Global Issue Interconnections

Summary

There is no shortage of pressing problems in the world, enumerated by the United Nations (and respective Sustainable Development Goals), World Economic Forum, 80,000 hours, etc. These issues are highly interconnected, and making meaningful progress on one often requires domain knowledge on another. This is my attempt to map out those interdependencies and identify outsized areas of impact (w.r.t. problem prioritization, but also to identify fundamental topics/domains that one should learn about that are important to many systemic issues).

Takeaways include:

• Geopolitics, social unrest, the economy, and strong institutions are foundational to most issues. It’s difficult to make progress on an issue if one of these areas is in a poor state, so understanding general trends in them is important.
• Strategically prioritizing problems is important for effectiveness and efficiency, and priority is situational e.g. per country.
• Prioritizing basic and secondary needs (strong institutions, extreme poverty, access to essential services, gender equality, and governance) are perceived as more important than tackling higher-level systemic issues (e.g. climate change, urbanization).
• The Sustainable Development Goals typically synergize with one another (where success in one promotes success in the other), rather than posing trade-offs (where success in one comes at the cost of success in the other).
• None of the Sustainable Development Goals are fundamentally incompatible with another, but some have trade-offs that warrant careful consideration to support economic and social development within environmental limits.

My attempt at synthesis

Below is my basic attempt to draw connections between UN Global Issues. It was developed from reading summaries of each issue (supplemented by A Guide to SDG Interactions: from Science to Implementation), and noting challenges that block its progress, adjacent issues that will also benefit from its progress, or related topics that are necessary to understand it. It’s a superficial overview that lacks weighted importance between connections, and some issues are more thorough in drawing sub-issues and connections than others, but it provides a decent enough overview to understand systemic interactions.

An edge (arrow) from A → B indicates either A’s causality to B, or A’s importance in B’s solution. Nodes are sized based on how many outgoing edges they have, i.e. how causal or important they are to other issues. The original UN Global Issues are marked with a “UN” icon.

My conclusions are:

• Lack of access to basic services and gender inequality are at the root of many systemic issues (e.g. poverty, inequality, economic development)
• Similarly, economic development and the application of big data are “horizontal” beneath most issues and can advance progress on many issues simultaneously

Appendix

United Nations

The United Nations’ list of global issues reflect the issues the organization is trying to tackle through its Sustainable Development Goals, which aim to promote human development while balancing the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainability. The SDGs represent a highly interlinked and indivisible agenda, with trade-offs and constraints in the implementation of goals to avoid detracting from others. Implementation is left up to each country, though the SDGs intentionally do not provide a plan of action or address the complexities and trade-offs that emerge.

SDGs In Order

The SDGs have been criticized for their broad scope and lack of prioritization strategy (“[looking] more like an encyclopedia of development than a useful tool for action”). In response, New America and OECD created an ordering of the Sustainable Development Goals designed to optimize for stability in society and the state. They contend that a logical, ordered approach to tackling SDGs makes a significant difference in effectiveness over organizations and individuals pursuing their own specific issues due to self-interest. The ordering was created by surveying “economists, political scientists and social scientists working in public institutions, international organizations, foundations, universities, think tanks and civil society groups around the world”, and asking them to identify and sequence the first 20 SDG targets that should be tackled as part of an effort to fulfill all SDGs.

Targets to promote rule of law and access to justice, and eliminate the most extreme poverty, were perceived as significantly more important than the others:

The targets chosen in the survey were mapped to their corresponding SDGs to rank the SDGs as well. Deviating from the target ordering, goals to reduce inequalities, eliminate poverty, achieve gender equality, and promote peace, justice, and strong institutions were perceived as significantly more important than the other SDGs:

The experts’ philosophies of prioritization were also categorized into approaches that optimize for empowering individuals vs. strengthening institutions, and having a deliberate, calculated approach vs. moving quickly to address the most pressing challenges. The majority of approaches were individualistic, with a relatively even split between deliberation vs. urgency.

SDG interactions (qualitative)

From A Guide to SDG Interactions: from Science to Implementation:

Although governments have stressed the integrated, indivisible and interlinked nature of the SDGs …, important interactions and interdependencies are generally not explicit in the description of the goals or their associated targets. … This report … [explores] the important interlinkages within and between these goals and associated targets to support a more strategic and integrated implementation. Specifically, the report presents a framework for characterising the range of positive and negative interactions between the various SDGs, … and tests this approach by applying it to an initial set of four SDGs: SDG2, SDG3, SDG7 and SDG14. This selection presents a mixture of key SDGs aimed at human well-being, ecosystem services and natural resources, but does not imply any prioritisation.

There aren’t many details on the report’s methodology, other than “the approach taken relied on an interpretive analytical process whereby research teams combine their knowledge and expert judgment with seeking of new evidence in the scientific literature and extensive deliberations about the character of different specific interactions”. I presume the teams mapped their understanding of target interactions to the numerical framework mentioned in the report, which categorizes the positivity or negativity of each interaction.

Some of my takeaways are:

This analysis found no fundamental incompatibilities between goals (i.e. where one target as defined in the 2030 Agenda would make it impossible to achieve another). However, it did identify a set of potential constraints and conditionalities that require coordinated policy interventions to shelter the most vulnerable groups, promote equitable access to services and development opportunities, and manage competing demands over natural resources to support economic and social development within environmental limits.

It should also be clear that a good development action is one where all negative interactions are avoided or at least minimised, while at the same time maximising significant positive interactions; but this by no means suggests that policymakers should avoid attempting progress in those targets and goals that are associated with significant negative interactions – it merely suggests that in these cases policymakers should tread more carefully when designing policies and strategies.

SDG16 (good governance) and SDG17 (means of implementation) are key to turning the potential for synergies into reality, although they are not always specifically highlighted as such throughout the report. For many if not all goals, having in place effective governance systems, institutions, partnerships, and intellectual and financial resources is key to an effective, efficient and coherent approach to implementation.

Given budgetary, political and resource constraints, as well as specific needs and policy agendas, countries are likely to prioritise certain goals, targets and indicators over others. As a result of the positive and negative interactions between goals and targets, this prioritisation could lead to negative developments for ‘nonprioritised’ goals and targets. … due to globalisation and increasing trade of goods and services, many policies and other interventions have implications that are transboundary in nature, such that pursuing objectives in one region can impact on other countries or regions’ pursuit of their objectives.

The following types of dependencies within a pair of goals/targets can be useful to contextualize their relationship/interactions:

• Directionality: whether the interaction is unidirectional, bidirectional, circular, or multiple
• Place-specific context: scale of the interaction, e.g. highly location-specific vs. generic across borders
• Governance: does poor governance create or amplify a negative relationship between the goals/targets?
• Technology: do technologies exist that can significantly mitigate the trade-off between the goals/targets?
• Time-frame: will the (positive or negative) interaction develop in real-time vs. over a long period of time?

Policies developed to address the SDGs should be coherent, i.e. systematically reduce conflicts and promote synergies between and within different policy areas to achieve policy objectives. Policy coherence is comprised of the following dimensions:

• Sectoral: coherent from one policy sector to another
• Transnational: observing to what extent the pursuit of objectives in one country will affect the ability of another to pursue its sovereign objectives
• Governance: coherent from one set of interventions to another
  • e.g. legal frameworks, investment frameworks, and policy instruments all pull in the same direction
  • It is often the case that while new policies and goals can be easily introduced, institutional capacities for implementation are not aligned with the new policy designs, because the former are commonly more difficult to develop
• Multilevel: coherent across multiple levels of government (international/national/local)
• Implementation: coherent along the implementation continuum: from policy objective, through instruments and measures agreed, to implementation on the ground
  • The latter often deviates substantially from the original policy intentions, as actors make their interpretations and institutional barriers and drivers influence their response to the policy

Takeaways on specific SDG interactions are included in the synthesized interactions graph above.

SDG interactions (quantitative)

A Systematic Study of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Interactions builds upon the previous (ISCU) qualitative analysis of SDG interactions by performing a statistical analysis of SDG indicators from country and country-disaggregated data. They capture interaction synergies and trade-offs by identifying significant positive and negative correlations in the indicator data.

They found the following SDG pairs have the most synergies and trade-offs:

The observed positive correlations between the SDGs have mainly two explanations. First, indicators of the SDGs depicting higher synergies consist of development indicators that are part of the MDGs and components of several development indices …. Second, the observed higher synergies among some SDGs are an effect of having the same indicator for multiple SDGs.

Most trade-offs … can be linked to the traditional nonsustainability development paradigm focusing on economic growth to generate human welfare at the expenses of environmental sustainability …. On average developed countries provide better human welfare but are locked-in to larger environmental and material footprints which need to be substantially reduced to achieve SDG 12 (Responsible consumption and production).

We are aware that correlation does not imply causality. This means observed synergies between two SDG indicators could be independently related to another process driving both indicators and therefore resulting in correlations. However, because the correlation analysis is done for indicator pairs in each country individually, the existence of a large number of synergies (or trade-offs) suggests that the relation is widespread across many countries and most likely not appearing by chance.

Takeaways include:

• The conclusions from this quantitative study are largely in agreement with the qualitative ISCU study: there are typically more synergies than trade-offs within and among the SDGs in most countries, and fostering cross-sectoral and cross-goal synergetic relations will play a crucial role in operationalization of the SDG agenda.
• SDG 1 (No poverty) is associated with synergies across most SDGs and ranks five times in the global top-10 synergy pair list.
• Reducing poverty is statistically linked with progress in SDGs 3 (Good health and wellbeing), 4 (Quality education), 5 (Gender equality), 6 (Clean water and sanitation), or 10 (Reduced inequalities) for 75%–80% of the data pairs.
• Improvement of global health and well-being has highly been compatible with progress in SDGs 1 (Poverty reduction), 4 (Quality education), 5 (Gender equality), 6 (Provision of clean water and sanitation), and SDG 10 (Inequalities reduction) based on more than 70% of the data pairs.
• SDG 3 (Good health and well-being) was found to have a higher share of synergies with other SDGs in most of the countries and the world population …. Hence, a paradigm shift prioritizing good health and well-being, for example, by inter-sectoral and prevention based approaches, will have a greater impact than the conventional approaches … and will also leverage attainment of other SDGs.
• The global top 10 pairs with trade-offs either consist of SDG 12 (Responsible consumption and production) or 15 (Life on land).
• SDGs 8 (Decent work and economic growth), 9 (Industry, innovation, and infrastructure), 12 (Responsible consumption and production), and 15 (Life on land) are associated with a high fraction of trade-offs across SDGs.

World Economic Forum

The World Economic Forum generates an annual Global Risks Report by surveying their “extensive network of academic, business, government, civil society and thought leaders” about their largest perceived global risks. These reports rank the importance of issues over short- (2-year), medium- (5-year), and long-term (10-year) horizons, and often feature a map of interconnections between issues with weighted causality, which is relevant to the objectives of this post.

However, it seems the risks are primarily relative to governments and businesses, have an elite-centric perspective, and do not consider fundamental issues affecting individuals (e.g. poverty and gender equality) to be “risks”. Additionally, the reports seem inconsistent in their long-term risk perceptions, and follow trends and FUD du jour. Nevertheless, they provide an additional perspective on interconnection and causality, to be taken with a grain of salt.

Causality

Since 2021, the WEF reports have included a section that analyzes causality and downstream effects between issues. These are included below, with my respective conclusions under each year.

In 2023, the following risks were identified as especially consequential if they were to be triggered. This doesn’t necessarily indicate high individual impact/severity of these risks, but rather high influence for exacerbating other issues. An interactive version is available here under the “Causes & Consequences” tab.

• Cohesion is tightly coupled between the societal, geopolitical, and economic spheres; if one sphere collapses, it has significant consequences for the others

2022’s report shows the perceived downstream effects of the top 5 most severe 10-year risks; interactive version here, under “Global Risks Effects”.

• Climate action failure leads to further damage in the environmental and societal spheres (involuntary migration, livelihood crises, and social cohesion erosion)

2021’s report shows the perceived drivers (opposite of 2022) of the top 5 most severe 10-year risks; interactive version here.

• Climate action failure and human environmental damage reinforce one another
• Climate action is impeded by geopolitical issues (interstate relations, resources, multilateralism), economic issues (stagnation, debt), and societal issues (livelihood crises, social cohesion erosion), in that order
• Livelihood crises are caused by a relatively even distribution of societal factors (social security collapse and diseases (COVID)), economic factors (stagnation and debt), and technological factors (to a lesser extent than the others; digital inequality and adverse tech advances)
• Social cohesion erosion is primarily driven by other societal factors (livelihood crises, social security collapse, youth disillusionment, involuntary migration), and technological factors to a lesser extent (digital inequality, adverse tech advances)

Interconnections

Prior to 2021, the reports analyzed risk interconnections (without causality) by surveying “the most strongly connected” pairs of global risks. Interactive versions of this section of the report are available for 2020, 2019, and 2018. Node size and edge weight are based on number of appearances (of a given risk, or pair of risks, respectively) in survey results.

Risk pairs that were consistently perceived as strongly connected include:

• State collapse or crisis & involuntary migration
• Interstate conflict & involuntary migration
• Unemployment & social instability
• Climate action failure & extreme weather

Freedom and Equality

Summary

Freedom and equality are typically presented as opposing values (in e.g. Sapiens, The Lessons of History). The different conceptions of each term, and how they’re interrelated, are explored in greater depth below. While various conceptions of equality do restrict individual liberties, the moral significance of these restrictions is subjective and depends on one’s values. Egalitarians view these restrictions as insignificant and worthwhile to enable others to enjoy a good life.

Freedom

“There is a whole range of possible interpretations or ‘conceptions’ of the single concept of liberty”, thus the overview below is incomplete; but it’s good enough for a model to add depth to the question (of whether freedom and equality are opposed).

• these types of freedom are not mutually exclusive; can enjoy two of them at the expense of the third
  • for example, it’s possible to be institutionally oppressed without directly interfering with actions – i.e. it’s possible to lack republican freedom while maintaining negative freedom
• the positive and negative conceptions of freedom are credited to Isaiah Berlin, and the republican conception to Philip Pettit
• additional context and definitions are included from Elizabeth Anderson and other sources as linked above
• to sustain a free society over time, Anderson claims we should accept priority of republican over negative liberty (which endorses equality of authority)
• Anderson also claims “we should be skeptical of attempts to operationalize the conditions for nondomination in formal terms. Powerful agents are constantly devising ways to skirt around formal constraints to dominate others. Republican freedom is a sociologically complex condition not easily encapsulated in any simple set of necessary and sufficient conditions, nor easily realized through any particular set of laws.”

Why favor positive or republican over negative freedom?

Summary:

To block arguments that freedom requires substantial material equality, libertarians typically argue that rights to negative liberty override or constrain claims to positive liberty. This chapter will argue that, to the extent that libertarians want to support private property rights in terms of the importance of freedom to individuals, this strategy fails, because the freedom-based defense of private property rights depends on giving priority to positive or republican over negative freedom. Next, it is argued that the core rationale for inalienable rights depends on considerations of republican freedom. A regime of full contractual alienability of rights—on the priority of negative over republican freedom—is an unstable basis for a free society. It tends to shrink the domains in which individuals interact as free and independent persons, and expand the domains in which they interact on terms of domination and subordination. To sustain a free society over time, we should accept the priority of republican over negative liberty. This is to endorse a kind of authority egalitarianism. The chapter concludes with some reflections on how the values of freedom and equality bear on the definition of property rights. The result will be a qualified defense of some core features of social democratic orders.

Further detail:

Arguments for the priority of negative over positive freedom with respect to property rights run into more fundamental difficulties. A regime of perfect negative freedom with respect to property is one of Hohfeldian privileges only, not of rights. A negative liberty is a privilege to act in some way without state interference or liability for damages to another for the way one acts. The correlate to A’s privilege is that others lack any right to demand state assistance in constraining A’s liberty to act in that way. There is nothing conceptually incoherent in a situation where multiple persons have a privilege with respect to the same rival good: consider the rules of basketball, which permit members of either team to compete for possession of the ball, and even to “steal” the ball from opponents. If the other team exercises its liberty to steal the ball, the original possessor cannot appeal to the referee to get it back.

No sound argument for a regime of property rights can rely on considerations of negative liberty alone. Rights entail that others have correlative duties. To have a property right to something is to have a claim against others, enforceable by the state, that they not act in particular ways with respect to that thing. Property rights, by definition, are massive constraints on negative liberty: to secure the right of a single individual owner to some property, the negative liberty of everyone else—billions of people—must be constrained. Judged by a metric of negative liberty alone, recognition of property rights inherently amounts to a massive net loss of total negative freedom. The argument applies equally well to rights in one’s person, showing again the inability of considerations of negative liberty alone to ground rights. “It is impossible to create rights, to impose obligations, to protect the person, life, reputation, property, subsistence, or liberty itself, but at the expense of liberty” (Bentham, 1838–1843: I.1, 301).

(The above paragraph also makes the case for the conclusion at the end of this post.)

What could justify this gigantic net loss of negative liberty? If we want to defend this loss as a net gain in overall freedom, we must do so by appealing to one of the other conceptions of freedom—positive freedom, or republican freedom. Excellent arguments can be provided to defend private property rights in terms of positive freedom. Someone who has invested their labor in some external good with the aim of creating something worth more than the original raw materials has a vital interest in assurance that they will have effective access to this good in the future. Such assurance requires the state’s assistance in securing that good against others’ negative liberty interest in taking possession of it. To have a claim to the state’s assistance in securing effective access to a good, against others’ negative liberty interests in it, is to have a right to positive freedom.

Considerations of republican freedom also supply excellent arguments for private property. In a system of privileges alone, contests over possession of external objects would be settled in the interests of the stronger parties. Because individuals need access to external goods to survive, the stronger could then condition others’ access on their subjection to the possessors’ arbitrary will. Only a system of private property rights can protect the weaker from domination by the stronger. The republican argument for rights in one’s own body follows even more immediately from such considerations, since to be an object of others’ possession is per se to be dominated by them.

(All quotes are from Elizabeth Anderson.)

Equality

Similarly to freedom, (in)equality is not just a single principle, but rather a complex group of principles that form the basis of today’s egalitarianism. Different principles yield different answers, and no single notion of equality can sweep the field. The sections below provide an overview of some of its different conceptions; they are incomplete similar to freedom above, but are sufficient models to add depth to the question.

Relational Equality

Relational equality aims to reduce or eliminate certain status differences in social interactions. Some of its forms include (from Elizabeth Anderson):

• these three types of hierarchy (i.e. the opposite of equality) usually reinforce each other (i.e. all three types of hierarchy at once)
• *these connections between relational equality and distributive equality are mainly causal

Distributive Equality

Theories of distributive equality offer accounts of what should be equalized in the economic sphere.

Notes from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

• most can be understood as applications of the presumption of equality, where everyone should get an equal share of the distribution unless certain types of differences are relevant, and justify (through universally acceptable reasons) unequal shares
• the equality required in the economic sphere is complex, taking account of several positions that – each according to the presumption of equality – justify a turn away from equality
• a salient problem here is what constitutes justified exceptions to equal distribution of goods, the main subfield in the debate over adequate conceptions of distributive equality and its currency
• the following factors are usually considered eligible for justified unequal treatment:
  • need or differing natural disadvantages (e.g. disabilities)
  • existing rights or claims (e.g. private property)
  • differences in the performance of special services (e.g. desert, efforts, or sacrifices)
  • efficiency
  • compensation for direct and indirect or structural discrimination (e.g. affirmative action)
• every effort to interpret the concept of equality and apply its principles (e.g. presumption of equality) demands a precise measure of the parameters of equality – we need to know the dimensions within which the striving for equality is morally relevant
• here is an overview of the seven most prominent conceptions of distributive equality, with some discussion on their objections

Notes from Elizabeth Anderson:

• any attempt to enforce strict material equality across large populations under modern economic conditions would require a totalitarian state; this is “true and of great historical importance” (e.g. communism), but virtually no one today advocates for this
• concern for distributive justice—specifically, how the rules that determine the fair division of gains from social cooperation should be designed—can be cast in terms of the question: what rules would free people of equal standing choose, with an eye to also sustaining their equal social relations?

Absent from this list of conceptions of equality is any notion of equality considered as a bare pattern in the distribution of goods, independent of how those goods were brought about, the social relations through which they came to be possessed, or the social relations they tend to cause. Some people think that it is a bad thing if one person is worse off than another due to sheer luck (Arneson, 2000; Temkin, 2003). I do not share this intuition. Suppose a temperamentally happy baby is born, and then another is born that is even happier. The first is now worse off than the second, through sheer luck. This fact is no injustice and harms no one’s interests. Nor does it make the world a worse place. Even if it did, it would still be irrelevant in a liberal political order, as concern for the value of the world apart from any connection to human welfare, interests, or freedom fails even the most lax standard of liberal neutrality.

Relationships between these types

*There is a deep affinity between republican freedom as nondomination and authority egalitarianism. These are not conceptually identical. Domination can be realized in an isolated, transient interpersonal case (consider a kidnapper and his victim). Authoritarian hierarchy is institutionalized, enduring, and group-based. Yet authority hierarchies cause the most important infringements of republican freedom. Historically, the radical republican tradition, from the Levellers to the radical wing of the Republican party through Reconstruction, saw the two causes of freedom and equality as united: to be free was to not be subject to the arbitrary will of others. This required elimination of the authoritarian powers of dominant classes, whether of the king, feudal landlords, or slaveholders. Republican freedom for all is incompatible with authoritarian hierarchy and hence requires some form of authority egalitarianism.

General diagram of concepts

*See this model for the connection between hierarchy and oppression

Are freedom and equality fundamentally opposed?

It depends on how you view freedom and how you view equality. Are personal liberties restricted to uphold the types of relational equality defined above? Yes - there is now a smaller spectrum of acceptable actions. The same goes for economic liberty (the freedom to make contracts, acquire property, and exchange goods) when upholding distributive (i.e. economic) equality.

But are those restrictions significant? That depends on your stance on egalitarianism. If you value equality as a fundamental goal of justice, you would be willing to make (relatively insignificant) sacrifices of these freedoms (i.e. would not want to take actions that oppress others) so others can enjoy a good life.

Quoting Anderson, “moderate egalitarianism of the social democratic type has proved compatible with democracy, extensive civil liberties, and substantial if constrained market freedoms. … the ideal of a free society of equals is not an oxymoron: not only is relational equality not fundamentally opposed to freedom, in certain senses equality is needed for freedom. Inequality upsets liberty.”

Additionally, Giebler and Merkel have empirically concluded both freedom and equality can be maximized at the same time.

Basic Psychological Needs

Summary

Many theories attempt to define the core psychological needs that underlie all human behavior. These theories risk oversimplifying a complex topic, and are often contested and debated, but are nevertheless interesting to use as a frame of reference for understanding human behavior. This is my attempt to survey some of the popular theories and draw parallels between them.

Common needs across leading theories include:

• connecting with others and feeling accepted in a group
• learning and growing from one’s experiences
• having choice in one’s actions
• seeking meaning through something larger than oneself

In Search of Human Nature

Mary E. Clark proposes there are three basic propensities that specifically constitute human nature, as distinct from the nature of animals in general. Most animals seek out food, water and mates, and so do humans, but for us these are subsumed by even more powerful needs that arise by virtue of our being wholly and imperatively social. The three propensities are for bonding, for autonomy, and for meaning.

Bonding: remaining attached to (and being accepted by) a group

• One may shift from one group to another, but acceptance within some group is essential; evolutionarily, total exclusion is tantamount to a death sentence for human beings
• Our utter dependence on others in infancy creates this lifelong need to belong, to be accepted and appreciated
• Bonding by adults in stable communities is essential for the successful rearing of each new generation of helpless infants
• Though it is common in many societies for males, in particular, to play down this need for attachment to others, such suppression leads to a whole host of potential pathologies
• Rejection, or rupture of a bond, whether actual or threatened, is a profound cause of psychic distress
• Cultural narratives differ greatly in how they meet this need for belonging; some provide for lifelong acceptance, others promote feelings of rejection or oppression, whose violent consequences within the society are suppressed by various forms of psychic and physical coercion

Autonomy: ability to behave independently and generate one’s own actions

• The [evolutionary] increase in cognitive capacity of the primate brain that makes highly adaptive, intelligent group life possible also demands autonomy of individual behavior. Big, relatively unprogrammed, adaptive brains must learn through experience how to survive. And learning demands spontaneous engagement by the developing infant and juvenile with its world.
• Every social relationship constrains individual action to some degree. One cannot be a member of a social community and not experience some restrictions on one’s behavior. The magic of “successful” cultural narratives is the balancing of social constraints with a sense of spontaneity of personal action. They possess two qualities: childrearing practices that generate secure self-identity and reciprocal trust in and respect for others; and a cultural meaning system that attracts spontaneous support from all its members.
• Just as respect creates equality, so trust generates spontaneous prosocial activity, without need for threat or coercion. … the natural propensities to belong and to be independent, if carefully nurtured, create in the developing person a strong urge to help the whole group by whom one feels accepted; to contribute to the good of the whole.
• How a culture perceives human nature determines the way its people behave! In general, the narratives of [egalitarian] societies promote equal respect for all contributions, and a balancing of the satisfaction of belonging with the needs for autonomy and independence. This seemingly paradoxical result occurs when a cultural story possesses those two qualities mentioned above: (1) an appreciation that the purpose of attentive nurturing is to develop not obedience, but self-reliance and autonomy (the “trust concept”); and (2) a sacred aspect to the shared social purpose that is embedded in the narrative and lends identity to each individual life and a desire to contribute to the success of the whole. These two together ensure that the uncoerced, autonomous behavior of the individual is naturally directed to the benefit of the whole society.

Meaning: internal perceptions of the significance of experience (which can be communicated with others and valued by a group); a set of beliefs about the purpose of existence; tells how bonding and autonomy (and hence, a secure sense of “self”) are to be met

• Most important of the three, as cultural narratives have generated institutions for prescribing bonding patterns and for limiting autonomy
• Bonding and autonomy are propensities humans share with other primates; it is our further propensity or need for meaning that makes us unique
• [After developing the ability to communicate] It is but a short step to valuing choices about what to do, to providing reasons for those choices, and to justifying them with causal explanations. For the first time, internal perceptions of the significance of experience can be communicated with others and valued by a group. Conceptual meanings come into existence, are shared, and ultimately become the structural basis of culture. The resulting cultural meaning or cultural narrative becomes what connects the individual with the group she or he depends on for survival.
• An “interpreter” region in the human brain’s left hemisphere automatically creates meaning out of experience. A satisfying meaning system both explains our function in the universe and tells us how to fulfill that function: what things an individual and a whole society ought to do. It justifies a society’s social institutions. Hence, an entire group shares the same (or very similar) beliefs. Shared meanings inspire loyalty; they coordinate social activity.
• The evolutionarily adaptive function of such a shared meaning system is obvious. It ensures effective group behavior vis-à-vis the common environment. Not surprisingly, most cultural narratives incorporate an authoritative source for their explanations: an originating spirit, ancient ancestors, one or more powerful deities. They also include rituals of sacrifice to the unseen powers to make sure the sun comes up and the plants and animals flourish, and the universe continues as it should. (These, of course, have the important effect of synchronizing human activities with the local environment …).
• All these critical functions are embedded somewhere within the shared cultural stories of every coherent society. And since time immemorial, because successful social life depended on loyalty to the group narrative, it has been defended vigorously. This extreme defense of belief systems … has often proved problematic throughout history. It may inhibit the changes needed to meet altered contexts, leading to “cultural traps”; and it has been the cause of enormously bloody conflicts between disparate systems. Both of these can be avoided by consciously incorporating into the narrative story processes for modifying the belief system over time, and for recognizing that different beliefs held by others are not necessarily threatening to one’s own.

General notes:

All three [propensities] persist throughout life and are defended by powerful emotions. We seek bonds and resist their rupture. Broken bonds may lead to anger or to grief. We strive for independence and resist constraint, especially physical coercion. And we seek meaning, not only as individuals within a group, but especially collectively, as whole groups. Threats either to our individual identity within the group or to the integrity and the identity of the entire group are powerfully resisted. And all of these emotional responses are the result of the importance, during our evolutionary history, of each of these propensities for our successful survival.

Societies promote prosocial and antisocial behaviors in very different ratios, often having to correct coercively the consequences of their own unsuspected misreadings of human nature. I dismiss the notion that violence and aggression are behaviors forced on us by “selfish genes.” Rather, they are the extreme forms of communication that humans use when social conditions necessary for their individual or collective survival are not being fulfilled. When violent and senseless behaviors happen it is because there are virtually always either personal or cultural causes in the life experiences of those who commit them. Not all cultures are equally adaptive; not all meaning systems accommodate equally well the needs human nature demands. None is “ideal,” but some really do succeed in satisfying all our human inner propensities better than others. It behooves all peoples to try to learn from each other what “works” and why.

Self-Determination Theory

The Basic Psychological Needs Theory (within the broader Self-Determination Theory) defines three basic needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, which are similar but slightly different than Clark’s three propensities:

• Autonomy: experience of volition and willingness; one’s actions, thoughts, and feelings are self-endorsed and authentic
• Competence: the experience of effectiveness and mastery; becomes satisfied as one capably engages in activities and experiences opportunities for using and extending skills and expertise
• Relatedness: experience of warmth, bonding, and care; satisfied by connecting to and feeling significant to others

The identification of these needs allows scholars to grapple with the fundamental question of what our human nature looks like. The introduction of these psychological needs is congruent with the meta-theoretical assumption of a growth-oriented nature, while also recognizing that we have a vulnerable nature. While need satisfaction energizes pro-active, prosocial and growth-oriented inclinations, need frustration awakens our vulnerabilities for passivity, self-centeredness, and defensiveness.

A review by Van den Broeck et al. notes how SDT differs from other theories of psychological needs:

SDT characterizes basic psychological needs in two ways that render it unique in comparison to other need theories: needs are viewed as innate, and needs must promote psychological growth, internalization, and well-being. … each need is thought to be present in everyone, and none of the needs are thought to be relatively more important than the others. SDT thus regards each of the three needs as essential, with thwarting of any one need causing disruptions to psychological growth, internalization, and well-being. This contrasts with other need theories that argue for a hierarchy of needs—the most famous being that of Maslow (1943), who argued that needs higher in his hierarchy become more activated when needs at the bottom of the hierarchy are satisfied.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

Maslow’s model differs in that needs are hierarchical, and individuals’ most basic needs must be met before they’re motivated to achieve needs at the next level (though research suggests that levels continuously overlap each other). It defines eight levels of needs (ordered below from bottom to top within the hierarchy):

• Physiological: biological component for human survival
• Safety: physical, economic, and emotional security, health
• Belonging and love: being comfortable with and connection to others that results from receiving acceptance, respect, and love
  • This need for belonging may overcome the physiological and security needs, depending on the strength of the peer pressure
  • In contrast, for some individuals, the need for self-esteem is more important than the need for belonging; and for others, the need for creative fulfillment may supersede even the most basic needs
• Esteem: the respect and admiration of a person, but also “… self-respect and respect from others”
• Cognitive: creativity, foresight, curiosity, and meaning
• Aesthetic: ability to appreciate the beauty within the world
• Self-actualization: the desire to accomplish everything that one can, to become the most that one can be
• Transcendence: giving oneself to something beyond oneself

Criticisms of the theory include its lack of supporting evidence, diverse study participants, or differentiation between individualistic and collectivist societies.

Other theories

• Murray’s system of needs
• Max-Neef’s fundamental human needs
• Human givens
• Many more here

Cognitive Dissonance Is an Essential Cultural Feature

Summary

Cultures are full of contradictions in beliefs, norms, and values. Cognitive dissonance – here referring to our perception of contradictory information, and sometimes the conflict or discomfort that follows – is essential for cultures to function in light of these contradictions. Our ability to overlook these contradictions allows us to avoid analysis paralysis and get along with one another, and eventually trying to reconcile them drives change.

Context

From Sapiens:

During the first half of the twentieth century, scholars taught that every culture was complete and harmonious, possessing an unchanging essence that defined it for all time. Each human group had its own world view and system of social, legal and political arrangements that ran as smoothly as the planets going around the sun. In this view, cultures left to their own devices did not change. They just kept going at the same pace and in the same direction. Only a force applied from outside could change them. Anthropologists, historians and politicians thus referred to ‘Samoan Culture’ or ‘Tasmanian Culture’ as if the same beliefs, norms and values had characterised Samoans and Tasmanians from time immemorial.

Today, most scholars of culture have concluded that the opposite is true. Every culture has its typical beliefs, norms and values, but these are in constant flux. The culture may transform itself in response to changes in its environment or through interaction with neighbouring cultures. But cultures also undergo transitions due to their own internal dynamics. Even a completely isolated culture existing in an ecologically stable environment cannot avoid change. Unlike the laws of physics, which are free of inconsistencies, every man-made order is packed with internal contradictions. Cultures are constantly trying to reconcile these contradictions, and this process fuels change.

… medieval culture did not manage to square chivalry with Christianity …. But this is no defect. Such contradictions are an inseparable part of every human culture. In fact, they are culture’s engines, responsible for the creativity and dynamism of our species. Just as when two clashing musical notes played together force a piece of music forward, so discord in our thoughts, ideas and values compel us to think, reevaluate and criticise. Consistency is the playground of dull minds.

If tensions, conflicts and irresolvable dilemmas are the spice of every culture, a human being who belongs to any particular culture must hold contradictory beliefs and be riven by incompatible values. It’s such an essential feature of any culture that it even has a name: cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is often considered a failure of the human psyche. In fact, it is a vital asset. Had people been unable to hold contradictory beliefs and values, it would probably have been impossible to establish and maintain any human culture.

Look at the Disagreements to Understand a Topic

From Sapiens:

If, say, a Christian really wants to understand the Muslims who attend that mosque down the street, he shouldn’t look for a pristine set of values that every Muslim holds dear. Rather, he should enquire into the catch-22s of Muslim culture, those places where rules are at war and standards scuffle. It’s at the very spot where the Muslims teeter between two imperatives that you’ll understand them best.

This is also a good way to understand the limits of (e.g. academic) understanding of a particular topic within its field: look how far the consensus goes, and at what points do debates take place.