Thomas Sowell explored why people in different societies can develop very different ways of thinking. His point was that culture, institutions and incentives shape how people interpret the world — not simply intelligence or nationality. The lesson is bigger than Americans vs. the French: How we think is often... shaped by the environment around us.show more

”Those who wrote the Constitution and established a fledgling nation out of 13 recently independent colonies were well aware of the hazards of their undertaking — and proceeded with great caution as a result. In The Federalist Papers Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay discussed the sad fates of other republics and democracies of earlier times, and struggled to prevent the same fate from overtaking the United States. The Constitution avoided issues that would tear the country apart in its infancy-through silence in the case of slavery, through forbidding Congress to act, in the case of religion. The Constitutional convention of 1789 was not a seminar on moral philosophy, and the document that emerged from it was neither a manifesto nor a suicide pact. It was an attempt to create a nation that could endure, despite internal stresses and the external dangers of an international jungle, in which the United States was small and vulnerable. Strong moral traditions underlay the Constitution, but they were implicit in its structure rather than explicit in ringing rhetoric. It had none of the flare and sweep of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which accompanied the French Revolution of the same era. But the French Revolution ended after one decade with the military despotism of Napoleon, while the U.S. Constitution not only endured but spread its freedom with the Thirteenth Amendment against slavery and the Fourteenth Amendment proclaiming equal rights under the law. The whole outlook on life, and the whole vision of man underlying it, were radically different as between the American Revolution and the French Revolution. Many of the key figures behind the Constitution of the United States saw man's inherent limitations as severely restricting how much power anyone could be trusted with. It was this vision of human nature which produced the Constitution's elaborate scheme of checks and balances. "It may be a reflection on human nature that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government," James Madison said. "But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?" Alexander Hamilton likewise saw the only reason why government exists at all as the fact that "the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice" unless forced to. He considered this to be as true of the elite as of the masses. Without this crucial assumption about the inherent limitations of human beings, there would be no point in the Constitution's checks and balances, which prevent each branch of government from achieving unbridled power.” - Thomas Sowell

I Agree. The environment is a powerful force, shaped by school, friends, work, and influential figures—such as politicians, artists, teachers, and athletes—particularly during childhood and adolescence. At certain points in life, this environment leaves a deep mark on young people's minds, and that is when thoughts about the future begin to emerge.

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