A big silent intellectual change of the past quarter century. The West got rich because Westerners are different. People from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic societies are WEIRD. The most important argument: this came from the Catholic church, which banned cousin marriage.

submitted by Chipit from astralcodexten.substack.com

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[–]newguy 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

Morality is a key component to a long-term stable society. That's why most majorly successful societies across the world have a religion in their culture. At its core, religion is the aspiration toward morality.

Lots of backstabbing creates low-trust societies. Low-trust societies cannot build large social and organizational structures, or if they do they don't last very long.

Only high-trust societies can flourish. And high-trust societies can only exist if people act in an overwhelmingly trustworthy manner, and people who do not are punished or ostracized.

[–]weavilsatemyface 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Morality is a key component to a long-term stable society.

And yet those stable societies have a considerable variation in terms of what they consider morality.

With the exception of a handful of common ethics, most of which come down to either the Golden Rule or to self-serving rules that protect the elites, stable societies rarely agree on the nitty-gritty of morality.

We all agree that murder is bad, but what is murder, exactly? Obviously murder is unlawful killing but societies differ in what they treat as unlawful.

  • Killing members of your own tribe? Unlawful.
  • ... unless they are a member of your own family who has shamed your family, then you are honour-bound to kill them.
  • ... or to prevent them from stealing your wallet.
  • ... or if they insulted you.

  • ... or if they totally ignored the Trespasses Will Be Shot sign on the front lawn, they brought it on themselves really.

  • Killing newborn babies? Unlawful.

  • ... unless they are defective, then it's okay to leave them out in the hills to die of exposure or be eaten by wolves.

  • Going to war and killing people from other tribes? Unlawful.

  • Nah just kidding. Pretty much every society has considered wartime killing of the enemy (including civilians) to be lawful, so long as you have a good excuse for your war:

    • If God tells us to.
    • Because they worship the wrong god.
    • Or the right god but in the wrong way.
    • If the king tells us to.
    • If they insulted the king.
    • Self-defence.
    • Preemptive self-defence (hit them before they hit us.)
    • Retribution for the things they did to us.
    • Retribution for the things they're going to do to us for the things we did to them.
    • To take back our land that they stole.
    • To take their land if it rightfully belongs to us.
    • Because we want their stuff, and they unfairly won't give it to us.

That's why most majorly successful societies across the world have a religion in their culture.

But unsuccessful societies also have religion.

Since both successful and unsuccessful societies have religion, religion cannot be what makes some societies more successful than others.

At its core, religion is the aspiration toward morality.

Oh man, you don't know much about religion, do you?

The morality of religion is 100% "Because God says so." If God said that it was mandatory for you to murder babies, you would do it. Just ask Abraham and Jephthah. In Christian USA, about one child a month dies because they are sacrificed to illness and disease for their parents twisted spiritual beliefs.

[–]jet199 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

You need to look up the difference between guilt based and shame based cultures

Most cultures really don't have morality as a big aspect, only not being found out.

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I know about the guilt-shame-fear spectrum and honour, dignity and victim cultures. That's my point. Each society throughout history is unique in terms of its positions between guilt-shame-fear and honour-dignity-victim and consequently what they consider moral is unique.

Of course there are broad similarities because ultimately we all share the same fundamental needs for security and safety, and some of our moral intuitions about fairness and justice seem to be biological, but the fine details matter.

Most cultures really don't have morality as a big aspect, only not being found out.

Of course morality is a big aspect of every culture. It just might not be the same morals that you consider "morality".

Ultimately cultures don't have morality at all, individuals have morality. But we talk about a culture's morality as a short-hand for the more or less common morality shared by most members of that culture.

Without at least something of a shared set of morals, it would not be a culture, there would be no trust between individuals and society would collapse into a dog-eat-dog world where anything goes in the absence of at least some nominal unspoken shared morality. Even the worst criminals in prison form a prison culture with its own rules and morality.

Individuals differ in how strictly they keep to their moral standards. Nevertheless they have morals, even when they differ from one culture or subculture to another.

[–]newguy 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Oh man, you don't know much about religion, do you?

A lot more than you, apparently. The aspiration is different from the reality. You don't have great reading comprehension on the last few replies.

[–][deleted]  (3 children)

[removed]

    [–]twolanterns 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    you are assuming the media pushed cancel culture is the majority - its a perpetrated disease

    the way the media has betrayed society should have them banished from the society they utterly hate

    those behind it - they are the ones who should face elimination from civilization

    [–]Vulptex[A] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    Don't advocate violence.

    [–]binaryblob 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    If you were to eradicate the aggressive people in society, after some time there won't be violence anymore. As such, I am advocating less violence. So, why would I be advocating violence?

    [–]Islamofascist 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

    All of those Westerners will be extinct within a couple hundred years, except maybe the Amish (who are the least westernized of the Westerners). The future belongs to the Black Muslim.

    [–]LarrySwinger2 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

    mudslime*

    [–]Canbot 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    Or there will be another Hitler, and this time he will get it right.

    [–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

    The West got rich because Westerners are different by looting the rest of the world.

    Fixed that for you.

    People from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic societies are WEIRD.

    Yes, that's what the initials W E I R D spell out.

    The idea that westerns psychology is different in some ways from the rest of the world isn't a terrible idea, but when the west was conquering the world and becoming rich, they weren't rich or democratic, and not that much more educated either.

    Rather, we became WEIRD because we were more successful at robbing other nations than they were at defending themselves.

    [–]Chipit[S] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (5 children)

    Oh look, it's the tired old hard left view again. How uninteresting.

    The West won the world by the superiority of its ideas or values and religion. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.

    [–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

    The West won the world by the superiority of its ideas or values and religion.

    The people who actually won the world, instead of sitting in their mom's basement eating Cheesy Puffs and trying to be an edgelord on social media, knew how they did it. And occasionally they were honest about it.

    ‘Whatever happens, we have got, the Maxim, and they have not’

    The west didn't win the world by having better "values" or ideas and especially not by having a better religion. It won by being better at killing.

    [–]Chipit[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

    That's the hard left view.

    I think out of all the views in the world, that one has quite enough representation already. Do you really need to run around repeating it?

    The west's religion converted people all across the planet. Nobody else's did.

    [–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

    That's the hard left view.

    Don't be daft. Its the view of the honest imperialists who wrote about it. They weren't shy to admit that they conquered the world through superior ability to kill the natives and steal their stuff. They might have been bastards, but they were honest about their bastardry.

    The west's religion converted people all across the planet. Nobody else's did.

    😂 😂 😂

    Islam says hello.

    In any case, I don't dispute that Christianity was spread around the world, by the sword and the Enfield rifle.

    [–]Chipit[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    Islam was spread by the sword. They didn't send missionaries. They murdered anyone who refused to convert.

    Meanwhile Christians send married couples into the bush...20 years later there are Christian nations all over Africa that straight up fight Islam.

    [–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    Christianity is 2000 years old. You have literally no idea how it spread for most of that time, do you? For you, history is a mystery, nothing occurred before 2010, right?

    Can you even tell me how Rome became christian and what happened to the followers of the old religions who didn't convert? How about the Albigensian Crusade? The conquest of the Inca and Aztec? What about the Belgian Congo?

    [–]jet199 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    The West got rich and better tech which then enabled them to conquer the rest of the world.

    After that it was still industrialisation and not empires which made the West richer.

    [–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    The West got rich and better tech which then enabled them to conquer the rest of the world.

    You have it backwards. The west got better tech, which enabled them to conquer the world and get rich.

    British India is the perfect example. For 1800 years, India was very possibly the single richest nation in the world, with around 25% of global GDP, based on trade as far away as Rome and Egypt. But after the British got their hands on it, between the British Raj and the East India Company, India fell to one of the poorest countries in the world, with less than 1% of global GDP.

    After that it was still industrialisation and not empires which made the West richer.

    Where do you think the west got the raw materials to feed the factories? They got it by exploiting the subject empires.

    And the man-power to keep the empire going? In WW2, the British famously spoke of "standing alone" against the Nazis, but they conveniently ignored the Empire and Dominion. Britain mobilised about 6-7 million men and women for the Armed Forces (which was a slightly smaller percentage of their total population than Germany) but they also mobilised another 7-8 million from the Empire. To say nothing of the millions of (mostly Indian) subjects who aided the war effort in non-combat roles as labourers.

    The same applied in WW1. France had their African colonial troops. Britain had Africans, Indians and others. It has been said by historians that the typical French or British soldier in the trenches in WW1 had black or brown skin, a fact which is entirely absent from our western collective memory.