You're implicitly comparing western cultures to an imaginary perfect culture, or to modern free (Western) countries. This is not reasonable.
You should compare cultures that share similar options: those living around the same time in geographically similar regions.
>I feel like most people act pretty much the same way and organize themselves in the same way, when prosperity permits.
Saudi Arabia vs Canada today.
Japan 1937 vs Israel today.
Britain 1939 vs Germany 1939.
The only reason you don't care about Anglo Saxon culture is because you're fully immersed in it and always have been. You think that Western cultural norms are actually universal human nature. They're not. They're a quirky weird aberration held by 15% of humanity and falling.