Inner directedness. Is character strictly personal? Either you are or you aren't, calm, courageous, charismatic, or does culture have a part to play? Does when and where you live make a difference to the kind of person you become? That was the question posed by three great American Jewish sociologists,

David Reisman, Nathan Glazer and Ruel Denny, in their 1950 classic The Lonely Crowd. Their argument

was that particular kinds of historical circumstance give rise to particular kinds of people.

It makes a difference, they said,

whether you lived in a society with a high birth and death rate, where families had many children but life expectancy were short, or one on the brink of growth, or one in the early

stages of decline. Each gave rise to its own type of character. Not that everyone was the

same, but you could discern certain trays in the population and the culture as a whole. High birth and

death rate societies such as non-industrialized societies or Europe in the Middle Ages tend to give

rise to tradition-directed people. People who do

what they do because that is how things have always been done. In these societies often highly

hierarchical, the primary struggle is to stay alive. Order is preserved by ensuring that people stick rigidly to rules and roles.

Failure to do so gives rise to shame. Society is on the brink of growth, that is,

transitional societies such as Europe during the Renaissance or the Reformation, produce inner directed types.

Culture is in a state of change.

There's high personal mobility.

There's a mood of invention and exploration.

This means that people have constantly to adapt to new challenges

without losing a sense of where they're going and why,

which means facing the future while keeping faith with the past.

Such societies pay great attention to education. The young internalized the values of the group,

which stay with them through life as a way of navigating change without disorientation or dislocation. They carry their inner world

with them. Whatever they do and wherever they go. Failure in such societies is marked not by shame

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