is it hard to see why figurines and other artifacts from as far back as neolithic times would show hair styling (Herman 1999).

It's also not hard to see why the extra effort involved in maintaining the hair actually contributes to its effectiveness as a signaling device, much as the effort required to create an unnaturally groomed suburban lawn tells us something about its owner.

Consumption

O nce you understand how hair and lawns are connected, i.e., how the very act of putting in extra effort functions to signal fitness, it becomes easier to grasp many other facets of consumptive behavior and why we often find it so hard to act sensibly and sustainably with respect to our natural resources and our physical environment.

Take, for example, US policies with respect to oil resources, i.e., our petroleum.

It's become widely recognized in recent years that petroleum consumption is beginning to outpace the discovery of new deposits, and it's only a matter of time until production begins to drop off. It won't happen today or tomorrow. Depending on who you talk to, it may not happen for decades. But it's inevitable. Shale and coal may be put to service. But there's only so much of the stuff in the ground. Even a child can understand this.

So it makes sense, in the meantime, to try to conserve oil, right? Most of us know that we should drive less and recycle more, that we need to eat less, and that we shouldn't run our air conditioners so much. But the reality is that, by and large, we US citizens just go about our fat, consumptive lives—chauffeuring kids around in our vans and SUVs, buying stylish clothes, maintaining oversized homes, and running our power mowers and snow blowers—without significantly reducing our petroleum (or natural gas, or general resource) consumption. To assuage our guilt, some of us go out and buy hybrid cars and local produce. But in general we hang on to our cars and commutes, our big homes, our lawns, our eating out, our nice clothes, and our existing lifestyles.

The reason we find all these things hard to give up is that the conspicuous expenditure of resources beyond what's needed for survival, and even comfort, has long served as an important social signal of fitness. Yes, consumption is often convenient, even luxurious. But it's also our birthright. If you drive an old car, if you don't mow your lawn, if you have bad hair, if you wear faded clothes, and so on, people will see you as less stylish, savvy, and less fit. To drive a decent car, mow your lawn, wear nice clothes, and so on, is to demonstrate that you belong, that you're doing OK: that you're worthy.

What Would Jesus Do?

I ronically, most major religions teach that spiritual fitness requires renouncing worldly obsessions like money, clothes, and cars. Christians, in particular, learn that they must give up everything and follow Jesus (Matt 19:21). They learn that the kingdom of heaven is within them (Luke 17:20), and that one must decide between God and wealth (Matt 6:24, Luke 16:13). They learn not to worry about how they dress or what they eat, but rather seek God and trust that they will then be given what wealth and material things they need (Luke 6:28-34; cf. Talmud Bavli, Taanith 9a). They learn that they must render unto Caesar (i.e., earthy authorities) the things that are Caesar's, but render the really important things to God (Matt 22:15-21), and not be distracted by worldly riches, pleasures, and concerns (Luke 8:11-15).

It confuses me, therefore, when I see supposedly devout Christians (and, for that matter, devout Buddhists, Hindus, etc.) all forgetting their religion when it comes to the use of natural resources, the buying of fancy clothes and jewelry, fancy cars, big homes, etc. They are reverting to the very state their religion encourages them to transcend.

It's difficult to view such behavior as anything but hypocritical.

I would agree that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with material things. I'd even concede that material things are useful tools for bringing about laudable ends (note, e.g., the Quranic concept of "spending one's wealth in Allah's cause" [Al-Baqara 2:262,274]; cf. Talmud Bavli, Eruvin 86a). What I don't concede is that our spiritual well being depends on things like tanning salons, big homes, SUVs, and expensive hair. In fact it's quite clear that conspicuous consumption of such goods can distract us from the things that most religions say really matter.

If you think about it, intelligent, sustainable use of natural resources is only possible for those who are willing to rise, to some extent, above their nature. Our nature demands that we demonstrate our fitness precisely by consuming a disproportionate amount of resources and showing (with our hair, lawns, clothes, etc.) that we have time, money, energy, and creativity to spare. This behavior is built into our genetic code, our social structures, and our ways of life.

But if you believe that there is a spiritual part of us separate from the natural, or if you just believe in intelligent altruism, you know that the demands of sexual selection and the requirements of one's social position, do not determine who we are. We have the freedom, if we choose, to rise above these things and do what we genuinely feel is right.

And what is right here? It would be impractical for us all just to stop cutting our hair, wearing clothes, or getting to work. Also, it can be expedient at times to use hair, clothes, cars, etc. to offer nonverbal clues about one's culture and social position. But there's also nothing wrong in stopping and asking ourselves whether we need to spend five or more hours a week on our hair, whether our cars and houses need to be as big as they are, whether we truly must live as far as we do from where we work, whether we need to have heavily groomed lawns, or whether we are truly compelled to buy new clothes as often as we do and cover our bodies in cosmetics. And it's actually quite healthy to stop now and then and ask whether we're actually as altruistic and good as we think we are.

It's also healthy, and really not even all that difficult, to try to live up to the religious or social beliefs most of us give lip service to by just being a bit more modest and intelligent about how we interact with the world and the resources it provides.

References

I've written a few articles on hair and mourning customs in the Hebrew Bible, and hair has been something of interest to me for some time now. Below I list references to my earlier articles, as well as to other material I think is interesting.

Barnett 2006. Adrian Barnett. "Tressed to impress: Our love affair with hair." New Scientist 2576 (14 Nov 2007), 39-41. (URL)

Goerwitz 1996. Richard L. Goerwitz. "What Does the Priestly Source Mean by ‮פרע את הראש‬?‎" The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series 86:3/4 (Jan-Apr 1996), 377-394. (URL)

Goerwitz 2003. Richard L. Goerwitz. "Long Hair or Short Hair in Ezekiel 44:20?" Journal of the American Oriental Society 123:2 (2003), 371-376. (URL)

Goerwitz 2008. Richard L. Goerwitz. "Getting Out of Mowing the Lawn." Online essay/blog. (URL)

Goodwin 1986. Sam Goodwin. "Body, Mind, Gender." Online essay/blog. (URL)

Herman 1999. Judith C. Herman. "Bad Hair Days in the Paleolithic: Modern (Re)Constructions of the Cave Man." American Anthropologist 101:2 (June 1999), 288-304. (URL)

Veblen 1899. Thorstein Veblen. Theory of the Leisure Class. New York, 1899. For full text, see Google Books; also, Project Gutenberg.