The Cultural Exoskeleton and Its Embodiment
It’s a myriad of evolving structures in which human supra-organisms grow, act, and change themselves and those structures
Think of a group of people who buy a large old house together to share as a residence. If they are wise, they will draw up a written contract to govern how they will share the house. The structure and functioning of the parts of the house, augmented by the written contract, will both constrain and enable the individual and group behavioral actions that the people will subsequently take in the house. But the behavior of the group — including even the extent to which its members agree on modifying the house and the legal agreement — will also depend on the individual interpersonal interactions of the people in the group, including new people who may join the group later.
The people who make up the group over time are the soft, perishable organisms that make up the supra-organism of the group itself. The house and written contract are the more durable, longer-lasting things that provide some external structure for the group supra-organism.
Furthermore, each person in the group grows and modifies their own partial understanding and misunderstanding of the house and the contract in their individual brain as they interact with the house, the contract, and other members of the group.
