Not sure if you’re still reading comments here, but if you are:I responded sometime later. This is a big part of my idea behind naturalized sociology. But even this doesn't cover all the bases..Basically I see Society = Population (biology) + Culture (noetics/memetics/behavior). You can start as small as you want and recursively get larger and larger societies grouped together. Different societies are engaged in (Darwinian) competitive struggle, with Good and Bad defined, within each society, as that which makes the society stronger. That isn’t determined in advance by some rulebook, but rather, emerges over time as what has demonstrated as being adaptively suited to the situations that society finds itself in. There is both canalization due to physical circumstances (think the institutionalized selfishness of water in Herbert’s Dune) and due to cultural factors (John Locke’s notion’s of individual rights, and the Revolution in America that were founded on it, were continuous with the British evolution, going at least as far back as the Magna Carta, of greater liberty for even those who weren’t themselves monarchs).Civilizations, in turn, are collections of interrelated societies, and “Culture Wars” are, exactly as you term it, the evolution within a society of social mores from those adaptive to one era, away from the era of its generation. Sometimes new cultures are more adaptive and succeed. Sometimes less adaptive, and they fail. From my perspective, too much of the “liberal/conservative” dichotomy arises because one group (typically the conservatives) feel rules are good *in and of themselves* while the other feels that there is no good (i.e. observable) reason to hang on to those rules. Both groups are wrong, of course, and the law of unintended consequences arises when either group blindly decides that its course of action can be undertaken without paying careful attention to the full range of causes and effects of the rule in question.My ultimate view is that what is good or bad is by what is best for the species – and for that reason, among others, I vote for the West vs. Sharia. Among other things, I don’t trust Islamic culture to provide us with rockets able to shoot down any incoming asteroids that might head our way, and I like to prepare for the long haul.I would like to say that my blog discusses things of this nature. I can honestly say that I *intend* to discuss these things on it, but… haven’t gotten around to it yet. The name of the subject – Naturalizing Sociology – is meant to be taking a look at human society’s purpose and evolution as *strictly* continuous with human biological history and evolution. So I’d welcome any further discussion of ideas along these lines.
Not sure if you’re still reading comments here, but if you are:
I responded sometime later. This is a big part of my idea behind naturalized sociology. But even this doesn't cover all the bases.
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Basically I see Society = Population (biology) + Culture (noetics/memetics/behavior). You can start as small as you want and recursively get larger and larger societies grouped together. Different societies are engaged in (Darwinian) competitive struggle, with Good and Bad defined, within each society, as that which makes the society stronger. That isn’t determined in advance by some rulebook, but rather, emerges over time as what has demonstrated as being adaptively suited to the situations that society finds itself in. There is both canalization due to physical circumstances (think the institutionalized selfishness of water in Herbert’s Dune) and due to cultural factors (John Locke’s notion’s of individual rights, and the Revolution in America that were founded on it, were continuous with the British evolution, going at least as far back as the Magna Carta, of greater liberty for even those who weren’t themselves monarchs).
Civilizations, in turn, are collections of interrelated societies, and “Culture Wars” are, exactly as you term it, the evolution within a society of social mores from those adaptive to one era, away from the era of its generation. Sometimes new cultures are more adaptive and succeed. Sometimes less adaptive, and they fail. From my perspective, too much of the “liberal/conservative” dichotomy arises because one group (typically the conservatives) feel rules are good *in and of themselves* while the other feels that there is no good (i.e. observable) reason to hang on to those rules. Both groups are wrong, of course, and the law of unintended consequences arises when either group blindly decides that its course of action can be undertaken without paying careful attention to the full range of causes and effects of the rule in question.
My ultimate view is that what is good or bad is by what is best for the species – and for that reason, among others, I vote for the West vs. Sharia. Among other things, I don’t trust Islamic culture to provide us with rockets able to shoot down any incoming asteroids that might head our way, and I like to prepare for the long haul.
I would like to say that my blog discusses things of this nature. I can honestly say that I *intend* to discuss these things on it, but… haven’t gotten around to it yet. The name of the subject – Naturalizing Sociology – is meant to be taking a look at human society’s purpose and evolution as *strictly* continuous with human biological history and evolution. So I’d welcome any further discussion of ideas along these lines.