Status Updates From The Righteous Mind: Why Goo...

“Most societies have chosen the sociocentric answer, placing the needs of groups and institutions first, and subordinating the needs of individuals... the individualistic answer places individuals at the center and makes society a servant of the individual. The sociocentric answer dominated most of the ancient world but the individualistic answer became a powerful rival during the Enlightenment.

“as with all foreign travel, you learn as much about where you're from as where you're visiting. I began to see the United States and Western Europe as extraordinary historical exceptions—new societies that had found a way to strip down and thin out the thick, all-encompassing moral orders that the anthropologists wrote about.”