Ross Brink

English 201 section

Dr. Duszenko

9-14-2010

Culture slowdown

Morals vary from place to place, most are based off of where one has grown up

and experieced in their life. According to Ruth Benedict:

"In the higher cultures the standardization of custom and belief over a couple of

continents has given a false sense of the inevitibility of the particular forms that

have gained currency, and we need to turn to a wider survey in order to check the

conclusions we hasily base upon this near-universality of familiar customs."

This seems to say that culture has been spread out to the point where things are the same

almost everywhere and it probably has something to do with the internet connecting

everyone to everyone; with such an influx of culture it's no wonder that it is standardizing

such huge expanses hof land.

There is only a limited number of cultures in the world meaning that once

everyone is connected to everyone culture will slow to a standstill after the breif moment

of rapid change. The same thing happens in evolution when a population is large. The

genetic mutations that are benificial are drowned out by the much more common

unchanged DNA, but when a large amount of that population is wiped out by disease

only the best suited to survivewill survive to spawn more of them. Then the genetic

mutaions will be spread throughout the population and become normal, but another

catastrophe will come eventually. Now to relate this to culture lets substitute the first
catastrophe that killed the population off with the internet. Both increased the rate of

change exponentially, but now we're reaching that point again where the rate of change is

slowing down due to such an increased population, but since most, if not all, of the

cultures of the world have already blended together it seems that culture as we know it

will come to a standstill. With no culture bastion left to tap into it seems that culture will

be limited to keep up with technological advances, at least until we come into contact

with other intelligent life, if that ever happens.

Once everyone is the same culture-wise I think that the earth would become a

world without culture, everyone having the same morals, ideas, and thoughts about

everyday life. We, as humans, might tap into a few unheard of or undiscovered tribes

here and there to diversify us, but otherwise we will all be the same. With this equalness

across the board moral relevatism would probably cease to be, due to the fact that

everyone would have the same values. There probably would not be much of a grey area

of what is right and wrong between people living in all corners of the earth.

Homosexuality would most likely be accepted as part of society ion a world five hundred

years into the future along with many other things that seem to be 'bad'.

But these undiscovered tribes that somehow evade our probes when we as a

society attemt to assimilate them into our culture and gene pool might just be viewed as

freaks of nature and be put into circuses and bullied because moral relevatism probably

will have died with cultural diversity. This is because after everyone is the same nobody

will bother to learn it or even think that there is something wrong with genocide because

they are so dramatically different from the resto of the world of about 10 billion people,

so why would casting out a few tribes of 200 people each matter in the bigger picture?
Genetically they are incredibly worthwhile to improve the gene pool brining in (possibly)

never before seen traits. Even so 200 people are not going to make a dramatic impact on

people unless they're captured and forced into bearing children with each other and other

people to get the greatest impact possible which is just ridiculous.