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That's because cultures change on timescales of centuries. If it works at all like gene transmission works, it isn't worth adapting the culture : one of the cul
by waps 12y ago
That's because cultures change on timescales of centuries. If it works at all like gene transmission works, it isn't worth adapting the culture : one of the cultures will die out in less than the time it would take to adapt.
This is called "island species" : where there are barriers that prevent gene/meme transmission (like an ocean before the internet), you can have different cultures/races. If you take away the barrier (in Darwin's book it was a rock surfacing that allowed birds to fly from one island to another), one of the cultures will die due to cross-pollination. It is theorized that for memes, racism is one such boundary.
In history you do see this happen. Racism occurs because only a single group lives in an area. For some reason (war, natural disaster, ...) a large group of foreignors moves in, peacefully (rarely) or not. Then there is a period of time where there is obvious racism, and it disappears. Once it's gone one of the cultures vanishes entirely, and racism slowly starts to rebuild.
So don't worry : your kids will have much less problems than you do, and your grandchildren will not even know what different cultures are anymore. Ironically, these days, racism is the one of the last things remaining that can keep cultures going in the 21st century. If we destroy that, a single monoculture (one of the existing cultures, by numbers, I'd say probably Chinese culture, by far the most homogeneous at such a size) will expand and destroy everything else.
- stcredzero 12y agoThat's because cultures change on timescales of centuries. If it works at all like gene transmission works, it isn't worth adapting the culture : one of the cultures will die out in less than the time it would take to adapt. Your comment seems to carry assumptions about the granularity at which transmission works, which aren't appropriate for memes. Bacteria can gain the immunities from other bacterial species through plasmids. In the same way, people can appropriate ideas from other cultures/sub-cultures. This is called "island species" : where there are barriers that prevent gene/meme transmission What the historical record would suggest, is that effective barriers to memetic transmission are the exception rather than the rule. It's even more the exception in the era of the Internet. Racism occurs because only a single group lives in an area. Racism comes from outgroup psychology operating on signals involving race/ethnicity. I'd say that racism doesn't exist where there is no awareness of racial difference. (In those situations, classism and other forms of internecine prejudice can arise.) It is theorized that for memes, racism is one such boundary. Please give examples of memes for which racism acted as an effective boundary. Racism seems to have zero boundary effect in Japan and Korea, though their traditional cultures once institutionalized racism. EDIT: Also, recent research has revealed that biological evolution can be detected in large mammals on the timescale of only several centuries.
- mahyarm 12y agoYou forgot language barriers. I think that is far more significant.