Cultural Software: A Theory of Ideology presents a theory of cultural evolution that places culture squarely in the context
of history. We, as
individuals, exist at particular points in history and are socialized within particular cultures. This results in the acquisition of certain kinds of information that Balkin terms “cultural software”. Our technologies, institutions, and values are composed of systems of this cultural software interacting within an organization of cultural development and exchange occurring among individuals and whole societies. And over time, our cultural software is modified as individuals and larger groups interact and transmit information.
Ideology is a shared way of understanding the world that groups of people possess, and as such is based on cultural software. Balkin examines ideology in terms of the components of cultural software that produce ideological effects. These components are the highly contextual mechanics of social cognition, and potential ideological effects occur when ways of thinking are produced that help create or sustain social injustices. The fact that social situations can be evaluated with regards to relative degrees of justice and injustice presupposes a
transcendent value of justice. A transcendent value, according to Balkin, is 1) never perfectly realized, 2) appears to us as a constant demand or longing for that value, 3) is indeterminate and imperfectly realized in our cultural manifestation of expectations, technology, and institutions, and 4) is presupposed by some essential aspect of humanity.
According to the author, such a transcendent notion of justice allows us to evaluate and criticize another culture’s actions because it is manifested in all cultures to various degrees of completeness. Individuals and societies will never formulate a completely adequate construction of justice because cultural software is historically contingent and continually constructed from older tools of cultural understanding that are applied to new contexts for which they were not originally adapted to. But by 1) recognizing the transcendent nature of certain values such as justice, 2) recognizing how our cultural software creates partially complete reconstructions of these transcendent values, and 3) modifying our cultural software in order to understand others (i.e., learning other culture’s historically shaped expectations of justice), we can begin to understand and evaluate our own and others worldview with regards to values such as justice.
Current political leaders might gain some insight through a reading of Balkin's work, and the current state of Middle Eastern affairs is a particularly relevant case. The social memory of nations and ethnic groups often includes prejudicial stories that individuals are acculturated with via elders, peers, the mass media, and even questionable government intelligence. Such stories form part of the cultural software that people and nations use to guide their actions, and often lead to aggressive actions and injustices on the part of one group to another. In the Middle East such actions have often elicited the very type of aggressive response that was anticipated ahead of time. The deeply historical conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is a specific example of this with injustices occurring on both sides. Political leaders, recognizing the nature of cultural software and modifying their own in order to understand the realized values of other ethnic groups and nations, could hypothetically begin to modify their actions in order to resolve current injustices and achieve future goals of peace, rather than operate based solely on past injustices, stereotypes, and prejudices.