Theme: Society

There are two people in the cockpit of an airplane. Up until thirty years ago, there were sometimes three, particularly in the Boeing 747: the pilot, co-pilot, and a flight engineer. The latter was engineered out as a matter of efficiency. But there was another reason, particularly prevalent in Asian airlines such as Japan Airlines and Korea Air. Research into various crashes and near-accidents showed that with a third person in the cockpit, a co-pilot was reluctant to contradict the pilot. Correcting your superiors in Japan and Korea is frowned upon and already inhibits open communication, but to avoid loss of faith, with a third person present in the cockpit, the co-pilot didn’t dare to contradict his superior, which could lead to dangerous situations.

To me, Japanese culture is awe-inspiring. Their refinement of diverse forms of craftsmanship, art, and cuisine is unprecedented. Japan may well be the most sophisticated country in the world. I’m ashamed to say I’ve never been there.

According to anthropologist Richard Shweder, different cultures often prioritize different human values, but every culture is successful in its own way. If that were not the case, cultures would not have proliferated. Japanese culture is clearly doing something right, despite its strict rules surrounding respecting superiors which can, at times, have horrendous consequences. But what is the function of a culture? Shweder asserts that a culture is a ‘collective delusion to help people co-exist’. Cultures exist because they are successful in making us live together. And cultures always have strong points, and weaker ones.

John Haidt gained his PhD under Shweder’s supervision and is now quite possibly better known. The metaphor he uses when talking about cultures is a ‘taste palate’. All humans have the same taste buds, divided into sweet, sour, salt, bitter, and umami, but every culture mixes them uniquely in their local cuisine. Haidt tried to establish the palate of cultural values, and settled on the following six aspects:

• Care/Harm: how quickly do you regard someone as being vulnerable?

• Fairness/Cheating: do you interpret honesty by its process or results?

• Loyalty/Betrayal: how important is loyalty to a group?

• Authority/Subversion: how necessary is a hierarchy in achieving a stable society?

• Sanctity/Degradation: do you have a strong concept of physical or mental purity and a firm idea of what you must avoid?

• Liberty/Oppression: how fervently do you believe that there are many forms of oppression?

In marketing, groups of consumers are also distinguished by what are known as ‘snake plots’, graphs charting customer perceptions. A snake plot could be used to chart cultures too. The Japanese, for example, score very high on obedience to authority, while the Dutch score low (the Dutch would define obedience as subversion, that is the negative end of the spectrum as they see it).

You can also have a go at sub-cultures in the United States this way. The progressive left often spotlights the vulnerability of certain groups, while the conservative right finds this less important. Instead, the right attaches more importance to certain hierarchies and to religion, while the left does not. Both sub-cultures have opposing definitions of honesty. The right is guided more by a fair process, while the left finds unequal outcomes unfair. In the US, these sub-cultures have grown further and further apart, evolving to resemble caricatures as a result. On the one hand, the vulnerable non-binary in a dress, and on the other, the redneck with a pick-up truck and six Trump flags.

And they project those values onto the world around them, altering their perspective. We all do. For example, when my wife Wendela sees people out with their dogs, she looks to see if the person is walking the dog or if the dog walks the human being. She prefers it if dogs are walking their owners. I didn’t need Jon Haidt for this, but he demonstrated that Wendela’s preference for naughty dogs, implies that she is a liberal, and that conservatives like to have obedient dogs.

It can be interesting to typecast cultures, but the underlying idea here is important. Both Haidt and Shweder emphasize that many different cultures exist, and that they are all successful to some extent. And no culture is strong in all possible dimensions where human values are concerned. There is always some kind of a payoff. Also the cultural system is interconnected and complex, the values are not like Lego bricks you can take out and replace with something else. So their key lesson is that we should make an effort to see how other cultures are valuable.