The key difference between western people and easterners is the way we judge our own goodness. For westerners we judge ourselves by what some omnipresent being would think of us if he watched us and judged us. When we let him down we feel guilt and try our best to make it up to him. Meanwhile, eastern people judge themselves by what a hypothetical neighbour might think of them. If they do something that would look bad to a neighbour they experience shame and will take action to prove to the neighbour that they are better than that 1. A Westerner thinks themselves judged by a being with perfect knowledge of what actually happened while easterners assume they are being judged by someone with imperfect knowledge. Though in both cases the judge is a hypothetical being.
From here it's pretty easy to see why the guilt based society will perform better. They are very similar, though assuming perfect knowledge of the judge avoids so many edge cases. The shame based society has the advantage that their hypothetical judge can and does become real occasionally. While the western judge never shows himself. So it requires more advanced story telling to get people to fully subscribe to it. And these stories took time to evolve 2.
Once the belief in an omnipotent god is in place, people behave much better. Of course there are many exceptions but there is a threshold after which many institutions become possible. One of which was merchant contracts and banking which enabled younger people get into shipping and execute larger trades with the risks distributed over a number of people who can afford to take it thanks to insurance. This had the affect of creating larger markets for goods like clothing and it was these markets that gave rise to the industrial revolution 3.
Shame based societies have one big flaw that only becomes apparent in the long term. That is that they stagnate. This is a direct consequence of the easterners judge having imperfect knowledge. When a creative westerner envisions something they assume that god understands their vision and will confidently ignore any negative short term optics. While the easterner doesn't give their judge the same level of credit and so will focus on projects with good short term optics regardless of what the long term affects of those projects might be 4.
Meanwhile, guilt based societies, particularly Protestant ones, cause each person to believe they were put on earth to do the work of god. They then evaluate what they are good to determine what god wanted them to do and then wholeheartedly proceed to pursue that task. It's very clearly well adapted to creatively solving hard problems. However, it can be hard to convince others to help you since the best among them are off doing what they think god put them on the earth to do. The west and the east compliment each other perfectly in that way, like yin and yang. It would be a tragedy beyond imagination if our civilisations came into conflict. Not simply because it would be a very large war, but because there is very little overlap in our strengths and weaknesses the result would be almost pure loss. In most wars the strong gain something and in the long term humanity is better off for it. This would not be the case if the hemispheres fought. Humanity would simply be worse of. Like the right arm fighting the left.
Guilt based societies have one major flaw. Which is that not everyone is useful. When useless people try and figure out what god put them on earth to do they come up thinking they were put here to fight for others. Hence, we get overrun with lawyers and social activists looking for a problem to spend themselves on. At certain times in history these people have found genuine problems to solve. Most of the civil rights amendments were good 5. However, when they run out of real problems they don't stop. At this point they have so thoroughly removed any possibility of anything bad happening that it's not possible to even rebuild after a disaster. A large chunk of the nicer parts of LA burned down recently due to inaction of the part of the fire department. And now people can't rebuild the homes they had because approvals take so long. Plus the costs of construction have gone up so much, due to red tape, that many people don't even want to rebuild.6
This is why they perform honour killings. They know the victim and themselves did nothing wrong but that's not what matters. What matters is if it looks like they did something wrong. If it does then they will kill the person that looks guilty from the perspective of a neighbour to demonstrate their contempt for the wrong doer and prove that they hold themselves to a higher standard than that.
Constantine used Christians in most of the high positions in his administration because they were more trustworthy. They were more trustworthy because they thought god was watching them at all times.
It's commonly believed that it was the steam engine that gave rise to the industrial revolution but that was just an early invention that arrived after the demand for such an invention had been created
This is why eastern societies caught up to western societies so quickly. When the west provides the example the easterners know that their judge will hold them to that standard so they work whole heartedly to achieve it. It's not that eastern societies can't change. They can change on a dime. It's just the change needs to be perceived as expected of them by their neighbours.
The 14th amendment was intended to reduce racism and it succeeded until recently where it's now being used to enable it under the guise of DEI. This X post has an interesting discussion of feminism
It seems like people are generally better at identifying what's bad about a vision than they are at identifying what's good in it. These people end up adding friction to the creative process. Which in some cases is good. Some of the bad sides they foresee might not of been considered by the visionary. However, many of the frictions they add stick around in the form of laws and procedures. Which accumulate over time and make it harder and harder for visionaries to execute until we stagnate. But unlike the eastern style of stagnation we aren't ready to adopt any new ideas when they prove themselves. We are bound up. Truly unable to change. Here is another way of saying this. We don't freeze cold when bound up though. The pressure builds for a while until a revolution pops out.