Thoughts on Joseph Henrich’s “The WEIRDest People in the World”
[Update added 10-5-21] I’m reading Joseph Henrich’s The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous - or rather listening to it on Audible . I mentioned this book as part of The Return of Civilization , as one of a suite of recent works that seem like they “admit the uniqueness and advanced development of Western Civilization … but neglect the central role of Christian principles in its development”. After listening to most of the book I think my assessment is sort of right, but also sort of unfair. The acronym WEIRD stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic, and also calls out his thesis that people from this type of culture (my culture) are exceptional, or at least different from the rest of the world, both in terms of location (West vs. non-West) and time (Modern-West vs non-Modern-West). The best thing about this book (other than the cool acronym in the title, of course) is the cornucopia of psych