Like biological evolution, the evolution of meaning does not seek the “best” or “maximum” solution; it only seeks the “sufficient,” “minimum” solution. This applies equally to making, communicating, and thinking. Evolutionary rationality is not based on utility and its maximization, but on preferences and propensities that allow us to choose a necessary and sufficient option. Moreover, utility is only one of the types of meanings between which a person chooses—along with morals, dreams, ideals and other meanings that are not always ordered among themselves. People’s needs and thinking are shaped by culture-society, and people behave rationally not only when they maximize utility, but also when they strive to comply with norms—that is, with the socio-cultural programs they have internalized:

“Rational conduct means that man, in face of the fact that he cannot satisfy all his impulses, desires, and appetites, foregoes the satisfaction of those which he considers less urgent. In order not to endanger the working of social cooperation man is forced to abstain from satisfying those desires whose satisfaction would hinder the establishment of societal institutions” (Mises 2005, p. 163).

Evolutionary rationality does not assume that reason is limited, but rather that reason and choice play different roles at different stages of socio-cultural and personal development. A child’s mind begins with an uncritical perception of another person’s actions, but as it matures, critical ability develops. The human brain and intelligence did not evolve to choose, but to persuade others, but now we try to use reason to make decisions:

“In what is already recognized as a major advance, in The Enigma of Reason Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber show that reason itself has evolved for the strategic purpose of persuading others, not to improve our own decision-taking. Motivated reasoning is why we developed the capacity to reason, and how we normally use it. Yet more fundamentally, the massive brain expansion of the past two million years has been driven by the need for sociality” (Collier 2018, p. 35).

Traditional choice accelerated the progress of meanings compared to cultural selection. Nevertheless, it still was constrained by customs, traditions, and other practices transmitted through cultural learning. Cultural evolution increased the sophistication of reason and enabled people to solve complex problems. However, in the race against uncertainty, the complexity of problems also grew. At the limits of traditional thinking, customs and other practices became an obstacle to cultural evolution. Simple self-reproduction ended when meanings proved to be an obstacle to their own growth and culture-society found ways to overcome this obstacle.

Simple self-reproduction is characterized by a relatively slow growth of both human population and meaning complexity. In a traditional culture-society, productivity hardly improves; population growth regularly tops production growth. At the same time, the uncertainty of the natural and socio-cultural environment causes fluctuations in the volume of production, primarily food, which from time to time prevents the culture-society from maintaining the achieved socio-cultural complexity and leads to its collapse.

The complexity of culture-society grows along with the complexity of the persons who compose it, although the rate of growth is not comparable for society and persons. Over the last few thousand years, the properties of the human brain have remained practically unchanged, while the complexity of both learning and culture-society has increased. At the same time, the complexity of personal active power has increased, mainly due to the lengthening of learning time. The main contribution to the increase in aggregate complexity lies in the division of order, the specialization of activity, and the complication of the means of activity, that is, in socio-cultural rather than personal complexity.

As we have seen, the difference between the complexity of a culture-society and the complexity of the persons who compose it is the source of surplus activity / product. In an agrarian society, the vast majority of the population is employed in agriculture, so the surplus is predominantly in the form of agricultural activities and their products. The agricultural surplus was a prerequisite for the development of cities and non-agricultural activities:

“Though most farmers and peasants individually produced very little surplus, the aggregated surplus of millions of agricultural workers was easily enough to support a large number of towns and to foster the development of industry, commerce, and banking. Much as they admired agriculture and depended on it, the Romans literally identified ‘civilization’ with cities (civitates)” (Lopez 1976, p. 6).

The slow complication of traditional culture-society led to the stagnation of agricultural surplus and thus to the stagnation of non-agricultural activities—crafts and trade—and of the cities in which these activities were concentrated.

Why did traditional culture-society reproduce itself in a simple way, why did its complexity and productivity increase so slowly? There were several reasons for this:

● Low sociality / isolation of communities, limited communication outside a narrow circle of acquaintances and relatives;

● Monotony of cultural and individual experience, low specialization of both activity and active power under subsistence farming and personal dependence;

● Rigidity of order that prevented the growth of personality, its complexity, learning and creativity;

● Inertia of traditional choice and socio-cultural norms and values that limited rationality and choice between counterfacts.

By nature, simple self-reproduction is the way small communities reproduce themselves under subsistence farming and personal dependence. In these small communities, consumption is reduced to the satisfaction of the simplest needs of existence and communication, production is small-scale and artisanal, circulation is limited mainly to gifts, tributes and local trade. Almost all social relations here boil down to communication with familiar people:

“The kind of exchange that has characterized most of economic history has been personalized exchange involving small-scale production and local trade. Repeat dealing, cultural homogeneity (that is a common set of values), and a lack of third-party enforcement (and indeed little need for it) have been typical conditions. Under them transactions costs are low, but because specialization and division of labor is rudimentary, transformation costs are high. The economies or collections of trading partners in this kind of exchange tend to be small” (North 1990, p. 34).

The merging of communities into chiefdoms and states did not change their local and inert character. Nor could the traditional order rooted in the community be overcome at the imperial level. Robert Lopez lists some of the obstacles that prevented the ancient Roman economy from going beyond the limits of simple self-reproduction. In our opinion, this list can be applied to all traditional states:

● Total or partial state monopoly on the production and circulation of salt, grains, metals, marble, etc.;

● Restrictions on foreign trade, total prohibition on the export of gold, strategic materials, foodstuffs;

● Lack of demand for foreign goods due to almost total self-sufficiency;

● Weak internal trade due to the unification of production and consumption;

● “The most serious obstacle to commercial development, however, was a psychological one. Trade was regarded as a base occupation, unworthy of gentlemen though not really unbecoming for commoners who would be unable to find a more dignified means of support” (Lopez 1976, pp. 7-8).