Your message comes in a timely fashion, since I just three days ago picked up
Hofstede's book from my college library. I now feel far more confident in my
understanding of these cultural dimensions, and am beginning to see how they are
often poorly described and even misnamed. Most notably, Individualism *is*
something directly caused by wealth and prosperity, and actually has little to
do with "true" individualism of thought - IND is really just hedonism and
selfishness, and this explains why the only personality characteristic it loads
on is Extroversion. Individualism is great in moderation, but in the extreme,
it's pure poison.


> > I've been wondering for a while about a puzzle presented by
> > the Ashkenazim. They seem phenomenally, paranoiacally racist,
> > yet at the same time they dominate liberalism and liberal
> > movements, moreso than conservative movements (although that
> > may be less true today).
>
> Other than Paul Gottfried, how many Jewish paleocons can you name?

I don't follow politics.


> > mwh:Is it really feasible for a fundamentally low-O,
> > nationalist/conservative group, to be able to get along
> > well enough with the high-O egalitarian/liberal mainstream
> > long enough to dominate its agenda?
>
> ams: I think your looking at this the wrong way. In analyzing
> Jewish activism, I think the conservative-liberal axis is less
> salient than the nationalist-cosmopolitan axis.

I thought of that, and yes, that is the traditional way of looking at ethnic
breakdowns in Red and Blue team. It's even simpler if you state that Euros in
blue team like helping ethnic outgroups, while non-Euros in blue team like
helping ethnic ingroups. Yet, Jews and Euro liberals often form friendships with
one another, more often than Euro liberals and, say, Hispanics, or Jews and
Hispanics. (Then again, I don't have Jewish friends; my buddies are all Euros,
Asians, and Eurasians.)

Just based on personal observations on working in Jewish-run and primarily
Jewish-staffed organizations, Jews do have genuinely liberal attitudes - they
tend to have very open sexual attitudes, an easy acceptance of homosexuality,
concern for the environment, interest in art and intellectual pursuits, and so
on. They also tend to be very disdainful of people in "honest" lines of work,
such as repairmen and construction workers. They tolerate and even find other
opinions interesting. They are also uncomfortable with rigid command structure
and tend to be very polite about giving orders. However, they are extremely
fearful of any sort of implied threat and treat the world as a fundamentally
hostile place. Once the manager closed up shop because of mysterious "fumes"
that only she could smell. Also, they're great lovers of bureaucracy and
procedures. Getting the job done isn't the only concern: Nitpicking rules are
also important.


> > mwh: A quick look at Israel might be illuminating:
> > http://www.geert-hofstede.com/hofstede_israel.shtml
> > Their PDI is quite low - below 10.
> > Their IND is around 50.
> > Their MAS is around 40.
> > Their UAI is high - about 75.
>
> ams: BTW, what sample are these personality scales normed on?
> Mostly north European Prots who speak a Germanic language, such
> as English? Just curious.

They are not normed. Hofstede applied formulae to these scales which generally
gave world averages near 50 or 60, SDs near 25, and high and lowpoints near 100
and 0. (European Protestants have a high IND, low PDI, low UAI profile when
compared to world averages.)


> And in fact, when averaging all predominantly Jewish nations'
> [Jewish communities'???--ams]

"Jewish nations."


> > "The high Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI), the
> > primary correlating Hofstede Dimension with Judaism, reflects
> > a low tolerance for ambiguity. This creates a highly rule-
> > oriented society that institutes laws, rules, regulations,
> > and controls in order to reduce the amount of
> > uncertainty within the population."
>
> ams: The US has more laws than any other country in the world.
> Does Hofstede mean primarily extra-legal rules (custom,
> religious law, etc.)?

UAI is focus on and attention to rules. Americans may have lots of rules, but in
the past, they have been blase about following them. However, you'll find if you
can get your hands on Hofstede's book that I was correct: UAI seems to be on the
rise.

One example of this comes from the increasingly aggressive stance the US takes
towards the world. Isolationism is a low UAI stance; high UAI, high MAS cultures
are uncomfortable with tension and tend to resolve generalized anxiety by
striking out - better to be at war than to have to live with the uncertainty of
an uneasy truce. If IND is a result of Wealth, then UAI appears to be a result
of danger.


> Might Protestant countries be aberrations? Have Orthodox,
> Hindu, and Muslim countries been studied? I'll look more
> closely at Hofstede's site later.

Protestant cultures are low UAI - they tend to have less interest in the
afterlife, less need to control uncertainty with superstition/magic in religion,
and less need for religious figures to be vested with "holiness" to ensure the
veracity of their statements.

Note to Chris: The Irish are low UAI - they're Protestants who pretend to be
Catholic because the real Protestants piss them off.


> > Insofar as low PDI and high UAI is reflective of Jewish
> > personality traits in general, it seems that Jews are indeed
> > high on Openness - but also low in Agreeableness and high in
> > Neuroticism, as I have suggested on previous occasions.
>
> ams: And higher on Conscientiousness

No, PDI correlates *positively* with Conscientiousness! Thus, the extremely low
PDI of Israel (higher only than one country - Austria, I believe) is
inconsistent with claims of high Jewish C.


> Are there differences between the scores of secular Israeli
> Jews and fundamentalist Israeli Jews?

IND correlates inversely with the importance attached to religion. Note that UAI
tends to have a greater effect on the *style* of religion a country adopts; MAS
and IND(inversely) are associated with traditional religiosity.


> And that LTO--Long Term Orientation--looks interesting.
> The US should score extremely low on that one.

I agree that LTO is better than I first gave it credit for. Yet LTO still seems
like a bandaid for a cultural schema which doesn't include intelligence: LTO
looks like -IND + IQ, and probably also has some inverse function of
Extroversion thrown in.

On the other hand, MAS, which I haven't discussed much in the past, is much more
interesting. It has implications for eugenics (rich, low MAS cultures have
higher birthrates and tend to focus more on bio-related fields than mass
production), war (high MAS cultures fight more), ethnic relations (high MAS
cultures are much less forgiving of weeak minority groups) and intergroup
struggles (high MAS cultures tend to see life as a zero sum game; feminism
requires that men be lowered, affirmative action demands that Euros be lowered.
Low MAS cultures are more interested in quality of life).

Note to Chris: Nordic nations are feminine. *Extremely* feminine.


> Just looked--we're low on LTO and high on PDI.

Not that high on PDI, though we will probably continue to develop higher PDI as
ethnic minorities become majorities.


> Interesting that Hofstede blames feminism on our somewhat
> high MAS score, yet Japan's MAS is 90% [!], and feminism
> is very weak there.

MAS relates to political views; in very high MAS countries, those who might
otherwise be liberal describe themselves as moderate. In addition, women take
less active roles in high MAS cultures. Thus, there aren't enough liberals, or
women in politics, to make for a good feminist base. But this still ignores the
more obvious culprit: Bioegalitarian hysteria is much less prevalent in Japan.


> How do these traits develop? Could a country's government
> "engineer" its culture in such as way as to raise or lower
> its scores on these various scales?

Yes, in some cases.

How to boost IND: increase general wealth.
How to boost UAI: increase perceptions of threat.
How to boost MAS: ? Encourage competition in children ?
How to boost PDI: ? Increase stratification ?

It appears that the US is pursuing all three of these strategies. In Western
cultires, PDI and UAI tend to go together, and we're doing our best to increase
both by importing hordes of ethnic outsiders who have vastly different IQs from
the mainstream. Fortunately, America's wealth is going to decline, thus
decreasing its unhealthily high IND.

Note that IND and UAI, taken together, are especially important in dealing with
ethnic strife: Collectivistic, Uncertainty Avoiding cultures are full of purges
and genocides. You've gotta love the Middle East. Maybe if America is lucky it
will be able to recreate the wonderful conditions prevailing over there, over
here.


> I notice that Germany and Swden are both low on PDI;
> Germany is high, like the US, on MAS, but MAS is almost
> nothing in Sweden. This suggests to me a strong
> environmental effect on these scores.

Not so fast! PDI has a -40% correlation with national IQ, which is primarily
genetic in origin. And MAS has a strong relationship with latitude: very cold,
and very hot societies have verly low MAS. Such societies evolved in hostile
environments which require cooperation against nature rather than competition
against other people. Check population density and that will give you a clue as
to MAS in an area. In temperate zones, life really *is* much more of a zero sum
game than in arctic zones and inhospitable deserts.

(Yes, I know that the Vikings are supposed to be Masculine, but women often were
buried in boat graves, indicating that they held high positions in Nordic
societies, and they were also often merchants rather than stay-at-homers in
Scandinavian society. In other words, gender roles were flexible. Also, the
Vikings were better at negotiating - consider the Danegeld - and trading than at
fighting. They were more raiders and merchants than fighters.)

I do agree that environmental changes can have a strong influence over national
culture, and after studying this issue I can tell you that I do think
environment is more important than genes in determining national character. But
some traits are less influenced by environment than others, and PDI is the ones
I'd chose as being least environmental and most genetic; MAS is probably second,
with UAI third and IND last.


--Mark


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