History, cultures, and our stupidity

History is not a mean for making accurate predictions. We study history not to know the future but to widen our horizons, to understand that our present situations are neither natural nor inevitable, and that we consequently have many more possibilities before us than we can imagine. There is no proof that history is working for the benefit of humans because we lack an objective scale on which to measure such benefit. Different cultures define "good" differently, and we have no objective yardstick by which to judge between them. In a conflict, the victors, of course, always believe that their definition is correct. But why should we believe the victors? At the end of the day, only who wins survives to tell the story. 

Organic parasites such as viruses, live inside the body of their host. As long as the host lives long enough for the parasite to survive, the latter cares little about the conditions of the prior. In just this fashion, cultural ideas live inside the minds of humans. Humans die, but ideas spread: cultures are mental parasites that emerge accidentally, and thereafter take advantage of all people infected by them. 

This approach is sometimes called memetic. Just as organic evolution is based on the replication of organic information units called “genes”, so cultural evolution is based on the replication of cultural information units called “memes”. However, scholars disdain memetic seeing it as an amateurish attempt to explain cultural processes with crude biological analogies. Postmodernism thinkers speak about discourses rather than memes as the building blocks of culture. Yet, they too see cultures as propagating themselves with little regard for the benefit of humankind. Game theory explains how in multi-player systems, views and behaviours patterns that harm all players nevertheless manage to take root and spread. Arm races are a famous example. When Pakistan buys advanced airplanes, India responds in kind. When India develops nuclear bombs, Pakistan follows. 

At the end, the balance of power may remain much as it was, but meanwhile billions of dollars that could have been invested into education and health are spent on weapons. 

Arm racing is a pattern of behaviour that spreads itself like a virus from one country to another. No matter how you call it - game theory, postmodernism, or memetic - the dynamics of history are not directed towards enhancing human well-being. There is no basis for thinking that the most successful cultures in history are necessarily the best one for Homo Sapiens.
That's all. 

- original content from Sapiens (Yuval Noah Harari)