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Notes -
There is a level lower than culture: material reality. Unlike less intelligent beings, humans can adapt quickly to a new ecosystem by learning traits that are advantageous in that ecosystem. We don't have to wait for multiple generations for small changes in behaviour, we can develop a culture in a company in a matter of weeks. A national culture can evolve in centuries, while the corresponding differences would take at least three orders of magnitude longer if they were genetic.
Culture changes as the ecosystem changes and new cultural adaptations arise. These changes can be due to cultural changes as well as the material reality changing. Much of the cultural change we have seen in the past decades has happened in the parts of the world that consume the most oil. The social upheaval of the past century is less grounded in cultural innovation and more grounded in the ecosystem being fundamentally altered by fossil fuels. Hyperindividualism makes sense when mortality salients are largely gone. When there is enough material excess for people not to have to rely on social networks in order to get by the selection becomes a function of standing out in the crowd.
The Afghan culture is a function of small groups of isolated people trying to survive in a resource constrained environment.
Climates change, resources become more or less scarce, pandemics, wars and other factors will change the ecosystem. I do agree with human cultural change being a major driving factor but the world around us has changed profoundly.
if you re read the second paragraph I think you’ll see we agree that it’s a combo of cultural and external change
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