Chapter 15.                   (continued) 

Thus, in Western history, the next important worldview is the Roman one. Operating under it, Romans became much less cerebral than the Athenians, more practical, focused on physical effectiveness and power, and less interested in ideas for their own sake. Among many of the early Romans, this feeling often expressed itself in a hatred of all things Greek. The truth was that though they didn’t like to admit it, the Romans borrowed a lot from the Greeks, especially in art and in scientific knowledge. Greek science and geometry enabled the building of the engineering marvels the Romans constructed. But the Romans didn’t discuss whether there were pure forms beyond this world (as Plato did).

In their heyday, the Romans no longer feared the gods in the way the ancient Greeks or the Romans’ own ancestors once had. As the Republic faded and the Empire took over, the Romans turned so far from Greek-style abstract thinking that they lost much of the Athenian capacity for abstract things – philosophical speculation, pure geometry, and flights of imagination. 

The Romans built their state on abstract political principles, values, and behaviors, similar to the Athenians, but like the Spartans, they loved far more the real-world results and the physical power some ideas could lead them to. They cared little for speculation about “the one and the many” or where parallel lines meet. Those were Athenian mind games that, to the Romans, were silly. It is also worth mentioning that the early Romans’ ideals being political, rather than philosophical, meant that they dearly loved their city, and its mode of governance. They believed Rome had been picked by the gods for a special destiny. (Their ideas about their country and themselves were similar to what some Americans today call “American exceptionalism”.)

         

       Pont du Gard in France (Roman aqueduct built in the first century A.D.)                       

                     (credit: Benh LIEU SONG, via Wikimedia Commons)                     

   

                             

It’s tempting to see Roman culture as a synthesis of the ways of the Athenians and the Spartans. This would be an example of Hegel’s “dialectic”: one way of thinking – thesis – along with the human groups that gather around it, forms and grows, and then an opposite way of thinking – antithesis – rises up like a kind of cosmic response to the first way. The two interact, struggle, then meld into a synthesis, which is not a compromise because it is a new, coherent way with a character of its own. Thesis, anti-thesis, then synthesis. That’s Hegel. ²

The people born into the new way are not aware they are using some elements from one worldview and some from another. The new way is simply their way, and they add ideas to it till it is a seamless whole. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis, over and over, with the system spiralling ever upward toward greater and greater consciousness. This is Hegel’s model of human cultural evolution.

It is tempting. It is a fairly simple model, and with a little stretching it can be made to seem to fit in era after era and country after country in History. But it is too simple. The Roman way of thinking did contain some ideals similar to those of both the Athenians and the Spartans, but we know today that there was much else going on in the thinking and lifestyles of the Romans. Constant experimenting in construction, agriculture, war, medicine, etc.  

The Romans came into power in the ancient world by a culture that was their own, evolved over generations of farmers who had banded together to protect their food, farms, and families. They built a city as a fortress that would enable this goal. The Romans weren’t Atheno-Spartans. They were alien to all Greeks. Like foxes introduced into the Australian environment by Europeans. They were, more accurately, a society that contained some traits like the Athenians, some like the Spartans, and more that were their own. But they were a new experiment coming from outside of the Greek system, one capable of beating every Greek army that came against them. In short, real cultures in History are more complex than Hegel's model. But let’s digress on Hegel for a moment.

What makes more sense is to examine each society’s worldview, values, morés, and behavior patterns and observe how they coordinate to produce a culture and way of life that meets the citizens’ survival needs at the time. To see human cultures like we do species in the natural world with their infinite numbers of variations and ways of surviving, and unpredictable arrivals and departures. In order to survive, species change their anatomies, physiologies, programmed behavior, etc. Cultural evolution uses analogous devices. Under this view, we can learn much more about how human societies really work. Then, maybe, in modern times, we can finally get control of the process. This is our one hope.  

The model of human cultural evolution presented in this book doesn’t attempt to be as neat as Hegel’s model because cultural evolution is more complex than that. Cultural evolution is more closely analogous to the process of evolution in the biological world, which proceeds by genetic variation and natural selection. The key difference in cultural evolution is that genetic variations have been replaced with memetic variations. Both kinds of variations emerge in ways that aren’t syntheses. Like species changes, cultural changes have emerged in a wide range of ways. They have so far proved more unpredictable than Hegel’s model can account for. But our aim here is to understand cultural evolution in depth, as it works in reality, and to use that knowledge, finally, to prevent war.

Life didn’t move forward through time and proliferate into its many forms by the dialectal mode that Hegel describes. In the past, events like floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, droughts, and even collisions with giant meteors suddenly closed down, or opened up, reams of opportunities. Life forms move into new habitats opportunistically. Life spreads across time and space not in a single path like a chain, but like a bush branching and bifurcating from that primal trunk of a few cells that came alive eons ago. Most branches, by far, get cut off.

The model of human cultural evolution presented in this book can’t match Hegel’s dialectic for attractiveness. Hegel’s model seems so neat and complete. But both real animal life and human cultural life are not that neat. Our models of culture, in the meantime, must be grounded in reality, where new challenges and new memes both arise in ways that can’t be foreseen. Surprising variations occur that are radical departures from our past experience.

In every species, genetic evolution has also, over millennia, put in many genes that are dominant, some that are recessive, some genetically inert, and some that are lethal. Memetic/cultural evolution contains analogues for all of these, plus others that are presently beyond all our terms, models, analogies, and metaphors. These we are, nevertheless, going to have to analyze and try to understand. Sociology is a young science.

Examples of lethal genes are ones that used to guarantee at conception that a human born with that gene in his genotype was likely going to die young (e.g. sickle cell anemia, cystic fibrosis). My position in this book is that there are memes in cultural codes that are lethal memes, analogous to lethal genes. Or, more accurately, they have become lethal as our social environments and meme codes have evolved. For example, patriarchy is, in my view, such a meme. It produces sexism and homophobia. The meme that makes us practice and pass on tribalism is today also such a meme. It makes us act out patterns of behavior called “racism” and “war”. Either we end the tribalism meme, or it will end us. 

But the model explored here can do what we need it to do. It can give us insights into how human cultures and values work. It can enable us to build a rational moral code, one that retains our vigor, but also improves our odds of avoiding disaster, and so, of survival.

In order to do that, i.e. improve our odds, we must learn to do what a Bayesian view of society suggests. Enable (i.e. educate citizens for) decency and sense;  neutralize ignorance and cruelty. Now let’s return to analyzing the Romans.

The Romans had a system that contained more practicality, discipline, and efficiency than the Athenian one. They built roads, bridges, and aqueducts of great engineering sophistication and size by employing some of the knowledge they had learned from the Athenians, some they got from their neighbours, the Tuscans, and some useful ideas that were the Romans’ own. Similarly, in other areas such as agriculture, medicine, law, and war, by memetic experimenting and compromise, the Romans got practical results unmatched in their times.

 

            

                           Etruscan scenes; tomb painting in Tarquinia, Italy

                                             (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

 

 

In addition, it is worth repeating that the Roman Republic, cruel as it could be to its enemies, was dearly loved by Romans. They were citizens of a democracy. They were a family. They truly thought that they deserved to rule the world because there had never been any state like Rome. It was specially gifted and destined, chosen by the gods. State religion said so. The Aeneid, their national epic, said so. Thus, the Romans’ worldview assigned to them the most important role in the history of the world. For generations, the Romans knew by their foundational worldview that the gods loved Rome.

 

 

                                          Glory days of ancient Rome

             (“Consummation” by Thomas Cole) (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

 

This worldview produced an idealistic patriotism because it produced a state that gave democratic rights to all Roman citizens, or at first all “true” citizens, which meant adult Roman males who owned property. There were aristocratic families, as had been the case in almost all previous states, and these were accustomed to the idea of privilege. But there were also plebeians, and they too were full citizens with rights to vote, run for office, have a fair trial if charged with a crime, etc. These were ideals that existed above any human individuals. How could one not love such a country? What would one not endure for her? Thus, the Romans were capable of Athenian types of political ideals, but largely forgot Plato’s “forms”. Instead of loving “forms”, Romans loved Rome.   

The slave portion of the Roman population gradually grew till it became half of the people of southern Italy, but the Romans viewed this situation as the natural order. This view that superior people must have slaves in order to have time to pursue nobler ideals and activities, did not originate with the Romans. It had been common centuries before. Even Aristotle defended it at length for reasons similar to those that the Romans subscribed to. They accepted, unconsciously, that their culture was superior. They deserved to be masters of all others.

Then, sadly, later generations of Romans got spoiled. They grew to love luxuries far more than abstract principles and to want more and more of the luxuries. They overtaxed people - by the late Roman Empire, literally to death. “Provincials” and citizens got fed up and began to cheat on their taxes because “everyone did”. The ubiquity of bribed officials made it all worse. 

As the generations passed, Rome declined by degrees into a society built on slaves and worldly pleasures, restrained only by a warrior’s code of loyalty. Patriotic ideals faded. Rome’s collapse also became more probable when its armies ran out of lands to conquer. To the North lay frozen wastes, to the South, deserts, to the East, mountains or more deserts, to the West, endless ocean. They had conquered all that was worth having. The warrior code became superfluous and the citizens sank into cynicism, bribery, envy, and assassinations. 

In short, the cultural code of Rome started to decay. Its remnants, still followed doggedly by fewer and fewer, grew dangerously out of touch with larger forces in their times, many of which had been produced by the Romans’ earlier success. For example, by the late 300’s, nowhere near enough Romans were volunteering for the army. Military service had come to seem naïve. And for the growing numbers of Christians of that era, military service was too worldly, rather than spiritual. So the army had to be filled with foreign mercenaries. As a result, rival tribes learned better ways of making war from the Romans themselves. At the same time, government officials became ever more corrupt. All the while, fewer and fewer in Rome cared. For most of them, their minds were elsewhere, on worldly pleasures or else (for Christians) on heaven.

As the values of the old Roman practicality and love for their country declined, they were replaced not by newer, more practical values, but by Christian belief in the value of the life after death and the trivialness of this earthly one.

Like a computer operating system, a cultural code needs regular updating in order to stay effective in the natural and social environments it must interface with every day. Computer code that doesn’t get updated becomes obsolete as better apps are devised by competing firms. But the consequences for a society whose code falls out of touch with reality are more drastic than those felt by a company when its software no longer competes well in the software market.

By the time the Romans realized that Rome really could fall, it was too late. The Roman Empire got torn apart, especially in the West. The Eastern Empire held together for, arguably, another 800 years. But in the West, the Dark Ages came. Small fiefdoms, constantly at war with their neighbors. Roaming gangs of bandits plundering the areas away from the cities almost at will.

 

 

               

     Late Roman decadence (credit: Thomas Couture, via Wikimedia Commons)

 

Note how the decline of the later Romans’ values and their laziness regarding ideals of citizenship and honesty presaged that fall. Note also how we today grasp intuitively the crucial roles ideals play in shaping citizens’ lifestyles and, therefore, in the success of their state. Ideals shape behavior and behavior determines whether a society rises or falls. We know this relationship at a level so deep that we take it to be obvious. We grasp implicitly that when the Romans became procrastinating, hypocritical, and corrupt, the collapse of their state became inevitable. (The view originates, mainly, with Edward Gibbon, whose work on the subject is still, arguably, the most respected of all time.³)

But we are not good at articulating our deep understanding of how values/ideals work. The relationship between a society’s ideas/values and its ways of surviving in its physical environment has eluded us for too long. In this era, we must do better if we are to understand ourselves and end war before it ends us.