We are a conscious, intelligent, and adaptive species, and yes human culture updates and we move through social revolutions with all the passion and feeling of our hearts. In a way, though, culture and social revolution is fad. We need to perpetually adopt the attitude that works now. And now. And then now.
Mental invention - whether by new prescription, taboo, or social identity - is our greatest means of augmenting such dated biology, such legacy hardware, i.e. the successful genetic material of yesteryear from which we emerge. Evolution, in the traditional sense, of human beings, is slow. Yet we can change worldview, sense of self, of other, in minutes if inspiration strikes – but these are not true bug-fixes and are always retrofit over top of outdated hardware, and the original firmware built into it. Instinct, fight or flight response, threat assessment, pre-conscious discrimination - this is what is included in our firmware. It isn’t ideal, but we don’t work without it and cannot simply overwrite it. Software, like culture and ideology, on the other hand, is cheap, let’s say. We can adjust to the changing social climate by internalizing new attitudes and perspectives, and, on some level, social paradigms change from decade to decade, century to century, era to era. Yet in thousands of years, we really are not fundamentally different than pre-civilized human beings.
Although I welcome social progress and dare not take it for granted, I also see it as a type of illusion. All this to say there may be some serious limitations to how honest and authentic we can be about who we are and what our deepest impulses are. The pre-conscious processes are so continuously and necessarily obscured by modem social consciousness. Consciousness is such a complex web that the more I think about it, the idea of being honest with oneself starts to appear absurd. I normally approach these issues with a natural, maybe naive, positivity, but at the moment I have to deal with a well of cynicism as deep as they come.