Chapter 6.                          Part E 

It is also worthwhile to say the obvious here, however politically incorrect it may be. All of our obsolete but obstinate beliefs, moral values, morés, and behavior patterns did serve useful ends and purposes at one time. For example, in some, not all, early societies, women were programmed to be submissive, first to their fathers and brothers, then to their husbands. The majority of the men in such societies were far more likely, in purely probabilistic terms, to help to nurture the children of their socially-sanctioned marriages because they were confident that the children they had with these submissive women, and that they were being asked to help to nurture, were theirs. Biologically theirs.

Raising kids is hard work. In early societies, if both parents were committed to the task, the odds were simply better that those kids would grow up, marry, have kids of their own, and go on to program into those kids the same values and roles that the parents themselves had been raised to believe in. Other, non-patriarchal societies taught other roles for men and women and other designs for the family, but they simply weren’t as prolific over the long haul. Patriarchy isn’t fair. But it makes populations.

                        

                         Magazine image of the American family (1950's) 

“Traditional” beliefs about male and female roles didn’t work to make people happy. But they did give some tribes numbers and, thus, power. They are obsolete today partly because child nurturing has been taken over to a fair degree by the state (schools), partly because no society in a post-industrial, knowledge-driven economy can afford to put half of its human resources into homes for the stagnant, bored, and dejected, and partly because there are too many humans on this planet now. Population growth is no longer a keenly sought goal because it no longer brings a tribe/nation power. But more on this matter later. It is enough here to say that all of our traditional values, mores, roles, etc. once did serve useful purposes. Many of them clearly don’t anymore, even though it is like pulling back molars without anesthetic to get the reactionaries among us to admit that many of their cherished “good, old ways” are just in the way in today’s world.   

       

Thus, in all areas of their lives, even those that they think of as “sacred”, “traditional”, and “timeless”, humans do change their beliefs, values, and patterns of behavior in the manner suggested by Bayesianism. We do always adopt a new view of reality and the human place in it if that new view is more coherent with the facts that we are observing and experiencing, and it gets us better lives. We’ve come a long way in the West in our treatment of women and minorities. Our justice systems aren't race or gender neutral yet, but they're much better than they were even fifty years ago.

The larger point, however, can be reiterated. For deep social change, we do undergo the Bayesian decision process, but only in the most final of senses. Sometimes what has to learn to adopt new beliefs, values, and mores isn’t the individual; sometimes it is a whole community or even nation.