In the logic of evolution there is no such thing as “equality”. There are parallels and convergent features, but just as no two species or subspecies are identical, no two organisms are alike. Whenever a conflict arises, one creature will always have a slight advantage over the other, either due to physical strength, instinctive technique, or both. One possible scenario might involve a male chimpanzee fighting another male chimpanzee for control of the group, with the winner producing more offspring. Or, instead, it may involve a panther who suddenly and silently pounces on the would-be “alpha” dominant chimpanzee and devours him. Or perhaps to a tiny ion that evades and bypasses or surpasses the immune system of the strongest chimpanzee, with a consequent killing effect. Nature is so messy, sometimes extremely unpredictable.
Some bodies are stronger than others. Some brains are smarter than others. Some lower extremities are faster than others. Some languages are more complex than others, be it grammatical and syntactic codes or verbal expressions. Some techniques are more effective than others, whether instinctive or inborn. Some machines and drugs are stronger than others. And when natural disaster strikes a human group, the most fully adapted survivors outperform others. The mighty “long bow” of an evolutionary universe is rigid, but it yields and bends from the dominance and supremacy of the evolutionarily more capable being.
Of course this is all theory, but these are influential, evidence-based concepts that cannot be dismissed lightly and demonologically. So let’s plow ahead and dig into this arable row from another angle. The only way out is through it! Our Darwinian myth is an inversion of ancient creation stories, which describe a descent of mental forms into matter. According to the sacred tradition, Elohim created the world (“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” – Genesis 1.1), Jesus is the incarnate Word (“..and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” – According to John 1.18), the Hindu Vishnu “the all-pervading” Cosmic Protector, perpetually reinvents our universe to keep it “in absolute order”, the Buddha as Siddhartha Gautama descends from one of the six divine heavens, Tushita [where enthroned as Bodhisattva Svetaketu (Enlightened Lord “White Banner”)] to teach that “all is mind” and so on. By contrast, in atheistic evolutionary theory, dense and impure matter created the higher mental forms.
Over the centuries, random mutation, sexual recombination, and the “angel of death” of relentless natural selection favored a new species of ape. From a chimpanzee-like ancestor that roamed the African savanna some millions of years ago, hairless human bodies emerged, and with them advanced human minds. These minds were concentrated in various tribes with different rituals and languages. From flesh came the Word.
In the last hundred thousand years or so, human minds have led to a new, faster level of development: In the cultural – cultural evolution. [Ora Tim Luens 1 “Cultural evolution. Conceptual Challenges’ (Tim Lewens, Cultural Evolution: Conceptual Challenges), Oxford, United Kingdom, Oxford University Press, 2015].
According to the general theory of evolution, the evolutionary process unfolds on the cultural-cultural2 level parallel to the biological one. In social groups we see that their ideas and manifestations (religious beliefs, naturalist wisdom, mating rituals, and tool designs) are also subject to natural selection, just like genes and body types. The central idea of the theory is the survival of the fittest ideas. Cultural evolution continues where biological evolution left off. Or more precisely, cultural – cultural evolution is an additional principle that extends, accelerates and sometimes reverses biological evolution. For example, cultural myths that include fewer exclusions, are open and less “rejective,” allow larger societies to blend together smoothly. Stronger sexual institutions and norms produce more babies. Stronger fortress walls keep out formidable and insurmountable enemies.
Brotherhood, fertility and militancy are the emblematic slogans, the precepts of evolution. The weakest versions of these cultural forms, or those societies that do not produce them, will be crushed by the stronger forms or by Nature itself. The bloodlines, the lineages that produce or adopt the best ideas will survive and flourish—provided the “best ideas” do not follow the sociohistorical descent into rampant infanticide and mass birth control.
For many thousands of years, cultural-cultural evolution has moved faster than biology. Thus the hunter-gatherers surpassed our ape “cousins”. Thus the first farmers surpassed the hunter-gatherers. Thus the god-kings came to dominate the peasant states. Thus medieval societies adopted forms of authority that outperformed god-kings. And for this reason, until now, technological civilizations hold the gold medal in material production and cultural genocide. For now.
Successful culture-cultural ways reflect our biological instincts and exploit them. For example, imitation is a key component of cultural transmission. Like monkeys, canines, and birds, human children are programmed to imitate role models, but with much greater accuracy, as if they were “wired” to do so. [Michael Tomasello, “Imitative Learning of Actions on Objects by Children, Chimpanzees, and Enculturated Chimpanzees”, “Child Development” bimonthly magazine, volume 64, issue 6 , 1993, pages 1688-1705, Wiley–Blackwell Publications, Hoboken, NJ].
Imitation and repetition is how we learn our most sophisticated behaviors, from fluent speech to tool use and martial arts. For example, the Jews always taught their brightest children to memorize the Torah “by heart”, just as Hindu priests do the Vedas. [Ora Barbara Holdrege 4, Veda and Torah: Transcending the Textuality of Scripture, New York, State University of New York Press, 1995]
Intentional education, a practice unique to humans, is the way in which specific cultures are transmitted from one generation to the next – that is, it is essentially heredity – with variations between cultures and subcultures (that is, sets of specific cultural-cultural characteristics of segments of the population or social groups that are distinguished from the general culture to which they belong in terms of clothing, values, social norms, etc.).
Whether one’s ancestors taught the use of fishing nets, fishing spears, or fishing rods, the cultures best adapted to their environment will extract sufficient food and maintain their food security, thus surviving through natural selection. Today, for most societies, cultural transmission is largely a function of external media, from books and motion pictures to the Internet. Some claim this is just evolution, but one wonders how long any traditional society can endure in the murky depths of digital chaos.
Our innate cognitive biases are reflected in culture and in their own unique ways. Every culture will reinforce or suppress these biases in feedback loops. Our cognitive biases include our preference to be around people who are like us and suspicion of those who are unlike us (prejudice), the projection of human characteristics onto inanimate objects (idolatry), disgust with dead bodies, and infection (healthy), the desire to hear and share idle malicious talk and commentary (rumours and rumours), and a tendency to take pessimistic predictions more seriously than the daily news (death craze in all media). [Or Donald Edward Brown (Donald Edward Brown), 5 “Human Universals”, Boston, McGraw Hill Publications, 1991]
There is also our instinctive respect for those with power and prestige and the corresponding desire to raise our personal social level: [ Joseph Henrich 6, “The secret of our success. How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter” (“The Secret of our Success. How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter”) Princeton University Publications, 2015, pages 122–137, Chapter 8: “Prestige, Dominance and Menopause”]
Humanity is full of “social climbers” and pathetic slanderers. These vulgar fools spin the goods. Submissives and similarly ambitious tend to respect authority and dominance. However, we also exalt the kind, the righteous, and the wise. These diverse, fairly flexible evaluative tendencies are guided and utilized by different cultures in different ways. We can borrow a common metaphor from the machine world: Our evolved instincts for hunger, sexual arousal, socialization, and brutality are like constant radio signals passing through a receiver. Cultural institutions and practices simply play with our biological dials and switches to adjust the volume and equalizer and select the available radio stations. [For the metaphor of radio signals, see Robert Wright,7 The Moral Animal: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology, New York, Pantheon Books , 1994)].
