The myths of our time, that don’t tell us the truth about the world. They have power because they are a skins of partial truth, or they’re a counterbalance to the abuse of the actual truth. They have the right spirit, but the wrong content. Instead of correcting the truth, they contradict it. And the two are not the same.
Adversity promotes weakness.
Excellence comes from acceptance.
Comfort and agreement are always good, sympathy is always right. Love should always triumph over hate.
Diversity is always good.
Value judgements are always bad.
Discrimination is always bad.
Different outcomes prove that the game is unfair.
A just world would benefit everyone equally.
These probably sound like uncontroversial claims. In fact they probably sound quite noble. But so do everyone’s assumed cultural values, the instincts and narratives that drive their ethical ideal. So long as you’ve bought into them and you have some stories of your heroes and villains to back them up and illustrate them so they have cultural currency, you can make almost anything sound amazing.
There are so many different strategies for survival and adaptation and success in different circumstances, and just a cursory glance at nature or at human history should disabuse you of the notion that they’re all uniform or benign. Some ants are farmers, some are slavers, some are builders, some are warriors. We may, thanks to our personal and cultural preferences (which are basically personality and super-personality), prefer one to another. We may admire penguins and despise ducks, but nature makes no preference, except in success. We may find bees admirable and wasps horrifying, but nature gives us both equally. (I suggest researching penguin and duck reproduction and bee and wasp reproduction to see what my examples mean, you’ll learn all sort of things about explosive penises and parasitic wasps.)
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