Fix Democracy by Changing the Framework - LONG version

This post started here with the SHORT version. You really should read that first. This is the longer one with research notes and more discussion.  And, as always, this is a Work In Process. Weigh in, think, help me out there.

The Problem - Our Democracy is Failing
Our current form of democracy is based on the full participation of our citizens. If they FEEL that they are represented, then they support the common decisions we make. The problem is that our form of government was constructed by and for old, educated, white, male, landowners of British cultural heritage. It barely worked at the start. It has had some major threats, and it currently feels like it is falling apart. People no longer FEEL that they are heard, that they are represented. They are no longer civil about the means we need to gain common purpose and commitment. This essay is a purely theoretical exercise in why that might be happening, and a prayer of how we might change that. 

How I Came To This - Background

Frankly, this is a really strange way of thinking about people. This was literally forced upon me by an experience I had with a friend. As I researched it, I became convinced that there is something to this. Bear with me for the story. I have known this individual for most of my life. I value him, and I do not want to injure him, or make him feel bad about this in any way. IF he reads this, I want him to remain a friend.

A Good Friend

I met this gentleman when I started college - 1956. He is from the urban portion of a large eastern city. His background is pretty much lower middle class, same as mine. He earned two college degrees - BA and BD - Bachelor of Divinity. At which point he was ordained a Catholic priest. He is a very religious person. He identified with the poor, and wanted to work for and with them. He stopped practicing as a priest when he realized that he would never be exposed to the danger of being poor himself. He opted out, got married, had children - became part of this chosen class. 

So, he is well educated, has many good values from my perspective, is an activist, engaged. Fine man. BUT he supports the current fearless leader of our land without any question. I was stunned when I learned this. I have communicated with him enough to recognize that he is a "true believer". He is very selective about what he reads, and is "cherry picking", or everything is seen from just one perspective. At one point he sent me a list of the accomplishments of our fearless leader that was making the rounds in a our social media world. I researched it, and every one of those accomplishments was true. But every one was the exception to the rule, or a short sighted conclusion. Many stopped far short of where they might go. Some of them were actually disasters - like the economic trade war. That is only an accomplishment in the opinion of about 1% of our economists. Some were true, but barely. For example - our fearless leader said - "Let them wash the masks", when surgical masks were in short supply. When he said that, that method was impossible - would not work. The inventor of the mask did eventually come up with a way to sterilize the masks without destroying them - after many weeks of experiments, and much later. So our fearless leader takes credit for it. The list goes on like that. I'll bet a buck you can find the list on social media. I will not help with that!

Possible Explanations

Prior to this exchange, when I considered the current political landscape, I guessed there were three types of people supporting our beloved and deranged leader. I know of no credible evidence about the percentages or numbers of these or any of the other categories. 

1. Agree. Some percentage of his supporters are clearly bigoted racists and nationalists. They are always among us, in all parts of the world. It is a kind of protective mechanism. It is not rational.
2. Unaware. Some seem to be not well informed. This can be readily ascertained with any street interview with an attendee at a presidential rally. Jonathan Klepper on the Daily Show does it well. These people are not aware of the details, and do not want to know them. Easy enough. There are folks of this ilk on the right and the left. I think this is fairly normal. People go with the flow, with their tribe, without a lot of reflection or research. That does not mean that they should be ignored or maltreated - but we may want to "help" them with important decisions.
3. Tolerant. Some are aware but support this program to accomplish some other goal. They are putting up with idiocy in order to get the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v Wade, to reduce the effectiveness of government, especially regulation and things holding back the “wealth engine” that is unregulated capitalism. I would put virtually ALL of our Republican elected officials in this category. I assume they know well that our fearless leader is a dangerous autocrat, but they are putting up with him to remain in office, and to achieve some part of their party’s former goals, at some considerable cost to our democracy. I say former goals, because they have literally destroyed them. Free Trade? Fiscal Responsibility? And what happened with those former Republican goals?
4. Persuadable? This is personal theory with little evidence. It describes someone who is clearly aware, is not a racist bigot or other pejorative category, and who honestly believes that this man is sound and capable. How does one explain that? Thinking of my friend, I think that he is "persuadable", moved to join a tribe, a movement, a group, an idea, because he finds it so attractive that he cannot say no to it. He has a deeply held faith or commitment, and this person seems to support that.
   This seems totally crazy, but it is the only solution I can come up with. I like this friend. I value his friendship. he does not appear to be crazy. It must be that his brain operates in a model different than mine.
5. And if that is true, if there is one different type here, there may be others.

This Characterization is Personally Helpful.

I am happy to have come up with this cocamamey idea because it lets me treat this friend, and the others I encounter, with a measure of care and respect. They are not in the camp of bigoted racists, or uninformed idiots, or "deplorables". They are quite normal people, who have a particular bent to be persuaded about some value or other, in a manner similar to being hypnotized. They have no blame in this - and I should stop trying to persuade them about anything. It is a total waste of time. When you think about it, this can explain a lot of other things. 

It also alerts me to the fact that this type of thing happens on both sides of the aisle. There are plenty of "progressives" that pursue their dream in the face of craziness. 

In our larger human history, why did so many people support Hitler and Mussolini and the like. (I have just stepped in Godwin's law!) Not to mention the Cultural Revolution in China when they did their best to destroy all of the educated and scientific "elite".  And the Communist Revolution in Russia literally doomed millions to death and poverty. And how do religions that premise an all powerful deity remain so popular, with absolutely no evidence. These things are based on a deep need for meaning and purpose, and that persuades most people easily, it seems. Some historians indicate that going with the flow is the norm - the people who step out of it are the exception. See this little piece on an East German leader who finally defected.
  https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/trumps-collaborators/612250/

More Details on Our "Personality Types"

Each of the following sections are based on the "rules" or shorthand expressions of the ideas stated in the prior brief summary. 

1. Humans are rarely rational.

Following the Behavioral Economics folks (Kahneman / Thaler) and the evolutionary psychology folk (Haidt), and the like, science has pretty much come to the considered conclusion that most humans are NOT rational most of the time. 

In the book, Thinking Fast and Slow, Kahneman describes his work with his friend and colleague Amos Tversky. They conducted experiments where people make choices that are simply not rational. He is persuaded that we have two types of "thinking" - a FAST brain and a SLOW brain. The fast brain is the product of our adaptive evolution that enables us to survive. When we see an enemy or a large animal in the path, we are moving before we even recognize what we saw. The slow brain can make better decisions after some study and thought, but it takes us a long time, and we burn a lot of energy doing it, so we tire easily. Thinking slow is a lot of work, and difficult to actually do.  I highly recommend the book. Here are some brief descriptions of the findings, just to further entice you.

• Facial Reading. People can identify the winner of an election by looking at the pictures of the candidates with 70% accuracy.
• Our body knows before our brain. People asked to turn cards from three piles will "know" which pile is the bad one long before their conscious brain tells them. Their pulse and other physical attributes are aware before they are.
• Illusion of understanding or expertise. If I know a lot about a topic, I am persuaded that I make good decisions in that realm. Facts will not persuade me otherwise. In the investment world, it becomes the “illusion of stock picking skill”. In fact, based on mountains of statistical evidence, everyone is absolutely wretched about identifying good investments, or predicting any future event, because our rational thinking is so clouded by this illusion. 
  Kahneman describes his own experience as an officer in the Israeli army. His team was charged with determining the best candidates for officer training. They devised an exercise where the team had to get a large log and themselves over a wall without touching the wall. It can be done, but the point was to observe their behavior. One day they did some research to see how well their chosen subjects were doing. They discovered that only half of their candidates succeeded. They could have literally flipped a coin. But for the very next workshop, they were absolutely certain that they were able to identify the right candidates, even though their brain had clear information that this was not correct.
• Cognitive Ease.  If we have heard something before, even if we knew it was a lie or wrong at that time, we are much more predisposed to believe it the next time we hear it. I think our political candidates understand this one all too well. Lie well and lie often.
• Anchoring. If you are negotiating a price, and someone mentions an outlandish number - your brain is now anchored. You cannot avoid being influenced by hearing that number. Your best option is to leave and come back some other time.

There are many, many more in the book. It changed my mind on a lot of things.

For our political system of democracy, this "flaw" in human thinking is critical. We regularly make irrational choices that affect major parts of our lives and the future of the planet as a whole. What can be done about this? A nice study by Joseph Heath, Enlightenment 2.0, makes the problem quite clear and has a hint of a solution. I highly recommend the book. Heath gave me some new insights into the problem, and a potential solution - but he did not carry it far enough. I am hopeful that we can pursue that a bit.

In the book Heath describes the problem beautifully. He is aware of most of the neuroscience and evolutionary psychological research. He is also a philosopher and well aware of how we have thought about this problem over the history of civilization. That perspective is very helpful. I will not attempt to summarize the whole book - just those ideas that were relatively new to me. 

2. Humans are mostly emotional and automatic.

Most of the "decisions" we make are automatic responses. They come from our values and emotions - not our brains.We go with the flow, with the tribe, family, religion, team, moral value, with what "feels right". This is not a problem - it is just the way things are. There does not appear to be a way to "fix" this - we are what we are. Jonathan Haidt has some fine work on this in his book: The Righteous Mind. 

As he simplifies the human state, he sees fundamental values as driving most human activity. These are basic values which color our view of the world. ll of this comes from experiments with people around the world. I am NOT making this up, and neither is the author. Here are the key ideas:

• We are right! They are wrong. We are by nature self-righteous bigots. And that’s NOT a problem – it’s normal! We are always absolutely certain that we are right.

• We go with our gut. Evolution has given us this gift of rapid decision making. If we weren’t so primed to jump to rapid conclusions, we would never make any decisions.

• Thinking comes after the fact. We marshal other ideas only to support our gut call. Rational arguments on the other side just confirm our belief. You can’t make the dog happy by wagging its tail.

• We tend to be a bit more conservative than not. It’s what worked! The guy who first tried that strange mushroom didn’t leave any kids.

• We work off 5 basic moral imperatives that are in our genes. They pretty much govern how we work. The flavor of the imperatives changes a bit given our “world view” or social culture, but they are key to our rapid decisions.

• Progressives / Conservatives are different. Progressives tend to use just two of our moral rules, while most Conservatives seem to use them all.

• We are Tribal. Team or tribal membership is a big part of us. And then our tribe blinds us to the real world. We take our values from the tribe, the culture we live in, the group we identify with.

 

The five foundations of morality:

1. Harm / Care.

2. Fairness / Reciprocity.

3. In Group Loyalty.

4. Authority / Respect.

5. Purity / Sanctity. Sex on the right, food on the left.

The “liberals” or “progressives” work more from the values of harm / care and fairness / reciprocity. Conservatives tend to use all 5 more equally. The big insight for me was to understand the fear that “order tends to decay”. I am usually on the progressive side – we need to move forward, to change, adopt new technology and ideas. I tend to ignore the risks this carries. The basic conservative position tends to be that civilization is pretty fragile, and we could lose it all if we are not careful. They see order as precious, and anything that goes counter to the present structure is dangerous. It was also interesting to me that punishment seems to be a key part of our moral motivation – including religion and the threat of hell. There is good evidence that the hell part is much more persuasive than the heaven one.

3. We respond to others similar to the way we respond to music.

We need a way to "feel" how this works.The best analogy I have found is music. When you hear music, it moves you. It does something to your insides, it makes you feel and sense something. You cannot actually DO anything about that. You can't stop it, make it get better, make it go away. All you can do is turn off the music. Dance is very similar. When you dance, you become something different. You feel different, your brain goes somewhere else. I have not found much research on this as yet, but I am sure it is there. 

4. Different humans respond to different music.

Again, by way of analogy, we each respond to music differently. People who have amusia - cannot distinguish musical tones - respond very differently to music. I had the good fortune to have a freshman highschool teacher who set me on the path to love classical music. I do not respond well to modern atonal music. Nothing positive happens inside of me. That music actually upsets me. There does not appear to be anything I can do to change that. There seems to be a biological propensity in our genes for different responses.

5. Our cultural background shapes our larger society.

We think we are in charge of our world, but we are members of a nation, members of a culture that has been shaped over thousands of years. Individuals within the culture make individual decisions - but the culture, the social network as a whole, tends to follow a pattern. The historical study, The WEIRDest People in the World  by Joseph Henrich, indicates that the western world's values have been shaped by historical events, so that the general mind, the general view of human relationships is quite different from the rest of the world. Because our sense of family ties, of the larger family has been diminished, we are much more open to trusting strangers, we are more open to constructing a social structure that is much larger than the ones tolerated in parts of the world not so impacted. He does not reach this conclusion, but it strikes me that the roots of democracy came from this new perspective, and that fertile background does not exist in most of the cultures of the world.

Given that fact or theory, the broad culture of the United States has also had a lot of forces at work in recent decades in ways we do not understand. It will take the perspective of history before we can understand how we got to this point, but it is not within our conscious control as yet.

6. Humans have very different personality types.

We are not all the same! Duh! As a type of one - me - I have absolutely NO IDEA how you respond to things. "Personality type" is probably not the best term, and we need a better word. What I mean is that each one of us responds to others, to ideas, to the world, in a somewhat different way, depending on our inborn or acquired tastes. If you recall the music analogy from the shorter version of this - our body responds to music, to rhythm, to dance, without little conscious control on our part. We can step in, and with some practice, we can affect our response, but most of the time, we just "go with the flow" of the music. Some of us have a mix of flavors or preferences, but many of us have one dominant type. Based on scarce scientific analysis and my personal observation, I think the "types" might be the following:

• Psychopath. This is not a sociopath. This type simply does not easily make empathic connections with others as a norm. They tend to be risk takers - fearless. When a problem or person is presented to this "type" they respond with a sense of critical analysis, but with little empathy. I put this one first, because I think it may be the only one empirically proven. See Dr. James Fallon on this one. We can detect this type with an MRI or an questionnaire. Some guess that they may represent about 5% of the population. Normal population studies only focus on sociopaths, so the estimates may not be useful. For an "empathic" understanding of this, here is Dr. Fallon explaining how he discovered this:   https://youtu.be/vii60GUGTQU
• Narcissist. This person focuses almost exclusively on themselves. Many political leaders seem to fall into this camp. You might have one in mind. Some research indicates that this type can be empirically identified by physical traits. 
• Persuadable. This person is highly influenced by friends, family, team, tribe, whatever relationships they have. This is based on my personal observation. I know of no empirical research as yet. We all have a tribal "gene", but these individuals seem more affected than most.
• Rational. This person tends to be sceptical of everything, requiring evidence based on research or observable fact. I think this is me, but I am not aware of a lot of research into this.
• Empathic. This type reads every person and every situation in terms of the emotional engagement called empathy. They FEEL for others. They are continuously analyzing how others feel, how they are related, how they respond to things. This is also my personal observation - not empirically verified. 
• Sacred. This person is so committed to a belief or set of values that they cannot brook any threat. It is difficult for them to even consider a different set of facts. The flat earth society is a good example of how this works. Many religious believers fall into this category with respect to their own religious sect or group. Most of the planet adheres to one of the four major religions. I would be willing to bet that you do as well.
• Organized. Otherwise known as OCD. This person must have things structured and ordered. Disorder or change is considered inherently dangerous. Any risk to tradition, any change is to be feared.
• Others. I am sure there are others.

7. All of these "types" are NORMAL.

These are not illnesses to be cured, these are not disorders. There is a normal distribution of these people in our world. and they function fairly well. They are not ill, they cannot be held at fault because they have this automatic behavioral response. Think of the Myers Briggs personality definitions. That taxonomy is basically flawed, but still a useful analogy. 

8. It is helpful to know which type a person is.

If you are "differently abled", it is very helpful for you and for everyone else to be aware of this. If you have a "super" power in one area, and a "disability" in another, both you and your teachers, friends and family will find it very helpful to know just how you operate. A person who is color blind needs to be aware of that before they learn to drive. A person with dyslexia should be alerted that they learn differently. A psychopath tends to do things with higher risk. A narcissist always tends to choose what is best for themselves. And so on.

9. Our personality types are self selecting into opposing tribes.

We used to feel engaged as members of the same nation, the same tribe. Given modern media and communications, we now "feel" that we are members of different tribes or subgroups based somewhat on our personality types - not on our rational choices. And our tribes are at war. The "other" side is fundamentally flawed and is owed no respect. They are "crazy". Part of the problem is that our sense of self, our self identity, used to be based on multiple types of relationships. We would normally encounter friends, family, members of other organizations, that were somewhat different from us. As members of multiple groups or tribes, our sense of self, our identity was not at risk if someone attacked one of our beliefs or memberships. With the recent history of "identity politics", people are more and more identified with their membership or belief system, so that a different view is seen as an attack on our identity. 

10. Our political infrastructure was built for a small subset of personality types.

Our forefathers did not have neuroscience research at their command when they formulated our democracy. They had a long history of philosophical thought, but it was primarily geared to well educated male landowners with a British cultural background. The form of government they built was risky, but it struggled along for a few hundred years. We have modified our government many times to enlarge democratic participation, and it has finally proven to be inadequate. Democracy is built on the premise that we all participate, so that as a result we all support decisions to further the common good. But we no longer "feel" that sense of commonality and support. Responding to the demands of the "tribes" our representatives rarely make decisions for the "common good". We have become a cauldron of civil unrest and tribal warfare.

11. We need a new political "framework" to support our understanding of how humans operate.

Majority selection of leaders by geographical district no longer makes us feel represented in a participatory democracy. We need another method to select leaders or make decisions that engages our different "personalities", or tribes, and can gain our common commitment. I think this is absolutely true - but I have no idea how we might accomplish it. We have created self selecting "tribes" called political parties on the national level, and that does not augur well. We have "irrational" people on both sides. We need some external structure or mechanism to "nudge" us all in the direction of the common good. We also need a formal statement of exactly what that common good is. "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" just doesn't cut it any more. Hint: it is not "white power". That ship has sailed.  

The WEIRDest People in the World - book "report" and some ideas

I just finished The WEIRDest People in the World  by Joseph Henrich.

I HIGHLY recommend this book, and it made me think - a LOT.

It is a great lesson in how our cultural psychology evolved in the Western World - and how different we are from the rest of humankind. It was the Catholic Church that brought it about - totally unbeknownst to the originators. Bottom Line - we have precious little understanding of the cultural psychology of nations, groups, or individuals. It's a great lesson for that - but gives precious little insight in what the heck we can do about it.

That is the major learning here. It might help to give a bit of a background on my personal journey to this point. If this is boring, go get the book - you will learn a lot and our world will be somewhat better for it.

Cultural Psychology

There is a whole new scientific field of cultural psychology. I first became aware of it when I visited Africa in 2000 with my son. We were stunned by how differently everyone seemed to operate. Their world model was completely different from our normal view of things. People did things that we simply could not understand.

Guns Germs and Steel

To help us a bit, some of the Europeans we met there recommended a book: Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. It was an eye opener. His thesis is that the European mastery of the planet came about more because of the accidents of climate, the available beasts of burden, and types of crops than any "superiority" of the humans that happened to inhabit the middle East and Europe. That gives really short shrift to an amazing book, so please read it. It will move your brain just a bit.

Cultures and Organizations

As I puzzled about that some more, I stumbled on another book that helped me understand it a bit better: Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind, by Geert Hofstede. This one literally changed my view of human kind - what we are and how we operate. Across cultures or countries we are VERY different people in how we look at life and the planet. East Africans operate in an entirely different world model, and Asians do as well, and Norwegians are particularly "weird". I have written about this quite a bit in this blog - you can find references here. There are some great stories in there that you might enjoy.

World Views Differ

Bottom line, Hofstede discovered that we all have a very different mental model about how things operate. Most "westerners" seem to think they are in charge of life, and they can fix or repair anything. Most "East Africans" see life as something that happens TO them. They are not in charge. I happened to visit Nicaragua several times, and parts of Asia. I spent quite a few years reading about economic development and "culture" - how different thinking "patterns" would affect our level of civilization, use of technology, economic development, etc. I wrote quite a bit about this in the blog as well, and thought I was making some headway. Or NOT.

Poor Economics

Along the way, I got a set of readings in economics from a local econ professor. I went through the various "schools" of economics - more like religions than science - and finally found behavioral economics. They figured it out. Then I thought what we really need to do is apply the learnings from Kahneman and Thaler about behavioral economics to this problem of poverty and development. There are a couple of Nobel prize winning authors that did just that, Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo. Their latest book is: Good Economics for Hard Times. I thought so highly of this insight into economics that I offered to buy the book for any of our local elected officials that would commit to read it. I wrote a bit about it here.

Behavioral Economics

If you are not familiar with "behavioral economics", it is the latest scientific branch of the dismal science that has discovered that humans do NOT make rational decisions very well. We can, but it is a lot of work, and we generally do not. We have a whole world of cultural models in our heads that have grown over thousands of years. Some of them seem to be innate in our genetics, but most of them seem acquired from our social world. They profoundly change how people function, how they think, the groups they form, etc.  Aha, I thought, here's the answer. Now if we could just persuade our fearless leaders that this is the way to encourage development, we could eliminate world poverty. The head of the World Bank bet on that too - and put a lot of time and energy into making it happen. India's economic leaders have also opted for that path. I have written about it in this blog as well. Result - not much so far.

Political Divides

Of late, I have noticed that people often take sides of an argument for what appear to be totally irrational reasons. There is quite a bit of research on that phenomena. I think the best summary I have seen is The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt. I wrote a couple of blog entries on that one. Basically, Haidt theorizes that we have 5 basic moral foundations, which may be partially inheritable: Harm / Care; Fairness / Reciprocity; In Group Loyalty; Authority / Respect; Purity / Sanctity. The latter 3 of these incline us to be conservative, and the first 2 are generally more progressive. People are tuned to think one way or the other. And then we have all of these "irrational" "fast judgments" described by Kahneman's research. It is amazing that we can get anything done. Heuristics indeed!

Republican Politics

A whole lot more went on in my reading and brain in the interim, but then the election of 2016 happened. I and about half of the U.S. population said, what the hell just happened? About one third voted for the more progressive candidate, and one third did not vote. But about one third of the country elected a narcissistic man child as the leader of the free world. How is that even possible? A great deal more reading and some posts in my blog. What in the world is going on? Hillbilly Elegy, Identity Politics, Irrational Politics, etc. Lots of words, some research, but barely a glimmer of what gave rise to this, or how we can change it. I got some insight from the documentary film, Behind the Curve about the Flat Earth Society. It's on Netflix - you might enjoy it. These people are NOT crazy - they are committed, faith filled, and they MUST hold to this belief. Trust me, you are doing the same thing with a few of your beliefs. Where did the idea that human life is valuable ever come from? Why do you think that freedom is important? For that matter, why are grandchildren so priceless?

Cultural Psychology

Along comes professor Henrich with his remarkable 20 years of research on our western cultural psychology. You have to read the book - at a minimum, read some good reviews. There are lots of them. Here is a brief excerpt from the one posted at Amazon:

Unlike much of the world today, and most people who have ever lived, WEIRD people are highly individualistic, self-obsessed, control-oriented, nonconformist, and analytical. They focus on themselves―their attributes, accomplishments, and aspirations―over their relationships and social roles.

That is his primary insight, and the understanding that this came about over centuries because of the way the Catholic Church viewed marriage and kinship. We moved from small, close knit family groups, to larger, voluntary associations. To see the change today, you have only to look at the difference between northern Italy and Sicily. The mafia is not called "the family" for nothing. The church had a much smaller impact on southern Italy because of all of the other powers controlling things there. And the church had no clue what it was about. The church's preoccupation with sexual morality and marriage led it down this "weird" path, and the result was that Europe broke down the whole idea of kinship and family groupings. It made people much more individualist, more open to strangers, more trusting of a larger circle, more analytical, with less nepotism, more long range thinkers. It opened the doors to the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. This is why Europe dominated the world at that time.

AND  . . . the rest of the planet is very, very different from the West. Our cultural psychology is so different that we cannot make rational sense out of how others make fundamental decisions about life and groups and government and economics. 

Bottom Line

This is already way too long. Read the book. My fundamental takeaways:

• We are barely rational.
  People operate with a fundamental worldview that colors our entire psychology and thinking patterns. It is very difficult for any individual to get out of their model. That model guides the decisions we make to marry, to seek work, to study, to invest, to think about how life and the planet works.
• Culture develops very slowly.
  These psychological patterns are formed over hundreds and thousands of years, by small changes and events, that gradually alter the way people think. 
• Europe / the West is Unique - WEIRD.
  It is true that every culture is unique, but Europe's psychological change led to the industrial revolution and amazing economic advances. It also enhanced our individualism, weakened oru sense of collective belonging. Where this history is absent, economic development seems to be extremely difficult. It can be done, but it is uphill all the way. Development depends on group adherence, trust, and interest rates, and cooperation, and analytical thinking, and other implicit values that are not automatic in human kind, to say nothing of hard work, and ethical values. The latter apparently being gifts of the Reformation in one guise or other. Solving world poverty is going to take a while, unless we come up with some genius ideas.
• Democracy is rare.
  The whole idea of human rights and cooperative government came from this shift in world view. Where the history of a people lacks this foundation, there is precious little hope that democracy will be a success. Kings and dictators are better than failed states. My suggestions: stop trying to meddle from outside with what people are about.
• Cultural Psychology is not well understood.
  We have barely grasped how we got to where we are - barely. The book has 800 pages of research, and hundreds of studies noted - but we are just beginning to understand this. We have absolutely no idea how to move this whole assemblage forward. Hell, most people in the fields of psychology and economics and sociology and anthropology have not even heard of this yet. 
• There has to be a path forward. We can do this. Somehow, someway we need to study the past, and do the research on how human groups operate, to try and persuade our fearless leaders that we need a revolution in thinking, in education, in our institutions, so that we can better shape our cultural psychology to further advance human kind - rather than having us descend into wars and squabbles about wearing masks - for God's sake! This is way beyond "Nudge" - this is shape "human psychology".

HELP

If you run into anyone, anything that seems to understand this and sees a way forward, please let me know. Post a note here - I will eventually see it.  Thanks. 

Stay Safe.