The Norms of Pre-Modern Societies

As we know, rigid norms tend to dominate in low-income societies. And Ingelhart realised that almost all societies that survive as independent nations today at one point set rigid gender roles and were intolerant to gays, divorce and unnecessary sexual activity.

This might seem barbaric, evil, crazy and immoral to modern Westerners. We've become used to gay rights, diversity quotas and sexual freedom, but Ingelhart has us seriously question the reasoning behind our judgement.

Faced with high infant mortality rates and low life expectancies, agrarian societies required high fertility rates to survive. Practices like homosexuality, divorce and extra-marital sex put a spanner in the works. And women with careers and responsibilities beyond the family also jeopardised the mass churning out of children required to perpetuate the species. Hence the norms that limited women to the roles of wife and mother and that demonised homosexuality and unnecessary sexual activity. This was enforced through strict, fundamentalist religious systems.  

These norms still dominate today in many low-income countries. Instead of getting ideological, mounting our high horse and claiming to be morally upright and ethical if we value freedom, by recognising why we hold the values we do, we can better understand those who don't hold them.
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What Is Culture? The Rise of Freedom Norms

So if those Rigid values dominated humanity for so long, how is it that Freedom norms have come to be?

Let's look at Ingelhart's broad insights into the rise of Freedom norms before looking at the hard data.

In modern times, we no longer rely on traditional agriculture for our survival. We're in the information age, where knowledge workers are the best rewarded. In the West, we're living in unprecedented luxury and have incredible tools at our disposal: medicine, books, the Internet, more food than we need, and so forth. What effects does the move beyond agrarian societies have on the values we hold?

Well, when it comes to values regarding norms related to gender and sexuality, it has an enormous effect.

For one thing, the fertility rate needed to replace the human population has dropped. In high-income societies, life expectancy has almost doubled in the last century. Infant mortality is now a third of what it was in 1950. In fact, we've relaxed our child-rearing efforts so much that the birth rate is below the replacement level in some countries.

And our norms have changed too. In 1945, homosexuality was illegal in most West European countries. Now gay marriage is legal in all of them except Andorra, Liechtenstein and Italy.

Ingelhart has found that societies that remained insecure economically and physically throughout his survey years displayed little change: they remained supportive of Rigid norms.

But in other countries, he observed striking changes from one survey wave to next.