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You Can Believe That!

Cold Brighton Beach

I encountered an amazing resource this week: The World Values Survey. It's a 20-year long study of the values, attitudes, and beliefs of approximately 80% of the world's population carried out by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. I poked around the survey's website and I found this article from The Futurist: Modernization's Challenge to Traditional Values: Who's Afraid of Ronald McDonald?

I'll ruin the ending for you by quoting the article's penultimate statement. "Economic development will cause shifts in the values of people in developing nations, but it will not produce a uniform global culture." In short, those of us that have wrung our hands over the hosts of franchises poised to conquer our lives and our individuality can rest easy for a while. I don't know if I'll ever get around to writing a cogent article in defense of corporations and big businesses on here, but, in the meantime, I hope the following scatterbrained thoughts make sense.

Let's accept something, shall we? We live in a capitalist society. It's a fact. There's nothing we can do about it, but there are a lot of things that we can do within it. Many people mourn "globalization," a term rendered all but useless by its immeasurable definitions. However, it seems to me that many of globalization's fiercest opponents can't help but fan its fires. In efforts to reclaim the authenticity that capitalism has robbed from them, they set forth to discover the pristine cultures of the world, the places where people really live. You know? Where they do yoga all day and eat organic hummus. Where villages entertain themselves with drum circles instead of televisions. You know, those places. The concerned suburbanites demand authenticity, and they'll pay a premium for it. Whether in the form of ecotourism or $50/lb. coffee beans, they will be sure to experience the real before it ceases to exist.

The supply created to meet this demand pumps life into capitalism's farthest reaching tentacles, creating job markets where no job markets existed before. Personally, I think it's great. I just find it ironic. The World Values Survey offers a bit of insight into this phenomenon. Marx and Nietzsche had predicted that rising industry would crowd religion out of society, and they were somewhat right. It makes perfect sense; as capitalism has come to satisfy many of our physical needs, our existence becomes less miserable, longer, and no longer needs to be justified on so many levels. I'd posit that the search for "authentic" places and commodities is merely a modern version of yesteryear's pilgrimages and sacred relics.

To illustrate how societies' beliefs and economies relate, the Futurist has used the World Values Survey to map out the values of 65 societies across two axes: survival v. self-expression and traditional v. secular-rational. They then laid a map of national per-capita gross domestic products over the "values map." The results are pretty fun to look at.

I'd discuss this further, but the article does it perfectly well, so I won't waste our time. I just thought this would make a nice addition to a discussion that my brother started a while back on his blog; re: environmentalism - a new faith. As secular-rationalism makes traditional religions seem foolish, new faiths are created. "Free Tibet" stickers are a perfect example. I'm glad that there are so many people concerned for the Tibetan people, but I'd wager that the majority of people who affix Free Tibet stickers to their cars could not locate Tibet on a map or adequately describe the oppression from which Tibet needs freeing. It doesn't matter though, what matters is that the human desire to believe in something is being fulfilled. Thriving economies might make traditional religious promises obsolete (who needs a harp and a cloud in heaven when I can have satellite TV right now?), but we can always depend on our feverish minds to invent new ideals to which we can aspire.

I don't want to debunk anyone's faith, no matter where it's directed. If swearing off bee-exploitative honey helps vegans sleep better at night, by all means let them give up the honey. I want people to be happy, I just like examining human behavior. I've got my own modern faiths; I'm often more comfortable singing the praises of Modest Mouse and Apple computers than I am spreading the word about my beloved Mormonism. So what's my point? Well, I mentioned earlier that there are a lot of things able to be accomplished within a capitalistic society. A survey of the world's values can be a great tool to make capitalism useful.

Markets shape themselves to reflect the cultures in which they thrive. Yoga teachers can't find work in Gary, Indiana, evangelical preachers won't find a congregation in Soho, NYC. By helping investors to accurately funnel capital into emerging markets, this kind of study can help us figure out how to lift the countries out of survival mode and into self-expression mode. The survey results indicate that while such economic assistance will inevitably affect the values of those societies, their traditions will not be entirely lost. For instance, look at the United State's placement on the map, we've managed to hold on to our traditions fairly well in spite of our economic strength (it makes me wonder if WWI and WWII had more to do with Europe's shedding of its traditions than its economic development). Either way, there's no empirical evidence that economic development will steamroll a culture's charm, and an unfounded fear of eliminating cultural traditions shouldn't impede us from helping the destitute gain access to health care or education. Instead, a thorough understanding of a nation's values is essential to determine how to properly assist the economic development of that country.

Want to really help Kenyans develop a sustainable economy? Quit making them dress up for ecotourist groups and help them buy a water pump instead. Once they're able to focus on something other than mere survival, their true self-expression will flourish on its own.