Renewing what needs to be renewed

There is a way to think about societies. I read about the Long Now by Steward Brand, about making things last.

And one way of making things last, is to keep renewing them, in long abstract rituals, where the meanings are always talked about, renewed to the surface of consciounsess, like the monks in Japan that construct and deconstruct an ancient temple, like the Bibles and other religious texts that are being constantly copied and re-copied.

So is the same with the values of society. It's not too hard, to connect such replication with the processes of genetic evolution - how life reproduces itself through replication with some mutation. Societies will replicate the DNA - their values, but every once in a while, 'random mutations' in the form of new ideas, enter into the value system (the DNA) of society, and drive it towards something else - not necessarily better, but definitely different. So values need to be renewed over and over again, and how that renewal is done, is through discussion, and debates, with one another...

This renewal has to be done with every generation in society... It is the task of the population to educate their youth... Which I guess, is missing in SG. There is no ownership of these values - the values taught to 'us' are no longer 'new' and become stale. Yet these ideas have to become 'new' or they lose their... place in society.