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Even monkeys have a culture.

Not all cultures are equal.

Ethnocentric, yes.

However, at a macro level when averages start to play a role, culture becomes the PRIMARY reason why a society thrives or fails.

You can have a country that is resource poor, densely populated, loses a war and is bombed into rubble, even nuked, and like a Phoenix they will rise from the ashes because of their culture, i.e. Japan.

Societies that thrive do have certain commonalities:

—Aversion to corruption
—Time sensitivity
—Willingness to use force
—Homogeneous (common value system)
—Willingness to incorporate new technologies
—Concept of personal culpability, consequences for actions.

It does not matter what religion, race, continent, nation, time we are talking about, societies that thrive long term have these in common. And societies that lose these attributes like in ancient Rome, no matter how powerful they were, begin a journey into oblivion.

When you look at a country like El Salvador today, which has made a come back that is unimaginable from the nightmare they were in years ago, that is because their government under Bukele has essentially incorporated the idea of use of force, fighting corruption and creating accountability, in a society where this was lacking. The danger is if this isn’t accepted societally and only from him, then when the strong arm leaves, this country will backslide into the misery they had before.

The point is that culture makes wealth. Wealth does not create culture.

Take 1.2 million idiots from Syria and send them to Germany, and they are still just idiots (a few will change, but most will not).

In the West today, you have a culture that is at best promoting stagnation or a slow decline while a few others like China (PRC) are growth oriented.