'Chinese' horse, Lascaux cave (Source: https://archeologie.culture.gouv.fr/lascaux/en)
In the first part of this multi-part series about the dark side of culture, we established that the dark side is ubiquitous, pervasive, and impactful (see here). Given the huge costs of culture, can anything be done to tone down the dark side? To answer this question, we need to find out how and why culture evolved in the first place and, once evolved, why did cultural differences diverge so much from one another? The answers to these questions should go a long way towards determining if the dark side of culture is simply a feature of human biology, which we cannot hope to tone down, whether instead culture is mainly a social construct amenable to the impact of policy.
The most likely reason culture emerged in the first place is that human beings tried to make sense of the world around them. During early human history, scientific understanding of nature was entirely non-existent, so culture must have helped to give human communities some way to make sense of the world around them, a world, which was sorely lacking in both reason and empathy. By helping to endogenise the world around them, however primitively, culture will have imparted a limited sense of control, for example, through sacrifice and religious beliefs. The people who lived in the Lascaux caves of the Dordogne in France some 20,000 years ago, for example, painted animals, people, and symbols to reflect what they saw, what they ate, and what ate them.
Communities who lived in other environments will have done the same, but their art will have related to, say, the sea with worship of weather and ocean gods, while communities inhabiting, say, mountains will have worshipped deities perceived to have influence over, say, volcanoes.
In other words, while culture emerged every for the same reason - to make sense of the world - cultural differences will emerged due to spatial isolation in distinct environments.
It should be clear that the likelihood of spatial isolation was extremely great in early human societies. As shown in the chart below, human population on earth was tiny until very recently. Small populations therefore lived in great isolation from one another, often inhabiting very distinct natural environments. Unable to connect to and influence each other, the cultures evolved in unique directions in accordance with their specific environmental constraints.
Human population (Source: here)
Over time as populations grew, human isolation gradually diminished. Communities increasingly came into contact with each other. Cultural ‘cross-breeding’ became a thing.
Take the example of the expansion of the Hindu religion across South Asia some four thousand years ago. It did not take long for Hinduism to assume new and distinct forms in disparate regions, such as Sri Lanka, Bali, and India, while the entirely distinct religion of Buddhism emerged from Hinduism in Myanmar, Thailand, and Bhutan.
While encounters between human communities contributed to cultural diversity, they also soon required culture to assume an entirely new role, namely defence. Rather than just helping to making sense of the natural environment, culture now had to play a part in defending communities against communities with other cultures. After all, other cultures were no idle threat.
Relics from ancient history richly illustrate the dangers. Take the empire of Ashurbanipal, the last great Assyrian King, who died in 631 BC. In his lifetime, his empire was largest in the world, stretching from Cyprus to Iran and included, at some point, Egypt. You did not want to fall into the hands of Ashurbanipal! He was famous for his extreme brutality as depicted in the bass relief below, but he was by no means unique.
Vanquished and impaled victims of Ashurbanipal (Source: here)
The defensive motive for culture probably became universal in most societies as soon as human communities began to interact. In Scandinavia, for example, societies we now recognise as Viking communities began to use culture for defensive purposes in response to Charlemagne, the king of the Franks, who dominated central and western Europe until his death in the year 814 (for entertaining colour on this period see here).
After a brief blossoming as raiders following the death of Charlemagne, Scandinavians gradually became more defensive in their outlook with the rise of powerful civilisations in Russia, Germany, Britain, and France. Since Scandinavian were small, Scandinavian culture began to assign paramountcy to equality among its membership, a feature that remains dominant to this day. But why was equality the value that emerged in these communities? The answer: defence. Small societies are stronger if they have fewer internal divisions, because they can more effectively unify against external threats.
Equality cannot be achieved without cost, however. For one, it requires the subjugation of the individual. In his 1933 novel, “En flyktning krysser sitt spor”, Aksel Sandemose introduced the ‘Law of Jante’ as a way to describe how Scandinavian culture suppresses individuality in order to keep the collective strong. According to the Law of Jante, no individual must think him or herself better than others or society as a whole, and society is justified in forcefully punishing excessive displays of individuality. The rationale for enforcing unity with extreme prejudice is existential; without unity Scandinavian cultures with small militaries and small populations would simply not survive.[1]
Aksel Sandemose (Source: google images)
The Law of Jante remains as powerful today as ever. While Scandinavians welcome some aspects of foreign culture, including some kinds of alien music, food, and art they generally view foreign cultures with suspicion, occasionally with overt hostility, particularly when members of alien cultures call into question, do not agree with, or outright challenge core Scandinavian values.
Interestingly, not all cultures have evolved along the lines of the innately defensive Scandinavian cultures. There are in fact many examples of peaceful and prosperous multi-cultures in various settings at various times throughout human history.[2]
One of the early examples of peaceful co-existence of multiple cultures is the ancient Persian king Cyrus the Great (died 530 BC). Cyrus the Great is known for achievements in public administration, tolerance, human rights, politics, and military strategy. His influence has had a lasting influence on both the Eastern and Western worlds.
In general, however, the interplay between members of different cultures was always most productive in urban settings. The capitals of the Roman Empire, Ancient Greece, and the Ottoman Empire accepted peoples of different religions and cultures. Even Genghis Khan, known for his brutality against his enemies on the battlefield was remarkably tolerant towards those who accepted his authority in his capital of Karakorum, regardless of his subjects' cultural affiliations.
Genghis Khan's old capital at Karakorum, Mongolia (Source: Own photograph from a road trip around Mongolia in 2018)
In modern times, large heterogenous cities continue to show how cultural diversity can be a source of strength. There are more than 300 languages spoken in London. London is far more culturally tolerant than smaller homogenous English towns (see here). The inhabitants of London are far better educated in matters cultural and generally appreciate cultural differences rather than view them as a threat. London attracts some of the greatest talents from all over the world in business, finance, fashion, the arts, fine dining, and many other sectors. London also happens to be far wealthier than many smaller and less culturally diverse English cities. As such, London proves on a daily basis that people of different cultures can not only co-exist in peace, but positively thrive in a highly creative, dynamic, and successful society. Arguably, London’s most important source of prosperity is cultural diversity itself.
London, the most cosmopolitan city in the world. Source: Own photograph from 2023)
While there are probably strong genetic reasons for the evolution of culture in human populations, it is unlikely that differences between cultures have much, if any, basis in genetics. For one, human beings are barely distinguishable from squid at the level of genes. Differences between human beings across races, genders, etc. are even tinier. Cultural differences simply do not show up at all at the genetic level. Of course, the ultimate proof that we are all human beings is that men and women from any two populations on Earth – no matter how culturally distinct – are able to mate and produce viable offspring. Homo Sapiens has been the sole species of human beings on Earth for at least 15,000-40,000 years.
The absence of a genetic basis for cultural differences is clearly a good thing, since it implies that cultural differences (rather than the capacity to have culture per se) are purely social construct and therefore amenable to policy interventions, with the aim of minimising their dark side.
Sadly, human societies have so far been awful in managing away the dark behaviours that derive from cultural differences. In fact, there has been no shortage of attempts to exploit the dark side of culture to amplify perceived differences between people along cultural lines.
To this end, politicians have often alleged the existence of genetic bases for cultural differences. One particularly chilling reason for emphasising genetics is that it easier to convince ordinary people to commit inhuman acts against people of other cultures, when the persecuted people can somehow be demoted to sub-human status, akin to animals.
This is why Hutu leaders referred to Tutsis as "cockroaches” ahead of and during the 1994 Rwanda genocide.
This is also why, during its heyday in the early 1900s, eugenics was given the status of the most prestigious branch of science in the Western world. Eugenics maintained that differences in wealth and technology across human populations were attributable to differences in intelligence, which in turn was attributed to brain size. Since men had larger brains than women, so the argument went, men must be superior to women. Experiments, now proven to be deeply flawed, also purported to show that white people’s brains were larger than those of other races, wherefore members of the white race must be superior to members of other races. Brain size has since been proven not to be correlated with intelligence. For more fascinating insights about this period, see here.
Primitive and nonsensical theories like these were of course far from harmless: they became the rationale that underpinned European enslavement of Africans and were used to justify both Imperialism and Colonialism. Caribbean slave economies took these ideas to the extreme of organising entire societies in accordance with the degree of ‘blackness’ of the skin.
This is also why Adolf Hitler peddled quasi-scientific ideas to justify his treatment of Slav peoples and especially jews as sub-humans.
In conclusion, all the evidence suggests that culture evolved in response to environmental circumstances and that, later, interactions between different cultures became an extremely important as a determinant of cultural diversity. Defensive characteristics emerged as the frequency of communal interaction increased. However, the absence of a genetic basis for cultural diversity per se means that such diversity is mainly a social construct. And it follows therefore that how we organise ourselves - our politics - must play a hugely important part in how culture manifests itself.
This is both an important and a positive insight. After all, if politics plays an important part in how culture manifests itself then the dark side can be curbed. How culture and politics interact is the subject of the next part of this multi-part series on the dark side of culture (see here).
The End
End notes:
[1] It is unsurprising that Scandinavians have found it difficult to deal with the rise in immigration associated with globalisation in recent decades. Scandinavians used to pride themselves on their generous aid budgets and tolerance and open-mindedness, but these virtues quickly fell by the wayside as people with very different cultural values arrived in the country. Today, Scandinavian countries, especially Denmark, maintain some of the most draconian anti-immigration policies in Europe, illustrating the central point that fear of losing unity and therefore a sense of security lies at the heart of Scandinavia’s cultural emphasis on equality.
[2] British anthropologist Anthony Giddens defines multiculturalism as “the coexistence of different cultures within a single society, and to the policies and practices that promote this coexistence. Multiculturalism involves not only tolerance of cultural diversity, but an active engagement with it, in order to promote social harmony and prevent conflict”. See Giddens, A. (2006). “Multiculturalism”. In J. R. Gibbins & W. E. Paterson (Eds.), Canadian society: Global perspectives. Pearson Education Canada.