Culture is the operating system of a society
An OS channels hardware into useful work. Culture channels a people's energy into a direction. Those mechanisms decide whether prosperity lasts.
How an operating system achieves productivity from hardware by channelising available resources is a useful picture for society. Culture is the OS for a society. It channelises energy in a direction. The mechanisms inside that OS, not only the raw talent or capital on the surface, decide what gets done.
Prosperity that appears without those mechanisms is fragile. Regions have become rich before and failed to hold it. Whether prosperity is achieved and how long it is retained depends on whether society has ways of keeping current and coming generations aware of what prosperity is, how it is made, and how it is sustained.
From X
Derived from posts on X as devendrasm: