{"id":72539,"date":"2024-03-06T06:00:04","date_gmt":"2024-03-06T11:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=72539"},"modified":"2024-03-06T07:26:57","modified_gmt":"2024-03-06T12:26:57","slug":"we-contemporary-westerners-are-weird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/03\/we-contemporary-westerners-are-weird\/","title":{"rendered":"We Contemporary Westerners Are WEIRD"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yesterday we blogged about Gemini, Google\u2019s attempt at an AI chatbox and image generator, and its ludicrous attempts to apply Woke principles no matter what.\u00a0 We drew on an article by Ian Leslie, who said something else that deserves its own post.<\/p>\n

From\u00a0The Google Gemini Debacle Shows Us Why Office Politics Matters More Than Ever: On the Real Alignment Problem <\/a>(my bolds):<\/p>\n

\n

Gemini\u2019s quirks seem more likely to have been the output of a corporate culture that doesn\u2019t realise how weird it is.<\/p>\n

In my recent post\u00a0on how to fix DEI<\/a>\u00a0I suggested that organisations make an effort to understand how the cultural-political worldview of their staff compares to their median user (or voter). It\u2019s not that all organisations should try and be a mirror of the public, it\u2019s that, in a highly politicised environment, they should be self-aware enough to know how the profile of their staff differs from the profile of the people they serve.<\/p>\n

The anthropologist Joseph Henrich\u00a0famously reframed<\/a>\u00a0our supposedly neutral, objective Western worldview as a WEIRD one (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic). His point wasn\u2019t that WEIRD is bad, just that it\u2019s, well, weird; shared by only a minority of the global population.<\/strong> For an individual or an organisation, it\u2019s not necessarily a good thing to be normal, but it\u2019s nearly always a good thing to\u00a0know<\/em>\u00a0when you\u2019re not normal. To adapt the poker truism, if you look around the table and you can\u2019t see who the weirdo is, it\u2019s you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This has applications far beyond the internet, Artificial Intelligence, and the necessity of businesses to consider the values of their customers and not just those of their senior executives (as in the Bud-Lite fiasco).<\/p>\n

There are just over 8 billion people in the world<\/a>.\u00a0 Of these, about 335 million are Americans<\/a>.\u00a0 and there are some 745 million\u00a0 Europeans.<\/a>\u00a0 So there are about 1,080,000,000 \u201cwesterners\u201d in the world.\u00a0 \u00a0By my calculations, that comes to 13.5% of the world\u2019s population.<\/p>\n

Keeping in mind that some non-westerners have western values and that a big slice of westerners reject woke secularism, we can say that an extremely tiny percentage of humanity hold to the ideologies that loom so large in contemporary American culture.\u00a0 Those who do are, technically speaking in Joseph Henrich\u2019s term, WEIRD.\u00a0 And, in the sense of the dictionary definition<\/a>, \u201cstrange\u00a0and different from anything\u00a0natural\u00a0or\u00a0ordinary,\u201d they are also weird<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Thus, we can conclude that. . .<\/p>\n

Believing men can marry men and women can marry women is weird<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Believing that there are more than two sexes is weird<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Believing that we can change our sex is weird<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Believing there is no deity is weird<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Believing we can do without religion is weird<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Believing that culture is just a matter of one group oppressing some other group is weird<\/em>.<\/p>\n

We could go on.\u00a0 (Feel free to cite other tenets of our weirdness in the comments.)<\/p>\n

This does not<\/em> mean cultural relativism, though, another weird<\/em> idea.\u00a0 Some things are universal, applicable to everyone, by virtue of being human.\u00a0 Modern medicine works for westerners and non-westerners alike.\u00a0 Facts, scientific or otherwise, are independent of culture.\u00a0 So are other objective truths\u2013philosophical, moral, religious\u2013whether we in the west or they in the non-west like them or not.<\/p>\n

The west has a lot to offer the majority world.\u00a0 And we in the minority can learn a lot from them. The majority world has appreciated western medical care, technology, and economic progress, and in many cases has gladly received that religion that originated in the Middle East but came to them through the west, namely, Christianity.\u00a0 But we must take care not to impose our unique perspective on them.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s woke progressives, weird though they may be, condemn the west\u2019s colonialism.\u00a0 And rightly so.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to imagine how it could be right to just move in and take over someone else\u2019s country.\u00a0 And yet woke progressives are eager to impose their values of transgenderism, homosexuality, feminism, abortion, and other weird<\/em> ideas on Africans, Asians, South Americans, Pacific Islanders, and others in the majority world.<\/p>\n

This is colonialism\u2013not just the political and economic kind, but a colonialism that strikes deep into the heart of any culture, the family, being the foundation of every culture, as well as the larger\u00a0 convictions that sustain that culture.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, those of us in the west who also reject those culturally-destructive and soul-destroying ideologies should take heart.\u00a0 We may feel beleaguered here, but the world is on our side.\u00a0 The secularists and the wokesters are the outliers, the weird<\/em> ones.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Photo by Tony Webster from Portland, Oregon, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An anthopologist says that many of our contemporary assumptions are WEIRD; that is, Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic. How this applies to woke secularism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":72587,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,23,35,39,42],"tags":[7055,14438,1984,10607,14441],"class_list":["post-72539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-international","category-philosophy-2","category-religions","category-social-science","tag-anthropology","tag-contemporary-western-civilization","tag-secularism","tag-woke-ideology","tag-world-cultures"],"yoast_head":"\nWe Contemporary Westerners Are WEIRD<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"An anthopologist says that many of our contemporary assumptions are WEIRD; that is, Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic. How this applies to woke secularism.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/03\/we-contemporary-westerners-are-weird\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"We Contemporary Westerners Are WEIRD\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"An anthopologist says that many of our contemporary assumptions are WEIRD; that is, Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic. How this applies to woke secularism.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/03\/we-contemporary-westerners-are-weird\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Cranach\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/cranachblog\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-03-06T11:00:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2024-03-06T12:26:57+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/305\/2024\/03\/1024px-Keep_Portland_Weird_Portland_Oregon_23624489759-scaled.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"768\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"358\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Gene Veith\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Gene Veith\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/03\/we-contemporary-westerners-are-weird\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/03\/we-contemporary-westerners-are-weird\/\",\"name\":\"We Contemporary Westerners Are WEIRD\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2024-03-06T11:00:04+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-03-06T12:26:57+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/f9ca8670bcc51908a78994c0484dbfa1\"},\"description\":\"An anthopologist says that many of our contemporary assumptions are WEIRD; that is, Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic. How this applies to woke secularism.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/03\/we-contemporary-westerners-are-weird\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/03\/we-contemporary-westerners-are-weird\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/03\/we-contemporary-westerners-are-weird\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"We Contemporary Westerners Are WEIRD\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/\",\"name\":\"Cranach\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/f9ca8670bcc51908a78994c0484dbfa1\",\"name\":\"Gene Veith\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/054d79faea5d476edd8f99e5f14fb17f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/054d79faea5d476edd8f99e5f14fb17f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Gene Veith\"},\"description\":\"Gene Edward Veith, Jr. is a writer and retired literature professor, serving as Provost Emeritus at Patrick Henry College. He has authored over 25 books on Christianity and culture, literature, classical education, and theology. Dr. Veith previously held academic and editorial roles at Concordia University Wisconsin and WORLD Magazine. A respected voice in Lutheran and classical education circles, he holds a Ph.D. in English and several honorary doctorates. He and his wife, Jackquelyn, live in St. Louis and have three children and twelve grandchildren.\",\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/cranachblog\/\",\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gene_Edward_Veith\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/author\/geneveith\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"We Contemporary Westerners Are WEIRD","description":"An anthopologist says that many of our contemporary assumptions are WEIRD; that is, Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic. How this applies to woke secularism.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/03\/we-contemporary-westerners-are-weird\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"We Contemporary Westerners Are WEIRD","og_description":"An anthopologist says that many of our contemporary assumptions are WEIRD; that is, Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic. How this applies to woke secularism.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/03\/we-contemporary-westerners-are-weird\/","og_site_name":"Cranach","article_author":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/cranachblog\/","article_published_time":"2024-03-06T11:00:04+00:00","article_modified_time":"2024-03-06T12:26:57+00:00","og_image":[{"width":768,"height":358,"url":"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/305\/2024\/03\/1024px-Keep_Portland_Weird_Portland_Oregon_23624489759-scaled.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Gene Veith","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Gene Veith","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/03\/we-contemporary-westerners-are-weird\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/03\/we-contemporary-westerners-are-weird\/","name":"We Contemporary Westerners Are WEIRD","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#website"},"datePublished":"2024-03-06T11:00:04+00:00","dateModified":"2024-03-06T12:26:57+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/f9ca8670bcc51908a78994c0484dbfa1"},"description":"An anthopologist says that many of our contemporary assumptions are WEIRD; that is, Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic. How this applies to woke secularism.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/03\/we-contemporary-westerners-are-weird\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/03\/we-contemporary-westerners-are-weird\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/03\/we-contemporary-westerners-are-weird\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"We Contemporary Westerners Are WEIRD"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/","name":"Cranach","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/f9ca8670bcc51908a78994c0484dbfa1","name":"Gene Veith","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/054d79faea5d476edd8f99e5f14fb17f?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/054d79faea5d476edd8f99e5f14fb17f?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Gene Veith"},"description":"Gene Edward Veith, Jr. is a writer and retired literature professor, serving as Provost Emeritus at Patrick Henry College. He has authored over 25 books on Christianity and culture, literature, classical education, and theology. Dr. Veith previously held academic and editorial roles at Concordia University Wisconsin and WORLD Magazine. A respected voice in Lutheran and classical education circles, he holds a Ph.D. in English and several honorary doctorates. He and his wife, Jackquelyn, live in St. Louis and have three children and twelve grandchildren.","sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/cranachblog\/","https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gene_Edward_Veith"],"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/author\/geneveith\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1281"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}