Chapter 11.                                       (continued) 

The model of human cultural evolution presented in this book doesn’t attempt to be as all-encompassing as Hegel’s thesis-antithesis-synthesis model because the process of human cultural evolution doesn’t fit Hegel’s model. Rather, the process of human cultural evolution is more closely analogous to the process of evolution in the rest of nature—by genetic variation and natural selection and accident and disaster.

Life didn’t move forward through time and proliferate into its many forms by the mechanism that Hegel describes. In the past, conditions like tsunamis, earthquakes, floods, droughts, volcanic eruptions, and even collisions with giant meteors suddenly closed down, or opened up, reams of opportunities. Then, usually, life forms moved in opportunistically. Life spreads across time and space not like a chain or road, but like a bush branching and bifurcating from that primal trunk started from a few cells eons ago.

The model of human cultural evolution presented in this book can’t match Hegel’s dialectic for cognitive attractiveness. Hegel’s model seems so neat and complete. But life isn’t that neat, and our models of human culture must be placed in the realm of the living. The model explored here can do what we need it to do. It can give us enough insights into how human cultures work, and what right and wrong are for us to then be able to build a rational moral code. One that maximizes our odds of surviving. And that is all we need.

So let’s return to our main line of thought. The Romans put more practicality, discipline, and efficiency into the Athenian styles of values and mores. They built roads, bridges, and aqueducts of great size and engineering sophistication by employing knowledge they had learned from the Greeks, mainly the Athenians, and from their own neighbors, the Etruscans (or Tuscans). Similarly, in other areas such as war, law, medicine, and agriculture, the Romans achieved practical successes unmatched in their times.

 

   

                                           Etruscan scenes, from a painting in a tomb in Tarquinia, Italy

In addition, it is important to note that the Roman republic, as cruel as it could be to outsiders, was dearly loved by Romans. They were citizens of a democracy. They were a family. They truly thought that they deserved to rule because there had never been any state like Rome. It had been chosen by the gods to be specially gifted and destined. The state religion said so. The Aeneid said so. Thus the Roman world view, by a direct chain of logic, assigned to the Romans the most important role that had ever existed in the history of the world. For them, their gods did not rule them and their universe with cruelty. Instead, for generations, the Romans were certain of where they stood: clearly, the gods (later, God) loved Rome.

   

                            Cicero speaking in the Senate in the glory days of ancient Rome (Maccari) 

This worldview produced an Athenian kind of patriotism because it was built around a model that gave democratic rights and duties to all Roman citizens, or at least all “true” citizens, namely adult Roman males who owned property. There were aristocratic families, as had been the case in almost all previous states, and these folk 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 they were charged with a crime, and so on. How could one not love such a country? What would one not endure for her?