II.6            Mind Makers: Nature, Culture, Learning
By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
                                                         Confucius (ca. 551-479)
 
As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without cultivation, so the mind without culture can never produce good fruit.
                                                                Seneca (4 BCE-65 CE)
                                                                        
Culture is the process by which a person becomes all that they were created capable of being.
                                                                              Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)
 
Culture is a study of human perfection, . . . which is the exercise of rationality as opposed to instinct.
 
Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.
                                                                                Matthew Arnold (1822-88)

                         No culture can live, if it attempts to be exclusive.
                                                                            Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
 
                  A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
                                                            United Negro College Fund (1972-present)

 

 

A. About Culture in General

B. The Gene-Culture Co-Evolution

C. Memes, Units of Cultural Information:

Introduction
1. Common Memes and Their Struggle for Existence
2. Memetics, Evolution and Spread of Memes

D. Cultural Universals Express Needs and Abilities

E. Concerning Personality and the Quality of Life

 

A.                                   About Culture in General
Cultures were preceded by societies, and a society denotes here "a group of animals or plants living together in a single environment and regarded as constituting a homogenous unit or entity." In this sense, group living existed from the beginning and evolved with life itself. Culture, however, is not simply group living because it requires the passing on of units of information, memes (see below), from one generation to the next. And this activity required the evolution of larger brains with the capacity to develop intelligence, that is, the capacity to learn and to pass it on to the next generation. For details see The Emergence of Intelligence.
     The culture of a people includes their total way of life that includes their set of learned behaviors, beliefs, attitudes, knowledge, values, or ideals that are characteristics of a particular society or population. Its overall objective is to provide a better quality of life through improved means to satisfy our psycho-biological needs. It appears that cultures evolve through a gradual, continues process of adaptive change to concrete, observable, and sometimes measurable things such as their physical and social environment or their technology. This position is known as evolutionary cultural materialism.
     When we study the cultural adaptive relationships between a society and the environment in which it resides, we restrict ourselves to a particular social niche. However, this niche, and all other social niches, are affected by each other through the movement of ideas and things. Together they make up the human cultural ecosystem, and it is to this general ecosystem that we are adapted.
     While all cultures are advancements over purely instinctive behaviors and offer advanced control over the environment, they vary considerable in their development. However, even in the most "primitive"--almost stone-age-like cultures--we find the basic cultural universals such as: food, water, clothing, shelter, social organization, family, gender roles, language, recreation, arts, environment, oral history, incest taboo, trance, and spirituality. In the most developed cultures we find most or all of the 400 or so cultural universal listed below.
     Cultural universals are sometimes referred to as "empty universals" because by just observing their presence in a particular culture does not indicate to what extend they are practiced or which values are attached to them. Moreover, although there are universal cultural needs, they may be satisfied with culturally diverse means. For example, the need for an explanatory worldview, ultimate belief, and social control led to a variety of religious belief systems. Also, cultures, and individuals within cultures, exist at different levels of awareness or consciousness concerning the quantitative and qualitative aspects of these universals. Hence, some cultures are superior to others.
     Our behavior is largely learned through other than genetic transmission, that is, we learn  from our particular culture. Our physiology, nervous system, muscle structure, etc., makes behavior possible and it is plausible to assume that these have evolved to facilitate it. Therefore, our behavior as expressed in our culture is linked to our biology. We are biologically programmed to acquire culture through the structure of our brain. However, it should be noted that biology and culture affect each other--there is a gene-culture co-evolution.
    Finally, we should note that culturally rather than genetically transmitted behavior patterns have also been observed among nonhuman animals such as the great apes. However, the qualitative and quantitative aspects of human culture pale that of all other primates.
 
B.                     The Gene-Culture Co-Evolution
E. O. Wilson (b.1929) is a biologist and the foremost proponent of the new scientific discipline of sociobiology, the study of the genetic basis of the social behavior of all animals, including humans. Wilson connects genes to culture as follows. First he notes that well- established finding in psychology that our genetically inherited traits equipped us with a propensity to learn certain behaviors while they also predispose us to avoid others. However, this innate disposition for prepared learning is only a subclass of epigenetic rules.
      As recognized in biology:
Epigenetic rules comprise the full range of inherited regularities of development in anatomy, physiology, cognition, and behavior. They are the algorithms, a preexisting set of a limited number of instructions, that solve the problems of growth and differentiation that create a fully functioning organism. The base for the epigenetic code is a system above the genetic code of a single cell. While in one individual the genetic code in each cell is the same, the epigenetic code is tissue and cell specific. "The genetic code is the piano, the epigenetic code the tune."
 
     For example, epigenesis includes the development of a human from an egg through a series of processes in which undifferentiated (unorganized, shapeless) cell masses gradually differentiate into organs and organ systems. Hence, the long held theory of preformation, the idea that the fertilized egg contains a miniature individual, a homunculus, that growth into the adult stage was proven wrong. 
Genetically transmitted, these epigenetic rules also channel the acquisition of culture, but culture in turn helps to determine which genes survive and reproduce in breeding populations.
Hence, it is:
The hereditary regularities of mental development that bias cultural evolution in one direction as opposed to another, and thus connect the genes to culture (Wilson in his work Consilience 1998, 150, 164-6).
 
Wilson’s concept of gene-culture co-evolution together with his attempt to unify all the sciences towards the perfection of the human condition is ground breaking. Below I quote his summary of the gene-culture correlation:

  1. Genes prescribe epigenetic rules, which are the regularities of sensory perception and mental development that animate and channel the acquisition of culture.

  2. Culture helps to determine which of the prescribing genes survive and multiply from one generation to the next.

  3. Successful new genes alter the epigenetic rules of populations.

  4. The altered epigenetic rules change the direction and effectiveness of the channels of cultural acquisition (Wilson 1998, 157; my numbering).

In sum: It may be concluded that the individual's biology is a significant determinant in the development of mind and personality, for human nature, which includes the cultural universals listed below, is a collection of epigenetic rules, the genetic patterns of mental development. What we actually observe as culture, the implementation of these universals, are products but not parts of human nature. For example, art is not part of human nature, but our appreciation of art is. Also, because biology is such an influential determinant, human nature and mind are not infinitely malleable by culture.
     Moreover, cultural universals, like our appreciation of art is passed on vertically by genes from one generation to the next. However, the products of cultural universals, in this case art itself, like prints of a famous painting, may also spread horizontally to many individuals or cultures. Also, the cultural universals may be and have been studied scientifically, for example, concepts such as fear of snakes, the incest taboo, or art appreciation. Moreover, Wilson together with C. J. Lumsden argued in their work Genes, Mind, and Culture: The Coevolutionary Process (1981) that the fundamental biological units of culture must correspond to neuronal networks that function as nodes [central points such as basic meanings and concepts] of semantic memory.
     Finally, specific products of cultural universals, things that satisfy the needs or desires raised by those genetically inherited universals, form units of cultural information. The term "meme" has been coined to collectively name all kinds of units of cultural information. And the discipline studying memes has been named "memetics" analogous to the study of genes being named genetics.
 
C.                          Memes, Units of Cultural Information
                                         Ideas have a life of their own.
                                                                        An old proverb
                                             Beliefs are contagious.
                                                                        Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
 
                    Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
      Every thought, either philosophical or religious, is interested in perpetuating itself.
                                                                                   Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
                                                                                   
Introduction
1. Common Memes and Their Struggle for Existence
2. Memetics, Evolution and Spread of Memes
 
Introduction
Most, if not all thinking, but for sure, all higher level thinking is done in language. If one does not have the language, one cannot think about it. And thinking about how cultures come about and function can make important contributions to individuals, their societies, and the world community. As a matter of fact, the survival of this planet probably depends on thinking about these things. Here, the concept of a meme (from the Greek word for "to imitate") denotes a unit of cultural information such as ideas, concepts, practices, or goods. And the study of memes is known as memetics. It streamlines thinking by introducing a common vocabulary that describes types of memes and individual ones together with their origins, development, spread, life, modification, abatement, demise, and influence for right and wrong, good and bad.
     As a unit of cultural evolution or as a unit of imitation, a meme in some ways mirror a gene and one might extend Darwinian principles to explain the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. For instance, memes reproduce themselves and can move through a "culture" in a manner like the behavior of a virus. However, while there is no such thing as a good virus, memes can be good, bad, or even both. Finally, memetics offers plausible explanations for the origins, growth, and workings of culture and personality.
 
1. Common Memes and Their Struggle for Existence             
Memes in a non-literate society were passed on orally or by imitating the behavior or actions of others. In a literate society, the same applies but written communication offers another form of learning. And within the context of writing, the single word and its meaning represent a small meme. Next, several words together arranged in a proposition or declarative sentence is an example of a larger meme. And the entire text of a specific book exemplifies a much larger meme. And a very large meme would be the description or comprehensive worldview of a specific culture, which, however, can be broken down for analysis.
  • One may think of memes as all those things non-human animals, with some exceptions for primates, cannot have because they do not have the intelligence for culture. The same goes for humans that have not been enculturated during their formative years, that is, by the age of twelve or so. These are children that were raised in isolation or by animals. So it is acquired culture that makes us human.
  • Another way of thinking about memes is to think of them as specific products of cultural universals, things--material goods, information, abilities, creations of the mind--that satisfy the needs or desires raised by those genetically inherited universals.
Common memes include:
Material goods--such as permanent tools, machinery, implements, factories, computers, medicine, food, closing, shelter, household equipment, toiletries, means for transportation and all other things made or manufactured by humans.
Products of the mind--such as all types of literature, poetry, epic poems, anecdotes, nursery rhymes, proverbs, aphorisms, jokes, gossip, music, fashions, explanations, logic, science, education, technology, practices, habits, recipes, advice, theories, science, pseudoscience, religions, worldviews, moral and behavioral codes, concepts such as freedom, justice, property relations, egoism, altruism, and all human knowledge (see Division of Knowledge by Disciplines).
 
Memes are subject to the struggle for existence with survival of the fittest.
Concerning words and languages, for example, Charles Darwin points out in his work The Descent of Man (1871):

We see variability in every tongue, and new words are continually cropping up; but as there is a limit to the powers of the memory, single words, like whole languages, gradually become extinct. As Max Müller [born in Dessau, Germany, 1823-1900] has pointed out:

A struggle for life is constantly going on amongst the words and grammatical forms in each language. The better, the shorter, the easier forms are constantly gaining the upper hand, and they owe their success to their own inherent virtue.

To these more important causes of the survival of certain words, mere novelty and fashion may be added; for there is in the mind of man a strong love for slight changes in all things. The survival or preservation of certain favored words in the struggle for existence is natural selection.

     With reference to ideas, John Maynard    concluded his The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1935) with the following observation:

. . . the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribler of a few years back. I am sure the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. . . . But soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

 
2. Memetics, Evolution and Spread of Memes
Memetics as a discipline may be thought of as a Neo-Darwinian strategy (see The Evolution of Life) to evolutionary models of cultural information spread through self-replicating units of culture that are based on the concept of the meme.
Some practitioners of memetics, memeticists, claim:
  • Memes evolve by natural selection (similarly to Darwinian biological evolution) through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance influencing an individual entity's reproductive success.
  • Memes are subject to evolutionary pressures. This may include the following:
  1. Censorship: If an institution, government, religion, etc., forbids or suppresses the free passing on of a particular meme or a complex of memes, then that meme will suffer a selective disadvantage and become dormant if not extinct.
  2. Coercion: If a meme promises some future benefit then people may be inclined to believe it. Likewise, if a meme constitutes a threat then people may become frightened into believing it. The two, the carrot and the stick, are often combined in coercion. The coerced is given a choice but loses no matter what he chooses. This is because of the coercers threat, but by obeying, the coerced can minimize the loss. Examples are: "Give me your wallet or I shoot you!" or "Accept this (low paying) job (or starve)!"                                                              The most world-changing coercion is practiced by the world religions for the last 3,000 years: "If you want the blessings of an afterlife (Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition) or next life (in Hinduism and Buddhism) and not be damned, then join us and do as we say." In order to be saved and not be damned one has to join, but loses one's individuality and independence in matters of the mind such as personal moral autonomy and self-government.
  3. Economics: If institutions that benefit from their slogans also own or influence the mass media, then the meme has a greater likelihood of benefiting from a greater audience. If a meme tends to increase the riches of an individual holding it, then that meme may spread because of imitation. Such memes might include: "Hard work is good for you" and "If you work hard in our country, you will succeed."
  4. Experience: If a meme does not connected to an individual's experience, then it has less of an impact and is less likely remembered
  5. Pleasure/Pain: If a meme results in more pleasure or less pain (positive reinforcement) in a person, then he or she will more likely remember it.
  • Some memes will not be passed on or copied perfectly. A few will mutate less successfully and become extinct or near extinct, for example, Zoroastrianism and treating the sick with magic. Others memes will, for better or for worse, survive, improve, multiply by extraordinary proportions, and spread, for example, science and antibiotics or Christianity and Islam.
  • Memes most beneficial to their hosts will not necessarily survive; rather, those memes that replicate the most effectively spread best, which allows for the possibility that successful memes may prove detrimental to their hosts.
  • Memes may also lie dormant for long periods of time. For example, the works of Plato and Aristotle had disappeared in the West during much of the Dark Middle Ages but were re-discovered in the 13th century. Also, Copernicus (1473-1543) re-discovered the ancient heliocentric views of Aristarchus of Samos (3rd century BCE).
  • Memes spread by the behaviors that they generate in their hosts. Hosts may pass on memes?  For example, the fashion-value that "less is more" spreads through the behavior of people dressing down in understated clothes and acting superior. This behavior then has the effect of showing others a real-life example of this fashion-value. Verbal transmission can supplement or replace this imitative method.
  • Memeticists often take concepts from the theory of evolution, especially population genetics, and apply them to human culture. In the process they arrive at new terms by using "mem" or "meme" as a prefix to existing biological terms or by substituting them for "gen" or "gene" in words.
D.              Cultural Universals Express Needs and Abilities

Culture facilitates that ancient Greek ideal of "a sound mind in a sound body" in an intellectually honest and compassionately moral community.

Since all humans have an almost indistinguishable common biology or genetic basis, it follows that we should also have common abilities as well as needs that culture attempts to satisfy while following common innate directions or preferences. The immediately preceding leads us to suspect that there should be cultural universals. And indeed, the anthropologist Donald E. Brown, and as others before him, confirms Wilson's concept of gene-culture co-evolution at least in a crucial part when he is:
 
Challenging the assumption that human behavior is primarily determined by culture, [and] contends that certain behavioral traits are common to human beings everywhere. In Human Universals (1991), he addresses the problems posed for anthropology by the topic of universals, discusses studies that have caused anthropologists to rethink their position, and provides an ethnography [culture] of "The Universal People."
Moreover, in the same work, Brown lists about 400 universals. Below are about 360 of them as published in Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate, 2002.
                                  Human Universals
     "comprise those features of culture, society, language, behavior, and psyche
                                for which there are no known exceptions." Donald E. Brown

  • abstraction in speech & thought

  • actions under self-control distinguished from those not under control

  • aesthetics

  • affection expressed and felt

  • age grades

  • age statuses

  • age terms

  • ambivalence

  • anthropomorphization

  • anticipation

  • antonyms

  • attachment

  • baby talk

  • belief in supernatural/religion

  • beliefs, false

  • beliefs about death

  • beliefs about disease

  • beliefs about fortune and misfortune

  • binary cognitive distinctions

  • biological mother and social mother normally the same person

  • black (color term)

  • body adornment

  • childbirth customs

  • childcare

  • childhood fears

  • childhood fear of loud noises

  • childhood fear of strangers

  • choice making (choosing alternatives)

  • classification

  • classification of age

  • classification of behavioral propensities

  • classification of body parts

  • classification of colors

  • classification of fauna

  • classification of flora

  • classification of inner states

  • classification of kin

  • classification of sex

  • classification of space

  • classification of tools

  • classification of weather conditions

  • coalitions

  • collective identities

  • conflict

  • conflict, consultation to deal with

  • conflict, means of dealing with

  • conflict, mediation of

  • conjectural reasoning

  • containers

  • continua (ordering as cognitive pattern)

  • contrasting marked and nonmarked sememes (meaningful elements in language)

  • cooking

  • cooperation

  • cooperative labor

  • copulation normally conducted in privacy

  • corporate (perpetual) statuses

  • coyness display

  • critical learning periods

  • crying

  • cultural variability

  • culture

  • culture/nature distinction

  • customary greetings

  • daily routines

  • dance

  • death rituals

  • decision making

  • decision making, collective

  • differential valuations

  • directions, giving of

  • discrepancies between speech, thought, and action

  • dispersed groups

  • distinguishing right and wrong

  • diurnality [active during the day]

  • divination

  • division of labor

  • division of labor by age

  • division of labor by sex

  • dominance/submission

  • dreams

  • dream interpretation

  • economic inequalities

  • economic inequalities, consciousness of

  • emotions

  • empathy

  • entification (treating patterns and relations as things)

  • environment, adjustments to

  • envy

  • envy, symbolic means of coping with

  • ethnocentrism

  • etiquette

  • explanation

  • face (word for)

  • facial communication

  • facial expression of anger

  • facial expression of contempt

  • facial expression of disgust

  • facial expression of fear

  • facial expression of happiness

  • facial expression of surprise

  • facial expressions, masking/modifying of

  • fairness (equity), concept of

  • family (or household)

  • father and mother, separate kin terms for

  • fears

  • fear of death

  • fears, ability to overcome some

  • feasting

  • females do more direct childcare

  • figurative speech

  • fire

  • folklore

  • food preferences

  • food sharing

  • future, attempts to predict

  • generosity admired

  • gestures

  • gift giving

  • good and bad distinguished

  • gossip

  • government

  • grammar

  • group living

  • groups that are not based on family

  • habituation

  • hairstyles

  • hand (word for)

  • healing the sick (or attempting to)

  • hope

  • hospitality

  • husband older than wife on average

  • hygienic care

  • identity, collective

  • imagery

  • incest between mother and son unthinkable or tabooed

  • incest, prevention or avoidance

  • in-group distinguished from out-group(s)

  • in-group biases in favor of

  • inheritance rules

  • institutions (organized co-activities)

  • insulting

  • intention

  • interest in bioforms (living things or things that resemble them)

  • interpolation

  • interpreting behavior

  • intertwining (e.g., weaving)

  • jokes

  • judging others

  • kin, close distinguished from distant

  • kin groups

  • kin terms translatable by basic relations of procreation

  • kinship statuses

  • language

  • language employed to manipulate others

  • language employed to misinform or mislead

  • language is translatable

  • language not a simple reflection of reality

  • language, prestige from proficient use of

  • law (rights and obligations)

  • law (rules of membership)

  • leaders

  • lever

  • likes and dislikes

  • linguistic redundancy

  • logical notions

  • logical notion of "and"

  • logical notion of "equivalent"

  • logical notion of "general/particular"

  • logical notion of "not"

  • logical notion of "opposite"

  • logical notion of "part/whole"

  • logical notion of "same"

  • magic

  • magic to increase life

  • magic to sustain life

  • magic to win love

  • making comparisons

  • male and female and adult and child seen as having different natures

  • males dominate public/political realm

  • males engage in more coalitional violence

  • males more aggressive

  • males more prone to lethal violence

  • males more prone to theft

  • males, on average, travel greater distances over lifetime

  • manipulate social relations

  • marking at phonemic, syntactic, and lexical levels

  • marriage

  • materialism

  • meal times

  • mearning, most units of are non-universal

  • measuring

  • medicine

  • melody

  • memory

  • mental maps

  • mentalese [A hypothetical language in which concepts and propositions are represented in the mind without words]

  • metaphor

  • metonym

  • mood- or consciousness-altering techniques and/or substances

  • moral sentiments

  • moral sentiments, limited effective range of

  • morphemes

  • mother normally has consort during child-rearing years

  • mourning

  • murder proscribed

  • music

  • music, children's

  • music related in part to dance

  • music related in part to religious activity

  • music seen as art (a creation)

  • music, vocal

  • music, vocal, includes speech forms

  • musical redundancy

  • musical repetition

  • musical variation

  • myths

  • narrative

  • nomenclature (perhaps the same as classification)

  • non-bodily decorative art

  • normal distinguished from abnormal states

  • nouns

  • numerals (counting)

  • Oedipus complex

  • oligarchy (de facto)

  • one (numeral)

  • onomatopoeia

  • overestimating objectivity of thought

  • pain

  • past/present/future

  • person, concept of

  • personal names

  • phonemes

  • phonemes defined by set of minimally contrasting features

  • phonemes, merging of

  • phonemes, range from 10 to 70 in number

  • phonemic change, inevitability of

  • phonemic change, rules of

  • phonemic system

  • planning

  • planning for future

  • play

  • play to perfect skills

  • poetry/rhetoric

  • poetic line, uniform length range

  • poetic lines characterized by repetition and variation

  • poetic lines demarcated by pauses

  • polysemy (one word has several meanings)

  • possessive, intimate

  • possessive, loose

  • practice to improve skills

  • precedence, concept of (that's how the leopard got its spots)

  • preference for own children and close kin (nepotism)

  • prestige inequalities

  • pretend play

  • pride

  • private inner life

  • promise

  • pronouns

  • pronouns, minimum two numbers

  • pronouns, minimum three persons

  • proper names

  • property

  • proverbs, sayings

  • proverbs, sayings - in mutually contradictory forms

  • psychological defense mechanisms

  • rape

  • rape proscribed

  • reciprocal exchanges (0f labor, goods, or services)

  • reciprocity, negative (revenge, retaliation)

  • recognition of individuals by face

  • redress of wrongs

  • resistance to abuse of poser, to dominance

  • rhythm

  • right-handedness as population norm

  • risk-taking

  • rites of passage

  • rituals

  • role and personality seen in dynamic interrelationship (i.e., departures from role can be explained in terms of individual personality)

  • sanctions

  • sanctions fro crimes against the collectivity

  • sanctions include removal from the social unit

  • self-control

  • self distinguished from other

  • self as neither wholly passive nor wholly autonomous

  • self as subject and object

  • self-image, awareness of (concern for what others think)

  • self-image, manipulation of

  • self-image, wanted to be positive

  • self is responsible

  • semantics

  • semantic category of affecting things and people

  • semantic category of dimension

  • semantic category of giving

  • semantic category of location

  • semantic category of motion

  • semantic category of other physical properties

  • semantic components

  • semantic components, generation

  • semantic components, sex

  • sememes, commonly used ones are short, infrequently used ones are longer

  • senses unified

  • sex differences in spatial cognition and behavior

  • sex (gender) terminology is fundamentally binary

  • sex statuses

  • sexual attraction

  • sexual attractiveness

  • sexual jealousy

  • sexual modesty

  • sexual regulation

  • sexual regulation includes incest prevention

  • sexuality as focus of interest

  • shame

  • shelter

  • sickness and death seen as related

  • snakes, wariness around

  • social structure

  • socialization

  • socialization expected from senior kin

  • socialization includes toilet training

  • spear

  • special speech for special occasions

  • statuses and roles

  • statuses, ascribed and achieved

  • statuses distinguished from individuals

  • statuses on other than sex, age, or kinship bases

  • stinginess, disapproval of

  • stop/nonstop contrasts (in speech sounds)

  • succession

  • sucking wounds

  • sweets preferred

  • symbolism

  • symbolic speech

  • synesthetic metaphors

  • synonyms

  • taboos

  • tabooed foods

  • tabooed utterances

  • taxonomy

  • territoriality

  • thumb sucking

  • tickling

  • time

  • time, cyclicity of

  • tools

  • tool dependency

  • tool making

  • tools for cutting

  • tools to make tools

  • tools patterned culturally

  • tools, permanent

  • tools for pounding

  • toys, playthings

  • trade

  • triangular awareness (assessing relationships among the self and two other people)

  • true and false distinguished)

  • turn-taking

  • two (numeral)

  • tying material (i.e., something like string)

  • units of time

  • verbs

  • violence, some forms of proscribed

  • visiting

  • vocalic/non-vocalic contrasts in phonemes

  • vowel contrasts

  • weaning

  • weapons

  • weather control (attempts to)

  • while (color term)

  • world view

 
 
E.             Concerning Personality and the Quality of Life
It appears that what we call personality, or perhaps the self, is the over a lifetime relatively enduring pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting structured by the memes of the culture an individual is living in. In this process, the human mind is literally a battleground for competing memes. Different cultures enculturate different personalities because environmental constraints limit and determine the particular manifestations of cultural universals which in turn satisfy the needs and wants of a common underlying biology and psychology. But biology and culture are co-evolutionary and therefore interdependent. Therefore, a culture cannot mold human behavior at will because our genetic inheritance sets limits to such manipulations.
    While most cultures overtly attempt to satisfy basic human needs, they succeed only to different degrees, and therefore we may evaluate them. And evaluation of societies indicates a wide range of qualities of life. Worldwide it ranges from premature death for billionth after an unnecessarily low quality life to obscene luxury and hoarding of wealth by those who represent only a tiny fraction of the population.
 
Summary: The Brain-Mind Event
Made possible by the physical world and starting with a few nerve cells in jellyfish some 600 million years ago, more and eventually large amounts of nerve cells evolved into highly organized forms we call brains. In primates, and to a high degree in humans, these large brains have allowed self-consciousness and higher thought such as thinking about thinking and how we think about the way we think about thinking, ad infinitum. This emergence of intelligence broke the chain of purely instinctual behavior because humans could now analyze, evaluate, and modify their behavior, thus to a degree they could be held responsible for their action. These higher cerebral workings of a large brain then made possible The Intellectual Realm which is the topic of the next section.