NoIdentity

How society evolves, introducing the WVS The World Values Survey (WVS) is a global research project about people’s values and beliefs, how they change over time and what social and political impact they have. It measures and analyzes: Support for democracy Tolerance of foreigners and ethnic minorities Support for gender equality The role of religion and changing levels of religiosity The impact of globalisation, Attitudes towards the environment, work, family, politics, national identity, culture, diversity and insecurity Subjective well being The World Values Survey has demonstrated that people’s beliefs play a key role in economic development, the emergence and flourishing of democratic institutions, the rise of gender equality and how effective government is in societies. Values are classified into categories: Traditional: Emphasize the importance of religion, parent-child ties, deference to authority and traditional family values. People who hold these values reject divorce, abortion, euthanasia. These societies often have a high amount of national pride and a nationalistic outlook/worldview. Secular-rational: Less emphasis on religion, traditional family values and authority. In these societies it’s more about independent thinking and rationality. Divorce, abortion, euthanasia, etc. are seen as more acceptable. Survival: Emphasis on economic and physical security, linked with an ethnocentric outlook, low levels of trust and tolerance, high corruption and authoritarian styles of government. These countries are closer to poverty and basic survival is more difficult. Self-Expression: A high priority on environmental protection, a growing tolerance for foreigners, LGBTQ and gender equality, rising demands in participation in decision making in economic and political life. These countries tend to be more democratic, the basic needs are met. Traditional values are contrasted with Secular-rational values and Survival values are contrasted with Self-Expression values. The less developed countries are more traditional and survival oriented in their values. These are the lower stage of Spiral Dynamics (Purple, Red, Blue). The more developed countries are more secular-rational and self-expressive. These are Spiral Dynamics stages Orange, Green, Yellow (and above). What is culture? A culture is a set of learned behaviours that constitutes a society’s survival strategy. What’s special about humans, is that we create our environment. We innovate, build and create physical and social environments, which alter our culture. Our environment is never static and thus culture is always changing and evolving. Our values change based on cultural changes. Children are programmed with culture for the first 20 years of their lives. Their minds gets imprinted with the culture they grow up in. Your parents, education, peers, etc. shape the way you view the world. Then the rest of their lives they act out that program. By the time people reach adulthood, their basic values usually stay about the same. The norms governing the survival strategy usually change very slowly, often persisting for centuries, but they can change rapidly under certain conditions. Even though fashions change quickly, basic values tend to change slowly through intergenerational population replacement with multi-decade time lags. When the old generation dies, the cultural values die with it. This makes room for new values. It takes a long time to change basic values, because a new generation has to be born and grow up, and the old one has to die off. How these values are established: Survival drives everything. Your worldview isn’t based on truth and isn’t chosen. Instead, you adopt the values that support your survival needs and the values that your culture (environment) holds. Your beliefs and values are mostly dictated by the survival situation that you grew up in. People all over the world face different survival challenges and thus have different values and worldviews that accommodate their survival. Every part of the world has a different climate, different threats to humans (animals etc.), different weather and opportunities (farming, fishing, foraging, agriculture). The culture adapts to all of these types of conditions to be an optimal strategy for survival. Security vs. Insecurity: The feeling that the world is secure or insecure is an early-established and relatively stable aspect of one’s outlook. When people are insecure, they give top priority to materialistic goals. People’s psyche is heavily influenced by the way they grew up. If there wasn’t enough food as a child, that’s something you’ll carry with you into adulthood and that affects your priorities and needs. There’s a huge difference between growing up and knowing that survival is insecure, and growing up taking survival for granted. Individuals under stress yearn for rigid, predictable rules. They want to be sure of what’s going to happen because survival is precarious and their margin for error is slender. Conversely, people raised under conditions of relative security can tolerate more ambiguity and have less need for the absolute and rigid rules that religions provide. People with relatively high levels of existential security can more readily accept deviations from familiar patterns than people who are uncertain that their survival needs will be met. In Westernized, more developed countries, survival needs (base layers of Maslow's hierarchy) are taken care of, and we have other needs like democracy and more self-expressive values. In countries which are still developing, democracy won’t work, because they're still trying to handle their base survival needs. This has nothing to do with race, but rather with geographical and historical factors. Survival in deserts or tropical places is harder than in the west. People there face more disease, wild animals, floods, etc. Development is relative on all the factors involved and environment. As society evolves, we move out of insecurity and materialistic values like food, shelter, water, etc. and have room for more abstract values like justice, equality, democracy etc. Leadership and Government: Under conditions of insecurity, people may readily submit to authoritarian rule. People in developing countries tend to vote for more authoritarian leaders, tirants and autocrats. When your society is under threat, by for example war, you’ll gladly take a strong leader who will ensure your survival, rather than one who advocates abstract values like free speech and equality. Democracy is a luxury which comes at later stages of development, when survival is taken care of and there’s room for self-expression values. The survival conditions require a strong leader, and installing democracy in such places will only lead to more chaos (see middle-eastern invasion). Democracy doesn’t work without having a foundation of strong rules, like having laws that protect your life and property. If there is no court and there are no laws, people will fight with each other to resolve conflict. Once there are laws and measures to ensure those laws (i.e. police, court) we can have unintimidated voters who can be educated and vote responsibly. Threats increase the need for strong normans and punishment of deviant behaviour to maintain order. Tight societies have autocratic governing systems that suppress dissent; provide strong deterrence and control of crime, and tend to be more religious, Nations that encountered severe ecological and historical threats have relatively strong normans and low tolerance for deviant behaviour. Submission to authority has high costs: the individual's personal goals must be subordinated to those of others. Under conditions of insecurity people are willing to do so. Under threats of invasion, civil war, or economic collapse, people tend to seek strong military figures who can protect them from danger. Conversely, prosperity and security are conducive to tolerance of diversity. This helps explain a long-established finding: rich societies are much likelier to be democratic than poor ones. The more corrupt a country, the less democracy there is. All of the low-income and lower-middle-income societies fall into the lower-left-hand zone (Traditional + Survival values). Traditional values and Acceptance: Low-income societies remain solidly opposed to gender equality and tolerance of gays. In a low income society, maintaining a strong family unit is important for survival. Traditional family values are in place. Everyone has a role. The woman takes care of the kids and household, and the man supports the family financially, and works. It is arranged that way to survive (men have biologically more brute strength than women). When society evolves to a higher level of development, the roles aren’t as static, because technology equalizes the physical differences in strength between men and women. There is more tolerance for gay marriage, because having many (if any) children isn’t necessary for survival of your bloodline. In underdeveloped countries, your children are your safety net. Once you’re old, they are the ones who will take care of you, because the government won’t do so. Since there is not social security, having 8 children is your social security. In developed countries, you will be taken care of through your retirement funds and there are retirement homes, so you don’t need children. Religion: People who experience threats to themselves and their families or their community during their formative years tend to be far more religious than those who grew up under safer and predictable conditions. Religion binds people into a tribe and keeps people aligned. It provides collective values, which protect the tribe against insider threats (tribal warfare) and provides a protection against outsiders. When we’re together, we’re strong and we can fend off invaders. Strong rules are necessary to get everyone to comply. Religion is one of the strongest forces that unifies people under a certain umbrella of values. It helps to set up a moral system that people can agree upon, which is why it plays a huge survival function. Religion is a very power device to create a proto legal system. Without it, people wouldn’t agree on what’s right and wrong. It prevents tribal warfare, because it unifies people under one value system, which creates a country. To evolve out of religion, a new level of development is needed. You need to shed the old survival strategies and build upon them to get to new ones. You have to recognize the limitations of your current stage to transcend it and evolve to the next one. Survival vs. Self-Expression values: The shift from Survival values to Self-expression values also includes a shift in child-rearing values, from emphasis on hard work toward emphasis on imagination and tolerance as important values to teach children. This is a good test to gauge a person’s or countries level of development. Parents who push their children to study hard and become doctors, lawyers, etc. come from a background of poverty. These parents are afraid that their children will end up in poverty and try to prevent that. It’s difficult for them to accept their children's aspirations towards self-expressive careers, like philosophers and artists, because survival trumps everything, and the parents are still in a survival oriented mindset. For them a high paying job equals survival (no poverty), these parents are just looking out for their children. They tend to miss the fact that conditions change and that you can make a great living in artistic careers nowadays. People who emphasize survival values tend to be less satisfied with their lives and less happy than people with self-expression values. Economic development brings systematic changes in a society’s beliefs and values. When societies move from survival values to self-expression values, overall happiness levels increase. Survival isn’t very satisfying. The true satisfaction is in self-expression and life purpose. This has however a caveat: After a certain point returns start to diminish. More wealth doesn’t equal to more happiness for developed countries with a good economy. The developing countries get a big increase in happiness as wealth goes up and economy increases, but richer countries don’t. Once you have your basic needs met, chasing more money and luxury isn’t going to lead to more fulfillment. Then, fulfillment comes from self-actualisation, spirituality and contribution to society. Progression, Regression and backlash: Repressing Tradition values through government doesn’t work, because skipping stages leads to regression later on in the developmental process. If a stage isn’t TRULY transcended, it will creep back up later on. Regressive nationalist movements are collective ego backlash. Because we are progressing so quickly to keep up with our technological evolution, a lot of people (often older generations) are being left behind and are getting scared (new technology, what if I lose my job?). Culture and society is always progressing forward, even if it doesn’t seem that way in the moment due to temporary setbacks. Reality is progressing and evolving towards higher consciousness, unity, complexity and love. National identity: People are more identified with their nationality and similarities feel way stronger with people of the same nationality. A woman from India relates more to a man from India, than a woman from India to a woman from Russia. This is because each country has its own education system that indoctrinates/teaches children (with) a set of values, which define the country. This is due to different levels of development and education. It is more accurate to divide people by their values than any other traits like gender and income status. Islamic (and other) fundamentalists see Western culture as something to guard against. The older people’s egos are clinging to traditions and trying to preserve them. It’s a backlash against secularisation, because they view secularisation as a collapse of society and as a threat. When they grew up, religion was the binding force for keeping society together, ensuring survival and giving life meaning. They now see others trying to remove those religious elements from society as something negative. It is a fear based reaction, stemming from insecurity and the lack of understanding of social evolution. Insights from WVS data: Human values evolve in predictable ways. There are clear trends where all countries are going towards: More self-expression and rational-secular values. The largest increase in basic survival happens from agrarian to industrial societies. Industrialisation is an important event that corresponds in the shift to secular-rational values. Survival to Self-expression values come with increase in individual agency. Modern societies make individualism possible, in underdeveloped societies, individualism is impossible. The largest increase in individual agency comes with the advancement from industrial societies to knowledge based societies. This produces the largest shift in Self-expression values. In a knowledge-based society, being educated becomes more important, and with being more educated comes the desire for self-expression. Life transcends being purely physical and becomes more intellectual. Democracy is driven by Self-expression values, not the other way around. To install a democracy in a country, a shift from Survival to Self-expression values is needed. After that shift democracy will naturally flourish. If you remove a dictator and install democracy first, the people’s values haven’t changed, so they will install another dictator or cause tribal warfare. The strongest emphasis on traditional and survival values is found in Islamic societies of the Middle East. The strongest emphasis on secular-rational and self-expression values is found in Northern Europe. Desire for democracy is universal. Once countries develop they will move towards a democracy with ‘Western values’. The higher your education, the younger your generation, and the less survival threats you face, the more liberal you are. In general conservatives are less educated, older and face more survival threats. In low-income societies, a better economy leads to massive increases in happiness. In high-income societies, more democracy and self-expression leads to more happiness. How societies evolve: Human societies go from hunting and gathering to horticultural (raising animals on a small scale), then from agrarian to industrial, and then from industrial to postindustrial (knowledge and service based economy). 3 era’s: Pre-industrial, Industrial, Post-industrial. As more people come together without being educated (manual laborers/workers), they need to be organised by some higher force. This is when brute force comes in. These are countries with totalitarian regimes, autocratic leaders, tiranies and dictatorships. Once your population becomes large enough, it needs more and more bureaucracy. Bureaucrats need to be educated, so education of the population becomes necessary and schools emerge. The most educated people rise to the top of society. Better organisation leads to better economic efficiency: more trading, opportunity for technology, etc. Once education is a norm, basic survival needs are easy to take care of and at this point enough social infrastructure is built up to manage the society, which leads to a shift in Self-expression values. Now people are more socially connected, so they want civil rights and a say in what happens in the government. This is when democracy emerges. With higher education comes more critical thinking, which leads the fall of religion and the shift to rationality. People start to question old dogma’s and traditions and see their flaws. This is when science flourishes. Xenophobia, elitism, nationalism, sexism and racism decline, because the cause of those was fear and insecurity. Once survival is taken care of, we don’t need to protect ourselves and fight for survival, because we feel more secure. We are moving from fear to love. Fundamentalist movements break out as a collective ego backlashes to try and return back. This is especially visible in places in society where people are less educated and aren’t being propelled as quickly (older people who aren’t being educated or places who don’t experience economic prosperity) tend to get fearful and resentful. Eventually those generations either die out or get used to the change and let go of the past. The success of the previous generation creates the foundation for the next generation to be more liberal and self-expressive. We are standing on the shoulders of giants who came before us and fought for our freedom. The newer and older generations don’t understand each other as well, because the prior generations are still wary of the old survival threats. The fears of events that they witnessed are still wired into their brains. Take for example the backlash on elements of Socialism, which conservatives (often boomers) associate with the Soviet Communism tragedy. Notice that when your opposition to something comes from a deep place of insecurity, that it is a problem. Survival threats change., society is not static. Development goes on and things that didn’t work before can potentially work now, because evolution is going towards higher levels of consciousness. Society is a collective memory bank, storing and passing on lessons from each generation to the next. We are adding layers upon our civilisation. We are growing like a tree: each ring representing a generation. The key is to see this dynamic from a big picture and not get attached to any generation or set of values, survival strategies or culture. When older generations cling to power and avoid the newer generations from making change, the stifle growth and constipate the system. This is the value of death: It makes room for change and evolution. One of our current problems is that the older generations have most of the positions of power and hold most the wealth of society and don’t care about progress (for example cleaning up the environment and addressing climate change, equality, etc.), because they'll be dead in a few years or decades. Then they deny the upcoming problems, because they don’t recognize the problems that come with development of society (more people = more pollution and trash). They weren’t raised with the same mentality, but the newer generations need change, because it’s necessary for their survival. New times require new survival strategies. Liberals are more evolved than conservatives, because the trend of society goes from Traditional and Survival to Secular-Rational and Self-expressive values; From Conservative to Liberal. The conservatives of today were liberals of 100 years ago.