Social norms develop in order to simultaneously preserve group identity and coordinate social capital towards the end of civilization. Since the very practicing and respecting of social norms is how one discerns group identity, and likewise the social norms will provide a means to the individual for deciding how they shall (or not) be integrated into a group, it is not unfair to treat individuals as the accretion of the social norms by which they operate. At this level of analysis, it is not that the expressed reasons are unimportant, it is only that we are attempting to cash out the perpetuity of social norms as memes, subject to evolutionary dialectic and telling us significant information about the conditions faced by a society.

Consider an honor ritual which most certainly imposes a cost for which the individual cannot receive any benefit. The practice of seppuku is the ritualized suicide of a samurai for failure and loss of honor. What possible reason could there be for such a practice to become a norm? It is tied to a concept of honor, and as patriarchal societies would tend to invest in the prejudice of viewing sons as taking after their father in behavioral characteristics, the preservation of a father’s honor through seppuku would also tend to preserve the reproductive success of his sons. Through successive generations, this would lead to the wider adoption of seppuku and the benefits it conferred until it was simply the norm. If a father didn’t commit  seppuku, his sons would face a reproductive disadvantage; given seppuku demonstrates an individual’s ability to subordinate himself to society in a most significant way, this selection for cooperation brought about reproductive success for those families which practiced (or were at least prepared to practice) the ritual which was self-reinforcing. This penchant for suicide to demonstrate fealty to society has taken on many different forms. One notes the knack of the Japanese even in the present for suicide. Their adoption must be connected to integral social values such as honor, which becomes a kind of proxy for genetically inherited civilizational fitness.

Likewise, we perceive the reflexive conditioning of society. Memes are projected into the cultural savanna, which leads to effects on society which effects the projection of its memes, and so the process cycles. Just in the way prices reflect changing balances of supply and demand, social norms tend to approximate towards equilibrium. While not always (or perhaps never) reaching it in actuality, hypothetically this suggests “apex norms” which are, relative the memetic ecosystem (noosphere?) conducive to the host society’s superiority, guiding it to perpetuity. Of course, given such memetic ecosystems are constantly changing over time, there may be no “climax noosphere” and memes are in a Red Queen arms race. This decay of advantage, as today’s superiority tends to produce more superiority, raising the bar for what counts as relatively superior tomorrow, appears an approximation of Galton’s regression to the mean. It is not that the mean is not higher in an absolute sense, but that the relatively r-selected memes are selected out while the population of more K-selected memes grow, reflecting the preferences of the classes of society those memes tend to transmit in.

Certain norms are significant enough so as to raise human populations up to civilization where before there was none. There is evidence that the rise of civilization about 10,000 years ago was accompanied by social norms which tended to confer a ruling authority to fathers over their families and society in general. In other words, patriarchy. Patriarchy is such a significant memeplex that there are virtually no recorded civilizations that don’t have patriarchal norms; without patriarchy society falls into less advanced social technology, a form of which appears to be gynarchy. The strengthening imposition of Malthusian pressure on a society, which tends to result in the reproductive success of the most desirable populations, i.e. eugenic effects, can be captured through norms which increase fertility. If one thinks this is no longer necessary, consider it is apparent per the evolutionary dialectic that one’s group is either continually working to maintain fitness, or going extinct. You do not cease reproducing and maintain a cultural heritage.

And so the memes that wrought this mess invite their own destruction. In the end, this inadvertent extinction of 21st century Western European culture (the United States were essentially European) shall inoculate future civilization from these social norms which prove to decohere their host societies. Oh happy fault? I must admit some part of me is saddened at the prospect of those most like me, Western Europeans of the mixed American type as I know them, being essentially modern day Atlanteans. We grew powerful and indolent, inviting the wrath of Gnon. We  gave fealty to false memes which promised the feeling of holiness and superiority, and which led us to forsake our own society.

One species rises and then declines, bringing the advent of another species’ rise. With the cultural stagnation wrought since the Protestant Formation, it becomes a question of who shall succeed the frail West. Shall the world become more Chinese, or more Muslim?