The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous

People without an internalized symbolic system can all too easily become captives of the media. They are easily manipulated by demagogues, pacified by entertainers, and exploited by anyone who has something to sell. If we have become dependent on television, on drugs, and on facile calls to political or religious salvation, it is because we have so

The WEIRDer you are, the more you perceive a world full of separate objects, rather than relationships.

The double shift in thinking brought about by Christianity persists today and has now become part of our identity. First, we have come to perceive ethics and morality as outside ourselves, and as in conflict with our ‘natural’ impulses — meaning, of course, that natural impulses are bad. Second, we are convinced that we are accountable to a higher

policy makers and even