Over the long span of human existence, different cultures have held varying notions as to how responsible we are for our own thoughts and beliefs. Before the dawn of the Abrahamic religions, and in places untouched by these faiths, it tended to be the rule that individual members of the group could only be understood as parts of the whole, or in the grander cosmic scheme of things. The ascendence of Christianity in Europe, with its idea of the indivisible soul, tilted matters more towards a belief in individual agency and accountability. This concept, secularised by Descartes, who gave us the commanding rational ego, has proved resilient ever since, despite the best efforts of Freud, neuroscience and gene selection theory to dethrone it.
Ancient Greek culture was birthed in a rocky, arid, hard-scrabble environment that fostered self-reliance
In Why We Think What We Think, Turi Munthe writes that there still persists this alluring and flattering notion that we’re mental self-legislators, immune to factors that lie beyond our control – our genes, environment and subconscious desires. He says that we still overrate our capacity for rational deliberation: ‘Most of us think that we come to our opinions based on a mix of reasoning and environmental reason’; that we arrive at our views ‘on the basis of evidence and logic’. Yet, as he reminds us, how we think is as much determined by the vagaries of circumstance as of reason, formed by culture, history, psychology, physiology, social connectivity, peer pressure, weather and – perhaps most belittlingly of all for human pride – geography.
This emerges as the biggest determining factor of all. And cultural traits derived by topography and climate persist through time. For instance, in seeking the origins of one of the greatest cultural and historical cleavages, between the eastern half of the globe, marked by Confucian collectivism and shame, and the western one, characterised by Aristotelian individualism and guilt, Munthe believes he has found the answer: it’s down to soil and climate. Ancient Greek culture was birthed in a rocky, arid, hardscrabble environment that fostered self-reliance, while the vast, fertile central plain of China gave birth to a culture that necessitated cooperation in order for huge populations to irrigate, plant and harvest crops.
Another theory espoused here is that societies which materialise in tropical areas, where there is a high prevalence of pathogens, invariably develop illiberal attitudes, ranging from conformity, through ethnocentrism to authoritarianism. This occurs because societies prone to diseases spread through close contact are averse to strangers, unpredictable population movement and unregulated intimacy.
Who we are is thus the product of a bewildering plethora of influences, most of which have nothing to do with the individual, and no single factor alone determines our mental makeup. Therefore societies shouldn’t be praised or blamed for their liberal or conservative leanings: most of our non-rational beliefs originate from the exigencies of survival. Conservative societies, which are more wary of strangers, are sometimes not being mindlessly xenophobic; they might be being wise and prudent. ‘Groupthink,’ Munthe adds, can be a ‘deliberate and rational social strategy’.
There is much familiar fare on display, such as the tendency of twins separated at birth to share political outlooks as adults, the role of cognitive bias and the invisible power wielded by culture – here given the name ‘paradigm blindness’. The only irrational phenomenon Munthe fails to explore sufficiently is that very modern one of social contagion, the one we witness most conspicuously in the explosion of young people self-identifying as transgender.
Written with enthusiasm and erudition, Why We Think What We Think is broad in its ambition and scope, and, befitting books of its ilk, is adorned with intriguing vignettes and curios. For instance, do conservatives dislike spicy food more than liberals because they are more susceptible to xenophobia, or is it because they tend to have more taste buds? Readers may also be interested to learn that attractive people tend to lean to the right (because the status quo always favours the beautiful).
Although Munthe’s thesis that we are fundamentally irrational creatures and the instruments of exterior forces may seem fatalistic, his parting message is upbeat. While we’re not primarily governed by reason, we are the only species capable of employing it. We can both overcome nature and transcend culture, because pluralism and diversity of thinking are inherent to who we are. As he concludes in this beguiling and compelling book, by understanding the non-rational reasons for our beliefs we have the capacity to achieve ‘intellectual independence from our selves’.
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