I’ve been thinking about ancient civilizations a lot recently. Their stories are so different from mine that they seem like alien species from other worlds. The levels of cruelty practiced by the Romans, Aztecs, and antebellum Americans are almost unimaginable to me. We tell ourselves that we’re different, we would have been better. People today would all raise their hands to affirm that they would have been abolitionists, but can this be true? What would I have done? Would I have bravely stood up against the cruelty?
If I’m just playing the odds, my guess is “no”. Most people at the time didn’t speak up, so, therefore, I probably wouldn’t have either. I would have probably been there, in the colosseum cheering on the damnatio ad bestias. I would have been the Aztec priest, torturing a child during ceremonial sacrifice to ensure that he cried intensely enough to please Tlāloc, the god of rain.
What keeps me from committing these atrocities today? It's not that I'm genetically a better person than they were. Our DNA hasn’t changed very much from theirs. Genetically, we’re essentially the same.
Yet I think it’s true that I, and everyone today, would have been abolitionists. How can this be so? It’s because “I” am not just some sequence of genes. I am a person, born of genes, who has been shaped by my environment, by my culture. If the same genes were born centuries ago, into a different society with different culture, I don’t know which side of any given dispute they would reside on, but I do know that person would not be me.
Culture - our norms, behaviors, beliefs, and institutions - is powerful. It shapes us more than we realize. It is the glue that holds our society together, and the basis for moral progress in the world. Culture is why some places people stone homosexuals and others find the thought of it abhorrent. Engaging in this type of barbarism might be in your DNA, but, at least for probably anyone reading this, it’s not in your culture. Culture is why bribery is part of everyday life for some and unheard of for others. It’s what makes this world a good place to live for many, and why, at least in some cultures, we’re concerned about those for which it isn’t, no matter how far away they are. We are reaping the benefits of a powerful culture that has made life better for many people.
The Nazis wanted to find superiority in their genes to show that they should be the world's ruling class. This notion was, as many famous historians have said, complete horseshit. But the mistake goes so much further than racial superiority. Genes aren’t even what made humans rule over the world. The DNA inside us is the same as that of the hunter-gatherers who cowered in fear of saber-toothed tigers and cave bears. It’s human culture, in the form of language, knowledge, technology, and cooperation, that allows us to rule over the Earth. Our genes may be the firmware, but it is culture that runs on top like a software layer, giving us the power to thrive.
Without culture, we would be lost, and likely succumb to the same atrocities that have plagued humans throughout history. We would do well to protect it.
I’ve been talking about cultures in general here, but I want to focus on the culture I live in (roughly speaking, “Western culture”). It’s under a lot of pressure at the moment. It will, of course, continue to change. But we shouldn’t assume change means it will necessarily get better. Cultures can get worse. Probably, the long arc bends toward a better world, but in the long run, we’re all dead. And I said “probably”. Our culture is buttressed by the institutions we’ve created. We need to guard the institutions that are key to it, defend norms that enforce it, and pass laws that protect it. Those who seek to burn our institutions to the ground should think carefully about what they believe would exist without them.