Thomas Sowell On Cultures

Manuscript scrolls once preserved the precious records, knowledge, and thought of European or Middle Eastern cultures.  But once paper and printing from China became known in these cultures, books were clearly far faster and cheaper to produce and drove scrolls virtually into extinction.  Books were not simply different from scrolls; they were better than scrolls.  The point that some cultural features are better than others must be insisted on today because so many among the intelligentsia either evade or deny this plain reality.  The intelligentsia often use words like "perceptions" and "values" as they argue in effect that it is all a matter of how you choose to look at it.

 

When Europeans first ventured into the arid interior of Australia, they often died of thirst or hunger in a land where the Australian aborigines had no trouble finding food or water.  Within that particular setting, at least, the aboriginal culture enabled people to do what both aborigines and Europeans wanted to do-- survive.  A given culture may not be superior for all things in all settings, much less remain superior over time, but particular cultural features may nevertheless be clearly better for some purposes-- not just different.

 

http://www.tsowell.com/spcultur.html