[ExI] An anomalous point

[David C. Harris]

Hi Amara,

I attribute the deviation of the US on these 2 graphs to our strong 
individualism.

The people who didn't get along well in other countries were the ones to 
come to America.  We've learned to make quick but shallow friendships, 
but Americans seek friends both in churches and in voluntary 
associations.  See Alexis de Tocqueville*,* who noted the voluntary 
associations soon after the American Revolution.   I see the 
individualism as creating labor mobility and the attendant prosperity, 
loneliness that makes us satisfy our need for human contact in clubs and 
churches, and an inner hunger for secure significance that a religious 
theology can bring.  So I see individualism as the prime cause for the 
religiosity. 

Now what kind of religion came to America?  A lot of anti-pleasure 
religious doctrines, which joined historic accident and racism to make 
drugs illegal and fill our many prisons.  I wonder if someone has good 
estimates of  how much lower our prison populations would be if drugs 
were as legal as addictive Valium or codeine used to be when I was young.

With these concepts I find living in the anomalous points explainable 
and less disconcerting.  And they direct my efforts toward reducing 
rigid religiosity and ending the insanity of Drug Prohibition.

  - David Harris, Palo Alto, California

Amara Graps wrote:
> Despite my knowing the language, living where I am now is more
> than ever like living in a foreign country. Sometimes I am struck
> at how anomalous the US really is.
>
> Steve Jurvetson notes the outlier position of the US in a plot
> of religiosity versus wealth (per capita GDP normalized):
>
> http://flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/2275614130/
>
> which brings to my mind Anders Sandberg's plot of Freedom (from
> the Heritage Freedom Index) against its number of imprisonments
> (from World Prison Brief numbers), where the US is again a most
> striking outlier point:
>
> "The Best Prisons that Money Can Buy"
> http://www.aleph.se/andart/archives/2006/02/index.html
>
> Living in an anomalous point is pretty scary.
>
> Amara
>