Post No.: 0926
Furrywisepuppy says:
Being kind is more important than being clever. Well it is socially intelligent to overall be kind.
Social animals dominate the top 5 lists of smartest animals in the animal kingdom (although determining such lists involves the human bias of being a social species! For instance, octopuses are quite intelligent too.) Social withdrawal and aggression are correlated with being disliked. Athletic ability and academic ability are correlated with moderate likeability. Meanwhile, prosocial behaviour is correlated with high likeability.
Social withdrawal is correlated with low status. Academic ability, prosocial behaviour and aggression are correlated with moderate status. And athletic ability is correlated with high status.
It can differ in different cultures though – in relatively individualist countries like the USA, prosocial behaviour and aggression are correlated with moderate status, whereas being sad or anxious are correlated with very low status. But in relatively collectivist countries like China, prosocial behaviour is correlated with high status, whereas and being sad, anxious or aggressive are correlated with low status.
Some cultures or individuals view happiness as a self-focused question about their own life satisfaction, whilst others view it as a collectivist question about interdependent harmony (i.e. their own happiness depends also on whether they feel those around them are happy too).
Different cultures also have different conceptions of what it means to be happy. Americans typically want to be cheery and merry, whilst Chinese people prefer calmer states like being relaxed and at peace. This means that we shouldn’t over-simplistically define happiness as being in an excited state or having a high self-esteem.
It’s actually too basic to really group countries into ‘Western’, ‘Oriental’, ‘African’, etc., for there’s some level of diversity within any such group. And sometimes over-emphasising a general difference between groups just perpetuates those group stereotypes when in fact there are plenty of similarities between all cultures, like that good relationships are key for all happy people across the globe. Woof!
From someone who lives and was brought up in a relatively individualistic culture – seeing those in more collectivist cultures surrendering relatively more of their privacy away like they do seems like a dystopia. But the relative lack of community cooperation in individualistic cultures appears like a dystopia to those in more collectivist cultures.
The vast majority of people across the world tried their best to do the right thing for each other during the COVID-19 pandemic. Most people could be trusted. But the problem was that, with an infectious disease, just a relatively few individuals who didn’t cooperate for the greater good could spread so much risk onto others. Politicians who acted selfishly didn’t send a message of unity either.
SARS-CoV-2 did originate from China, not because the country was collectivist but (most likely) because of the country’s under-regulated meat markets (which one could say is a feature of unfettered capitalism rather than communism). Being somewhat slow in alerting the world and hindering investigations into the virus’s precise origin was due to a communist leadership trying to protect its image though. However, a country doesn’t need to be communist to be more collectivist. Democratic and relatively collectivist cultures like in South Korea, Japan and Singapore tackled COVID-19 relatively more rapidly and efficiently than individualist ones, at least initially.
For effective COVID-19 contact tracing – South Koreans traded their privacy for more freedom of movement, and that worked well for them and their relatively collectivist culture compared to the USA and the UK (here, we hesitated on both testing and tracing). South Korea could learn from previous experience with Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) though.
We needed places where public-use paw sanitisers wouldn’t get selfishly stolen if they weren’t tethered down, where people didn’t selfishly flout lockdown rules such as by going to secret parties, and where people cleaned their own areas plus kindly a little bit more.
Reactance is greater in more individualist cultures, where any instructions to wear masks, keep gatherings small and so forth were more likely to be met with the opposite behaviour.
A few individuals can cause problems for so many others especially in so-called ‘superspreading events’. Well lots of small but simultaneous clusters of fuzzy contagion are worse than well-managed large gatherings; yet the former can stem from individuals returning to their hometowns after coming together at a single large gathering.
Trust in vaccines appears to be an issue that’s unrelated to whether a culture is relatively individualist or collectivist though. Anti-vaxxers may be persuaded by conspiracy theories. But they shouldn’t be talked to with condescension if you want to change their minds. Get them to apply scepticism towards claims that vaccines are risky. Get them to think about the risks of not getting vaccinated. Those with moneyed interests in selling alternative therapies to approved vaccines, or have political interests in campaigning for those who reject vaccinations, will least likely ever wish to change their minds due to their conflicts of interests however.
Along with a strong healthcare system (a lower population density perhaps also helps), communities where people trusted each other, felt more connected with and cared more for each other, had lower infection and death rates, and bounced back from any disasters better. If we trusted our leaders when they told us to wash our paws, wear masks and socially distance, then that helped too.
So some lessons from the recent (and ongoing) coronavirus pandemic may include having leaders who give clear, consistent and prompt messages, a population that is considerate towards others, that takes such situations seriously and obeys the rules strictly, ensuring the elderly and vulnerable are given priority care, and providing welfare support for all those who need it.
Our liberties sometimes need to be restrained for the greater good, like enforcing lockdowns and other rules. Sharing some of our private data was useful for the purpose of contact tracing. Our own short-term and selfish desire is to do whatever we want to individually do. But our long-term interests collectively and for ourselves was to obey the rules and get vaccinated so that the pandemic could end as quickly as possible and so that we’d face a shorter total duration of curbs to our freedoms overall as a result of decisively nipping in the bud the chances of harmful mutations of the virus evolving.
So obeying the rules isn’t always anti-freedom – it can precisely restore our freedoms far sooner, whilst keeping more people healthy and alive.
I know this is with the benefit of hindsight and I’m not saying there wouldn’t still have been many attributable deaths and sizable economic losses – but looking back now, would the entire world’s population rather have chosen to (after perhaps a couple of weeks to prepare for it like stocking up enough food) each hunker completely down inside the one building where they were each at (which might have needed to have been at their place of work if they worked for essential services) for 14 to 28 days in early 2020 without ever leaving this place unless for hospital or other genuine emergencies, so that the transmission of the virus completely died out by the end of this period? Only emergency services staff would’ve been exempt from this strict curfew. Let’s all cooperate and endure a relatively short period of restrictions to our lives so that we can enjoy complete freedom and safety far sooner! There were certainly a lot of things to learn from in preparation for future similar outbreaks. If the only problem would’ve been a backlash from some individuals who resisted such measures then that’d be a human problem – not a practical feasibility problem – and that’d be disappointing.
One drawback in collectivist cultures is that shame is often piled onto those who don’t conform to the group norm. Diversity is stifled. Anyone who is perceived to be letting themselves down is also perceived to be tarnishing the image of the group collectively. Consequently, those who deviate from the group norm might even get bullied into conforming by the masses – even when the law doesn’t compel them to conform.
We ultimately need to find the right balance between community (nationally, internationally and really at all levels) and individualism. A society where individuals vote or volunteer rather than are forced to be collectivist is probably the best. Educate and share love and trust and perhaps people will?
The world’s happiest nations are generally democratic, entrepreneur and creativity-friendly, yet have strong social safety nets (some will regard this as socialistic). They are tolerant, allow free speech, are secular, and people feel safe and secure in their own homes. They afford good education and career opportunities, and instil the belief that the harder one works, the more one will be rewarded. There are few restrictions on the flow of capital or labour. Being ‘developed’ and out of poverty is crucial, but then once that’s achieved – health, safety and freedom matter most (but temporary curbs to one’s freedoms will be accepted and obeyed if it’s for the greater good, such as during a crisis). The perception of confidence is key (e.g. it’s not so much about how many jobs are actually out there but the feeling of there being jobs available out there). Being able to trust others and especially the government is also key. Being a small nation helps too because it reduces the chance of the country containing regions of subgroups with different factional beliefs.
The free market is usually more dynamic but during national emergencies – like during the COVID-19 pandemic – governments are more dynamic to mobilise funds and action, as long as state leaders are decisive and consistent. Competition must switch to cooperation during crises. Public funding and charity donations overwhelmingly helped to develop the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for instance. It was then sold to the UK government at cost-price i.e. it was not capitalism or greed that made this vaccine work.
Despite their benefits to the world – vaccine development is costly, uncertain, they typically only need to be administered once or twice per person in their lifetimes (i.e. there’s little/no repeat custom) and they would be undersupplied in a totally free market. Poorer countries need large supplies yet cannot afford high prices, which means supply won’t go to where it’s most demanded if profit maximisation is the goal. Patent protections and controlling supply maximises profits for the pharmaceutical corporations but delays the speed that these vaccines can be deployed to save lives. So publicly funding vaccines and perhaps waiving patent rights, at least temporarily, is essential.
The billions of pounds awarded to private companies – many of which were suspiciously closely connected to government MPs at the time – to supply personal protective equipment, led to much waste though! And, through indecisive leadership, the UK didn’t do comparatively well in the first year of the pandemic according to the death rate.
As nations, we can also be selfish by hoarding vaccines and boosting our own already multiple-jabbed citizens when so many across the world haven’t even had their first or second jabs yet. The longer a contagious virus is spreading globally, the greater the risk that variants resistant to our existing vaccines will mutate, which will be bad news for ourselves as well as for everyone else in the long run.
We’ve however fortunately witnessed so much altruism during the pandemic, and the NHS, which is publicly funded, along with the thousands of volunteers, managed to get the vaccine rolled out faster in the UK than in most other countries. Post No.: 0260 explored some potential reasons why altruism generally evolved.
Woof. You can share your opinions on collectivist versus individualist cultures by replying to the tweet linked to the Twitter comment button just below if you’d like.
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