I’ve never been a big fan of Thomas Sowell. Author of Race and Culture: A World View (among many other books), Sowell is an American economist, social philosopher, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, and a conservative who is generally far too conservative for me.
But earlier today, when I read the following observation from Dr. Sowell (via David Swindle at God of The Desert Books), all I could say was: Amen.
A few years ago some Nigerians visited Stanford. They asked me: Why do we [Nigerians] have so many military coups? I said: Military coups occur all over the world. Why shouldn’t they occur in Nigeria? Anybody who’s got guns can walk into the presidential palace and take over.
The real question is: How come, in a handful of countries, they don’t do it? And the answer is cultural capital. There are traditions ingrained in the soldiers themselves. If an American general says, listen, we’re going to send a battalion over to the White House and take over the country, when he gives the order, they’ll arrest him and put him in jail.
I think we grossly underestimate how much is determined by what’s inside people’s heads.
Indeed we do.
Here at Out of Babel, I’m focused on the stories inside people’s heads. Because best I can tell, most of us have one. … A story, that is. Also, a head. 😊