Our Culture is Abundance

Now I want to look at the other side of the coin. Many English speaking, blog reading, cultures are W.E.I.R.D.O. cultures. They are Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic Out-breed cultures. As noted by the word “rich” in the acronym one of the things that characterizes these cultures is that they generate a tremendous amount of abundance. The traits industrialized and educated, and maybe some of the other traits, produce a plethora of material goods as well as opportunities. People growing up in such a culture are going to encounter an abnormally high level of abundance  all around them. They are going to find that the opportunities to deal with abundance, and be rewarded for it, are much more common than the opportunities to profitably deal with scarcity. Experience will teach them much more about dealing with abundance.

Though some individuals may have an inborn disposition towards abundance or scarcity, humans, as a species, adapt to our environment. Some environments call for mainly scarcity specialists and some for mainly abundance specialists.  young people find their competitive advantage in filling the gaps between what the environment calls for and what their culture already provides. So over time the balance of specialists in a society will adapt to what its environment calls for. A weirdo culture will end up having mostly abundance specialists.

Although we will still be tilted much more towards scarcity due to being human, Western cultures will be tilted much more towards abundance then the human average. As democracies we will tend towards the median of our populations, and therefore, we will as a society be prepared for abundance, expect abundance and have societal structures that are designed to work with abundance. And as we get more and more abundance in our society the percentage of people specializing in abundance will continue to grow.