Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress

Multiculturalism is a lie. It is a lie not because it says we should tolerate minorities (we should), but because it says every culture presents an equally valid way of looking at the world (they don't). This lie has consequences. The most significant being that educators in America and Canada have abandoned teaching Western culture for fear of offending minority cultures. Policy makers in the West take our culture for granted. They don't recognize that rational thinking is not natural, and it took a 1500 year battle with the Catholic Church, culminating in the Reformation and the Enlightenment, before rational thinking became a fixture in Western culture. In the Arab world today, that battle is still waiting to be fought. Consider the following thought pattern 1. a terrorist attack kills scores of people 2. muslims would never kill innocent people 3. therefore, the killers could not have been muslim 4. since they were not muslim, they must have been CIA or Mossad. A person schooled in Western culture - the language of Aristotle and Socrates - will recognize the fallacies in this thought pattern: the false premise (#2), circular reasoning and logical quadruped (#2->#3), and non sequitur (#3->#4). And even Westerners without a classical education will almost instinctively recognize those fallacies, even though they don't know the technical terms of logic. Yet to a person in the Arab world, the above thought pattern seems eminently reasonable. (See http://news.bbc.co.uk, search for "Iraq shrine blast: Your reaction"). Rational thinking, then, is an important difference between Western culture and Arab culture. Not because Westerners are inherently smarter than Arabs, but because Western education has taught European history and philosophy (Aristotle, Socrates, Kant, and Mill, among others) and in doing so given students the tools of logic. There is currently a movement among "multiculturalist" educators to take the European classics out of North American education. Their motive is good - exposing a multiethnic student body to a multiethnic curriculum - but the result would be disastrous. A whole generation of students will come up using the same flawed thinking patterns so common in the Arab world today, and the society those students build will likely come to resemble the violent, repressive theocracies of the Middle East. Indeed, by denying Western culture to our students, we are doing a grave disservice to immigrants who come here precisely because they want a better life for their children. That better life includes a Western education. This book is therefore quite right to say culture matters. If we want to preserve our way of life, then we have to preserve our way of thinking, and the way we think is a direct product of our education in European history and philosophy.

I just started reading the book and I finished the Culture and Economics section. I am not an economist and I am not a sociologist, I am a 27 year old engineer (born in Pakistan and raised in the Middle East) who intends to make a documentary on a related subject. This book is a collection of essays by prominent sociologists and economists written in an easy to understand language (except for some sections in one essay where the authors wants to foist technical terms on you to impress or cajole you into seeing things their way but you will know and identify such people and make your own judgements about what they have to say) and it presents both point of views (the extremes as well as the middle ground). Although there is one bad thing about the book (you cannot tell clearly which author will argue which side until you are in the middle of the essay : this is particularly the case with people who wish to state that Culture Does NOT Matter. They almost sneak up their arguments on you and beat around the bush for pages before getting there; which probably reflects on their essays). If anything, reading this book has told me A LOT about African and Latin American cultures (atleast in the first 50 pages). These are deep insights that only an observant student of that culture can deduce. It is very amusing to read them at times while at other times you go "Ok, so these people have problems, I can't do anything about it but I would like to know more about the culture good and bad, and particularly the parts that every culture tries to hide or gloss over".This book is a good read for all future politicians, economists, businessmen and anyone who is curious about how to interact with various cultures and what are the motivations behind the actions of various cultures. Fabulous, simply fabulous. What is amazing is the media attention a mediocre book like Guns, Germs and Steel received as opposed to this book which is simply sublime. I read passages of it for my younger sister and my friends and to this guy who is working on making our company more efficient (some motivation coach) and my coworkers too, naturally ... tonight I intend to read passages of it to my date over champagne and strawberries (I hope) ... after reading this book I felt a closer attachment to my watch and a greater desire to be more efficient and precise, more hardworking, more thrifty (with the exception of tonight) and more entrepreneurial (sp?)

It certainly seems to matter. Why, after all, should Japan have been be rich while Taiwan was poor, if culture did not matter? Or Denmark been a nation of farmers while Holland held dominion over the trade routes of the world? And why, as is asked in one of the most frustratingly tentative essays in this very variable volume, do different immigrant groups to the United States have such very different careers? Of course, it is unfashionable to ask such questions lest someone believe that to say culture matters is to imply that race matters: ie that members of wealthy races are inherently superior to members of poor races. Perhaps that is why the most compelling essays in this book are by an African development economist and a Latin American journalist who exclaim impatiently that of course culture matters and insist that the thing their nations need is to discover the cultural components of economic success and import some. Even more refreshing is the essay by Ronald Inglehardt who brings - gasp - actual measurable data to this debate. Not that anything is quite settled. We are still left with the big questions, like: Why Europe? Why not China? and What was so special about eighteenth century England? On those questions, permit me to recommend two other new books. Nathan Pomeranz's THE GREAT DIVERGENCE, which bends over backwards to prove that China could equally well have given us the industrial revolution, but for a few chance occurances that have nothing to do with culture. And BULLOUGH'S POND by Diana Muir, which, in the course of discussing a number of other things, does lead one to wonder if there may have been something about those Calvinists after all.

Agree or disagree, you have to admit that there is food for thought in this collection. After all, if culture doesn't matter why is Singapore rich while Banglsdesh starves? The problem with this sort of thing is that it is so hard to pin down. Jared Diamond, after all, can tell us exactly how many domesticable plants there were per square mile on any given coast, and a phalanx of econometric historians tells us how taxes or wages impacted growth at given points in the past. By comparison culture is a slippery customer. Still, this is an interesting read. As a companion volume, I recommend Diana Muir's Reflections in Bullough's Pond, a dazzling little volume that plays out the culture wars on the ground.

I'm afraid some may jump to conclusions simply from the title and contributors of this collection. This book is a fascinating discussion on the differences in culture around the world and how these have affected cultural paths. There really is no judgement involved. If you're curious at all about the way modern thought, from the most micro of microeconomics to the universals of anthropology, regards cultural differences and how those differences might contribute in a positive or negative way to the world's future success, then read it. You can be of any political persuasion, if you have an open mind, you will appreciate it.