I think incorporating incumbent elites actually strengthens your theoretical framework. It moves the argument beyond a purely cognitive explanation toward a multi-level evolutionary theory in which cognitive filters, institutions, and power interact.
I would revise the model like this:
Environmental change
↓
New adaptive problems
↓
Generation of cultural variation
(new ideas, technologies,
social movements, experiments)
↓
Cognitive filters shape
which ideas gain attention
and public support
↓
Elite selection
(resources, legitimacy,
funding, law, coercion)
↓
Institutional adoption
↓
Institutional performance
↓
Cultural transmission
↓
Modification of cognitive filters
through education, media,
religion, markets, politics
↓
Next evolutionary cycle
The key addition is that elite selection becomes a second, distinct selection process.
I would distinguish three different selection mechanisms operating simultaneously.
Level 1 — Psychological selection
This occurs inside individual minds.
Cognitive filters influence
- what people notice
- what they believe
- what they remember
- what they imitate
- what they are willing to support
This determines which cultural variants gain an initial foothold.
Level 2 — Institutional (elite) selection
This is where your recent thinking has become especially interesting.
Most cultural innovations never become institutions.
They must first survive a bottleneck controlled disproportionately by incumbent elites.
Elites decide
- which technologies receive investment
- which scientific discoveries become policy
- which laws are enacted
- which educational curricula are adopted
- which media narratives dominate
- which organizational forms become legal
- which innovations are suppressed
Thus elites act as gatekeepers of institutional evolution.
Their decisions need not maximize social welfare.
Rather, they usually maximize
- political survival
- organizational stability
- wealth
- military advantage
- prestige
- ideological legitimacy
Those objectives may coincide with long-term societal interests—or diverge sharply from them.
Level 3 — Societal selection
Even institutions favored by elites ultimately face reality.
Institutions are continually tested by
- economic performance
- military competition
- demographic change
- social legitimacy
- environmental sustainability
- resilience to shocks
Some persist.
Others fail.
Unfortunately, this feedback often operates over decades or centuries, allowing maladaptive institutions to persist long after they have become harmful.
The central feedback loop
This leads to what I think is the heart of your emerging theory.
Evolution produced
cognitive filters
↓
Cognitive filters
shape institutions
↓
Institutions
concentrate power
↓
Power shapes
future institutions
↓
Institutions reshape
future cognition
Notice that the causal arrows run in both directions.
Institutions do not merely emerge from cognition.
Once established, they reshape cognition through
- education
- media
- advertising
- law
- religion
- workplace organization
- financial incentives
- social norms
Institutions become powerful selection environments for future cultural evolution.
The role of incumbent elites in maladaptation
This also sharpens your argument about evolutionary maladaptation.
Your earlier work argued that cognitive filters evolved for small, egalitarian bands but now operate within global mass societies.
Adding elites suggests a second layer of maladaptation.
Incumbent elites are themselves products of existing institutions. Because they generally benefit from those institutions, they possess both the incentive and the capacity to preserve them, even after those institutions have become maladaptive for society as a whole.
This does not imply that elites are uniquely irrational or malicious. Rather, they are subject to the same cognitive filters as everyone else, while occupying positions that give them disproportionate influence over institutional selection. That perspective is consistent with your earlier analysis of elites as the principal creators, maintainers, selectors, and defenders of institutions.
A possible central proposition
I think this could become one of the foundational propositions of your project:
Human cultural evolution operates through three interacting systems of selection. Cognitive filters determine which cultural variants gain psychological acceptance. Incumbent elites determine which variants receive institutional support and large-scale implementation. Societal and environmental outcomes determine which institutions ultimately persist. Because elites are themselves selected within existing institutional arrangements, cultural evolution is systematically biased toward preserving incumbent institutions, even when they have become ecologically or socially maladaptive.
This formulation also points directly toward your concept of directed cultural evolution. If the existing institutional selection process systematically favors short-term elite interests over long-term sustainability, then the challenge is not simply to design better institutions. It is to redesign the institutional selection process itself so that innovations are evaluated against explicit criteria such as sustainability, resilience, equity, and species-level survivability before they become entrenched. I suspect that this redesign of the selection process, rather than any single institutional reform, will become the distinctive contribution of your theory.
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