Chapter 14.                                             (continued) 

Some social changes contribute to the building of new values and morés and others contribute to the dismantling of old ones. Some do both at once. The important point for the purposes of my argument is that this inclination toward unceasing positing and testing—an inclination that evidence in all human societies suggests is programmed into us genetically and that constantly places some people at odds with their society’s morés—is an unalterable part of our nature. And luckily so. It makes our cultures evolve. It gives us our statesmen, scientists, artists, and eccentrics, and they enable us to respond to this ever-changing physical reality – and thus to evolve, economically and socially, in a timely way.

Externally, reality’s uncertainty and adversity are always weathering, eroding, and jolting the body of any society, compelling it to deal with change. When a society no longer deals effectively with these jolts and pressures (e.g. overpopulation, pollution, drought, war, famine, plague, and economic and technological advances) by one process or another, it is sooner or later superseded by a society that does.

   

                       Bee sipping nectar while pollinating a flower, demonstrating mutualism in nature

Another interesting feature of how values drive society’s behavior patterns and morés is the paradoxical design that value clusters, at first look, appear to exhibit. Values are designed in matched pairs. As one value drives humans toward a particular set of behavior patterns, it is tempered with a complementary one which attenuates, gives focus to, and reduces the excesses of the undiluted use of the first value. Our guide here is nature. Nature creates endless clusters of relationships by balancing cooperating and competing forces.

If our young people were filled only with aggression—or daring or courage, as they might see it—they would die off continually, in large numbers, hurling themselves at cars, cliffs, ocean waves, outer space, and one another. But they are also encouraged to acquire judgment—wisdom, as their elders see it—that will direct them to practice courage in ways likely to benefit rather than harm them and their society. Be aggressive, assertive, and ambitious, but aim to use your drive to become an entrepreneur, a scientist, a doctor, an athlete, an artist, or a musician, rather than a criminal or a highway casualty. Strive to participate in your society in a way that encourages compromise rather than cruelty. And most importantly, remember what would exist today if, historically, there had been no human values at all.

Some societies and some individuals within those societies don’t balance courage with intelligence very well, and excesses result. But over time, the overall movement for our species, despite the difficulties or pain incurred, is toward a social ecosystem of ever greater vigor, wisdom, tolerance, and diversity. There were once a few hundred of us; there are now over seven billion. On this earth, on Mars, and beyond our solar system, nothing living sits still; we either evolve or we die.

Freedom, as a value programmed into children, also is useful to society. It drives all, the young especially, to develop talents and live motivated lives. But, if it weren’t tempered and complemented with love, freedom as a social value would beget cliques and subcultures, then prejudice, then strife, then anarchy.

Brotherly love, as a widely accepted basic value, solves this dilemma for society. In Western society, for example, love seemed so crucial to Jesus that he told his disciples to aim to live by love above all other virtues. He proclaimed that it was the one thing he’d taught them that they must not forget. Implicitly, he was saying that all other values—even courage and wisdom and their benefits—accrue from love.

“A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another as I have loved you. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” (John 13: 34-35)

Thus, humans sustain and spread their societies by practicing lifestyles that may seem paradoxical to anyone who looks for all phenomena to be reduced to simple parts. Our behaviors and the values that drive them mirror the balance principle of their prototype—that is, the ecosystem of the earth. A culture is a self-monitoring and self-regulating system that is designed to respond to reality within strategically set limits or parameters—set by the values that it teaches to its citizens. Our morés can seem to be built on logical contradictions, but they are anything but. Rather, opposing forces, by constant interaction, create dynamic equilibria. 

   

This is basic systems theory. We couldn’t survive long in this uncertain reality, as individuals or societies, if our lives were otherwise. And the balances are tricky to find and maintain, but who really expected easy? Freedom is a precious, beautiful thing. If the price of it, over the long haul,  is an honest, loving attitude and standard of conduct, there is a deep sense of justice and symmetry to that picture. A good life for an individual or her/his society is hard - but not impossible. Freedom asks only all that we have to give.