(credit: Freepik.com) 

19. Concluding Notes

As a final note, let us emphasize that this is a model of cultural evolution that works. It pictures human reality in a way that empowers us humans. What we see is that our moral codes were written by trial and error over eons to maximize survival probabilities. With this model clearly understood, we can effectively counter the postmodernists who say our values are mere arbitrary cultural constructs. They are wrong. Our values are as real as entropy and quantum uncertainty.

We can start to write a plan for our own future. Instill the Moral Realist model in our kids that will guide them past climate collapse and World War III. Can we set them on a path to complete security? Not possible. Can we toughen them to keep forming and enacting action plans with better and better survival odds? Absolutely. 

Moral Realism recommends to us a society that is free to a scary level. We fear being that free. But we are that free. On the other hand, Moral Realism sees life as exciting challenge. What shall we do today?

There is currently no other model or theory being offered that contains that hope. We may be able to save ourselves if we work at transforming ourselves as whole tribes into one tribe. Work on survival in an informed and resolute way, using strategies that are contained and explained in Moral Realism. Or we can drift deeper and deeper into materialism, militarism, cynicism, and despair.

Moral Realism is not unrestrained capitalism, nor is it Marxism. Market driven economies make wealth, but capitalists are not equipped to run a nation. Politics are complicated in ways business is not, as many industrialists in Nazi times learned to their sorrow. The centrally planned economies of Marxism also tend to wither and die. Moral Realism is the model that supports democratic pluralism as a way of life for whole societies. And it works. The evidence lies in the nations of the world now. Mixed economies balanced with government institutions. Populations varied in ethnicity, religion, gender, etc. The whole system updating regularly, growing more and more sociodiverse and dynamic.  

The role in which we humans strive to understand ourselves and to exercise proactive control over our lives has always seemed nobler to me than its cynical alternatives. I choose that role. And for the honest entrepreneurs, trades people, soldiers, teachers, etc. …yes, your life is hard. So was your Grandpa's, so was your Grandma's, and you see now, they were not fools. They were doing the best they could with what they knew at the time. But your life does have higher purpose: you are what makes democracy work, and democracy is what makes humanity work. A cliché, but a true one. Never doubt it again.

               U.N. General Assembly in session 

               (credit: Wikimedia)