The Importance of Culture

Culture is important. It determines the way people interact with each other in society and within the family, what choices they make for themselves, and is often the most important factor in determining whether a society is wealthy and successful or impoverished economically and in terms of quality of life.

Certain conditions and ways of operating lead to societies where people are productive, wealthy, healthy, and happy. These ends all arise from widespread people holding the traits of responsibility, an affection for hard work and honesty. Free societies lead to people with these traits being much more successful and setting the tone, and make even the poor richer.

Indeed, there are certain cultures that are very much in support of freedom, and these cultures are the most successful in nearly every way; productivity, happiness, health, in virtually every way people’s lives here are quantifiably better than elsewhere. It is precisely in these freedom loving cultures that we find the best examples of honest, responsible, hard working people. When examining cultures adverse to freedom, we find people who are often lazy, would rather save face or blame others than take responsibility for failings, and more damagingly than most anything else, prone to aggression. These traits make it very hard for a society to improve its quality of life, and difficult also for even the hard workers to become successful or advance themselves far.

Because human quality of life varies widely with the relative amount of freedom and hard work found in a society, and societies have vastly differing levels of freedom, quality of life in a society is largely a function of the quality of the culture. Because a high quality of life is the most prominent desire for every person on the planet, and certain cultures lead to different qualities of life, different cultures are of different qualities. In short, some cultures are better than others in the most important way possible.

Of course there are the rather superficial aspects of culture, such as types of music popular, or art created by its members, these things are mostly compared and contrasted amongst each other and enjoyed by whomever appreciates them, as they are mostly a visible and tangible result of the more important underlying characteristics which define a culture. What defines a culture? It is the part of culture that programs its members to act in certain ways in certain situations. It is often irresponsible to judge an individual by the actions of others in the same group, but certain groups quantifiably act in ways more often than others, and inferences can be made into group and individual behavior. One can look at cultural norms and assume that an individual who is a member of that culture will be more likely to make a decision similar to that norm than different from it. It is these fundamental features, like Americans being socially outgoing, or Swedes being socially reserved, that define cultures.

There is an important dichotomy that helps to distinguish cultures where one is likely to find greater degrees of freedom and hard work, and thus prosperity, from those where one is likely to find greater degrees of aggression and irresponsibility. Generally speaking, there are cultures where people are used to living on hard land, where surviving itself requires a good deal of work, and winters must be prepared for long in advance. Constant work is needed to ensure survival, but the environment is relatively stable and predictable. Finland serves as an example of this, as there is not a tremendous opportunity for agriculture, the land provides little food to man easily, with the exception of fish, and winters are long and absolutely brutal. For most of its history, the populace had a decent immunity to common diseases as well. Europe and parts of North Asia such as Korea and Japan serve as good examples of this. Work must be done the entire year to keep up food production and prepare for winter, and deferral of gratification and hard work are the only ways to accrue much wealth as a society. Pair bonding is important to ensure that the children will have a steady flow of resources through the hard times of winter.

On the other side, there are cultures where people come from unpredictable but fruitful lands, where surviving requires less intensive farming, as there is much fruit and easily available food, but disease is much more rampant and is a large threat to longevity. War is also extremely common in places such as these. An example of this type of culture comes from those in Central Africa. The land is fruitful naturally, and winter is hardly existent. Even the dry seasons experienced is not nearly so challenging to exist through. However, vile tropical diseases can very easily kill people here, and is a much less predictable threat than winter starvation, with virtually no way to prepare for it. Other cultures in places across Africa, Arabia, India, Southeast Asia, and the Americas have developed cultures that work to ensure reproduction in places like these. There is little incentive to defer gratification, as long life spans are rare and there is little to prepare against. Sexual promiscuity is high because death due to disease is high, and many children must be born to ensure that some will survive.

Though these cultures have just adapted differently to survive in different environments, they do not have the same results. Society improves itself in a very large way by the acquisition of wealth over successive generations, and only one of these culture types does this. Constant hard work and responsibility results in freedom and better productivity, and only one of these types of cultures does this. One can see even where European cultures have been transplanted to places which formerly had very different cultures, the Americas and Australia, the effects that responsibility, hard work, and relative freedom has on people. These places are now among those with the highest quality of life on Earth.

Another way to describe this quality of life dichotomy is with the r/K selection theory. This term was first used by Robert MacArthur and E.O. Wilson to describe reproduction strategies in different species, but can be easily and validly applied to humanity as well.

The “r” reproductive strategy is designed for unpredictable environments. It involves the production of many offspring, at the expense of quality investment in each one. A member of an “r” species is likely to have small body size, early maturity onset, and short generation time. They are not well designed for competition with other species, as the environment is likely to change again.

The “K” reproductive strategy is designed for more stable environments close to their carrying capacity. It involves the production of fewer offspring, with much parental investment into each offspring. A member of a “K” selected species is likely to have larger body size and a longer life-span. They are designed to compete with other species, as they live in environments where the only way to survive is to compete for scarce natural resources.

In humans, the relative numbers of offspring are manifested in much the same way, as is the amount invested in caring for offspring. However, body size seems to correlate with intelligence, as that is man’s most important tool. Life-span varies mostly due to health, as it is within one species, though the correlation still holds up here as well.

The “r” selected strategy is analogous to cultures coming from these tropical areas where the environment is unpredictable. The high number of offspring is very much the same, indeed with many children dying per those that survive. For example, the fertility rate in the Democratic Republic of Congo is 6.7 children per woman, and the infant mortality rate in the is 69.8/1,000 live births. Intelligence is also much lower among these cultures. The IQ in Cameroon is 64. A commonly accepted range of IQ scores indicating mild mental retardation is from around 55-70. The average life expectancy is low here too, in Liberia at birth it is only 59 years across men and women.


The “K” selected strategy is analogous to cultures coming from northern areas where the environment is less hospitable but more predictable. The lower number of offspring is found in these cultures similar to how it is in “K” species, including the high investment in offspring. Finland’s fertility rate is 1.75 births per woman, and has an infant mortality rate of only 2.5/1,000 live births. Intelligence in these countries is also much higher. South Korea has an average IQ of 102. The average life expectancy here is extremely high, from birth across men and women, it is 79.8 years.

It is these types of traits that largely determine the ability of a society to prosper and improve itself, and indeed in themselves help determine quality of life. These sorts of statistics and the facts they represent are both results of the cultures they are found in, and help keep the momentum of the society keep going the same direction it was, rather upward or downward. Freedom is one of the largest determinants for human success, and culture influences the amount of freedom more than any other one factor. That is the importance of good culture. Good culture promotes liberty and hard work, and results in wealth, health, and happiness. Bad culture results in death, destitution, and depression.

It is because I realise the importance of good culture in creating good lives that I am so concerned about massive influxes of people with bad cultures into places where we have the most precious treasure of liberty. Different cultures in proximity to one another are destined to violence, unless they both have liberty. Just take a look at the Rwandan genocides, or any of the wars in the Middle East. Europe is a place on Earth that is incredibly special. It is a continent where many cultures exist that glorify hard work, honesty, responsibility, and treasure freedom. It has gotten them exactly what these values always will in time; safety, health, happiness, and dignity. Massive immigration into Europe from places where people do not care about living moral lives and do not value these most important of human qualities is an enormous danger to the world. So many people cannot just assimilate into a culture, they will replace it, and sadly that is exactly what many seek to do. Europe and other lands with similar cultures have been making progress in absolutely every field, and the entire world has been constantly benefiting. These people do not realize that they will be destroying the one light in the world. They cannot possibly all be helped by immigrating to Europe, or the USA, or anywhere. There are too many, and they will destroy what they want to become a part of. The only way is to help people where they come from. Charity, and more than anything, the growth of business in impoverished lands is the only thing that can help these billions. They must learn for themselves the value of liberty, hard work, honesty, and responsibility, and build for themselves their own new countries. They do not have the right to take away what thousands of years of Europeans have sacrificed millions of lives, labor, and treasure for. They must take the example, and apply it in their own homelands. It is the only way to save them.

If you care about liberty, and a planet worth living on, then defend Europe and its incredibly special culture.