Donald Trump and Dictatorial Taste

[JasonBlack]

(07-10-2022, 08:07 AM)David Horn Wrote: I guess it's time to pitch The WEIRDest People in the World, How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous by Joseph Henrich.  Henrich is an anthropologist of some renown, and wrote this book after collaborating on several cross-disciple papers with fellow Harvard faculty members.   
The book is a weighty read, and the data are numerous and varied, but the essense of the book is the postive but totally inadvertant effect the Roman Catholic Curch had on Western society by purposely destroying the family/tribal model over roughly 10 centuries.  In short, lack of focus on family and tribe made collaborative efforts with strangers more likely and far more profitable.

Christianity has a long and proud history of fostering cooperation and fostering good relations between otherwise unrelated groups (of course, it also has a long and not-so-proud history of being misused in abetting all manner of more "worldly" agenda, to put it mildly, but that's another discussion).

Alas, being tribalist in the sense of looking out for one's family does not have to mean they are one' sole concern, only that they are one's first concern. Tbh, I think the world would be better off if about 80% of people focused primarily on their own immediate families. Prioritizing the world as a whole should really be the reserve of the elderly, the wealthy and those able to afford the lifestyle of an intellectual.

Think of it like Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. You have to secure the foundation before you reach for levels of higher consciousness.

In the words of Nassim Taleb: "If your goal is to become a philosopher king, become a king first, then a philosopher".