This is easily my book of the year, and possibly the last ten years. Not for the writing, but for the ideas that it generated and the understanding that I have hopefully developed.
This book picks up where Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel ends. The author focuses on the difference between Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies and how they differ from other societies. He goes all the way back to hunter-gatherers and how they coalesce (or don’t) into groups and clans, and how different customs are adopted to survive and later thrive. These lead to kin-based societies. The big disruption in the west happened due to the church – the Catholics followed by protestants. And while this institution did what it did to benefit itself, it seeded the changes that would lead to WEIRD societies in a few centuries.
When I was much younger (and more naive) I used to think that education was the solution to all of India’s problems (this is still true for many problems that we face). However, there were numerous examples of educated people behaving like idiots, and I could not fathom why, until I read this book. Take a simple example of a village threatening an entire community for what a single person has done. There is a psychological cultural explanation for this that I had not realized before.
I have a fairly good exposure to India and the US and have interacted with quite a few Europeans. There were so many descriptions that I could immediately relate to. Consider the difference between guilt (personal) and shame (collective). Now think about the institutions that we import from the west, and which, to our surprise, don’t work here! We are not culturally aligned with the processes that created these institutions; hence their failure.
A few other ideas that struck me:
- I’m still trying to figure out the role of nations today. However, there is ample evidence of the importance of competition.
- I encourage my students to take multiple online courses on the same subject. Every teacher brings a different perspective, and this deepens our knowledge of the subject. It turns out this was exactly what was happening with guilds and apprenticeships in Europe, and exactly what does not happen in kin-based clans
- The greater the interconnectedness of the network, the more innovation and invention are observed. Ditto the greater the diversity of minds at work.
- Success is a function of the network we belong to. Sharing ideas is more useful (for everyone) than hoarding ideas. The latter helps the hoarder for a short time but leaves no lasting gains. Of course, this is obvious but good to have data that backs it up!
… exploring how our psychology shapes institutions and how institutions shape our psychology.”
I think one missed opportunity is understanding how America was unique (when it was being settled) as compared to Europe, and how this has lead to a distinct American psyche!
I will be re-reading this to better think about what needs this means in the Indian context. Secondly, can we apply the same analysis to the biggest institution that we have thus far — the internet? And the impact that it has had on the psychology of pretty much everyone?