Chapters 15.                                        (continued) 

People in varied cultures in many parts of the world establish market squares in the middle of their towns for commercial activities like the selling of fish, and they hire police to patrol the market to stop thieves. Getting fish out of the water and into human stomachs is healthy for those humans who learn to catch fish and set up markets. 

Marketplaces, police officers, and currencies are efficient social constructs because they help societies maximize the usefulness of what their citizens produce; they allow capital to flow, in a timely way, to where it can do the most good in human terms.

Thus, certain meme complexes we call values or principles steer us toward creating institutions that are advantageous for the tribe and especially for those subgroups that believe in the effective values most devoutly. The values (meme complexes) survive in meme-space because they foster behavior patterns that work, and the members of the tribe who hold these values most passionately survive to pass the values on to their young.

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 1980s, “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 men to beat women or children or each other or engage in crime or war. We can learn to imprison rather than execute convicted murderers. We can learn to see regular exercise and moderate eating as mere habits of all normal adults.

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 its main 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 slowly and grudgingly, but we can change. We can learn a mode of cultural evolution that is vigorous but not militaristic.