Culture as an Evolutionary Tool
Culture is the means by which complex behaviors—behaviors that cannot be easily encoded into biological instinct—“evolve.” This is what makes cultural memes[[1]](#_ftn1) fundamentally distinct from memes in general: While general memetic sets replicate primarily by using a host to infect other hosts with said meme, cultural and religious memetic sets primarily spread by influencing the fitness of any given host (by fitness, we mean genetic fitness—the number of surviving offspring—not the quality of life of those offspring).[[2]](#_ftn2)
Because culture can affect a person’s number of surviving offspring, traditional evolution (not just memetic evolution) shapes culture. This interplay allows complex behavior patterns to emerge among groups of people well before those behavioral instincts might otherwise biologically evolve (consider that ritual Islamic hand washing evolved long before medical science understood the advantage of this behavior).[[3]](#_ftn3)
A culture can be thought of as ever-evolving software that sits on top of—and synergistically interacts with—both biological hardware and firmware, addressing flaws our biology hasn’t had sufficient evolutionary time to address. To go further with this analogy: Biological evolution provides some basic coding, much like a low-level programming language might for a given hardware, whereas cultural evolution manipulates the high-level, object-oriented code that lets us program highly nuanced behaviors.
We can illustrate this dynamic with a colorful example: In The Pragmatist’s Guide to Sexuality, we explore copious evidence that humans almost certainly evolved to, by default, create polygynous (one man, many women) cultures (though not necessarily relationships).[[4]](#_ftn4) However, above certain population thresholds, monogamous cultures outcompete their polygynous counterparts, likely because monogamy produces measurably lower rates of cheating, rape, murder, terrorism, corruption, and other anti-social behaviors instigated by high rates of unattached males—an inevitable byproduct of polygynous cultures.[[5]](#_ftn5)
While 83%[[6]](#_ftn6) of individual human cultures are polygynous,[[7]](#_ftn7) nearly all of today’s most dominant cultures are monogamous, thanks to the historic competitive edge granted by this practice. By reducing societal ills, such as terrorism and corruption (via lower population percentages of unattached men), cultures practicing monogamy have the upper hand when spreading and conquering neighbors.
Rather than taking the evolutionary time needed for human biological predilections to evolve toward structuring societies monogamously by default, cultures that effectively enforced monogamy quickly outcompeted their rivals. This is what we mean when we say that culture supplements biologically evolved elements of human consciousness by accelerating the evolution of cognitive proclivities beyond the capacity of pure evolutionary pressure on genes.
It fascinates us how quickly people cast out aspects of their traditional cultures without understanding why those elements evolved. Many throw out the “hard stuff” in their cultures, such as fasting and arbitrary self-denial, without understanding those cultural practices evolved both for general health reasons and to strengthen the individual’s inhibitory pathways in their prefrontal cortex. Consider that strengthened inhibitory pathways likely offer some protection against intrusive thoughts and, as a result, lower rates of anxiety and depression.[[8]](#_ftn8)
Almost every common cultural practice exists because it increases the fitness of cultures that practice it. Keep in mind that fitness is morally blind. Sometimes, measures taken to increase fitness are highly immoral. Sometimes, increasing fitness means lowering rates of depression with seemingly arbitrary rules. Other times, maximizing fitness means forcing gay people to pretend to be straight or be killed because socially accepting same-sex couplings has historically lowered birth rates.[[9]](#_ftn9)
This is not one of those books that assumes “natural” or “traditional” things to be better or somehow inherently good. As we demonstrate in The Pragmatist’s Guide to Sexuality, humans almost certainly have a proclivity toward infanticide of stepchildren. The fact that humans have evolved certain cultural or biological instincts doesn’t mean we should encourage those behaviors.
We, nevertheless, choose to inhabit a world of pragmatic truth. The human brain evolved to work within a strict cultural framework. Our brains and cultural/religious mechanisms co-evolved to work together. Operating our brains in a cultural/religious vacuum is like trying to run a machine without any grease—it will start fritzing and fall to pieces at a much faster rate. When individuals cast off their ancestral cultural/religious frameworks or make up new ones out of whole cloth without carefully investigating the instrumental roles cultural practices play, is it any surprise that they find themselves barely holding it together mentally by their mid-30s while desperately searching for community and purpose? Instead of taking the winding road to their destination, they decided to just beeline their car (brain) straight through muddy fields and, in the process, damage their car.
**Because it is endlessly annoying to keep referring to both culture and religion, we will call specific cultural-religious memetic packages “cultivars.”** We chose this word for its colloquial definition as well as its etymology (cult+variation), with “cult” originally non-judgmentally referring to care, worship, culture, and reverence (it is where our word “cultivate” comes from). Honestly, we’d prefer to call this book The Pragmatist’s Guide to Crafting Cultivars, but as our use of the word is not yet pervasive, “religion” must be our public-facing shorthand for “an intergenerational culture and worldview.”
The Pragmatist’s Guide to Crafting Religion is focused on a fun experiment: Can we craft the perfect cultivar?
This is a selfishly motivated experiment. We want to create a powerful culture for the benefit of our children and the growing tribe of “Pragmatists” who read our books. With the framework we present, you, too, should be able to join us and attempt to create your own lasting culture. It might be a few centuries before we see the results of this experiment, but we genuinely believe that failure could lead to the death of our species and eventually all life (we know, it’s dramatic—more on that shortly).
Exploring cultivar differences and how they affect adherents’ life choices in an effort to develop a culture that ultimately persists through millennia is like studying comparative evolution while spending a good deal of time trying to create the ultimate evolutionarily competitive organism that may also do some benefit to civilization. (Think: An organism that can terraform other planets.)
In short, it’s really fun.
This brings us to what will likely be one of the most unique elements of this book: While other people have written extensively on cultural and memetic evolution, to our knowledge, they almost all have an intensely antagonistic perspective toward religions in general—and especially toward stricter, more “conservative” religions. This deeply clouds their perspective on the wider civilizational game at play.
We hold a deep admiration for the lives led by adherents of many stricter religious traditions, from members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (i.e., Mormons) to Evangelical Protestants and Anabaptists.[[10]](#_ftn10) It may seem odd to encounter people like us—affiliated with the Effective Altruism and transhumanist movements—speak with greater reverence for Amish culture than their own. Still, despite the above cultures’ faults, they are out-competing our own at the evolutionary and civilizational level, not just in terms of birth rate but also in surprising realms like mental health.[[11]](#_ftn11) To dismiss these groups’ competitive advantages requires blinding arrogance.
Throughout history, as humans developed social environments we had not biologically evolved to handle (such as early cities). Through the selective pressures on cultivars, we evolved social technologies that permitted relatively rapid adaptation. Unfortunately, from the internet to megacities, the rate of change humans encounter today has become so rapid and momentous that even social evolution may not have time to act before permanent damage is inflicted. We may have reached a point in human history at which we must intentionally engineer cultural solutions to ensure a prosperous future for our species. To do so, we must understand why cultures evolved the way they did.