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The data is interesting……my experience has been even more interesting, to me.

Growing up in a broke community fosters more community thought. We have to stick together to survive and to make it. You never know when you’ll need someone or something and you depend on the same thought process. Most folks come through and return favors and embrace tolerance and or acceptance of others. The common saying is “If I got it…..then you got it”. Some of that is the ‘blessing’ gospel, but that also is rooted in deep poverty and oppression.

The experience I have with people who make 3, 4 times the amount of average money I’m accustomed to , has been appalling in my adult years. They are the least likely to share, will argue over a few dollars and seem very self motivated. Group thought doesn’t come first to their mind. And why not? Bec you don’t need someone for basic resources. Until/if/when they do…..

@marcitko said:

@person said:
The question that occurred to me was which comes first? Do less organically religious people create better societies or do better societies create less religious people? Or is it some sort of self reinforcing spiral?

You might find interesting and illuminating the findings of the World Values Survey: https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp

To the best of my knowledge, this is some of the best stuff coming out of social science.

From what I remember, their findings are that while culture retains some significance, economic development is the predominant factor influencing values, including religious values.

When I studied political science, the main debate was as you framed it. Max Weber said that culture determines economics. Karl Marx said that economics determines culture. From my understanding of the World Values Survey, it turns out that Marx was much more right.

I'm hardly a Marx scholar, but my general impression is that he (or maybe its down to those implementing his ideas) misses the organic vs forced distinction in the video. The former being positive the latter a disaster. At any rate its a helpful place for me to try to sort the question out, thanks for the pointer.

@person said:
The question that occurred to me was which comes first? Do less organically religious people create better societies or do better societies create less religious people? Or is it some sort of self reinforcing spiral?

You might find interesting and illuminating the findings of the World Values Survey: https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp

To the best of my knowledge, this is some of the best stuff coming out of social science.

From what I remember, their findings are that while culture retains some significance, economic development is the predominant factor influencing values, including religious values.

When I studied political science, the main debate was as you framed it. Max Weber said that culture determines economics. Karl Marx said that economics determines culture. From my understanding of the World Values Survey, it turns out that Marx was much more right.

The question that occurred to me was which comes first? Do less organically religious people create better societies or do better societies create less religious people? Or is it some sort of self reinforcing spiral?

Interesting....