From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of LizR
Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2014 6:11 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Atheist
On 25 July 2014 12:48, 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List
<[email protected]> wrote:
_____
From: LizR <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2014 4:49 PM
Subject: Re: Atheist
On 25 July 2014 11:27, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:
And in any case 'natural selection' would just be replaced by 'cultural
selection' - which is natural.
>>What is 'cultural selection' ?
An ape figures out how to insert a palm frond down into a termite nest and is
able to harvest a bonanza of good termite protein... soon other apes in the
vicinity begin mimicking the original "creative" ape... with some of them
learning how to perform this new neat trick (others ignoring it and still
others failing to master the new skill)... in time -- if compelling enough --
the idea spreads throughout the larger grouping of culturally inter-acting apes
and many of the members of the larger inter-acting group learn the new valuable
technique.... mother apes (who have mastered the termite feeding learned
behavior) begin teaching their own offspring this new valuable survival skill.
After some generations the culturally learned technique is firmly established
in this particular ape sub-culture, while remaining absent in other ape
sub-cultures of the same species that have not been exposed to this new
cultural evolution.
A successful *cultural innovation* will spread (or conversely fail to
propagate) in a similar manner (through a different modality of course) as
biologically encoded evolution.
Good ideas -- i.e. those with high survival fitness -- will tend to spread
through an interacting group of individuals in a given culture, who are in
fairly close contact with each other.
I agree that this would have been useful in a situation like that. Do you think
this is still happening in Western culture? A lot of memes appear to not have
any specific survival value, although some are undoubtedly useful. But the vast
majority seem to just be what happens to be fashionable at the moment - which
is often the result of the whole meme thing having been hijacked to benefit a
few individuals.
Yes, I think it goes on all the time. Fashion is fickle as they say; so sure
fashion always happens – and is marketed in today’s global markets with
billions of dollars being spent to push the product out the door. But what
survives is Mozart.
There is a natural organic process by which the best – survivable memes – make
their way into the transmitted cultural DNA (transmogrified over time by the
accidental history surrounding their genesis and evolution into cultural
adoption)
Of course gangsters will try to hijack any and all cultures to turn them to
into captive systems working for their narrow interests. I agree with you that
“mass culture” is a tool of the narrow interests who seek to centralize power
into an exceedingly constricted elite of the very few.
But culture evolves and in some ways it follows a Darwinian trajectory, which
is not always evident to us mortal beings caught up as we are in the froth of
existence.
Sometimes bad ideas will spread, but it is rarer.
I can think of a few which have negative reproductive / survival value but have
nevertheless spread, especially religious ones.
I agree… however if you look at some negative ideas; cultural forms imprinting
on pre-existing forms (as for example Christianity or Islam has become grafted
onto preexisting cultures in often bloody genocidal manners)
Why did they survive? Because they confer survivability in some manner on
groups (i.e. cultures) practicing them. Negative as we may both agree that they
are. For example the ability of religious zealotry to brutalize human beings
and transform them into slaughter machines for god is, from a military
viewpoint a distinct advantage. A teeming army of heartless zealots is a
terrible meta-monster to face. So, while I agree heartedly with you as to the
negativity of the message, in practice zealotry has proven to be a most useful
tool in the hands of dogmatic centralized power and this confers a certain
Darwinian advantage.
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