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Harrison Koehli's avatar

Thanks for bringing up the evolutionary angle. I have a couple preliminary thoughts on this. First, that biological evolution (however conceived) provides us with our basic 'survival template'. So as you write, each species will have a different range of motion, so to speak - different limits in which to act. But as a thorough-going speciesist and anthroposupremacist, I think humans are more than *just* another species. We have purposes on top of survival, but which in general must be consistent with survival. Our ultimate goals won't be consistent with extinction, for instance, but they may be consistent with a personal sacrifice. And there is more than one type of survival. In the schema I included in my piece, with higher and lower levels, sometimes the survival of one's personal integrity trumps the survival of their body.

So the way I see it, morality must be largely consistent with biological survival, but shouldn't necessarily be reduced or equated to it.

If I remember correctly, McConkey has some interesting things to say about the evolutionary nature of things like the common law in "Darwinian Liberalism."

//Sometimes cultures get sick, but sometimes they simply evolved for a different set of circumstances and have stopped being even “good enough” and are on their way out. //

Good distinction. In the terms of my piece, the latter would be a temporal mismatch.

//Typically applying the rules of the military to civilian institutions quickly makes them deranged, just as the military quickly becomes deranged when treated like a regular 9-5 job.//

And I think this is a good example of what I had in mind re: sick cultures. Sometimes bad rules may get adopted that don't necessarily spell destruction, but which can't said to be fitting for the context in which they've taken root.

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Daniel D's avatar

Great points. I suppose one question that arises is, how do you make a "multicultural" society work, when the different people of each subculture are trying to impose their cultural values on the rest of the society? Some of these values overlap or are at least consistent, but others really aren't. Usually these subcultures occur along ethnic or religious lines, but your example of military vs civilian cultures is a good example. You almost need a sovereign who is above it all, somehow, to arbitrate these clashes; otherwise it turns into a contest of whoever can dupe a majority of voters (or hijack the institutions) gets to impose their values on everyone else. But such sovereigns are rarely trustworthy and are usually partisan to a particular subculture. It's been making me wonder if multiculturalism is actually sustainable long term. I enjoy many aspects of it, but it does seem to have that fatal flaw. And with today's culture wars, it would be as if the pandas took over a zoo and tried to make the other animals balance their diets with bamboo. (Maybe the solution is to make society more like Nature and less like a zoo.)

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