hello everybody I'm here tonight to
share with you two of the most
fundamental insights of my research of
which I truly believe many more people
should know about first humanity as a
whole has over the last couple of
decades experienced a massive and
actually unprecedented transformation of
moral values second and even more
importantly this transformation is a
good thing because it brings to the
surface the better moral qualities of
our species
well hearing that you might think this
person must live in a different reality
heaven I heard about brexit Trump rising
populism right-wing extremism global
terrorism religious fundamentalism and
all the other indications of our moral
decline indeed influential critics try
to convince us since the ages
that our undeniable technological
progress is counteracted by a moral
digression which opens are growing
discrepancy between our technological
capacities and our moral qualities the
problem of the critics however is they
never proved their point by systemic
evidence - hard facts what they usually
do is cherry-picking examples that fit
their claims but leaving out others that
don't so let's try a different approach
let's have a look at a collection of
systematic data of what people from all
corners around the world think is
morally right or wrong the data
collection exists in several decades so
what we can do as well is look at change
over time if there is any and then if in
what direction is it going the data
collection I'm referring to is known as
the World Values Survey
if you're interested in the details and
how this study is conducted you can go
at their website which is on display
here in blue colors we see the the
countries in the world that have been
surveyed at least once by the world
while you survey this is more than 100
countries but more importantly we cover
in each global region the biggest
national population so we have China and
Japan in East Asia we have India and
Indonesia and South Asia
we have Nigeria and South Africa in
sub-saharan Africa we have Egypt Iran
Turkey in the Middle East
we have the u.s. and North America of
course we have Brazil and Argentina
covered in South America and so on and
so forth so we can claim that our data
represent more than 90 percent of the
world population which is significant we
find in these data a whole host of moral
differences between people and between
entire nations but we sifted through
these data since many years and it turn
out that most of these differences boil
down to just two just two key domains of
cultural variation one of them you see
on the horizontal axis where it spans a
continuum from sacred to secular values
populations on the left end emphasize
the the authority of sacred sources of
authority especially religion but also
the nation the state the family
populations on the right have a secular
distance to these sources of authority
especially again religion the second
dimension is on the vertical axis and it
spans polarity between patriarchal and
emancipated values at the lower end at
the patriarchal end populations
emphasize male superiority over women in
the areas of Education in the areas of
access to job
and in the areas of political power they
also emphasized strict authority of
parents over their children and such
things as strict discipline law and
order and related things populations at
the upper end at the inmense prevent
emphasize women's equality to men child
autonomy self-determination and
democratic voice is part of what they
emphasize now you see there's a lot of
countries covered here but another
interesting point is that these many
nations cluster into a much smaller
number of what we call culture zones
which map on these cultural differences
as well as you have seen before we color
and blue the Western cultural zones and
it's apparent that they differ from the
non-western culture zones especially on
the dimension of patriarchal versus
immense but of values where Western
culture is actually defined in a sense
by an emphasis on emancipation much more
than other cultural zones in the world
and even the Protestant West sticks even
more out here and the biggest cultural
distance that we find is between the
Protestant West and the Islamic world
with many people in the Islamic world
emphasizing sacred values and
patriarchal values and most of the
people in the Protestant West
emphasizing secular values and
especially emancipated values scholars
usually consider such cultural distances
or differences as a constant as enduring
traits of national mentalities this
overlooks however how much dynamic there
was over current over recent decades in
these moral values surprisingly all
cultural zones of the world have
uniformly moved in the same direction
even the
lamech world even in sub-saharan Africa
we see a movement towards more secular
and especially towards more emancipated
values on the other hand it is also
clear that the Western cultures made a
much farther space on that in that
direction so their move is even more
pronounced which means that the
emancipatory outlook of Western culture
is nowadays even more pronounced than it
already has been decades ago so the fact
that all cultures owns are moving in the
same direction does not lead to
convergence cultural differences have
actually been become bigger which is an
issue of conflict looking at the forces
that might be driving this change
towards emancipated values we get a hint
here we see knowledge economies which
are those countries that obtain their
wealth from high-end products and
services we have industrial economies
which are those countries that obtain
their wealth from cheap work bench
production so those ones into which we
outsource our labor a lot and we have a
grain in oil economies obtaining their
wealth from natural products and raw
materials a criterion distinguishing
these Arkady's economies is what I call
the Enlightenment forces which is
education knowledge and science these
Enlightenment forces are the most
pronounced most powerful in the
knowledge economies more so than in the
industrial economies which in turn have
them more powerful than the agrarian and
oil economies and here we can see that
it is worthwhile to send our children
into school and to universities and to
college and let them enjoy education it
is a transformative force in all three
types of economies we see that people
who
obtained more education emphasized
immense bit of values more strongly
again this is more pronounced and
knowledge economies where the
Enlightenment forces are most powerful
if you ask yourself the question is that
move towards stronger immense motive
values is this something good is this
positive from the viewpoint of democracy
it certainly is because here we can see
that over the decades from 1952 to or10
culture zones have make made of shift
from more autocratic to more democratic
circumstances to about the extent to
which their populations have shifted
from patriarchal to immense but of
values you actually can see that
oftentimes a move to the right that
means towards more immense for the
values precedes a move upward which
suggests that the value change is causal
for the subsequent change in
institutions and not the other way
around an even more fundamental reason
why we can consider the rise of
emancipated values as a force of
enlightenment is these values tendency
to produce what I call moral
universalism that is the widening of our
circles of solidarity to an extent to an
outer rim planet and humanity were the
concerns about these things defy group
divisions because everyone is included
patriarchal values by contrast go back
there
favor the opposite moral tendency
towards moral parochialism what is that
that means the narrowing down of the
solidarity circle my nation first
America first these are the slogans that
depict
that moral tendency and here we can see
the shift from patriarchal to immense
for the values is indeed related to a
shift from moral parochialism to moral
universalism to the expansion of our
circles of solidarity of our empathy for
others this is measured here for example
by environmental concern about global
change and by fighting poverty in the
world so the concern for the planet and
for Humanity is covered here but are
also problems
the rise of emancipated values has also
created cultural conflict over moral
universalism versus parochialism and
this applies to a particular segment of
Western electorates there is a segment
of the population that has been left
behind by the immense petroi mainstream
that does not get a lot of education and
accordingly is working in low-skilled
manual jobs that are threatened to be
outsourced to other countries so the
working class to simplify it this
working class in the economic conflict
between social security and market
competition it's located on the Left
also ideologically on the Left they are
in favor of social security and this is
where usually leftist parties Social
Democratic parties the Democratic Party
in the u.s. contacts picks these voters
up however on the moral conflict between
universalism and parochialism there
aren't a parochial end and this is a
moral conflict this is not an economic
conflict these people want to narrow the
circle of solidarity again my nation
first make America great again and let
no immigrants in any more build a wall
this is parochialism and these people
are located there for reasons
and this is where now the rising forces
of populism flam's bloc and for national
in France the Liberal Party in Austria
where they including Trump in the United
States pick these people up as their
voters the other area of emerging
cultural conflict over issues of
emancipation is immigration especially
immigration from non-western populations
into Western countries I exemplify this
here at the case of Germany which is a
very typical post-industrial Western
society the Left bar shows that the
native host population born in Germany
German citizens they score very high on
immense but of value so sixty-two
percent of this population emphasizes
this type of values strongly
first-generation immigrants which is the
lower bar on the right side are very
very different they emphasize these
values not even to 20% of this group and
these are immigrants from non-western
cultures and that of course that creates
a cultural gap over these issues and
these are important lifestyle issues
gender equality tolerance of
homosexuality all these issues are
related to that given the centrality
that emancipated values have for a
healthy democracy this is not trivial
this is a challenge and we need to face
it in order to tackle it the good news
however is we can master their challenge
because it's also obvious from the data
and these are the three bars in the
middle that second-generation immigrants
already are very close in their emphasis
the values that we're the host
population is so obviously socialization
in this country does work which relates
us to the point can we strengthen the
effectiveness and the pace of that
socialization process can we do that and
this relates me to my final point which
is actually a call for action I believe
what we need to do is to thoroughly
rethink our civic education programs and
to target them particularly to the
immigrant population and most
importantly what we also need to do
while doing this is to place the
psychology of emancipated values center
stage in the curriculum of these
programs
[Applause]