One of the major evolutionary advancements that humans made was to offload a large chunk of our biological hardware into simulated software. Our subconscious mind acts as a sort of simulated biology, which allows us to adapt to changes in our environment much faster than would otherwise be possible if we had to change our physical bodies to adapt. It’s an interactive support system which analyses & interprets our environment, to give us general guidelines of what things mean, and how to behave. To illustrate this concept, let’s imagine a hypothetical scenario; the practical specifics don’t really matter, but the general concept will illustrate the point. Imagine that you are an ancient proto-human out in the wild, and for whatever reason, your tribe is forced to move into a new environment that is meaningfully different from your original habitat. Your existing biology is not optimized for this new environment, and you must adapt to take full advantage of these new challenges. Now, I admit that this example is a bit weird, but just humor me. For the sake of argument, let’s say that in order to take full advantage of this new environment using your existing behavior & biology, it would require growing an additional finger; but if you can modify your behavior & perception in some meaningful way, then you can make do with the fingers you have. While this example is a bit simplistic, it gets the point across. Obviously, changing your behavior would be much, much faster than waiting for humans to grow a new finger. Being able to reconfigure the body’s high level systems allows humans to adapt to fundamental changes in our environment much faster than waiting for the nuts & bolts biology to catch up. This is how the human brain works; more so than any other animal on the planet. We offloaded much of the fixed hardware functions of our biology into an intelligently managed simulation that can respond to its environment, and reconfigure itself on the fly. Our subconscious mind is the part of our brain that {manages & runs} this simulated biology; our subconscious brain is a biological computer, and our simulated biology is a program running on that computer.
Culture is essentially a new piece of software that we install in this subconscious computer to experiment with {[higher levels of abstraction] & [more complex adaptation systems]} that we call “civilization”. These culture programs run within the subconscious computer, and have access to all of the biological functions that are being simulated there. In other words, culture has the power to leverage, trigger, exaggerate, suppress, orchestrate, focus, & inspect, all of the internal functions of the subconscious mind; for example: ambition, fear, shame, anger, personal identity, loyalty, fulfillment, purpose, pain, pleasure, lust, preferences, taboos, beliefs, expectations, assumptions, and so on. These functions become tools to shape & coordinate human behavior; and contrary to popular belief, none of these things are wrong. For example, shame is not bad, if it’s used for a sufficient & wise reason.
In the previous article in this series, on the Foundations of Morality, we ended by discussing the fact that human consciousness does not exist in base reality, but rather exists within a complex structure of biological constructs which impose restrictions, demands, sensations, incentives, etc. on our consciousness. Those are the subconscious functions we’ve been talking about in this article. The emotions, sensations, perspectives, etc. that our simulated biology imposes on our conscious mind are the fundamental distinction between base reality and human experience. From the perspective of a human consciousness, these emotions, sensations, etc. are indistinguishable from the physical environment of base reality, because from the perspective of a human consciousness, both exist outside the control of the human will, and are imposed on us from an external source. The fact that those sources are different may have scientific distinctions, but from the foundational philosophical perspective of raw consciousness, they are equivalent; because from the perspective of an isolated human consciousness, the biological body is external to your consciousness; it is a meat robot that your consciousness is driving around in. The only part of you that is actually genuinely YOU is your raw experiential consciousness; everything else is your external environment. The biological constructs, the sensations that enter your conscious experience are the bridge between your internal self (raw consciousness), and the outside world.
Getting back to culture, while these simulated biological constructs are vital, they are often vague pressures without a definite means of expression. Culture is the means by which we manufacture specific outlets for these pressures, so that we can {predict & control} how they manifest, and thereby leverage this precise outlet as a tool in a higher system. But how we choose to leverage these pressures is almost entirely based upon personal preference. It’s similar to any other objective in the physical world. There are a near infinite number of ways of leveraging the forces of nature to solve the problem, and most are not any more {right or wrong} than any other. Some may be more efficient than others, while others may be simpler or easier, while still others may be deliberately more difficult for the sake of having fun and giving yourself a challenge. The same is true of culture. There are a near infinite number of ways of solving the problems of our existence, especially because some people might not even perceive some of them as being problems in the first place, and instead focus on different issues.
Culture leverages these biological tools’ influential power over our actions & behaviors, in order to {mold & predict} the social interactions of large groups of people in a society. This allows for all kinds of things including teamwork, predictable safety, reliable {expectations & predictions} about behavior, and many others. One of the ways that these benefits are accomplished is by the representative sub-system we call ethics.
In its totality, the full system of culture is much, much larger than simply telling right from wrong. For example, technology is also just a part of culture. Different cultures will solve the same problem in vastly different ways, while yet other cultures may not even see such things as problems at all, and don’t even attempt to “solve” them, or perhaps, may even leverage them as an advantage. To quote the character Legion from Mass Effect:
“Technology is not a straight line. There are many paths to the same end. Accepting another’s path blinds you to alternatives.”
Morality & ethics are very important, but they are merely one of the internal pieces of the cultural system, and like the whole cultural system, there are a near infinite number of ways of interpreting our circumstances, actions, behaviors, and their contexts. There are a near infinite number of interpretations of {[which values are more important than others], [which things are negligible], & [how to frame those ideas in relationship to the outside world]}; especially because many of these are a direct consequence of the greater cultural system. For example, if a cultural system decides to leverage sexual intercourse as a powerful tool in the construction of society, then any actions which risk undermining the effectiveness of that tool would be seen as immoral. It’s not necessarily the action in and of itself, as much as it is the consequences of that action INSIDE THAT CULTURAL SYSTEM. The exact same action in the exact same context could be genuinely unethical in one culture, while at the same time being perfectly fine in another, solely because of the cascading consequences that occur inside each separate system. And, it’s not just that the one culture perceives it as bad even though it’s not; what I’m saying is that it actually IS genuinely bad inside the system of the one culture, but is genuinely fine in the other, because even though it’s the same action in the same immediate context, the greater context is the complete cultural system, which has different broader consequences in each case; and some of these consequences can include the ramifications to the system itself, and not just to the individual people involved. This is one of the reasons why the concept of multiculturalism is absurd; cultures can only function if they have exclusive, sovereign control over a population. If people can switch back & forth between cultures whenever they want, and if when you encounter a stranger on the street you have no way of knowing which culture they are a member of, and you never know which set of {rules & behavioral-expectations} are being enforced at any given time, then there are effectively none. Cultural guidelines of behavior are not just about preventing bad actions, it also serves the vital importance of reducing the chaos of your environment by giving you reasonable guidance about how to interact with others, and reliable bounds for the expectations of other people’s behavior. In other words, so you know how you’re supposed to {act & [treat other people]}, and you know that if you act within those guidelines, you can reasonably predict how people will respond to you. This gives you a more {secure & predictable} day to day life, and also allows you to make better use of your social interactions, because you know how to behave, and how to go about achieving what you’re trying to do, rather than constantly being confused, and never knowing how to act or what to do or how people will respond to you. Mature homogenous culture solves this problem; that’s its job. Culture gives you the power to control your environment, and empowers you to make {informed & reliable} choices to {[control your fate] & [achieve your goals]}.
Functionally, the way this works in practice, is that arbitrary assertions of value are put forth, which serve as the foundational presuppositions of the {moral & cultural} framework. As that culture is put into practice, the people who have adopted it start to act in accordance with those values, and align their behavior with its rules & priorities. By acting out these ideas, they are facilitating the propagation of the logical consequences of those foundational assertions, both on their own, and as they interact with {[each other] & [their environment]}. This resulting logical framework is what we call “culture” or a “moral system”. The {[sustained interaction of people] & [repeated encounters with the environment]}, provides {practical-experience & experimental-evidence} for the effectiveness of that cultural system. One of the primary mechanisms of cultural evolution is messing with these foundations, and experimenting with moving them around, abandoning some, replacing others, and adding new ones.
Tradition is the accumulated wisdom of your ancestors.
It’s the result of thousands of years of {painful & confusing} experimentation into how to interact with the world. When they {[encountered a new idea] or [tried to modify an existing one]}, if it worked then they kept it, and passed it down to their children; if it failed or caused problems, then they either threw it out and forgot about it, or they explicitly taught their children to avoid it. The culture that we had before the deconstructionists started burning everything down, was the result of thousands of years of accumulated wisdom from our ancestors, and to simply throw all of that away, and label it as “oppressive” or “evil” or “primitive”, because you think that you can do a better job in 1 generation, then your ancestors did in 10,000 years, is pompously absurd; especially because there are miles of bedrock ancestral wisdom beneath you, that are so vital to your world view that you don’t even realize they’re there.
There are 2 more articles in this series. The next one will be another content article examining the practical implementation of a cultural construct, and how cultures fabricate value. Then, the final article will close out the series with a conclusion, and a path back to sanity.
Continued in Part 4 – Reality & Fabricated Value.
