tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post5248506917719729630..comments2024-03-28T18:32:05.933-04:00Comments on bensozia: The Adaptive Power of Culture and our Fondness for TraditionJohnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-57339829992343086312019-06-08T10:14:13.261-04:002019-06-08T10:14:13.261-04:00I would push back on the power of Henrich to expla...I would push back on the power of Henrich to explain things like why Republicans defend both their version of the Constitution and cheerleading. It seems to me the connection of high school football and cheerleading and other Republican values is obvious: they're about traditional gender- and person-definition--and not in a mysterious or singing-to-the-pigs kind of way. Republicans defend football and cheerleading because they love them, because they're the ways of being male and female and for both to be sexy that they like, and for many other reasons (including, let's face it, their particular vision of racial harmony: black players can be famous, important, rich, lionized--but always ultimately subordinate to the white quarterback or coach).<br /><br />In other words, it's not just they take everything they grew up with and preserve it as a whole. It's much deeper and richer than that.<br /><br />Henrich, as presented by Alexander, simply seems weak on issues of psychology and identity. (I'm not surprised that Alexander would present a thinker in such a way; I've never gotten over the way he simplified, in an insidious and pejorative way, the Sunni-Shi'ite conflict. His point was, look at these funny people whose real, silly motives I can spot and explain.)<br /><br />And all this is, of course, not to mention that liberals have their own versions of morality, responsibility, and respect for the Constitution. All that stuff tends to saturate the liberal posts I've read. In fact, a good deal of Trumpism seems to me to be about being tired of liberals prating about morality, responsibility, and respect for the Constitution. Trump's pugilistic populists (in Douthat's magnificent phrase) wanna cut loose and kick ass.Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14456987412710878404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-35670758842567051182019-06-07T19:27:00.970-04:002019-06-07T19:27:00.970-04:00Where this seems most powerful to me in interpreti...Where this seems most powerful to me in interpreting contemporary life is in the weird hodgepodges of stuff that make up a culture. Conservatives defend things that seem to me important (morality, responsibility, respect for the Constitution), things that at least seem serious to me (churchgoing, the nuclear family), and things that strike me as utter nonsense (high school football and cheerleading). Henrich says this is because a person of conservative mindset is prone to seeing everything he or she grew up with as equally important and therefore insist on preserving all of it. As David hints, leftists do the same. In fact the striking thing about politics in America is that more and more people are accepting all of their party's tenets, as if being a Republican or Democrat were as all encompassing as being an Orthodox Jew. Thus people are constantly insisting on connections that strike me as wholly imaginary. People who write for Salon like to argue that socialism would necessarily lead to equal right for women and minorities, while at RedState they think socialism would necessarily lead to crime and family breakdown.Johnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01037215533094998996noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-50291144496504591922019-06-07T09:58:05.091-04:002019-06-07T09:58:05.091-04:00One could add, of course, that many movements that...One could add, of course, that many movements that want change have the belief, "adopt the new ways, all of them, because not doing so is evil."<br /><br />I suppose one could say that the "life is hard and so it shouldn't be too hard for us all to chill out" message is a kind of fiction, on the Harari model, that might have beneficial pacifying effects on our current political struggles. And since we must have fictions, why not that one? But at the moment I have trouble seeing beyond the fiction in the fiction. Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14456987412710878404noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8304928500646903522.post-59756373661850276612019-06-07T09:47:48.578-04:002019-06-07T09:47:48.578-04:00Very interesting post. (Indeed, I was interested ...Very interesting post. (Indeed, I was interested enough that I checked, and Henrich's book is available on Audible.)<br /><br />I would add that Henrich's argument, or at least Alexander's version of it, also seems radically simplified in that clearly a lot of culture is passed down, not for pragmatic purposes or or perceived pragmatic ones (in the sense of interaction with the non-human world, singing to the pigs and such), but purely with an eye to how humans interact with each other--that is, for social reasons (especially avoiding the angry pushback, or even just the disapproval, of other humans). Thus people accept deference to hereditary rulers or the upper castes or dominant ethnicities or whatever because resisting that is socially risky, in specific and personal and even physical ways, but also in general and psychological ways that have to do with identity and emotion.<br /><br />In this sense, perhaps we should bring together Henrich as depicted here with Yuval Harari's argument in Sapiens that what distinguishes humans is their ability to work together based on shared fictions about identity, morality, the cosmos, etc.<br /><br />At the same time, this means that culture-maintenance is also about issues like social status and one's sense of self and the universe. It also means that social and political conflicts often run deeper than simply the world is big and complex and hard to figure out. As an example, consider that, while the Irakia were happy to adopt the ways of the Fore, whole-hog, other cultures' basic message is "keep to the old ways, all of them, no matter the cost, because not doing so is evil"; Brahminism, Salafism, and Orthodox Judaism all partake of this in very obvious ways. And there's a determined and devoted psychological quality there that seems to me to go beyond the life-is-complex model.Davidhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14456987412710878404noreply@blogger.com