The Ghosts of Empires Past

[Dan '82]

http://peterturchin.com/blog/2016/09/17/...ires-past/

Quote:Apparently my blog posts on the historical roots of European dysfunction (see for example the last one, Visualizing Values Mismatch in the European Union) were noticed. I was approached by people who run Euromind and asked to contribute a short article to the edited volume they are putting together, titled Do Europeans Exist?  I did that and you can see it here:
Deep Historical Roots of European Values, Institutions, and Identities
In my previous post, I used data from the World Values Survey (WVS) to make a point about values mismatch that ensued when the core six countries, which originated the European Union in 1957, grew to the current 28 countries (soon to be 27 if Brexit really happens). Recollect that WVS has been collecting data on people’s beliefs in many countries since 1981. Researchers discovered that much of variation between populations of different countries can be mapped to just two dimensions: (1) Traditional values versus Secular-rational values and (2) Survival values versus Self-expression values. When values for each country in the sample are plotted in a two-dimensional space defined by these two axes, we have what is known as the Inglehart–Welzel Cultural Map.
Well, for the article that I contributed to Euromind, I wanted to explore the question of where do different values come from. Do they have deep historical roots? The argument I made was as follows:

Quote:Historical experience of living in the same state often results in the spread of common values, institutions, and identities among initially diverse groups. Elements of culture, including those that affect cooperation, change slowly, and often persist for long periods of time after the original empire has broken apart.

I then took the WVS data for European countries from the latest survey, and color-coded them by shared history within past states: the Carolingian, Habsburg, Ottoman, British, and Russian Empires. “Nordic” refers to the Danish and Swedish Empires (since Denmark at some points in historical time included Norway, Iceland, and a part of Sweden, while Sweden included Finland). Here’s what I got:


As the figure demonstrates, modern countries, which belonged to the same past and long-gone empire, cluster very closely together. There is little overlap. And when there is, it may reflect the influence of even more ancient empires. For example, Spain, Italy, Greece, and the Balkans were all core regions of the Roman Empire, and that’s where the most significant overlap (between the Habsburg and the Ottoman Empires) occurs.
This is really a remarkable result.

[Eric the Green]

Looking at an example of the world values survey
http://graduateinstitute.ch/files/live/s...(2005).pdf
I would not understand how Mr. Turchin could possibly associate the questions with the two axes he describes.

[Dan '82]

(09-17-2016, 07:55 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Looking at an example of the world values survey
http://graduateinstitute.ch/files/live/s...(2005).pdf
I would not understand how Mr. Turchin could possibly associate the questions with the two axes he describes.

Here's the wikipedia entry for the theory I'll see if I can find more later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inglehart%..._the_world

[Ragnarök_62]

(09-17-2016, 08:34 PM)Dan Wrote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inglehart%..._the_world

wiki Wrote:Out of Western world countries, the United States is among the most conservative (as one of the most downwards-located countries), together with highly conservative Catholic countries such as Ireland and Poland.[6] Simoni concludes that "On the traditional/secular dimension, the United States ranks far below other rich societies, with levels of religiosity and national pride comparable with those found in some developing societies" (roughly, between Iran and Iraq).[3]

Yup.  Lot's of crackpots here and probably even moreso  in the South.


So , yeah, really we need to be a lot more like Sweden. That also means no more MIC and butting into other nation-states' business.

[pbrower2a]

Even in the US I would recognize a regional difference, with most Southern states having been effectively single-party dictatorships until the mid-1960s. Mississippi even had a KGB-style secret police, the Mississippi Sovereignty Committee. Even with ethnicity, figure that people who fled Commie rule (like Vietnamese or Cubans of a certain age) would think differently from Irish-Americans who know nothing of the sort.

I see a strong correlation between memories of dictatorial regimes (25 to almost 30 years ago in the former Soviet bloc to about 40 in Spain, Greece, and Portugal to 70 for most of the rest of Europe -- exceptions the UK, Ireland, Switzerland, Sweden, and Finland) and concern with survival. The dictatorships did a poor job of promoting human happiness and did a good job of squelching personal expression. Figure that a 25-year-old in Poland might not be so concerned with day-to-ray survival and more concerned with self-expression than a 50-year-old Pole who remembers queues for food and remembers  fear of the secret police.


Even in the US I would recognize a regional difference, with most Southern states having been effectively single-party dictatorships until the mid-1960s. Mississippi even had a KGB-style secret police, the Mississippi Sovereignty Committee. Even with ethnicity, figure that people who fled Commie rule (like Vietnamese or Cubans of a certain age) would think differently from Irish-Americans who know nothing of the sort.