If Nurture, Why Not More Variation in Human Culture?

Humanity is, of course, morally free to make and remake itself infinitely, but we do not do so. We stick to the same monotonously human pattern of organizing our affairs. If we were more adventurous, there would be societies without love, without ambition, without sexual desire, without marriage, without art. without grammar, without music, without st smiles—and with as many unimaginable novelties as are in that list. There would be societies in which women killed each other more often than men, in which old people were considered more beautiful than twenty-year olds, in which wealth did not purchase power over others, in which people did not discriminate in favor of their own friends and against strangers, in which parents did not love their own children.

Matt Ridley, The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature (2003-05-01)

• culture
• evolution
• evolutionary psychology