How can a culture improve?
When I read the book review of R͟u͟s͟s͟i͟a in today’s WSJ, I was struck by the poignant portrayal of centuries of suffering… same as it ever was. I don’t feel the urge to read the book with its “various armies and savage battles recounted in riveting, and at times revolting, detail.”
But it made me ponder… given the vast differences in human societies and cultures, how can we improve the pace of progress, with an eye to human flourishing? Progress is made, unevenly, and at a pace that seems glacial compared to a lifetime.
If we could run more experiments in governance — be it Romer’s charter cites or off-world colonies testing direct democracy in the digital age — perhaps we could learn more quickly, and not require a revolution for any given country to advance. Experiments have been rare, on the timescale of centuries.
When you look at the regions of human suffering, cultural progress is slow within authoritarian regimes as they work to preserve their power base politically, militarily and economically. At the Oslo Freedom Forum, I argued that authoritarian regimes stagnate over the long run because they forestall disruption. Meaningful change is disruptive, whether in business or culture, and thus never initiated by incumbents. So, progress depends on the free flow of ideas and experimentation.
But it seems worse than that. Authoritarian regimes spiral into kleptocracies (“mafia states”) over the long run, even if they start off with an enlightened ruler.
And then there is Russia, with civil wars and experiments in radical governance… and yet, with a pan-political persistence of sub-optimal governance, spanning centuries. How does a culture get stuck like this? Must Russians, and their neighboring states, suffer for as long as there is a Russian state, and by proxy, a Russian culture?
WSJ Book Review: https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-review-a-nation-prone-to-cruelty-11663103338
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