At the heart of every society and great civilisation there is a tension between tradition and innovation. A culture war.

Long before the phrase became associated with identity politics and tribal bickering, societies wrestled with a more fundamental question: what should be preserved, and what should change?

Some fought to preserve the past while others sought to question ‘the way we’ve always done things’. But what are they really fighting over? And why does it matter?

Passing on the Torch

At some point in our very different past, one of our ancestors discovered a way to create fire. They probably realised quickly how useful that could be. And they probably experimented with the best way to start one, how to do so reliably, and what fuel in their environment was easiest to burn.

But when that original fire-starter got older, they would have started to worry about how the tribe would get on when they had passed away. Who would start the fires when they were gone? And who would do it when they died, and so on?

Every generation faces the same problem. Not how to invent everything from scratch, but how to inherit the discoveries of those who came before. Culture is the solution to that problem.

Monkey See Monkey Do

Civilisation survives by passing on torches, not by rediscovering fire. And it has come up with remarkable ways of passing on the flame.

Few things are more fundamental to the social life of a human being than learning and teaching. The invention of writing, the alphabet, and numerical systems have given us ways to preserve and pass on all kinds of knowledge from one generation to the next.

But practical knowledge – where behaviour and judgment are involved – require special mechanisms of transmission.

Writing can preserve information. But it cannot, on its own, teach us courage, judgement or integrity. Behavioural technologies are different. They must be demonstrated, observed and practised before they can be inherited.

For the purposes of this essay, we’ll focus on three of the most powerful:

• Stories
• Examples
• Rituals

Stories allow us to simulate and imagine varied and extreme examples of motivation and behaviour over time. When we listen to or read a story, we are given an experience – imagined or remembered – of witnessing behavioural technology in action. Narrative acts like a behavioural laboratory. It allows every generation to witness thousands of choices, mistakes and triumphs without paying the full cost of making them themselves.

Examples give us an even more powerful demonstration. We get to witness the technology live and in person. And when we get to spend time with an expert wielder of behavioural technology we naturally tend to copy them. We learn through inspiration, then through imitation and emulation.

Finally, there is ritual. A technology so powerful that it deserves its own essay – and we’ll come back to it later.

The Problem of Selection

The culture war isn’t really about old versus new. It’s about inheritance.

Every generation inherits thousands of behavioural technologies. Some remain useful. Others become obsolete. Still others need adapting to changes in our environment. The tension between tradition and innovation is really a disagreement about which technologies deserve to survive.

Every civilisation and society edits its inheritance. So the question is not whether culture changes – it always does. The question is whether we understand what we are choosing to preserve, what we are willing to discard, and what we may one day wish we had not forgotten.

Today, we sit on an inheritance of incredible abundance and power. Tools and technologies that transform our lives in ways our ancestors could barely have imagined.

But the character to wield those tools wisely will only survive by decisive action: to pass on the torch to those who will need it when they are gone.

The tools we inherit by default. We inherit character by choice.

Two Types of Virtue

We know that culture exists to filter and transmit ways of living. Virtues (and vices) are passed down the line in an attempt to help us solve the moral and social problems of our environment.

Some teach us how to live. Some teach us how to live together.

And the difference matters more than we may think.