I love this!

Entertaining, eloquent, and insightful. Very nice post.

He makes some pretty sweeping assumptions that aren't backed up in the 10 minute video, but it certainly is fodder for great discussion and additional investigation.

Wow. This is great. I have to use this!

I found every part of this lecture too simplistic to be believable. I actually felt insulted.

Very interesting.

Could this help explain why so many people feel a need to drive faster than the speed limit?

Certainly a lot of interesting ideas and research here (I'm going to assume that he has some kind of evidence for every assertion he makes). I like that he concludes that we need to change education to meet the needs of kids today rather than changing kids, which isn't going to happen. Although at the same time, I would challenge whether the way things are "traditionally" done in education was ever the best way to do it.

The only thing he says that I would take issue with is that all of those kids (boys he says, but come on, 80% of girls play video games too) playing video games "aren't being social." I know a lot of people who are researching the social aspects of video games, and while some kids may be doing it in an isolated way, most very definitely are not - the real difference isn't "social or isolated," it's new ways of being social that may or may not have long-term consequences for the way people socialize in general.

I'd say I'm a mix of past-negative and present-hedonistic. I focus on pleasure in the now to avoid the tears that come from looking back. I'm the type who waits until the last minute to work on schoolwork, but I'm smart enough to put something good together really quickly. I don't think focusing on pleasure is a bad thing. It's probably an influence of Judeo-Christian ideology that everyone thinks so--note that the artist put a devil to symbolize present-hedonism--but I'm not religious and don't think it's such a big character flaw.

Sapir-Whorf alert regarding the absence of a future tense in "Sicilian dialect." I'm going to forward this to Language Log and see what happens. (Zimbardo is of Sicilian ancestry but he seems to be saying he didn't know this until it was pointed out to him.)

while I easily identify myself as present-hedonist, and that has to count for something...

one of Zimbardo's premises is as tired and as prejudiced here as when it was made by Ortega y Gasset in the beginning of the XX Century: why why why do Europeans/USians insist in saying there are no seasons in the tropics? that the weather here is homogeneous and doesn't change? they use this imagined stability to explain why people in the tropics "don't plan ahead" since they have no need to follow the course of recurring cycles.

but this is completely false, and can be easily disproved by talking to someone who actually lives in there. many of us have plenty to say about the three month long perpetual rainstorm that constitutes the season we appropriately call "Wet", and how we have to plan around it and what it does for and to crops, livestock, communications, transportation, infrastructure, and so-called summer vacations.

I wish everyone who was so afraid of video games would pick one up every once in a while to see what they're all about. You have to be future-oriented in-game in order to win (in most games)-- save your health/mana/fairies/ammo/whatever for the boss, solve puzzles in dungeons now so that you can get past doors later, etc. I feel like pointing finger at video games and yelling "BE AFRAID OF THESE" is passing for a compelling argument among old people who don't know what they're talking about. (The random comment that he seemed to be pulling out of his ass about pornography was a bit ridiculous, too.)

Sexist, Eurocentric, puritanical... what's not to hate?

I agree this was built on a whole bunch of stereotypes and assumptions. The assertions he made about gaming, porn, productivity in different countries and ESPECIALLY religion were just not backed up by anything. I mean really, Catholics don't think about the future? I'm an atheist, so I know as an objective observer that there's no one "hardworking" religion (and if this guy thinks there is one he needs more to back it up than a vague reference to work ethic).

Weber breaks this down in The Protestant Ethic.
I think the very fact that people on this thread are taking his comments about work ethic as a slur... supports his argument.

this is likely some of the most self-righteous masculinist eurocentric psychobabble i have ever heard. a little more thorough research and a little less reliance on blatantly sexist and culturally racist stereotypes, please.

I agree with what he said about video games and approaching kids-- another sociologist and education expert was talking about that on NPR the other day and basically said that if you look at what kids remember and strategize about video games and card games, they're not only smarter than we assume they're actually insanely brilliant and blow most psych studies out of the water. But because the format of education is wrong, we aren't accessing that insane memory, logical capacity, and drive for challenging work.

That said, as soon as he starts talking about culture and latitude it kinda falls apart. It is true that different cultures go at different paces but it has NOTHING to do with latitude. It has to do with available resources in the native area to that culture. In cultures like SOME tropical jungles, or the Pacific NW, or southern Italy, food was readily available and required less work to obtain, so it's more economical to rest and focus on non-work things that help you, like community ties, having children, etc etc. In climates (or with lifestyles in any climate) where it's harder to get resources, invention and diligence take precedent (then you also have to consider that in VERY hot areas, there is a time of the day where it is dangerous to work outside and you MUST stop outdoor work). But that doesn't actually translate to "Northern Europeans/Protestants have ethic and everyone else doesn't" since some of the most industrious cultures with the hardest climates are also resource-poor-- for example, Australia's native people in the outback, the Apache in the American Southwest, the people of the Kalahari, and pretty much every circumpolar culture. I would also argue that the Protestant ethic is nothing compared to the Japanese ethic and it's eurocentric to hold up the Protestant culture as ideal.

I also thought it was strange that he briefly mentioned the trade-off in this-- the tendency for people in fast-paced, hyperindustrious societies to have higher rates of heart disease-- but then brushed it off and went on like hyperindustry was still ideal. Japan's hyperindustry, to the point where you are expected to work yourself to death, is a good example of why that mentality is only a good one when you absolutely must work super hard to survive. We don't really need to do that any more-- our culture, and ourselves, could survive with less effort thanks to technology-- but we still fetishize this idea, and it's seriously harming our health.

/and that's why I'm fighting with my mother that it's a bad idea for me to work two full-time jobs

OK, so games are correlated to boys doing poorly in school. Why not girls? Gamer girls do exist, Mr. Zimbardo, and you know what? A lot of us do pretty damn well in school, thank you very much...

The suggestion that climate helps determine future/present orientedness is an interesting one. Most of my extended family live and grew up on Vancouver Island - a warm/temperate place that is a vacation hot spot. It rarely snows there. My immediate family grew up in a cold northern city. In my family, you got out of high school, went straight to university, graduated at the top of your class, and went straight to work at a safe full time career. And you're always on time for things. When I compare my siblings to my cousins in Victoria, most of them took time off before university. Some never went and opted for jobs at Starbucks. Or they joined the ballet after a short stint as a magician. None of them are ever on time for anything. Whenever I go to Victoria, I'm always surprised at how relaxed everything is. Everyone drives slower. People take their time getting places. People seem more relaxed and less angry.

Climate may be at work here. Is it possible that people who live in warmer climates are more presented-oriented because they get more sun, which give them more Vitamin D, which makes them more relaxed and happier? I don't quite buy the theory that they don't have seasons. Victoria definitely has seasons, albeit they don't have the temperature extremes that Edmonton has.

But I think an equally important element in determining present/future orientedness may be city size. Metropolises are always fast-paced, high-strung places, in a way small cities rarely are.

I have to call BS on the "can't have family values without family dinner" too. What does that even mean? Why does eating at a table together, as opposed to doing other activities together, define family togetherness? I am so tired of that assertion being dragged out again and again.

Yes it's a "casual" talk but he is making some very large value judgements.

And hasn't there been quite a bit of research on, for example, girls who have kids as teens, that shows that at least some of them are making a rational decision in their circumstances?