Chapter 14.                               Part F 

We tend to change grudgingly and obstinately when it comes to changing our values, morés, and patterns of behavior, but we can learn. We can change. We can learn a non-violent style of cultural evolution.

Once we accept the view that there is a pattern in time itself along which our values and their attached behavior patterns, over generations, tribally, physically steer us, we are accepting the view that values are real, in the sense that they connect us to physical reality. Then, we must conclude that only certain values, ones derived from our best worldview – i.e. Science – will be the most rational to choose to guide humanity to greater and greater health and vigor in the future. We all must live and survive in this same physical universe.

The courage-wisdom meme complex, along with the behavior patterns that it entails, is the human response to entropy; the love-freedom meme complex is our long term response to quantum uncertainty. The optimal balance of them all is called names like "virtue", or "the tao". And it is always subtly shifting its path. We must, especially in these nuclear-armed and climate-threatened times, see those shifts and respond appropriately. Or die. 

                                                                       Lao Tzu 

The Tao Te Ching says: "The tao that can be spoken is not the tao." Lao Tsu was only telling his disciples not to ever get confident that they have life figured out and can now become complacent about their capacity to handle events around them; complacency is the harbinger of disaster. The way of all ways, the tao, is always evolving. To live – as individuals but far more importantly as nations – we must stay resourceful, nimble, and sharp, individually and communally.

But values themselves, we can now see, are just our best guides to where the survival path, through the present and on into the future, lies.

Notes

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution

2. Hofstadter, Douglas R. and Daniel C. Dennett; "The Mind's Eye: Fantasies And Reflections On Self And Soul"; Basic Books; 1981.

3. MacIntyre, Alasdair; "Beyond Virtue"; p. 78; Bloomsbury Academic; 2013.