But we could do worse. There is a potential for
contemporary Chinese or Russian or Iranian culture to become dominant in the far future. Do we really want that?
Besides, there was much about the Roman and Hellenistic world not to like, but there is much of value we have inherited from the classical Mediterranean world.
And as Margaret Mead once observed, the ultimate goal of anthropology was not just the understanding of culture, but to accumulate the knowledge necessary
to create successful new ones. This is one of the purposes of this website; not just our future in space, the environments we will be exploring and the technologies required to do so. We may also be forced to intervene in the evolution of culture itself and devise new ones suitable for our species' expansion into the galaxy.
Even if this never happens as we fantasize it, we still need to spend some conscious effort preparing for it lest it happens without any input from us.
Off Topic » in reply to Changing other cultures
I am often quite critical of generic western/American culture.
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- Changing other cultures
