socially required polite bow (common in Japan) 

It is true that deep differences between the meme combinations and morés of different societies can be found in large numbers. But to say, as some moral relativists do³, that these cultures are therefore incommensurable is to abandon humanity to war for all time. And it simply isn’t true.

  

                                                 English poet-musician Gordon Sumner (Sting)

In the first place, though there are differences, there are many similarities in our ways of life. Some of the highest peaks in the meme-scapes of all cultures coincide. Everywhere on earth, people respect and value wisdom, courage, love, and freedom. Different cultures adhere to moral values and the patterns of behavior that they lead to in varying degrees and in varying ways and combinations. But the areas of thinking we have in common far outweigh our differences. As Gordon Sumner (Sting) said in the 1980's, “The Russians love their children too.”

In the second place, we can learn. We can learn to fish in four ways instead of just one. We can learn to talk in several languages. We can learn to refrain from giving in to violent impulses that cause us to beat women or children or engage in crime or war. We can learn to imprison rather than execute convicted murderers. We can learn to eat vegan and stop using livestock completely.

The values discussed in this book—values that derive from and are tailored by and for the physical universe—are pointing us toward a society that will place ever greater emphasis on imagination, self-discipline, education, citizenship, pluralism, and good will. Courage, wisdom, freedom, and love. We want and need a global human society in a state of dynamic equilibrium of ever greater internal tensions, capable of responding successfully to an ever greater range of challenges, both short and long term. Then we can spread our species out toward our destiny—the stars.

When it comes to our values, morés, and patterns of behavior, we tend to change grudgingly and obstinately, but we can learn. We can change. We can learn a nonviolent or at least a non-militaristic style of cultural evolution.

Once we accept the view that over generations, a cultural pattern exists in time itself along which our values and their attached behavior patterns steer us, we are admitting that values are real, in the sense that they connect us to physical reality. Thus we must conclude that only certain values, those derived from our best world view—that is, from science—will be the most rational choices to guide humanity to 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 behaviour patterns 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 given terms like virtue or the Tao. And it is always subtly shifting its path. Especially in these nuclear-armed and climate-threatened times, we must 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 never to become overconfident that they have life figured out and can now become complacent about their capacity to handle life’s events; 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.

And values themselves. They are just our best guides to where the survival path, through the present and on into the future, lies.

Notes

1. “Convergent Evolution,” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Accessed April 30, 2015. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution.

2. Richard Dawkins, “Selfish Genes and Selfish Memes,” in Douglas R. Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett, The Mind’s I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1981), pp. 123–144.

3. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), p. 78.