Genetics of Culture

The genetics of culture is in the stories we tell.

The stories are the genes of culture.

As we tell the stories we are guaranteeing the replication of the culture.

How they are woven into the society is the DNA.

The stories are woven into the fabric of the society and they reappear sometimes very visible and sometimes hidden but very apparent.

As the stories appear and reappear they carry out their goal of replicating the culture represented.

The most important stories are the ones we tell little children.

When they talk about myth it is like taking the genes of society and analyzing them with a butcher knife.

This is because it is exactly at the boundary between the unquestionable real and the borderline myth in a story that we find the power of stories to replicate the culture.

The necessity for the mythical portion is that our minds live in dualism; whether the physical universe is dualistic or not.

Then to call them just stories or to call them mere myth misunderstands the whole process of culture.

Stories are not transferable between cultures because the myth is typed (e. g. King Arther, Daniel Boon, Sun Yat-sen, Gandhi).

Understanding culture, requires that we recognize the meaning of those stories as they are woven into the fabric of the society.

But to understand, we cannot question or alter the meanings that these stories provide to that fabric, even though the stories from another culture may never fit into our own culture.

To understand the culture we must understand the myth.

The story becomes more important as it comes closer to the physical center of the group.

The story becomes more important as it comes closer to the mythical center of the group.

To exactly the extent that we do not understand the way the stories are woven into the texture, we do not understand the culture.