Have you ever wondered how of all the cultures that have walked the face of the earth, why anyone in particular should arise to be so dominant and influential the world over as is Western Culture?

And have you wondered about its peculiarities…the cultural traits making ones culture stand out amongst the others? And what about the uglier aspects of culture?

Such as the ones that make some of us wonder if life has to be this way or how did our world come to be what it is? Why the great disparities, injustices and outright horrors in a culture purporting to be so civilized, advanced and just plain good for everybody?

What if I told you that every core cultural trait of Western Civilization is essentially unchanged since its Sumerian conception around 6000 years ago–that only our technology, architecture and clothes have changed.

What if I told you that Western Civilization has inherent cultural flaws that will compel it to cannibalize itself and others, over and over again as it has countless times since it first appeared.

Escape from Saharasia and The Rise of Patriarchy, Scourge of the Earth

The core-cultural traits of Western Culture were forged eons ago under extreme environmental conditions.

Conditions so extreme that some 6000 years later we are still reeling from its impact on the forebears of our culture and its subsequent impact on us and the rest of the world. For more information on the event that has forged the path of Western Civilization over the last 6000 years please see Saharasia.

Our Sumerian Mis-Conception

The grand implication to be gleaned from the preceding statement is that human cultural evolution is as much shaped by environmental factors as is our biological evolution.

Meaning that who or what we become or how we behave is not so much an act of will but more a set of predetermined responses to environmental stimuli.

The reality of the preceding statement undermines one of the most basic and long standing assumptions of Western thought. And that is that we are wholly responsible for our own actions, without any other considerations and therefore subject to personal condemnation and punishment as a consequence.

The religious and secular ideology of the West is saturated with a guilt and punishment predisposition towards “unlawful” and “socially unapproved” variances of human behavior.

I agree, personal accountability has its merits both for society and the individual. It is our archaic misconception about the nature of personal responsibility and subsequent mistreatment that demands urgent updating.

Under certain conditions individuals will emerge and their actions benefit themselves and, or society. Under other circumstances the opposite is true. In either case it is the matter of personal fortune or misfortune determining the categories our society places us in.

For example, it is true that certain individuals are more resilient in the face of adversity, but the trait does not come down to more magical will power. It comes down to genetic inheritance.

The Real Conception

Our individual response to the misfortunes of life comes down to the type of serotonin producing gene we inherit.

Those who are fortunate to inherit 2 long versions of the gene versus a long and a short or worse yet two short versions tend to bounce back from life’s misfortunes with greater success.

Whereas the other two combination of genes will make it more difficult to surmount life’s misfortunes.

Mountains of social prejudice and laws are based upon our incomplete understanding of the factors involved in personal character development and subsequent behavior.

The most horrendous consequence of this ignorance is the social prescription of contempt and punishment instead of understanding and humane rehabilitation.

Our responses to certain situations are largely predetermined.

As biological organisms we are first compelled to meet the demands of our survival. The laws of survival are primary above all others despite what the local judge may prefer we believe and do.

The four dictates of life are eat, drink, stay alive and mate.

These biological imperatives are what drive our most basic behaviors. How a group goes about satisfying those dictates, becomes the primary or core cultural traits of the group. Humans are first subject to the natural environment.

The natural environment is the first “cause” humans merely react to.

The sun rises and we rise with it. The sun sets and we sleep with it. If the weather is hot we seek to cool off. If the weather is cold we seek to keep warm.

After the natural environment the man-made urban and familial settings pose the next major set of conditions obligating responses. The leadership class makes laws and we are obligated to obey their laws or face the consequences.

Vehiclestraveling at high speeds pose hazards that we seek to avoid by performing any number of behaviors. Our parents gave us our genetic inheritance and until we were able to fend for ourselves we were bound to deal with the conditions of the family household.

By the time we have left our childhood family—culture has already imprinted us with layers and layers of sub-conscious conditioning.

What is Freedom?

Who and what we have become is the result of a complex interplay between natural and man-made influences over which we had little or no control over.

Unless we can control the weather we are subject to its whims. If we are not from the lawmaking or law influencing classes, then we are subject to their whims.

We had no say in our genetic lottery. Did we get lucky and come out with two long version serotonin genes or were we unlucky and get a short and long or worse yet two short versions?

Where then is this “freedom” that modern day politicians claim we have so much of? The freedom our ruling classes speak of is the “freedom” to choose from among the options the lawmakers have deemed “lawful”.

Freedom is a relative term and we acquire more of it by understanding the factors that influence:

• Who we become,

• What we do,

• What we think

• How we feel

Exercising our freedom means choosing how we react to life’s situations to bring about the most desirable outcomes. It is only after we begin to uncover our sub-conscious cultural and biological programs that we begin the road to self-mastery and the greatest freedom possible as human beings.

Our growing library of knowledge will enable greater freedom and ever more choices over time, but only if we apply the knowledge.

Religio-political institutions are by nature conservative in the overall sense. Changing things is extra work and change implies transfer of position, power and profit.

That is why real change will only come from the actions of large collectives of movements demanding change.

In the image to the right The Matrix movie character, Neo, emerges from his subconscious cultural programming in a very graphical, but symbolically accurate way. It is not easy to break the 6000 year spell that cultural conditioning (enculturation) has cast over its unwary participants.

It takes extreme circumstances in most cases to break the spell of enculturation. For more on the how the movie The Matrix is a symbolic unmasking of the human cultural condition.

Self-mastery is a work in progress and is best thought of as a journey, not a destination.

We will always be subject to conditions beyond our control. Self-mastery is not found in the illusory control of the external world, but in our responses to the external world.

Self-mastery is ridding ourselves of burdensome, unessential and sub-consciously embedded cultural programming.

If we wish to expand our meaning of freedom, acquire self-mastery and affect the course of history for the better we must understand how:

• humans and the environment interact to form culture,
• culture and environment shapes behavior,
• cultures operate as dynamic self-sustaining and self propagating systems.

In the various sections of the Emergent-Culture website I shed light on the dynamics of culture with Western Civilization as the culture of focus. I will share an evidence based view of Western culture as it starts some 6000 years ago, and then rapidly trace its development through the ages all the way up to the present moment.

Most importantly, we must understand what drives Western culture to repeat the same horrors.

If we know what drives Western culture to self destruction then perhaps we have a chance to course correct before man-made catastrophes of unprecedented magnitude demolish any hopes of a future worth passing on.

Most of us do not know the hidden story of Western Civilization nor the engine driving it. There are established, secretive and highly fortified power structures that do not want you to know the full story of what it truly means to be a member of Western Civilization.

The Emergent-Culture Website presents a narrative of the ongoing struggle between the revitalizing traits of emerging culture and the stagnation of prevailing culture.

[Update November16th 2011: This article was the first published on EC.com in November of 2008. Now that the occupy movement has coalesced the reader can better identify and understand what I mean by emergent-culture.]

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