Well, yes, we are all deeply affected by cultural influences, but I would suggest that this influence can (and should) be made to serve man by bringing it into alignment with natural reality. Man does have a nature that can be named, and two aspects of that nature are free will and susceptibility to conditioning.

Free will is rooted in the freedom to choose how we direct conscious awareness - where one's attention is placed. The body/mind is like a computer; running programming both genetic and environmental. The world is constantly offering programs, but free will may be employed to choose which programming we run on our systems. This has become very evident lately, as I have met many who appear to intellectually subsist entirely on either FOX or CNN news media, and the whole of their opinions reflect their constant attention on these sources.

The overall culture offers many options for attention - religion, politics, entertainment, etc. - and we largely become the sum total of what we ingest in these regards. Who we are as physical human beings is altered by attention to this "in-formation" (a process by which we are formed within).

Cultural information does not simply arise organically from the masses, but is often seeded by those with the influence to do so. A media mogul makes choices about what to offer, and these choices can be directed to produce one outcome or another. Where on popular television will you ever hear the principles of self-ownership and human rights rooted in natural law? Where will you hear the concept of taxation as theft, or hear the validity of governmental authority challenged? Nearly nowhere. And if you do, it will be with ridicule - perhaps by a fictional character portrayed as abnormal or insane. The representation of these ideas is not commensurate with the reality - there are many sane, lucid individuals who hold these views. But this skewed depiction is by design, as it does not accurately reflect the cultural consciousness as it is, but rather as people in power would like it to be.

In this way, in the U.S., we have moved from a culture who openly discussed these ideas, and even took to arms to repel British oppressors on this basis, to a culture of inane slaves who chastise anyone who brings up such issues in public. In the "land of freedom", the people still fight with the same fervor; though now it is not about the imperative of their natural law rights, but about the preferred style of their own enslavement. This demonstrates how culture can be used by the few to purposefully manipulate the mass consciousness, rather than mass consciousness organically creating the culture.

Now, we must acknowledge and make known our deficiencies, but you are correct in stating that we must not unduly focus upon them. Once the problem is diagnosed, the cure should be the whole of our focus. But if the disease is false belief, then is necessary to demonstrate its falsehood in order to encourage its abandonment. And it must be abandoned in order to free up space for true knowledge, as a full cup cannot take on any water. So the work becomes showing people their error, which seems to contradict our intention to focus upon solutions, even though it IS part of the solution itself. Do you see the problem here? How do we not focus on the negative, when ignorance of the negative is the very problem?

I have thought many times, "Perhaps we can just uplift people, and false beliefs will fall away" but in practice, we have many kind, well-intentioned, intelligent and spiritual people who still support the invalid authority of government oppressors, believing that by doing so, they are being responsible and benevolent. They want to feed the poor, and aid the elderly; they want justice for victims, and security for their families. And so they go out and vote to have their neighbors robbed under threat of violence in order to meet these aims. They "support the troops" who are overseas causing immoral chaos, believing they are heroes.

In the movie "The Green Mile" the simpleton prisoner laments, "They kill them with their love", and this is the state of the world - a handful of miscreants using the people's love and kindness to fuel evil.

The "evolution" I speak of is not growth in the common sense, but progress by way of regression. It's about removing what's false in us, and returning to what's at our core. It is the journey from "minus ten" back to "zero". There is nothing we need to gain, as we already are all that we need to be. But as long as we mistake what that is, we are not fulfilling our potential or embracing the beautiful implied promise of conscious existence.