You're a Child of Your Environment

We also think that in the West, the way we act is a consequence of the way we describe the world. But the way we act is actually a consequence of how you're brought up. Culture, it's also 400 years of Enlightenment manifestation, since the dawn of the Scientific Revolution, modifying the ways we act.

We think that we act because of a set of propositions. We think if we just tell other people those propositions, then they'll act that way because we think that's how we act. That isn't how we act exactly.

I mean, this is why, you know, when George W. Bush was saying there's a desire for freedom in every human heart, it's like, well, maybe yes. But not freedom as you define it. Meaning that George Bush's definition of freedom wasn't necessarily the definition of freedom of people living in Iraq or people living in Israel or people living in China.

Not everybody has the same definition of these words. They have ways of life that they wish to preserve—some better, some worse. I'm not a moral relativist on this sort of stuff.