Chapter 14.                   Part B 

But let’s return to our main point. A kind of field underlies time. At least two different types of codes guide living matter across that field, out of the past, across the present, and into the future. These two types are the genetic and the cultural. Other life-forms elsewhere in the universe may have found formulas for neatly balancing the momenta of these two codes, but in our case, the human case, the relationships between these two kinds of programming – genetic and cultural – are not yet well understood. However, the important point that we can still make, and that I emphasize in this book, is that the cultural mode of evolution, that has emerged in natural history so recently, is able to respond to environmental changes and pressures in ways that are every bit as subtle, and, more importantly, as material in their consequences, as the genetic mode is. Humans outsurvive, out-manoeuver, and outlast all other forms of life on this planet.

Thus, a digression on the analogies that exist between the genetic way of evolution and the cultural one is in order here. The parallels have been noted before, by the Social Darwinists in particular. However, the conclusions of the Social Darwinists are considered by most people today to be disgusting, and rightly so. Social Darwinists conclude that rich people are rich because they are superior, to put it bluntly. They deserve to be rich because they know how to run society, while the workers, who in many places in the world even now are still miserably poor, deserve to be so because they don't know how to run much of anything.

Some rich Frenchmen a few decades ago lived by a similar code and found to their sorrow that it contains the seeds of its own destruction. To persuade those who still want to live by that code and who pretend that the French Revolution was only an "exception that proved the rule", I offer the much harsher lessons of the Russian Revolution. Then come the ones in China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc. All of this evidence has taught some hard lessons to the nineteenth century-style Social Darwinists in societies all over the world. If you want to live, be nice. 

But how could it have been otherwise? The whole social milieu in which the Social Darwinists of earlier times lived and carried on their daily activities was not very loving or free or wise or even brave. They saw cruel indifference, wastefulness, and arrogance as being necessities of human society. Subsequent experience in countries all over the world has shown that societies which contain more compassion and justice can work, and do work, and ordinary folk all over the world today know it. They will not accept exploitation, misery, and bare subsistence as necessities of social living anymore.

                                     Teamsters' Union members vs. police, Minnesota, 1934

For a paragraph or two then, let’s consider an example which shows how values in real life must reach dynamic equilibrium in order for us simply to function. I want to consider this particular example of how values shape human relations partly because it fits neatly here and partly because it can be seen as a paradigm of how humans today really do relate in all areas of their lives, professional and personal.

The captain of industry in the West today has times when he hates and despises unions, but he has come to accept that if workers are not paid a fair percentage of what the company is taking in every year, they will work less and less efficiently. He may find ways of retaliating, but then the cycle will just deepen and worsen with every passing year. If the obstinacy on both sides becomes hardened enough, then violence is inevitable. If those who own the means of production – farms, dams, mines, factories, etc. – in this society, get ever meaner and more incorrigible in their attitudes, the whole country will, indeed, eventually break down into revolution and chaos. To prevent such chaos - to preserve his way of life, in other words - the smart industrialist must have ambition and drive (courage), but also wisdom. A smart owner and/or CEO works with, not against, his workers.  

Thus, we have learned, by trial and painful error, to aim for balance. Workers in the Western democracies have rights, for example, to safe working conditions and free, collective bargaining, and smart business people negotiate with unions. Contracts are arrived at by debate and compromise. In fact, the business people who are the most successful in the West today are the ones who train specifically to be skillful at labor-management negotiations.

                                       Boeing union-management bargaining - Seattle, 2008

On the other hand, in their hearts, most union leaders today know that they have to respect a company's ability to pay. They ask for wages and benefits for their members right up to that line, but most of them don't try to push the owners past that brink. To do so would simply be irrational. Union leaders must have drive and wisdom in balance as well. On the other hand again, most business leaders in the West have accepted that as long as prices go up, workers are going to expect wages to go up. Making her/his business or factory more efficient by smarter management, research and development, etc., rather than by union-busting, is what the ethical, deserving business person does. Thus, most attempts at strike-breaking indicate not managerial competence, but incompetence.