Backward and forward culture

Martha Graham once said, according to Jesse Dorris, that no artist is ahead of his time, the others are behind the times. This has also been true of the science of sociobiology which is now at least 40 years old. Sociobiology dismantled the legitimate frame work for much of modern intellectual culture but the world has not caught up, not even our colleges and universities.

Sociobiology dismantled the ground of postmodernism which saw truth, gender and so on as only a social construct, as well as cultural Marxism (political correctness), and even religion as something beyond biology, but few people seem to have realized this.

People tend to deny difficult truths, and also even merely uncomfortable truths. But I don't want to be flippant about illusions, which have activated much of human cultural history, as sociobiology pointed out (and Nietzsche earlier), illusions were important to successful survival and reproduction. But can we now move beyond even a few of these sloppy intellectual constructions? People like to hold on to the personal power they created out of these shaky constructions.

Yet we also should keep in mind that even specialists in sociobiology can be limited with what Nietzsche called only a “patina” of culture. The supreme goal of culture, all ethnic cultures, is the ongoing evolution of genius, with a noble character (that is, not just brilliant monsters), and with the continual goal of evolving all the way to Godhood in the cosmos. We all need to reach beyond ourselves in developing that sacred goal.