The problem of culture

How much are gurus like ordinary culture?  How deep does our programming go? 

Culture and society rely on some degree of brainwashing to hold together, but then extreme interpretations can lead to wars and destruction.  War, which is essentially culturally justified murder, arises when cultures, whether individual or collective, go into a survival mode, feeling threatened by some other.  But these definitions are entirely arbitrary; you could have been born that way, or he this way.  Who’s to say who is right?  Any good fundamentalist (or guru) will say that he is, but that doesn’t help us at all in a relative world.  When the decision is whether to attack an enemy or not to, a choice of one world-view versus another must be made, and this is a matter of life versus death.

Without an objective observer, or even the theoretical possibility of one (even if you believe in God, it’s unlikely he’ll step in and directly state his opinion), how can we hope to overcome these barriers and bring peace to this world?  Even if we stand aside from war, there will always be some fundamentalist who will just take advantage of our weakness.  If we stand up for ourselves, we are making a proclamation that our side is right, regardless of costs.  Sometimes this is necessary for survival, but survivalism isn’t a basis for cohesive morality.  Who’s to say that our survival is more important than the survival of that other guy?  In a zero-sum game, the answer is that everyone says it, because to each of us, our own survival is paramount.  We will justify it with god or philosophy or other illusions, but fundamentally the view is survivalist.  Can we admit to ourselves that this is the case?  If we can admit it, will it then change our behavior?