Comments on: Joseph Henrich Defines Culture

By: Rohan Verghese

Rohan Verghese — Sun, 06 Nov 2016 21:10:43 +0000

For #2, I assumed that the other part could be learning from books and other media. That “learning from people” was mostly learning “learning from people in the flesh” ie parents, teachers and friends.

After all, if you read a book from another culture, or even an older time period, and it influences you, is it part of your culture?

By: Roger

Roger — Sun, 06 Nov 2016 15:59:47 +0000

The caveat “mostly” is appropriate because individual learning can be culturally primed. We can, for example, get a tool which was built culturally via the collective evolutionary actions of countless people for thousands of years, but then practice individually with it to develop skill. The individual learning thus builds upon a scaffolding of cultural learning.

I would clarify the issue by stating that cultural learning involves learning from others and learning individually by building upon things or tools learned from others.

Clearly, there is a hybrid category dependent upon both individual and cultural learning.

By: Edgar

Edgar — Sun, 06 Nov 2016 15:44:02 +0000

Excellent observations. The whole book seems to be a bit half-baked frankly. What really struck me was the conclusion in which he writes “Humans are bad at intentionally designing effective institutions and organizations, though I’m hoping that as we get deeper insights into human nature and cultural evolution this can improve.” Huh? On one hand this is obviously true as the 100 million killed by social designers in the last century attest. But, does anyone really think it will get any better if we just give it one more try? On the other hand it is patently false as the millions and millions private utopias around the globe formed by individuals coming together and negotiating a dazzling array of associations attest. Everything from the retirement community around the corner to law practices to Anabaptist religious communities. Forming organizations is something that humans excel at. How does he think the big brains are going to improve upon that? I think what he is really communicating is that the cowbirds always have a few ideas on how the cuckoos can build a few more nests. Government and academia always wants to overthrow the principle of subsidiarity and usurp decision making from the rest of humanity. That is why so little attention or discussion is given to the concept of subsidiarity. When organizations and institutions fail, I would assert that the single most powerful explanation is that one group of people within the organization has decision making authority that would be better exercised by another group. This observation is antithetical to the clerisy’s interests, however, and it will likely continue to be ignored. Reality provides us enough evidence to suggest that “the principle of subsidiarity” ought really be known as “the iron law of subsidiarity.”