It is said Margaret Meade once remarked that the ultimate purpose of anthropology was not simply the study of existing cultures, but to use the lessons learned in that study in the devising of new ones.

Culture is the human species’ attempt to reconcile the needs of the individual with that of the group. We are undeniably social animals, we have not been designed by evolution to operate as solitary hunters or foragers, but to organize ourselves into bands and collectives that demand some kind of hierarchical organization to harness the advantages of leadership, specialization and cooperation. But we must also meet the needs of the individual. As a species, we have a history of constantly striving to increase individual autonomy, what we call freedom.

When agriculture, technology, the growth of large communities, and the specialization of labor demolished our natural hominid social organization, we have been organizing ourselves into larger and larger communities. But we have also experienced a parallel pressure to disperse personal leadership and responsibility, autonomy and obligation, so that it benefits each individual in the collective as much as possible. We demand freedom, and we reject a social structure that sacrifices that freedom in the name of the collective security and survival of the group. But we have no choice but to work together in some form of regulated hierarchy. Some compromise must be achieved, or this tension will either tear society apart, or lead inevitably to stagnation and tyranny.

The natural condition for primitive Man was the band, a small group of perhaps a score of individuals, (size was determined by the capacity of the land to provide sustenance) perhaps half of them productive. The remainder were either children, the aged, or those temporarily disabled by injury or disease. Children were the band’s future, no band that failed to nurture them survived for long. The aged represented valuable collective wisdom and experience, and were capable of some tasks. The temporarily incapacitated formed a reserve of skills and strengths. All had their assigned tasks, suited to their physical and mental capabilities.

Social structures arose to establish this triage, and as in our most primitive ancestors, a social hierarchy arose to help enforce order and continuity. Groups had leaders, but their powers were rarely absolute. No leader could maintain his power indefinitely without the consent of the others–he or she may have been the strongest or the wisest, but a coalition of the abused could always replace him. The Chief, if he’s smart, consults the tribal elders frequently, and is concerned with the welfare of all in the band, even the bottom of the pecking order. Kinship bonds cement the whole hierarchy together.

But technology allowed the band to grow beyond kinship boundaries, and by the time of the establishment of plow agriculture, communities were composed not only of individuals who were not related, but who may not even have known one another. Clearly, a million years of evolution had not prepared us for this. Social stresses arose, but the advantages of the new technology were too obvious for it to be abandoned. As a species, we were stuck with it. Internal conflicts were no longer resolved by consensus, but by coercion. And in a world of increasing population but finite resources (such as arable land or irrigation) external conflicts became more violent. Organization and regulatioin had to be imposed, often by force, to be able to exploit these new technologies, in the building of irrigation works and fortifications. Competition between communities could no longer be settled by one band simply moving away, or by ritual combat, but depended on increasing lethal means. A form of natural selection took over, and those cultures best able to deal with these new conditions tended to survive, those which could not faded away, were absorbed, were driven off into substandard environments, or were exterminated. New social structures based on land ownership arose, and they were dominated by kinship groups or political alliances which seemed to have their own imperatives, and the autonomy or even welfare of the individual or his immediate kin was not one of them. Human history since the adoption of agriculture has been dominated by this dynamic.

That same natural selection that allowed stable social structures to survive did not always adapt effectively to changing conditions. The new leadership castes often struggled to maintain their positions, through force and control of community resources, even when they were clearly obsolete. Eventually, they might succumb to internal or external stresses, but the result was often chaos, and always misery for those not entitled by birth to be in the ruling elites. This struggle continues to this day. Social and cultural change, politics and economics, always lags behind environmental and technological change. As a result, most societies don’t work very well for large numbers of their members. In fact, they never have. Part of the price we pay for increased production and protection is that most of it gets expropriated by smaller and smaller elites. We only tolerate it at all because the benefits are so welcome, and because things do seem to be getting better. When that is no longer the case, or when that perception is no longer general, the society is in trouble. I’ll stop here and keep these observations safely limited to the past.

Meade’s epigram makes sense when we consider the possibility of migration, particularly expansion into space. Man has always relied on expansion into empty areas to deal with these problems, although he has usually been handicapped by dragging along with him those forms of social organization and culture that were already obsolete when the original migration was forced on him. The expansion of of the Polynesian seafaring societies across the Pacific Basin a millennium ago forms a perfect model for this. They developed magnificent maritime technologies that allowed them to find fertile, empty new homes, but they brought their stratified caste structure and dominant family culture with them. But each new island and archipelago soon became overcrowded and wracked with hunger, environmental exploitation, social conflict and warfare. The strategy worked as long as there were new islands to settle, and no strangers to compete with.

So how do we design new cultures, new forms of social organization to take us to the stars? Should we even try? Are the factories of the asteroid belt or the ice farms of the outer satellites doomed to make the same dreary choice between Smith and Marx? Darwinian libertarian anarchy or social insect collectivism? Is there some middle way? Or is there some totally new strategy we can apply? And what about our organization at levels below the political and economic. How will, or how should, our families be structured, our communities ruled, our mores and customs be designed? Should we even try? Can we rely on natural selection, especially when it will already have been shown to be inadequate by making our migration necessary in the first place? And what do we do if our new designed and planned culture doesn’t work? Or if the old one we brought with us is clearly inadequate?

Speculative fiction is the place to discuss these issues. It is no guarantee of coming up with the optimum culture(s) for a spacefaring species, but it will give us a chance to discover, through discussion and criticism, obvious flaws, or potential benefits to these alternatives. Science fiction has already played a great role in inspiring our space pioneers. It still has a role to play.