It’s obviously different from WEIRD. Japan is also high-trust, as is Thailand. A lot of poor and “backwards” countries actually have many lovely people despite lacking the western values that some people would argue are necessary for good behaviour.
I think high-trust is the default, and that it’s broken by influxes of people who think or value differently. This causes a breakdown of the default dominant strategy, one cannot afford to trust one-another. We also tend to invest in our own environment, for when we improve things around us, we also improve things for ourselves. But what about people who move around a lot?
For trust to break down, you need quite a lot of people. In smaller socities, especially ones where people have lived for many years, everyone can be held accountable for their actions, and you can’t do anything without curious old ladies gossiping to eachother about it.
Imagine that you have new people visiting every day. Your cultural values doesn’t mean anything to these people. These people will likely never see you again, so they don’t need to worry about making a good impression. The population density is high, or at least the arrival and departure of people is way past Dunbar’s number, so your good deeds are unlikely to be remembered and paid back in the future. These people can move around as they please, so they can profit from the exploitation of your environment without hurting themselves. Said a little vulgarly, people tend to not “shit where they eat”.
Now, allow me to be a little blunt: This is not a difficult topic. There’s a small set of obvious answers that you won’t hear often solely because of a social pressure leading to self-censorship. Mixing vastly different cultures is a stupid idea, and it’s no wonder that difficulties have resulted from doing so. This is trivially true, a majority of people just don’t allow themselves to think of this conclusion. In connection to this, I want the reader to cognize the difference between good-faith pro-social behaviour, and conformity due to fear.
Yes, I know them, but are they correct answers? Racial purity, eradication of religious heresy, extermination of sexual degenerates, well-defined and immutable social hierarchy, strict enforcement of female submission, dietary/drug requirements and prohibitions, are all classics, but I’m unsure they actually work.
Whatever the solution is, it’s rather clear that fighting these factors have gotten us further away from it. Lots of people are trying to “improve society”, but it’s only getting worse. And when they double-down, thinking that they just didn’t go far enough, society gets worse even faster. These people are often utterly incompetent, even though some of them are clearly acting in good faith.
You don’t need racial purity, you just need competent people with a shared culture. You don’t need to eradicate heresy, just people who oppose the norms and values which currently work. You do need a hierarchy, no question about that, but position should correlate strongly with competence, and you need to keep corruption at bay somehow. And degeneracy is a symptom of bad mental health and a lack of self-control, the type of indulgence is less important. The more self-control/discipline a person has, the more freedom you can allow them before they destroy themselves.
I wouldn’t call it “female submission”, just different gender roles. And since women are more emotional on average, they’re much easier for politicians to manipulate. They tend towards the changes which sound the most appealing, rather than those with the biggest possibility of actually working. You have to take genetics into account, you can’t change human nature by changing society.
Human history is long. We have seen what works. The trick is finding something which works and in which people are happy and healthy. Keep in mind that I’m not advocating for people having “good lives” by whatever objective metrics you can think of, that doesn’t work. We should create lives in which those living said lives enjoy themselves. Comparison, and having too many choices, are both terrible for human health, for this reason modern dating apps are terrible.
It’s very possible that companies earn money by creating a need in the population, and that people signal much better lives than they actually have (buying things they can’t afford, only posting good news on social media, etc) which results in a population in which everyone feels inadequate/inferior, making them desperate enough to turn egoistic/selfish.
I do agree that there’s many possible factors, but I’d also encourage people to focus on the psychological side of things. Too many people try to change the world because they refuse to change themselves, and the most vocal of the bunch tend to be mentally ill.
Edit: Finally, we’re fighting against odds which have never existed before, like the current population density. I think it’s better to have many, smaller communities than few, large ones, for many many reasons. But this is less profitable, so globalism is the future.
It’s obviously different from WEIRD. Japan is also high-trust, as is Thailand. A lot of poor and “backwards” countries actually have many lovely people despite lacking the western values that some people would argue are necessary for good behaviour.
I think high-trust is the default, and that it’s broken by influxes of people who think or value differently. This causes a breakdown of the default dominant strategy, one cannot afford to trust one-another. We also tend to invest in our own environment, for when we improve things around us, we also improve things for ourselves. But what about people who move around a lot?
For trust to break down, you need quite a lot of people. In smaller socities, especially ones where people have lived for many years, everyone can be held accountable for their actions, and you can’t do anything without curious old ladies gossiping to eachother about it.
Imagine that you have new people visiting every day. Your cultural values doesn’t mean anything to these people. These people will likely never see you again, so they don’t need to worry about making a good impression. The population density is high, or at least the arrival and departure of people is way past Dunbar’s number, so your good deeds are unlikely to be remembered and paid back in the future. These people can move around as they please, so they can profit from the exploitation of your environment without hurting themselves. Said a little vulgarly, people tend to not “shit where they eat”.
Now, allow me to be a little blunt: This is not a difficult topic. There’s a small set of obvious answers that you won’t hear often solely because of a social pressure leading to self-censorship. Mixing vastly different cultures is a stupid idea, and it’s no wonder that difficulties have resulted from doing so. This is trivially true, a majority of people just don’t allow themselves to think of this conclusion. In connection to this, I want the reader to cognize the difference between good-faith pro-social behaviour, and conformity due to fear.
Yes, I know them, but are they correct answers? Racial purity, eradication of religious heresy, extermination of sexual degenerates, well-defined and immutable social hierarchy, strict enforcement of female submission, dietary/drug requirements and prohibitions, are all classics, but I’m unsure they actually work.
Whatever the solution is, it’s rather clear that fighting these factors have gotten us further away from it. Lots of people are trying to “improve society”, but it’s only getting worse. And when they double-down, thinking that they just didn’t go far enough, society gets worse even faster. These people are often utterly incompetent, even though some of them are clearly acting in good faith.
You don’t need racial purity, you just need competent people with a shared culture. You don’t need to eradicate heresy, just people who oppose the norms and values which currently work. You do need a hierarchy, no question about that, but position should correlate strongly with competence, and you need to keep corruption at bay somehow. And degeneracy is a symptom of bad mental health and a lack of self-control, the type of indulgence is less important. The more self-control/discipline a person has, the more freedom you can allow them before they destroy themselves.
I wouldn’t call it “female submission”, just different gender roles. And since women are more emotional on average, they’re much easier for politicians to manipulate. They tend towards the changes which sound the most appealing, rather than those with the biggest possibility of actually working. You have to take genetics into account, you can’t change human nature by changing society.
Human history is long. We have seen what works. The trick is finding something which works and in which people are happy and healthy. Keep in mind that I’m not advocating for people having “good lives” by whatever objective metrics you can think of, that doesn’t work. We should create lives in which those living said lives enjoy themselves. Comparison, and having too many choices, are both terrible for human health, for this reason modern dating apps are terrible.
It’s very possible that companies earn money by creating a need in the population, and that people signal much better lives than they actually have (buying things they can’t afford, only posting good news on social media, etc) which results in a population in which everyone feels inadequate/inferior, making them desperate enough to turn egoistic/selfish.
I do agree that there’s many possible factors, but I’d also encourage people to focus on the psychological side of things. Too many people try to change the world because they refuse to change themselves, and the most vocal of the bunch tend to be mentally ill.
Edit: Finally, we’re fighting against odds which have never existed before, like the current population density. I think it’s better to have many, smaller communities than few, large ones, for many many reasons. But this is less profitable, so globalism is the future.