Ok, can you explain this:
I'm not trying to be a dick, I'm just more interested in your argument than I am in explaining mine.
I don't see what there is to explain.
Here's some statements you've made throughout this thread.
- but most cultures should have core and unchanging components
- I'd call biology the primary influence on our behavior
- I'm more or less of the opinion that those mold-able parts of our culture are actually much more rigid
- Besides things like variation in political ideals, religious beliefs, and sexual practices, human cultures don't really vary that much.
each one of them is a non-statement as long as you don't give as a hint what those unchanging components are or should be, relative to what it is a big or small influence, what counts as 'things like', etc. It is trivially true that behaviours that are impossible to perform with human physiology will never become the cultural norm, and from all we know that's about all you're saying. And every one of those statements can be said with equal validity if we replace biology with physics: Just like whatever set of norms or beliefs you believe are running against human nature isn't going to materialize in any culture (and you have barely given us an idea what that would be), so equally you aren't going to find a lot of cultures where people expect a stone dropped to start moving towards the sky, or where people put on heavy woolen jumpers in summer only.
The whole point of the OP is that the ways biology influences cultural practices can be quite indirect, and it's arguing against a naive nativist conception where people take every (seemingly) universal behaviour as sufficient evidence that this behaviour was specifically selected for.
Ok, I'll try to go into a little more detail, keep in mind here that I'm talking about biology and human nature as a framework, and I'm going to tie this back into the OP eventually.
Core, Unchanging Components of Culture
Need for Food, Need for Water, Need to maintain internal temperature
Let's start with the stuff that is intuitively obvious about human nature and our survival: we need to maintain an internal metabolic temperature, we need to eat, we need water. Right there we've already identified three aspects about human nature that are absolutely critical to any human society, and if you want to call it that: culture.
This may seem trivial at first glance, but in reality every aspect of our day to day life is centered around these three facts. As children we go to school so we can be trained how to work (yes I realize this varies but lets generalize), as adults we spend our lives working or otherwise trying to obtain money so we can eat. This kind of thing is so essential to society that it almost seems arbitrary and not worth any notice, but already we're looking at the overwhelming majority of any given human's behaviour throughout their entire life, simply because it is essential that they eat.
No this is not predictive of what schools someone will go to, or what work they will do, but it is predictive of a few things:
- it is essential that people have food, and a mechanism to get food
- it is intrinsic to any culture that there are functions which work toward the end of obtaining food
- people's behaviour for an overwhelming majority of their time will be focused on finding and eating food
With internal metabolic temperature we get a few more facts:
- housing, buildings, and architecture are universal among human communities
- without the invent of fire, and later the technology to use natural resources, most modern day societies just wouldn't exist in the first place
Reproduction and Gender Roles
Now let's move to the sexual aspect of our genetics, which is nearly as critical as those already mentioned: our species needs to reproduce itself, and men and women have real psychological differences due to variance in gender roles
Due to these facts we will assuredly see that every human culture will have fertility rituals, and that men and women will generally have a different path in life.
No this isn't predictive of what fertility ritual a community has, but it is predictive of that existing, and the likelihod of how both man and woman in a relationship will live their lives. There is going to be variance from community to community, but again, biology now has it's hand in another overwhelming aspect of human behavior, how we spend most of our lives looking for a partner, and later raising kids. It also has a real hand in our psychology and how genders approach this game.
Religion, sexism, racism, tribalism
Ok so some of the obvious stuff is out of the way, let's move to our psychology: a need to resolve our cognitive dissonance about suffering, sexism, racism and prejudice, tribalism.
Honestly, at this point I'm just getting tired of writing this post, but I'll continue. Some would argue that these things are fixable, I don't think that they are. Because of the above points religious and/or idealistic beliefs are universal across human cultures. If not religion, it's idealism and utopian thinking about politics.
Then we get into sexism, racism, prejudice, and those aspects of our psychology that keep us feeding the people who are close to us (family) and ignoring the people who aren't close to us. I won't get into much detail here, but I presume that you get the point.
Once again, a huge portion of our behavior is dictated by a few simple facts about our psychology, that have evolved over a huge amount of time. They aren't predictive of individual human behavior, but they are predictive of these phenomena existing in any given culture: ethnic conflict, racism, nationalism, you name it. I would say that's some important predictive power.
Tying back to the OP
So when I tie this back to ronburgundy's point that behavior isn't necessarily dictated by actual neural differences, I'm left with the notion that behaviour is dictated largely by neural realities, and our ability to conform tightly to these neural realities is selected for. So where biology isn't ipso facto causing the behavior, it's instead producing the culture where the behaviour is derived, and the selective pressure is actually coming from our ability to conform to the culture that's been derived by our biology. This selective pressure is certainly going to mold real genetic differences where necessary, and I would probably go as far as saying that it's the most critical aspects of our culture that actually become embedded in our genetics.
So when we start talking about how to mold culture to our will, we're contrained by biological reality. And with the above in mind I'm not completely sure what's left to mold.
And bear in mind, that the above list of unchanging components of culture is anything but exhaustive, I could go on for a while.