New York Times, February 19, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Questions of Culture
By DAVID BROOKS
Once, not that long ago, economics was the queen of the
social sciences. Human beings were assumed to be profit-maximizing creatures,
trending toward reasonableness. As societies grew richer and more modern,
it was assumed, they would become more secular. As people became better educated,
primitive passions like tribalism and nationalism would fade away and global
institutions would rise to take their place. As communications technology
improved, there would be greater cooperation and understanding. As voters
became more educated, they would become more independent-minded and rational.
None of these suppositions turned out to be true. As the
world has become richer and better educated, religion hasn't withered; it
has become stronger and more fundamentalist. Nationalism and tribalism haven't
faded away. Instead, transnational institutions like the U.N. and the European
Union are weak and in crisis.
Communications technology hasn't brought people closer
together; it has led to greater cultural segmentation, across the world and
even within the
All of this has thrown a certain sort of materialistic
vision into crisis. We now know that global economic and technological forces
do not gradually erode local cultures and values. Instead, cultures and values
shape economic development. Moreover, as people are empowered by greater wealth
and education, cultural differences become more pronounced, not less, as different
groups chase different visions of the good life, and react in aggressive ways
to perceived slights to their cultural dignity.
Economics, which assumes people are basically reasonable
and respond straightforwardly to incentives, is no longer queen of the social
sciences.
The events of the past years have thrown us back to the
murky realms of theology, sociology, anthropology and history. Even economists
know this, and are migrating to more behaviorialist
and cultural approaches.
The fundamental change is that human beings now look less
like self-interested individuals and more like socially embedded products
of family and group. Alan Greenspan said that he once assumed that capitalism
was "human nature." But after watching the collapse of the Russian
economy, he had come to consider it "was not human nature at all, but
culture."
During the first few years of life, parents, communities
and societies unconsciously impart ways of being and of perceiving reality
that we are only subliminally aware of. How distinct is the individual from
the community? Does history move forward or is it cyclical? How do I fulfill
my yearning for righteousness? What is possible and what is impossible?
The answers to these questions are wildly diverse, and
once worldviews have been absorbed, they produce wildly different levels and
types of social and cultural capital. East Asians and Jews, for example, seem
to thrive commercially wherever they settle.
It turns out that it's hard to change the destinies of
nations and individuals just by pulling economic levers. Over the past few
decades,
At home, we spend more money on education than any other
nation. We have undertaken a million experiments to restructure schools and
bureaucracies. But students who lack cultural and social capital because they
did not come from intact, organized families continue to fall further and
further behind — unless they come into contact with some great mentor who
can not only teach, but also change values and behavior.
It all amounts to this: Events have forced different questions
on us. If the big contest of the 20th century was between planned and free
market economies, the big questions of the next century will be understanding how cultures change and can be changed, how
social and cultural capital can be nurtured and developed, how destructive
cultural conflict can be turned to healthy cultural competition.