I’ve been thinking about how shared myths and beliefs unconsciously shape our culture and personal values.
Westward expansion and the settlement of Alaska were enabled by the myth that pioneers were heroes entering an empty land, not colonists executing a conquest.
When I spent a season whale hunting with the Iñupiat of Arctic Alaska, I realized their communitarian culture was fundamentally different. They cared more about the group than about themselves.
The Iñupiat thrived in the forbidding, frozen North by acting effectively as a group. Everyone performed his or her role in society.
These values and the behaviors that support them still permeate their communities. Respect. Avoidance of conflict. Listening. Never putting oneself above others.
Stories that have been handed down from time immemorial demonstrate these values.
My own culture—mainstream American culture—elevates individuality and personal achievement above membership in a community or obligations to others. We honor stories of the brash, self-made man, the starlet, or the sports hero.
We believe our way is the right way (all cultures probably do). In 1948, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, surely at the highwater mark of U.S.-led Liberalism. It holds the individual supreme.
The declaration’s first article could have been written in the throes of the French Revolution: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
That statement is contrary to the values of many traditional societies. Not only indigenous societies, but Western Civilization before the Enlightenment. In those worlds, freedom and equality were secondary to the role assigned as a member of the community. A role that gave you a purpose and an identity, as well as limiting your individual desires.
Which is better?
We’re empiricists in the post-Enlightenment west, so this question shouldn’t be impossible to tackle, and it’s not. The remarkable Hofstedt survey ranked countries by six cultural dimensions. The U.S. was the most individualistic, followed by Australia, the UK, the Netherlands, and New Zealand.
In the World Happiness Report, those countries rank 23, 19, 29, 7, and 11. The perennially happiest country, Finland, was 16th on the individualism index.
The very least individualistic countries score even lower on happiness, but they are all desperately poor. There’s no doubt competitive societies produce more wealth.
In our centrifugally disintegrating country, perhaps it’s worth asking if there’s something more important than freedom. Think of all our lonely people scrolling lonely social media accounts created by emotionally stunted Silicon Valley oligarchs. That’s some freedom.
When Donald Trump was first elected to the presidency in 2016, I was writing a thrice-weekly newspaper column. I inveighed and sputtered against Trump, and immediately knew those columns would have no impact.
Instead, I began writing about people and how very good they can be. I looked for those doing their jobs well. People dedicating themselves to others. People of true faith.
I don’t know if that did any good. But it seemed like my best shot. If we don’t start loving one another, this can only get worse.