Is There Cultural Progress?
C. Leigh Anderson & Janet W. Looney, eds., Making Progress: Essays in Progress & Public Policy (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002), pp. 191-217.
29 Pages Posted: 12 Jul 2015
Date Written: 2002
Abstract
The ability to cooperate is a vehicle of progress. This vehicle is enhanced by cultural maturity, a concept that can be understood in the context of psychological maturity. In this Chapter I note that psychological components of cooperation help to define cultural maturity. I establish a claim that has subsequently become popular that cooperation and culture can be a product of natural selection. The focus here is on the growth in the ability to empathize, and through this to cooperate, as a measure of cultural maturity.
Keywords: cultural progress, cultural diversity, cultural anthropology, cultural relativism, cooperative ability, empathy, cooperation
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