I agree that it is a never-ending process of evolution. I didn't mean that we have to pick from what we've got. I just wanted to emphasize that the true benefit of variation is that the greater out-survive the lesser. And of course mutation is necessary to find deeper local minima in the optimization landscape. The evolution never stops (there is an infinite culture-space to search), though it could stagnate if we try keeping unfit cultures on life support.

in the kind of analogies being used above, then we can use the analogy of an operating system comprising various sub-systems, which solve fluid dynamics problems..
the problems however are based on one major input factor - nature dynamics

nature favours diversity within a species in this way: the example of polyploidity in plants..
here a wider set of possible expressions is retained (multiple sets of instructions) to adapt to various climatic conditions..

so the ideal cultural ‘operating system’ can have difficulties solving the survival problem if it’s pool of possible sub-routines is too narrow..an ideal operating system would not make certain sub-routines redundant based on competition to solve a problem, because the problem is in dynamic flux according to the laws of nature, which are the arena..
so an ideal operating system would focus on different sub-routines adapting and learning from eachother, while retaining what may be advantageous to all in differing conditions..
range is good…homeostasis of the whole system within the larger system requires a degree of ‘multi-culturalism’ in this analogy for the greater ‘good’ or survival..

what is a bit difficult to ‘codify’ in all this, applied to humans, is the basic notion of ‘care’ or caring..
thus come in ‘spiritual’ kinds of codification, such as ‘treat all living things as if they were your children’, ‘do unto others’ etc….love etc…the spiritual factor currently usually at odds with our purely secular philosophies..

in the historical look at colonisation in australia i gave earlier, a system which could be said to be inherently ‘inferior’ in many ways (it’s level of care, to itself even, or environmental awareness) was almost able to make redundant another system which was probably only ‘inferior’ in weapons technology…luckily it survived enough to continue to inform the aggressive sub-system so as to continue it’s evolution and hopeful system improvement..

if we study nature as a whole (as i said of the 'older systems') then we see that there is none or very little 'hate' as an abstract conceptual cause of killing..while there is a level of survival interaction and balance, there are no forms made redundant (extinct) except by environmental factors (or modern human systems) ..it's the balancing of emotion and purpose in the human systems that is hardest to 'codify'...again we come back to spiritual techniques, or even simply meditation as a widely practised thing for instance, or 'humanist' or ethical philosophies..

but we should remember that a culture which may claim a certain way (e.g. we are 'christian', 'do unto others', do not kill etc) may infact outwardly largely not operate in this way...to me this is either unbalanced hierarchical power structures, or some kind of bad code...virus...

it’s about optimisation to solve fluid dynamic variables…

but ‘why’? what for...and hence we come back to love vs logic..
for the logicians above - we need a grand unified equation of these..
.

Well, you do see killing, warfare and 'hate' in species of ants, primates, wolves and incidentally in solitary predators.

I do think that you can logically make the case for caring though, as well as for morality.
Most cultures have some sort of 'treat others like you would want others to treat you' moral paradigm.
If people where to treat eachother like that, on the condition that the other person would reciprocate this strategy, then what you have is a nash-equilibrium: everyone's strategy is the best (in terms of personal gains) answer to everyone else's strategy. In this particular case it would mean that there is no other scenario where the collective outcome in terms of individual personal gains, is better. This is, of all possible worlds, the one that is by far the best for everybody. Yet, the situation is inherently stable, so it's a very sustainable situation as well.

There is Always the risk of free-riders though. Someone could try to devellop a strategy to beat the moral strategy, by simply pretending to use the moral strategy, but to 'cheat' when the situation allows for it. That's where diversity in strategies can come in handy.
And it's also why moral behaviour should not be fixated. It's just like with genetic's: ever evolving, hybrid strategy's are less likely to fall victim to all kinds of bugs.

As caring itself is a very basic behavioural mode, part of parenting, it's very plausible that in a primitive species, even a slight genetic mutation would automatically lead to a preference for caring sort of behaviour, wich would be enough to automatically result in a moral nash-equilibrium.

However, revenge is also a part of this strategy. And it is typical that very brutal and seemingly unnessecary agression is something that's only seen in highly social animals like chimpansee's, gorrilla's...and humans.

nen888,
I agree that a complex machine should have different parts with different functions. In a human society, that could correspond to horizontal or vertical stratification. I suppose I would refer to the latter as "multiclass" rather than "multicultural".

A recent study has shown that perception of musical harmony between different tones is culturally determined. This was reported in a recent edition of New Scientist magazine.