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79 The Origin of ChUisation

Figurę S.4 The Ęyohition of Culture

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The Total Culture System    .......-............. ■ ► The Universal Chilisation System

behauiour patterns, ideas and innovations, some of which may proue to be advantageous while others may be detrimental or aelf defeating. Over the ultra-long term, only those which provi.de genuine survival benefits will be taken up by futurę generations, by a process of active selection. Clearly, if unfavourable ideas are adopted, they might precipitate or otherwise hasten a culture's demise. Decisions to embark on inter-cultural aggreasion leading to war would be a Łypical example of a culture-destroying activity. Historical evidence can be marshalled to show the cost-effectiveness of war, (in the case of republican Romę, for example, and for Britain, Prussia and Russia, who, according to Professor Rostow, "clearly gained from the European wara of the eighteenth century, down to 1793.")¹⁵¹ However, for the long-term survival of mankind, the useful role of inter-specific aggression operating aa war has yet to be prouen.

The second linę of theoretical reasoning favouring the ultimate emergence of one universal civilisation derives from the biological concept known as the principle of competitive exclusion. This was first formulated by the Ruasian biołogist, Gause. Theodosius Dobzhansky describes this notion by imagining a world with a completely uniform environment, a uniform soli and constant temperaturę and humidity. Such a tedious world, he suggests, could only be inhabited by one species:

If two or morę kinds (of organism) appeared in it, the most efficient form would gradually crowd out and finally eliminate the less efficient ones, remaining the sole inhabitant.^53

The planet is a f ar - f rom-un i f orm environment but, arguably, its futurę now depends most critically on how man himself deuelops. In a verv real sense, the rules of natural selection as they operate for life on Earth, have now, and increasingly to a greater extent, been ouerturned by man. Not only has he successfully interferred with the evolution of a whole rangę of domesticated plants and animals, 'creating¹ grossly modified or what sometimes amounts to uirtually new species, but he has also begun to drastically trans form the sur face of the planet to suit his changing and fickle requirements. Natural selection implies the survival of the greatest number of live offspring that are the most highly adapted to their particular ecological niche, among both competing species and among the competing members within any one species. In time, therefore, the genes of the most successful individuals dominate within that total population, and a gradual evolution of characteristics for the species comes about .¹⁵⁴ However, man 's success is based on cultural adaptations that actiyely attempt to surmount env ironmental disaduantages without the need to favour the hardiest members of the species. Indeed, family life is organised to protect and defend the weak or handicapped members of the group. This concern is deeply rooted in the history of our species, reaching back to before the emergence of modern man.