{"id":6633,"date":"2024-01-24T19:08:05","date_gmt":"2024-01-24T13:38:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/2024\/01\/24\/how-the-modern-west-is-weirder-than-the-rest-of-the-world\/"},"modified":"2024-01-24T19:08:05","modified_gmt":"2024-01-24T13:38:05","slug":"how-the-modern-west-is-weirder-than-the-rest-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/2024\/01\/24\/how-the-modern-west-is-weirder-than-the-rest-of-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Modern West Is WEIRDER than the Rest of the World"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<div class=\"video\">\n<div class=\"graphic alt-ratio\">\n<div class=\"jeg_video_container jeg_video_content\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"629. 7. How the Modern West Is WEIRDER than the Rest of the World\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/upqrkxtSVDI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<h2>Not a True Represenation<\/h2>\n<p>This is an acronym that I\u2019ve drawn from and slightly adapted from a psychologist called Joseph Henrich. He introduced the term about ten or fifteen years ago, and he said that people in the modern West are WEIRD: Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic.<\/p>\n<p>And I then added ex-Christian and Romantic, which are two words which interest me but which describe less the political and economic circumstances of modern people and more the ideological and religious convictions of modern people, which I also think are important and which I know that Henrich actually believes to some degree as well because of the way he tells this story.<\/p>\n<div class=\"product-placement list-item clear\">\n<div class=\"product-placement-image\">\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.crossway.org\/books\/remaking-the-world-hcj\/\"><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Remaking the World\" src=\"https:\/\/static.crossway.org\/studio-files\/media\/18e7eb25dafd70a609525bf7cd8adda806c965bd.jpg\"\/><br \/>\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"post-excerpt\">\n<h3>\n<em><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.crossway.org\/authors\/andrew-wilson\/\">Andrew Wilson<\/a><br \/>\n<\/em><br \/>\n<\/h3>\n<p class=\"copy-excerpt\">In this skillfully researched book, Andrew Wilson explains how 7 historic events in 1776 shaped today\u2019s post-Christian West and equips believers to share God\u2019s truth in the current social landscape.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>And so I find that a really helpful way of thinking about who we are. It\u2019s interesting that he was a psychologist who came across it\u2014and other psychologists have found it helpful\u2014because what they found was they were doing experiments and learning psychological research outcomes by interviewing people who live near research institutions in American cities.<\/p>\n<p>Students who have a lot of free time need the money to do these quizzes and these experiments and stuff. And as they went on they realized these people are not at all representative of most people on earth. They\u2019re Western, they\u2019re very educated, they live in an industrialized society, they\u2019re hanging around outside Starbucks all day and they\u2019re rich, they\u2019re democratic, and have been for a long time and they believe that human beings\u2019 choices are sacrosanct to each individual. And those five things are not true of 7 billion of the world&#8217;s 8 billion people right now. And they\u2019re not anything like what is true of many of the others as they are of the unique people we\u2019re sampling.<\/p>\n<p>So they came up with this acronym to say these people are WEIRD. They don\u2019t represent most people. And what I do in the book is to say that not only don\u2019t they represent most people today but they represent practically nobody who was alive a while back.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"pull-quote\">\n<p>The massive majority of people in human history have not thought like we do.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>And so the massive majority of people in human history have not thought like we do, and therefore it\u2019s quite a good way of exploring what\u2019s distinctive about the modern West. And then by bringing that in with the ex-Christianity and Romanticism, I&#8217;m trying to tell the story about how the modern world became WEIRDER in that sense. So what is it that meant that we became industrialized or Romantic or whatever? That&#8217;s the way the book then tries to unpack that story. But I found that acronym on its own\u2014just when I first met it six or seven years ago\u2014to be a really compelling summary of what is unusual about modern people.<\/p>\n<p>And obviously, any of us who\u2019ve traveled a bit in the world and met people who don\u2019t share our assumptions or realize this isn\u2019t just that you have a different system of government or you have less money, but it\u2019s actually that your concept of what it is to be human, of what the good life is, of whether individuals take precedence over families or vice versa, everything\u2014food, taboos, the whole caboodle\u2014is different. It is helpful for us to be aware of that and also helpful to understand the story of why it\u2019s true.<\/p>\n<p><em>Andrew Wilson is the author of<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crossway.org\/books\/remaking-the-world-hcj\/\">Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West<\/a>.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"clear\"\/>\n<div class=\"blog-post-author clear\">\n<p>          <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"left\" src=\"https:\/\/static.crossway.org\/authors\/small\/2610.jpg\" alt=\"Andrew Wilson\"\/><\/p>\n<div class=\"author-bio\">\n<p><strong>Andrew Wilson <\/strong>(PhD, King\u2019s College London) is the teaching pastor at King\u2019s Church London and a columnist for Christianity Today. He is the author of several books, including <em>Incomparable<\/em>; <em>Echoes of Exodus<\/em>; and <em>God of All Things<\/em>. Andrew is married to Rachel and they have three children: Zeke, Anna, and Samuel.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n<hr class=\"clear\"\/>\n<h2>Related Articles<\/h2>\n<div class=\"thumbnails clear\">\n<article class=\"post list-item\">\n<section class=\"post-excerpt right\">\n<p>\n        <strong><br \/>\n          <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crossway.org\/articles\/do-we-live-in-a-post-christian-society\/\"><br \/>\n            Do We Live in a Post-Christian Society?<br \/>\n          <\/a><br \/>\n        <\/strong>\n      <\/p>\n<p>\n      <em><\/p>\n<p>    <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crossway.org\/authors\/russell-d-moore\/\">Russell Moore<\/a><\/p>\n<p>      <\/em>\n    <\/p>\n<section class=\"post-meta\">\n      January 04, 2018<br \/>\n    <\/section>\n<p>Our society may not be a happy Christian one, but that leaves the gospel room to speak, stand, and save.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n<article class=\"post list-item\">\n<section class=\"post-excerpt right\">\n<p>\n        <strong><br \/>\n          <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crossway.org\/articles\/podcast-preparing-our-kids-for-a-post-christian-world-rebecca-mclaughlin\/\"><br \/>\n            Podcast: Preparing Our Kids for a Post-Christian World (Rebecca McLaughlin)<br \/>\n          <\/a><br \/>\n        <\/strong>\n      <\/p>\n<section class=\"post-meta\">\n      March 15, 2021<br \/>\n    <\/section>\n<p>Rebecca McLaughlin discusses what it looks like for parents to prepare their teens for a life in a post-Christian world, reflectong on kids&#8217; propensity to ask hard questions and why that&#8217;s a good thing,<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n<article class=\"post list-item\">\n<section class=\"post-excerpt right\">\n<p>\n        <strong><br \/>\n          <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crossway.org\/articles\/podcast-sexual-confusion-cultural-lies-and-our-christian-witness-rosaria-butterfield\/\"><br \/>\n            Podcast: Sexual Confusion, Cultural Lies, and Our Christian Witness (Rosaria Butterfield)<br \/>\n          <\/a><br \/>\n        <\/strong>\n      <\/p>\n<section class=\"post-meta\">\n      September 11, 2023<br \/>\n    <\/section>\n<p>Rosaria Butterfield responds to many of the most common claims and arguments that we often hear related to gender and sexuality today. She also answers tough questions that many of us may encounter.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n<article class=\"post list-item\">\n<section class=\"post-excerpt right\">\n<p>\n        <strong><br \/>\n          <a href=\"https:\/\/www.crossway.org\/articles\/podcast-how-the-world-found-democracyand-became-ex-christian-andrew-wilson\/\"><br \/>\n            Podcast: How the World Found Democracy\u2014and Became Ex-Christian (Andrew Wilson)<br \/>\n          <\/a><br \/>\n        <\/strong>\n      <\/p>\n<section class=\"post-meta\">\n      October 16, 2023<br \/>\n    <\/section>\n<p>Andrew Wilson explains why the idea of democracy was so transformative in the decades following the American Revolution and how industrialization changed the way people thought about the world.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/article><\/div>\n<hr class=\"clear\"\/>\n  <\/div>\n<p><script>\n        !function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s){if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?\n        n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;\n        n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;\n        t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window,\n        document,'script','https:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/fbevents.js');\n        fbq('init', '506435969522616');\n        fbq('track', 'PageView');\n      <\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.crossway.org\/articles\/how-the-modern-west-is-weirder-than-the-rest-of-the-world\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not a True Represenation This is an acronym that I\u2019ve drawn from and slightly adapted from a psychologist called Joseph Henrich. He introduced the term about ten or fifteen years ago, and he said that people in the modern West are WEIRD: Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic. And I then added ex-Christian and Romantic, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[]},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6633"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}