I know that there’s a pretty overwhelming antithesis about religion, hereabouts (there’s a lot of valid reasons, but, in my experience, it tends to originate from personal animus), but some things that you get from organized religion, are a sense of community, a very long view, and fairly strict rules about personal integrity and behavior.<p>There’s a lot less of the cutthroat competition, than you’ll see in industry and academia, and many folks plant trees that they will never use for shade.<p>Personally, I’m not religious, but have many close friends that are, and I see this mindset in action.<p>I also worked for an old-fashioned Japanese company, which had many of the same features.<p>Even though many people see these as conservative (or weak) traits, they actually work well, for development of new things.<p>Big things take time, and teams.<p>Time is supplied by people taking the long view, and making long-term plans, and teams benefit from people not stabbing each other in the back, sublimating personal goals, in favor of those of the collective, and trusting each other, and their management.
I think the question becomes "how does this behavior get rewarded?".<p>I agree with most of this, and also have experienced the positive outcomes of people thinking ahead and sublimating short term reward for long term gain (for the collective).<p>However it seems antithetical to put a reward function on it so there is this catch-22 about what makes the thing "good" also makes it difficult to achieve.