its just crazy to use Israel as an example in the debate here.
^^^ This. Israel is an outlier in many ways.
1. Much of what is considered "Israeli culture" is largely engineered over the past 150 years. (Example: Hebrew, outside of liturgical use, was a dead language until resurrected by Ben Yehuda et al in the 19th century.)
2. Considering the prominence of Haredim and other Orthodox within Israeli society and politics, the notion that Israel and the West belong to the same "culture" is questionable at best.
3. The amount of financial, ideological, political, and military support from the West makes it nigh impossible to objectively test the claim that Israeli success is due to "culture."
Of course, the way people are using the term "culture" is ridiculous. Describing Africa, a continent with more genetic diversity than the rest of the human species
combined, as a singular "bad culture" reveals nothing more than ignorance of both Africa and the term "culture."
No modern anthropologist, sociologist, or historian buys into the idea of "superior vs. inferior cultures." The thinly-veiled racism of that sort of ethnocentrism went out of fashion in the early 20th century, and the final nail in its coffin was administered by the brutality of the Nazi regime*.
* That is not a Godwin. Cultural superiority of the "Aryan race" was a central part of Nazi ideology.
