Culture Links, 3/7/2026

Chris Arnade on the American Way; Martin Gurri on world trends; Rob Henderson on personality extremes; Alice Evans on violence in human history

Chris Arnade writes,

The U.S. is unique among nations (and arguably successful) because we have a high acceptance for a lot of thin cultural differences as long as you buy into the shared thick culture. That is, you can live how you want at a thin level, as long as you ultimately believe in making big money through hard work and playing by the rules. We are a federation of regional cultures held together by this American dream. It is our shared moral horizon.

…the political turmoil of our last decade is about a disconnect between the front-row and back-row over the availability of the American Dream. As our economy moved to post-industrial (at a pace accelerated by choices of the front-row), emphasizing intellectual work over manufacturing, a large gap opened up between the two in economic well-being, and more importantly, in the ability to make meaning. Non-credentialed forms of meaning became devalued, while careerism became ascendant.

He sees signs of a turnaround in the midwest.

Martin Gurri writes,

Once out of Trump’s shadow, a different world comes into view—one teeming with humanity on the move. Impoverished and disordered nations across Africa, Asia, and Latin America are sending their populations outward in search of better lives. Ours is an age of vast, wandering migrations, a modern Völkerwanderung that recalls Europe at the end of the Roman Empire: unruly masses pushing toward the benefits of civilization, even as their advance threatens to undermine the very goods that they seek.

…New communication technologies predated Trump and made his rise possible. The same technologies beckoned the immigrant masses out of their failing nations and guided them along the way.

…Populism is a political by-product of the post-truth condition. Once presidents and TikTokers stand on the same plane of plausibility, with only the unruly public to choose between them, the temple of establishment authority is destined to tumble like the walls of Jericho. Sensing this, elites have succumbed to a reactionary panic—they want their twentieth century back. The first article of faith in “our democracy” is that the public must be pushed out of the commanding heights of the information sphere and that the power to construct a single, universal reality should return to those deemed properly trained for the task: the expert, the scientist, the politician, the journalist, the bureaucrat.

The essay asks the reader to look past Donald Trump to the underlying forces causing conflict and disorder.

Rob Henderson writes,

agreeableness can be exploited. Psychopaths, for example, are highly skilled at reading other people’s emotions. They read compassion the way a predator reads weakness. In a society that is highly agreeable, empathic, and trusting can create openings for exploitation.

Many people who work in policy and shape public debate about inequality, crime, and social dysfunction have spent most of their lives around people who are generally responsible, well-meaning, agreeable people. And because that is all they have seen, they assume everyone must be the same way. If someone commits a crime, there must be a story that makes it understandable. In the minds of the chattering classes, the only reason anyone would harm another person is because something pushed them to it: poverty, mistreatment, oppression, some external and comprehensible cause. But there really are people—typically extremely disagreeable people—who enjoy making life unpleasant for others.

I would speculate that culture evolves toward an equilibrium in which neither high agreeableness nor its opposite approach 100 percent of the population. Too little agreeableness and people are too suspicious of one another to cooperate. Too much agreeableness and people are easy prey for evildoers.

Alice Evans writes,

Smashed skulls remind us that organised violence was pervasive for most of human history. In such ecologies, men gained power by assembling mobs and militias, forging solidarity and glorifying domination. Bigger armies and sharper military innovations enabled ever greater extraction - of land, labour and tribute. Commanding force got you status.

When state enforcement was weak, private groups wrestled for advantage, battering rivals with stone axes, obsidian-edged macuahuitls, talwars and kris daggers.

As rulers monopolised force and courts gained authority, the returns to aggression began to fall. Only under these conditions could men (and much later women) pursue status in other domains - administration, commerce, innovation, and literature.

North, Weingast, and Wallis argued that the “natural state” is a coalition of groups with the potential for violence. A stable natural state is formed when the coalition partners agree on a formula to share the wealth that can be extracted by excluding everyone else from forming effective political or economic organizations.

It is well to remember their framework. What they call an open-access order, where anyone has the right to form a corporation or a political party, is not natural. Do not expect a Western democracy to emerge in Iran in the next several years, regardless of how the present war turns out.

substacks referenced above: @

Broken Skulls and the State!

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The Most Misunderstood Personality Trait

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What Holds America Together?