48 after the event. Let me say a few words about our speaker. now in his second tm of te u. S. Civil rights commissions book the moral foundation of economic behavior was nominated for the highest book prize in his latest book which is the subject of our talk today is on why culture matters most. This is an extremely important book given the political and cultural crisis that we now find ourselves in here in america. Think about it, the institutions that are supposed to hand down the great cultural inheritance of western civilization, the civilization upon which the United States faced are failing miserably at the respective tasks in education, media, the arts, business, politics. Its hard to think of an Important Institution in America Today that takes seriously the virtues and the ideals that make it possible it requires a trust, high trust society. Many would argue that this is the one type of society we do not now have. We seem to be educating the next generation intellectually, morally, spiritually in ways that build social trust. And this represents i think a profound failure of the highest order of failure education. James madison famously warned without educated citizens, popular government is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both. Thank you Jenny Mattison over there. Doctor rose, we are eager to hear from you about what we can do to avoi the tragedy for which madison speaks. Let me inviteoctor rose to join us on camera and please jo me in giving a warm ritage welcome to doctor david rose. Take it away, david. Thank you, joe, for that kind introduction. I appreciate it. Given the contribution to understanding the importance of culture and free society, it is a privilege to give the lecture. Id also like to thank ed for putting this in motion. In a variety of ways but let me start by making clear what, i mean, by the culture. It pertains to knowledge across the generations through learning rather than change. Different societies transmit different forms of cultural knowledge but i contend that the way culture works is basically the same across all societies. Today i will start by talking about how culture works and then i will talk about the kind of cultural knowled that is crucl for supporting. Not all societies. Then while they talk about the importance of culturehe progresprogressive has been wore hardest and i will conclude with a few remarks by the next break conservative project, the revival of amerin civil culture. A highly influential book called thinking and he argued it begs two different forms. The first ishat he called system number one that is intuitive and emotionally major. Its slow, deliberative and logical in nature, the kind of thinking we associate with science and a terrible decision making. Part of that suggested we tend to do too much of the former and not enough of the latter which has all sorts of problems for science. Its a fair point. But i submit system one thinking is actually an important part of the story how culture. From system number one taking precedence over system number two. Much of it is hardwired but much of it is also the product of adult teaching and practices. Heres an example of what, i mean. Every good, everything that is good is easier to achieve it takes individuals directly to the answer. I know this sounds a little crazy but is it so bad to live in a society when no one even considers harming other individuals or the community at large. I submit that when the beliefs and practices are brought early online, behavioral responses are to construct rather than genetically inherited. This is constructed where culture lives. It supported something first suggested by aristotle and later recapitulated by David Ignatius which is that before the age of seven, learning is well described as a practice much of what is learned at this time becomes the cognitive substrate of the subconscious mind and its also a guide to thinking largely. It presents a small opportunity to construct the architectures that mediate behavior in a way that is nearly as automatic as genetically encoded behavior. Beyond the age of seven, the window starts to close as learning increasingly switches to the mode of more conscious commitment. But here is the big point. The opening and closing of this window allows the system thinking of the adults in the present generation as shaped in the system number one thinking of the adults of the next generation. This comports while in the views on the importance. And the society that makes heavy Cultural Investment this can produce good or bad depending on which kind of beliefs and practices are learned. Everyone already knows this which is why all societies work hard to indoctrinate their children. I am going to argue thinking about culture as a mechanism that sheds a new light on how the western society have been able to create the freemarket democracy is that we now take for granted. We all know that the freemarket system and democratic voting rests on a variety of the foundations and we also know many of these institutional foundations are very cost dependent. We lose confidence that the contract will be enforced and we become less willing to work. When we dont trust the election procedures we become cynical about the democracy. Therefore it destroys these and other Important Institutions. The followup ultimately requires a high cost to society. Large groups are an important part of the society because adam smith was right about the power of economies of scale. The longer cooperation that requires trust allows us to survive but for us to actually thrive not surprisingly its most effective when supported by trust than even in the large group of content. Unfortunately, large group trust can only be built on something that we have learned because we havent lived in these groups long enough to be based in our genetic like small group trust is. This is evidenced by the fact large groups of cooperation are actually very common for example there are many species of social impact and they dominate by count and mass. And the behavior on the algorithmic basis the sheer behavior makes the issue of trust relevant. Biologists figured out why genetically it could circumvent the problem of individuals promoting their interest at the expense of the group. This also makes adapting to changing circumstances impossible within any given generation. It was pointed out the capacity for flexible cooperation that can be rapidly adopted to the changing circumstances. This brings us to a very important concept. Flexible large group cooperation. Flexibility allows rapid adaptation, larger context, to benefit the economies of scale. The problem is its very rare. The larger the group, the more the smallgroup genes alter in controlling the opportunism. Heres another way to think about it. There are many species by humans, ants and bees. But theres only one that can do both and it just so happens to be the one with the greatest capacity for culture. Unfortunately they do not do this well. Flexible cooperation that is mediated by irrational decisionmaking has more prospect with either the individual or the group so its not surprising that rationality is an important part of building a good person and a good society. The problem is that rationality can help us make sense of the world and make the decisions but it can also help us act to promote our individual welfare at the expense of common good. I believe the rise of human civilization is largely the story of channeling rationality through moral beliefs so as to suppress it from being used to support opportunism or otherwise leave it unconstrained. But how did they actually do this . Highly routine cultural practices address the problem by requiring the precise patterns of engagement and it simply left no room for opportunism. The problem is that as they grew to afford greater gains from specialization they got more complicated, so the practices had to become ever more detail detailed. To use the automatic searching for the appropriate response when confronted with any given circumstance it is a good way to have others wonder if you are an opportunist. This approach to bottling up the opportunism ends up bottling up rationality generally and some societies were opal able to open the floodgates for the cultural transmission of the beliefs that could precisely bottle of opportunism but no more. The society can bottle up opportunism but doesnt have to fear it being put to work to benefit the individual at the expense of the common good. They didnt suppress the rationality generally. This produced the societies with which it exploded and produced mass coercion. In my first book i explained why people express this with a strong ethic of what i call dutybased moral restraint and they would always be trustworthy even when there is no chance of being caught and situations called golden opportunities with the antithesis of opportunism one always obeys against taking the negative action as a matter of principle not because of the outcomes involved. To really trust someone or something you have to be confident you will not end up being duped to become the means to the end no matter how noble it might be. So if you strongly believe it will never behave in this manner the moral restraint exists in the vast majority and would be rational in all but the most exceptional of the circumstances. This is trust at the macro level what many call social trust, and it is flexible large group cooperation. Since weve only lived in large groups for a short time, we have no reason to support the trade that would effectively affect these moral restraints. It can, however, be cultural. Through Early Childhood instruction, we can construct such that if any circumstance that involves the chance to benefit by being untrustworthy is presenting itself to the response. Something important to note about the dutybased restraint is that it does not precisely prescribed behavior. Instead, it precisely proscribes or prohibits the behavior. The more precisely it is prescribed, the truer it is that a unique action is then required. The more precisely it is prescribed or prohibited the smaller is the portion of the actions that its redacted falling under the individuals jurisdiction. Because of this, he effectuatedd the group system number one thinking as increasing the exercise of system number two thinking by giving rationality more free space to roam and therefore, more to do. Or for the definition of a golden opportunity. To object by saying one might choose this is to employ circular reasoning so how can the society deal with this rationality, the answer is to exploit how cultural works like nothing else can. Since it is to be learned in each generation, the current generation of adults basically decides for the next what their beliefs will be. This effectively separates the decision to add certain kinds of beliefs from the consequences. This circumvents the rationality problem because the society isnt depending on nearly all of its citizens to irrationally choose to adopt the trust producing beliefs for themselves. With the resources even considering such action. Shes trustworthy mostly because she doesnt en consider being untrustworthy. This sounds a lot like the virtue charaer manifested through the economist system number one banking we all know people that are not even tempted to be untrustworthy because they do not even think about it. Theres a great deal of behavior in some cases beliefs like the dutybased moral restraint produced the high cost societies that suppo the trust depennt institutions for which the freemarket docracies function. My view its one ofhe most precious gifts of western civilization but it evolves so slowly, and we live with it for so long to us they are the last to discover water. I promised i would say a few things about what we can do. The progressives undstood that to achieve their vision they needed power to engag in the redistribution. They also understood that this prevailed moral biefs in the west especially in america. Most americans believe that while the government power could be used to pay for the fair share of public goods, it cld not legitimate be used to coerce the redistribution. Er a century ago the progressives began working to push the thinking in a new direction. One more amenable that could morally and therefore politically justify theeavy redistribution. D it pushed it towards the promotion of social justice ich is crucial for justifying redistribution and conform to the behavior. s been following you ever evere because it is from owing others in the government will not morally rationalize using us as a means to the ends that we can trust both. Because they understood power and culre, ty worked hard to get control of the k6 team edation. No longer teaching about history and our intellectua inheritance for the civilization before indoctrinating children and new ideas that stresse the moral and Political Foundation of soalism. In doing so they construct architecture that supports being a useful member of the statecontrolled society, e that promises to provide care and return and liberty. The progressives areond of saying uttering the word culture is blowing a dog whistle. Meanwhile theyve been practicing to perfection. This is why they worry so much about the joys and stress statesponsored education. Each successive american generation has a little less then the restraint and a little more anticapitalist and antiamerican views. Progressives have been waiting a long game. Meanwhile what we have been doing we make the arguments of the freemarket system while they denounce it on moral ground. Well, the morality comes to everything and no argument has beaten a moral one, nor will it ever in the future. To turn the tide, we need to make an affirmative case for the freemarket democracy. There is a strong case to be made one rooted in many of the premises the progressives strongly adore my how best to make the case is a discussion for another day. What i can say today is to the american civic culture across the country when i say this, conservatives say great idea. Ive been hearing that for 30 years. And they actually get into the game there are many questions i have. I want to remind everybody out there in the studio audience to submit your questions and we will get to as many as we can in our remaining time. One of the phrases you used on the restraint it seems to me and feel free to push back it seems this is near the heart of the struggle that we are having in the United States and we have been having for decades to battle and they take away the restraints on the individual stripping away any kin of moral restraints and parameters. Its not only enlistingoung people in the social justice clause but it the idea of casting off the restraints. It happens in a few ways. The release of restraints and how should the conservatives b thinking more strategically about that because it doeseem to be close to the heartf your argument as what we nee we are having that fight, arent we. We are. Basically there are two responses. In m book i discussed this issue and i call the idea t address the point of what i call the moral detente. You want to do it that you are willing to violate had been historic rtraint then you are someone who is going to have a natural affinity f the moral belief that dont draw the constraint. My fatherinlaw, who gw up in rural arnsas had a great way of putting it talking about raisg children. He said when it comes toaising children, i belve in just a few fold lines. Not lot of rul, just a few, but the are drawn boldl the idea that there e restraints on the per and they are very strong and because we are regulating behavior in that way we can have a society with very few of them. But if you want to do things that would violate our ctomary constraints, you are going to be someone who is eager to rationalize being able too so because you want to think that all morality occurs on the same moral dimension. So how it is determined by their moral behavior with acts of being sort of to the right of zero and to the left of zero as a strong moral sigficance. And then you trade positive against negative. This is the best way to rationale being able to do whatever it is you want to do. Ive got a question her from one of our visiting scholars in his question is w the proper role of religion in fostering the culture that reflects dutybased moral restraint and fostering that culture thayou speak of. That is a great question and i believe tha the United States beneted tremendously from the prevailing religious beliefs up until fairlyecently because they were very consistent. The interesting thing about religion i think if youook at relion and talk pretty much it doesnt matter across the board the idea that its a little softer iahat its more importt because doing harm is a morally significant thing than doing good. They will almost all agree with you. So the problem isnt really that the restraint is somehow inconsistent with a lot of religions outhere. The problem is its an idea that is a little bit me refined than most of the thinkg so sometimes it helps to simy refine an idea. It wasnt so long ago the very samerevailing religion that produced the restraints that we benefited from that cod sustain the democracy, the number were able to use those beliefs toustify slavery in particular so, sometimes religion can give us a foundation but itoesnt mean that i addresses everything. And we can i am kind of optimistic as long as the idea is pushed out into the religious community, almostll religions are likely to advocate it in a more direct focused way if they understand supporting the large oup trusts that can allow the societies to tive. m going to try to anticipate what we have in mind as followup do you see a connection between the increasingly Secular Society particularly in the instutions and the lack of attention to the moral restraints. The more secular, the more restraed and certainly thats been seen throughout history with ththeologiansand plic stat. What would be a quick respoe to that . I think tt is a good comeback and thats right of t mosthemost important thing that religion does is provides a narrative that gives people a great deal of incentive to strongly inculcate moral beliefs. The problem is some want to inculcate those that dont prode a kind of society that we in america enjoy. But on the issue of theoral restraint itself though, i think the real issue is that the religion can pick this up and run with it, but theyve got to know that there is a problem to be solved in ordero appreciate th solution. A. That is perhaps the most provocative. Theyavent quite grasped the severity reaching into theives of young people and i think we will pick that up again. If y could identify one aspect outside of the fily that can builup society in the way that you talk about, what would it be . That is a question that would be hard to answer because obviously one of the reasons why the family is so important as it provides, and i talk about this extensively in the book how it ovides powerful incentives and theres no gd substitute for it. I think, however, that historically the religionas picked up much of the slack and to some extent the problem with k12 education i isnt that it doesnt teach more now. Th problem with k12 education is that it teaches a type of mora thinking that has more to do with providing the justification for the utopian views the left than with producing csistent by the people. You probably wouldnt put it in these terms here we all are wanting to see our kids back in school but going back means gog back into that cultural indoctrination if im reading it correctly. Is that right one of the things that is lacking tt was dropped, there wasnt much discussion of the moral foundations or how economic interacts with the civic siety there was so much inertia it was treated as something we didt even make the decision. Find it ironic that for pple who spend so much time talk about following t science end so much time making moral assertions saying this is morally coelled or you shouldnt do this becauset is in moral and stang it away as though the policy position and selfevident what do you think helps explain this ting to raise the alarm in vious circles or elsewhere what do you ink it explains the attention to the crucial dimension of culture shapi the Civic Education getting to the conservativen the audience were outside the audiee that would disagree with you. The more successful in other words the higher the achievent of the high quality of lives the smaller ithe cost and the harder it is to notice. I would say the last two years or so have or should have shocked the people into reality to not be agnostic about education and to get in the game. Wev advocated and the progressives have built the vacuum with their own brand. For the Civic Associations which is contributing to the problem, the decline and the quantit and quality of Civic Association as a part of the problem. Its n as a cause but more of an effect. When we trust each other we are more likely to spend a lot of time together a do things together and so on. The more we tend to retreat into which trust is sustained ether the kids were winning and yocan sense the tension that wasnt there even a couple of years ago though many of these endeavors and involve those larger than closest friends and families to stop and think and maybe be willing to take a different direction. A. A cultural wakeup call. Another question. The frankft school pushed a form to the western instutions particully educational ones. Do you think thearxists will on day push for the religious or spiritual marxism in the future . No, because they are alrea doing it at the present. If you listen to pele who are the most fervently left or fervently progressive, the w ey speak, the condition with which they advance their position is consistent with a kindf religious zealotry thats already there there was so much fervent religiosity among peoe whose champions felt the religion was the opiate of the masses. Its now dominating on the left and h become the opiate of those engaging in a great deal of intellectual race by handing off theomplex issues and treati them as simple onestop. The swer, yes. Because healthcare is a right. Why, because it would be in moral not provided. But it is easy. We are done. There is no discussion about the uses or minuses of doing iin some other way. Maybe its a society we should take care of each other but why that couldnt be donthrough the organizatns that have been documented so well the problem with that is that it has tremendous appeal and its difficult to undo i later. If i could rephre it a little, a clumsy heavyhded moralizing that only seems to lead in one direction which is a larger and more intrusive state. Its where we are headed with so much of the Progressive Left and i think iis linked to the secularizing tendency if we do not have this sense of meaning for life, the way human beings seem to be wired as we will find it somewhereocial justice quote on quote seems to be operating it has the traings of the religious cult and its ritual and dogma and the heresy. Just cannot without a sense of deepeaning when life gets easy in the world is easy thats one of the big problems with america we are so successful we are able to produce. People start to le the sense of meaning. That meeting doesnt stop when e kids grow up. We will equalize everything at the end of the game. Then the struggle that you love morehan life yourself and has been sucked away. The amazing story is desrately trying not to be temptedy the ring of power. His great calling there is a beautiful objective that he had and is willing to sacrifice everythingor it. How do you think that conservatives maeconservatives r an alternative mor vision to the ones t left is offering social justice, whatever it is we need to offer it seems to me alternative in the remaining few nutes that we have. I think the biggest mistake was equating a safety net of the government involvement of the social problems with socl justice theory. Social justice advocacy is ultimately about equalizing outcomes. Itsbout this, that and all these other things but they tend to be already assumed in our sense o justice. We dont need a new theorof justice in order toelieve that its unjust to have mechanisms that dont give people do process. Thats already been sorted out. The onlyhing that makes it different in an interesting way is the more just is the system. One way to sort out t thinking is to give peopl enthusiasm and plain to them if you hav a and bargain society whe you say look in return foreading thleavingthe way the economy wo, leave it alone, do not try to manipulate it or redistribute and in return for that we will use a substantial portion of e money nerated by the society to provide for basic needs. This isnt what t social justice advocates want because its a very welldefined thing. Once its solved then theres no meaning for that to have b you can reverse it and say to promote the fremarket democracy. We can generate soany more resources that we can actually deal with these problems that is a problem thais in that deep. However, people suffering i a probm and the alleviation of the sufring of others is a selfevidentct of the virtue. Thats where we should focus our attention and that i whe the attention is focused. Thats a fascinang response response. Understanding the stake and culture and how t affect culture i think that could discourage some people to hear that and understand it to be aware of how mucground we have lost. Can you thin of whether its storical examples are right w patches of light tha can give some reasons to be hopeful fothe capacity to push back against the worst trends and impulses we are undergoin and faced and it can make a difference on the ground. A. Some examples of the prent that are glimmers of the problem is theyause more harm than good parents are opting out of public education. They have greer faith inhe kind of cultural knowledge our children will get in addition to what they will get academically. With education institutions and doing homeschooling for exactly the sam reasons. Within that context there is a tremendous varie of excellence for homchooling now and a private school that can do a lot of what we are talking about. Buthat this is doing now is it is taking a group of people that are already doing fairly well and doubling down on the kind of cultural trade thats part of the explanation for the success and leaving the other people in Society Without any of that. Even without the parents being in the same schools are associated with their hands in the same sool so i see this as producing a kind of globalism that is unhealthy f our society. In other words, throughhe private actions we are seeing a movement in the direcon of taking culture more seriously d being successful a it but the groups tha are most liky to do that are the groups that are already fairly successful meanwhile they have no choice but to go to Public School and are even me entrencd and its the difference between them and the others. See the dilemma. It doesnt have to be either or we need to create and sustain these havens ofanity and intellectual formation. We need to have those and exponentially see them grow and invite as many people as possible but also i think maybe ur suggestion we do have to try to reclaim these existing institutions. Theres two possible ways to go. One, if bill gates was listening to me right now i wrote a letter in the wall street journal once and i have to believe he read that. If bill gates and a f with his fries were listening right now i would say the best thing you can do with your money is to create a completely private voucher system. Education is too important to have the government do it because it just we are going to do it but then ordinary people ll put the money in and we will make sure everybody in the united stes, no matter how, we are tired of waiting. Itserrible we are wasting all that money i like that approach and i think it imore credible than you might imagine. The other approach is to say look, at the state level the state can pass legislation that can mandate the teachgs of vic education. Some states have already done that to some extent. Florida, texasnd a few others. In tt case you are saying we are not going to let you treat public educaon as your little playthin we are not going to leave the ground anymore. We are going to get io the game and we are going to do it with legislation that seems like a call for the cultural leadership and political leadership. I want to thank you for that and for the investment of time and lecture. You can check this out 48 hours after. Thank you for the terrific discussion. On his life and political career. In this portion of the program he talks about his cancer diagnosis at the beginning of the first term as governor. Id only been governor for five months. We won a huge overwhelming victory the biggest in the country, and then i had my first legislative session after putting together an entire government in an overwhelmingly democratic monopoly stayed and we cut taxes for the first time and balanced the budget. We then battled the riots and 60 days later we got hit with this news. I was on my first trade mission to asia and wasnt feeling that well. A little aches and pains and ended up having the doctors come in and tell me that i had advanced aggressive cancer all over my body from my neck and my groin and it ended up being almost an 18 month total battle 24 hour day chemotherapy dealing with all of that while being governor in a very tough state with a lot of things going on. And i talk about this experience in my book and i got to meet so many people and i talk about what it was like going through that. My first worry was how do i tell my family. It was fathers day weekend when i got this diagnosis. My first thought, ive got to tell my wife and daughters and my dad who was 80 at the time was coming over for fathers day dinner at the Governors Mansion and he took it harder than anybody. It doesnt matter how old you get, to him i was still his little boy he couldnt protect and he cried the whole time. Then i had to announce it to the whole state of maryland. They put their trust in me and i had to explain to them that i would continue working and i worked from the hospital bed continuing to try to run the state and came out of it stronger than ever. Hello and welcome to the chicago humanities festival andodays program