Evolutionary Biology and the Punk Scene

Evolutionary biology historically has focused on a particular kind of change in heritable traits. Some traits enable an organism to have more offspring than other organisms in a population. In this way, a heritable trait can become more abundant in the next generation. It's a simiple numbers game. New traits appear first in a single organism (like the debut songs on a pioneering punk album). But they can appear in increasing numbers of organisms with each :h new generation if they help organisms have more offspring than others in the same population (as those songs inspired other songwriters to form bands of their own). After enough generations, a trait can become so widespread that it is essentially universal within a population of organisms (as when punk became mainstream and punk songs were heard, as they are today, on commercial radio). By the same token, if a new trait causes an organism to have fewer offspring, that trait is unlikely to persist (like so many failed experiments in punk music, such as Bad Religion's "lost album" Into the Unknown).

In the previous paragraph, I was drawing analogies between biological evolution and the history of punk music. But again it's important to note that the two processes are quite different. The most widely accepted view of biological evolution is that the gradual accumulation of traits is due to some organisms in a population leaving more viable offspring than other organisms. In this way, populations of organisms gradually become more adapted to the environments in which they live. The punk scene evolved not from heritable variation but rather from cultural innovations that struck a nerve with willing groups of misfits. Still, it's hard for me not to draw evolutionary parallels. I used to envision each Bad Religion concert as a unique environmental opportunity. We could try to increase our popularity trait by singing better songs and giving better performances, in which case our popularity would grow. Or we could suck and lose fans, causing eventual extinction. Either way, the similarities seemed obvious to me.

An interesting comparison, that demonstrates the natural selection of memes in culture works the same as genes in biological fitness.