The power of culture

David Brooks has an unusually (for him) thoughtful op-ed behind the subscription wall at the NY Times today. In it, he argues that one of the things we've learned in recent years is that better education, better communications, and stronger economies do not promote a more secular, less polarized society. Instead, he argues, education and wealth promote religious fanaticism and polarization.

I have a feeling that he's imputing cause and effect where there is simply spurious correlation in a small sample. Just because the world is polarized today and the world also happens to be richer and better educated than in the past does not imply that education and wealth caused the polarization. Nor, I suspect is the world more polarized today than at many other times in its history, when it was poorer and less educated.

He doesn't say it, but I'm sure that one implication some on the right would draw from his conclusions is that we should close the public schools and leave education only to the wealthy.

He does make one good point, however. That is that education and wealth do not, in and of themselves, guarantee better harmony in a society. Much depends, he argues, on the underlying culture in which the education and wealth are found.

His final conclusion:

It all amounts to this: Events have forced different questions on us. If the big contest of the 20th century was between planned and free market economies, the big questions of the next century will be understanding how cultures change and can be changed, how social and cultural capital can be nurtured and developed, how destructive cultural conflict can be turned to healthy cultural competition.

I don't know that this is the big contest of the 21st. Century, but it certainly may be among the contenders.