I suspect it is, at least in the sense of WEIRD as a now trendy acronym for western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic societies.
One criticism of utilitarianism is that it implies that we should value the welfare of far away people just as much as we value the welfare of our own family and friends. This, it is argued, goes against human nature.
I agree that it goes against human nature, but I don’t believe that makes it a bad idea. If someone insults me, my human nature is to punch him in the face. Throughout most of history, in most parts of the world, that’s exactly how many people would respond. If they were aristocrats, they might challenge them to a duel.
In rich societies we have tended to move past fighting duels over insults. We’ve risen above out natural instincts, at least in some respects.
Razib Khan recently made this observation:
In The WEIRDest People in the World Harvard’s Joe Henrich makes the argument that the Western Christian Church’s destruction of extended family networks led to the rise of the West. I won’t recapitulate the argument which I’ve outlined elsewhere. But the idea is rather persuasive.
Before proceeding, let’s stop for a moment and consider just how weird this theory is. Many conservatives (not all) hold the following two beliefs:
1. Strong family values are the bedrock of western civilization.
2. Western civilization is superior to most or all other cultures.
Wouldn’t it be surprising if the success of western civilization were based on the rejection of strong family values?
In many parts of the world you are expected to offer a job to a cousin over a slightly better qualified stranger. Many of those countries have higher levels of corruption than rich western nations. And this is not just about Europe vs. non-white countries. Sicily has stronger extended family networks than Sweden, and is less prosperous. So one can make similar distinctions even within Western Europe.
The claim that each person’s wellbeing is equally important is a truly radical idea. Conservatives upset about my dismissal of “family values” might take some solace in the thought that this radical idea may have come from Christianity. In contrast, utilitarianism is often viewed as a sort of bloodless, secular worldview—almost inhuman. But if the WEIRD hypothesis is correct, then perhaps society can to some extent overcome its natural instincts, and move at least some distance down the road toward valuing everyone’s wellbeing equally.
To be sure, some bias toward family and close friends might be optimal from even a utilitarian perspective, as we are social animals. Babies come into the world defenseless, and hence a strong nuclear family is a useful institution. Perhaps in prehistoric times a strong extended family was useful to survival, but in modern WEIRD societies there’s no great benefit to extended kinship networks, beyond the nuclear family. It’s all about balance, and how that balance changes as society evolves and becomes more urban and specialized.
I have not yet read Joe Henrich’s new book, but for those whom have I pose this question. Is it possible that at least a part of the claim that western societies have become WEIRD another way of saying that western societies have become increasingly utilitarian? That is, do we increasingly view everyone’s welfare as equally important?
Now I’ll go out on a limb with one further thought—admittedly wildly speculative. What if Christianity led to utilitarianism, and utilitarianism led to the rejection of certain non-utilitarian ideas in the Bible? (Stoning adulterers, prejudice against gays, usury is bad, etc.) This is analogous to the view that capitalism leads to prosperity, which leads to social liberalism, which leads to a rejection of the Protestant work ethic that supposedly led to capitalism. As I said, all wildly speculative.
READER COMMENTS
Garrett
Aug 2 2020 at 2:02pm
In my experience living in the WEIRD northeast United States, people who prioritize extended family relationships over friendships are worse off for two reasons. First, the ability to choose friends versus the inability to choose family members means people typically have a lot less in common with their extended family members than their friends. Second, people take their family a lot more for granted than their friends, and people tend to be a lot more permissive of their family’s behavior than their friends’. This makes the average level of treatment between friends higher than between family members because people will much more readily end bad friendships than shun family.
On the other hand, the weaker ties that people feel towards friends mean that friendships come and go quickly as people move, change jobs, and evolve their tastes. While some childhood friendships endure, one should not expect a friend that’s made at 25 to still be there at 50 (or even 30). So the benefit of our culture’s weakened extended relationships is only reaped by those willing to continue making new friendships through their lifetimes.
nobody.really
Aug 4 2020 at 5:19pm
In my experience living in the WEIRD northeast United States, people twolk funny.
Fazal Majid
Aug 2 2020 at 3:03pm
Suharto reportedly told Wolfensohn “What you call corruption, we call family values!”
Mark Z
Aug 2 2020 at 5:28pm
Weakening extended family bonds is one thing. Convincing someone to care as much about a stranger 2,000 miles away about his child is another, however. Nuclear family bonds are a lot more deeply ingrained, both for biological reasons and because you spend a lot more time with your children than with your cousins, and so bond emotionally with the former much more than the latter. I don’t think nuclear familial preference is ever going away. I also wonder if the reason the erosion of extended family nepotism in developed countries is sustainable is because they’re rich and have functioning institutions. You don’t really have to worry if your cousins will be taken care of, if they’ll be treated more or less fairly even if they don’t have relatives in high places. You know that if your cousin harms someone, that someone’s relatives probably aren’t going to try to get revenge on you. If those attributes of developed societies disappeared, people may go back to worrying a lot more about the well-being of their relatives.
Scott Sumner
Aug 2 2020 at 6:45pm
Everyone, Good points.
Philo
Aug 2 2020 at 8:40pm
As you note, utilitarianism shares its universalism with Christianity. But belief in universalism does not really go against human nature: intellectual history shows that people can believe almost anything, no matter how absurd or counter-intuitive. It’s acting on their beliefs that’s the sticking point; human nature might well prevent people from many of the more extreme actions indicated by their beliefs.
robc
Aug 2 2020 at 10:17pm
Wouldn’t a deontologist possibly* view everyone’s welfare as equal also? I see nothing particularly utilitarian about that.
* Depending on their moral code, of course. If the radical idea comes from Christianity, then that moral code already has it covered.
nobody.really
Aug 4 2020 at 5:38pm
As far as I know, a deontologist can believe ANYTHING–provided that the belief does not depend on some contingency. Thus, a deotolgist might believe that every human has dignity, or that none do, or that only the king has dignity, or whatever. The only thing a deontolgist couldn’t believe is that the duty to accord dignity depends upon some consequence or optimization strategy.
If you understand utilitarianism as the pursuit of the greatest good for the greatest number, and you believe in diminishing marginal returns (for example, that giving a dollar to a poor person does more good than giving a dollar to a millionaire), then I can anticipate many strategies that lean toward promoting equal welfare.
Scott Sumner
Aug 3 2020 at 2:13am
Philo, Perhaps, but it depends what you mean by “universalism”. Don’t you think it’s human nature to view the lives close to us as having more value?
robc, I agree, although I’d add there are other utilitarian aspects to “weird” societies. Indeed I’d say they are becoming more utilitarian over time, and perhaps a bit less religious.
Phil H
Aug 3 2020 at 6:46am
There are a lot of different levels to unpack on this! I’ll mention two.
First, there are utilitarian traditions all over the place. In China, as you may well know, the Mozi tradition was one of the schools that competed for attention in the axial age, and that contained a fairly utilitarian ethos.
Secondly, I’m not convinced many westerners are more deeply convinced of the moral importance of utilitarianism. But I do think our relatively long history of (theoretically) impartial law has left us impressed by the idea of fairness between all people, in a way that has happened less in other cultures. Rule of law makes utilitarianism institutionally and psychologically real.
Scott Sumner
Aug 3 2020 at 2:24pm
Phil, You said:
“Secondly, I’m not convinced many westerners are more deeply convinced of the moral importance of utilitarianism.”
I’m not sure what this means. If you are suggesting that, on average, westerners are not more utilitarian than non-westerners, then I very strongly disagree. If you are suggesting that many westerners are not utilitarians, then I agree.
Phil H
Aug 4 2020 at 2:23am
The first is what I meant, and I find your disagreement… reasonable. But I still stand by the claim. What I mean is this: rule of law and rule of law institutions have created more habits and senses in which westerners recognize the effectiveness of utilitarian thinking and approaches, but without, in most cases, creating any philosophical commitment to utilitarian-style principles.
(E.g. voting is a utilitarian-ish institution, but I think many people think of it in terms of national strength and efficient selection of good leaders).
Whether or not we are on average *more* utilitarian… would be devilishly hard to measure. Your intuition is probably as good as mine, and I feel like we can differ reasonably.
nobody.really
Aug 3 2020 at 1:50pm
1: I share all these speculations–with the exception that I don’t regard them as wild.
Recall that Christ arrives pretty near the end of the Bible–and while he claims that he has come to fulfill everything in the Torah/Old Testament, he really upsets a lot of apple carts. Stoning adulterers is a pretty clear example: The Torah/Old Testament prescribes stoning, but Christ more or less forbade the practice. Thus, Christianity was always going to undermine “the Bible” where Torah/Old Testament teachings conflicted with Christ’s teachings.
Another area pertains to universalism: Whereas Judaism generally regards itself as a compact between God and one specific tribe, Christ admonishes his followers to make disciples of ALL nations. Moreover, Christ’s story of the Good Samaritan admonishes people to extend compassion not based on tribe, but on need, and to admire people not based on their tribe, but on their deed. This is about as anti-tribal a message as you could want.
Note, however, that Christ’s message still gave heavy emphasis to the fate of nations, not specifically individuals. It was not until the late Middle Ages that Christianity shifted its focus to INDIVIDUAL salvation and damnation. As any economist/game theoretician would predict, this shift in emphasis from collective judgment to individual judgment proved to be quite effective in motivating people to modify their behavior. And arguably this shift helped fire the Protestant Reformation and the Protestant Work Ethic.
2: Utilitarianism promotes the virtue of meritocracy: Allocate resources/opportunities in a manner that promotes the greatest good for the greatest number. Under meritocracy, people tend to be richer–but live in constant fear that some more meritorious person will displace them.
In contrast, tribalism promotes the virtue of loyalty. Loyalty arguably has the advantage of reducing stress: You know your status in society, whether good or bad, and know that a network of people exist to maintain that status–ergo you do not have to fear (or hope) about change.
As various people have argued here, while we tend to praise utilitarianism/meritocracy, we immediately rebel against the idea of applying such standards to our nuclear family. We WANT loyalty to govern this relationship. We WANT our moms to love us more than that goody two-shoes neighbor kid. Indeed, a big part of the current discussion about White Supremacy focuses on how even reputed meritocrats pull strings to get their kids into good schools, at the expense of all other kids–especially the kids who have no strings to pull.
Likewise, many (non-libertarian) people understand a nation as reflecting a kind of mutual aid pact: We’re supposed to exhibit loyalty to a fellow citizen that we would not exhibit to a non-citizen. Thus, we expect FEMA to rescue people in San Diego, but not Tijuana.
In short, we value both utilitarianism/meritocracy and tribalism/loyalty. The challenge is in finding the optimal mix, and articulating a standard for getting there.
The Freeconomist
Aug 3 2020 at 2:17pm
“Wouldn’t it be surprising if the success of western civilization were based on the rejection of strong family values?”
… Not at all. Dysfunctional societies are usually tribal – and the strongest form of tribalism is familism.
The essence of tribalism is valuing the welfare of people in your tribe (family, nation, race, …) higher than that of other people. Saying a society became less tribal is equivalent to saying it became more utilitarian.
The less tribal (= the more utilitarian) a society, the more successful it will be.
Max More
Aug 3 2020 at 5:13pm
Scott, I have never found utilitarianism appealing. (Unless I’m only allowed to choose between it and deontological ethics.) It doesn’t bother me that, in some mild sense, it “goes against human nature”. That’s what culture is for! What I dislike is that it requires everyone to be a slave to maximizing utility (happiness, pleasure, well-being, or however defined). No one has a right to their own life and projects. They are there to serve the utilitarian goal. In the end, this approach fails to answer the core question: “Why be moral?”
I prefer virtue ethics. However, I definitely understand why utilitarianism appeals to economists.
To robc: A deontologist wouldn’t even think in terms of welfare. That is the mark of a consequentialist (utilitarianism being the most popular form). Deontologists are universalists in the sense that they hold that all persons have an intrinsic dignity and deserve moral respect. But it has nothing to do with welfare. You must follow the moral rules regardless of the outcome.
nobody.really
Aug 5 2020 at 8:22am
Your understanding does not match mine. I combine this philosophy with the economic principle of revealed preference: What people ACTUALLY DO when given a choice, rather than what they profess, reflects their true preferences. And I struggle with the idea of being “enslaved to the goal” of doing whatever you like. What are these “own life projects” that you would pursue, even though they bear no relationship to happiness, pleasure, well-being, or anything else a person might define? Because once you identify a motivation for pursuing them, that motivation presumably has a place in your utility function.
If you want to sleep all day, a utilitarian would conclude that doing so optimizes your utility function. True, you might starve, which might depress your utility in the long run. But perhaps your function places enormous value on present consumption at the expense of the long run.
In short, I understand utilitarianism as providing a framework for explaining the observation that people pursue multiple objectives simultaneously, and for predicting how their behavior might shift when, say, the cost of pursuing various objects changes. Utilitarianism describes, not prescribes–except in that it rejects the idea that people act without considering anticipated costs and benefits.
Larry
Aug 4 2020 at 2:04am
I thought it was Europe’s rejection of cousin marriage.
nobody.really
Aug 4 2020 at 8:23am
Or perhaps the regulation of a man’s marriage to his dead wife’s sister, as discussed in Gilbert & Sullivan operettas.
jj
Aug 4 2020 at 11:31am
Scott, I think most of your questions would answer themselves if you started by defining “family values”. That’s a large chunk of human experience to be encompassed in just two words.
As far as Christian instruction regarding family values, I think it would go:
Honor your parents
Love your wife and children
Love your brother*
*treat everyone as your brother, even strangers
Under these particular ‘family values’, the nuclear family gets special treatment, and outside of that, there is no justification in mistreating anybody. Your point is then clarified as:
1. Strong nuclear family values are the bedrock of western civilization.
robc
Aug 4 2020 at 12:10pm
Comments seem weird. Both “Rule of Law” and “Meritocracy” are deontological positions, not utilitarian ones. They may also be utilitarian ones (I think they are), but that is not the basis of either. No one initially chooses rule of law because they think it works better, but because it is the morally correct thing to do.
nobody.really
Aug 4 2020 at 5:09pm
I’d rephrase that: Nobody.really chooses the rule of law because he thinks it works better. Because he does. As did Justice Antonin Scalia, who said, “Our salvation is the Equal Protection Clause, which requires the democratic majority to accept for themselves and their loved ones what they impose on you and me.” Cruzan v. Missouri Dept. of Health (1990).
I tend to focus on consequences. If a benign dictatorship produced better, less corrupt outcomes over the long term, I might support it. But while a person might dream of a leader that “would have tyranny and purity together … the most superficial observation might have shown … that there can be no tyranny without corruption.” Thomas Babington Macaulay
Ghatanathoah
Aug 5 2020 at 5:06am
Scott, I would recommend looking up Mohism. It is a philosophy developed in ancient China that strongly resembles utilitarianism. It even had the exact same objections raised against it, that it was alienating and demanding because it demanded equal consideration for non-family members.
Maybe utilitarianism is not so WEIRD after all if someone in Warring States era China devised it independently.
nobody.really
Aug 5 2020 at 7:30am
On the distinction between consequentialism/utilitarianism and deontology: C.S. Lewis appears to embrace a deontological view—but cleverly designed to have many of the qualities of consequentialism. He grounds his view in a call to duty, but harnesses ambition for the goal of preparing to fulfill that duty.
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Letter XV (1941).
In short, imagine a person feels a duty to dedicate her life to improving the world. She therefore employs all her faculties and resources designing, optimizing, and implementing a strategy for achieving that end. She takes in information about the consequences of her strategy as she goes, and modifies it to better achieve her goal of improving the world. Yet if she takes satisfaction in the idea that she dedicated her life to improving the world, rather than in whether the world actually improves, then she has acted deontologically.
She focuses on playing well the hand she is dealt–and not with the outcome of the game. To her, it matters not that the road to hell is paved with her good intentions. The good intentions–implemented to the best of her ability–are, by themselves, her stairway to heaven.
Upon reflection, I may be coming around to this view….
robc
Aug 5 2020 at 9:34am
As an aside, when asked the question about what influences or what I read or whatever that made me a libertarian, I claim CS Lewis as my primary influence.
Specifically, but not entirely, some of his essays in “God in the Dock.”
I word it differently that Lewis (although he words it much better): Among the moral means, choose the one you think will lead to the best end.
It is a utilitarian sub-game within the larger framework of deontology. If all the moral means lead to sub-optimal ends, you still have to choose one of those. But nothing wrong with trying for the best end possible.
Comments are closed.