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Wish I could up vote this a hundred times. I also wonder what happened in the 70s. A big cultural change in 'white' America that was copied/amplified in 'Blac

by drndown2007 16y ago

Wish I could up vote this a hundred times. I also wonder what happened in the 70s. A big cultural change in 'white' America that was copied/amplified in 'Black' America? I can't put my finger on it either, but there really is something concrete about 'family values' that expresses itself for generations.

lucasjung 16y ago
"I can't put my finger on it either, but there really is something concrete about 'family values' that expresses itself for generations." I wasn't around at the time, but I think that the social movements of the '60s and '70s threw the baby out with the bathwater. There were definite wrongs that needed to be fixed (segregation being the prime example), but in the process of fixing them we inadvertently damaged key aspects of our societal structure. I think that this happened because of the way our culture lumps together completely unrelated positions into strongly correlated groupings that we label "conservative" and "liberal." As a modern example, consider the fact that people's positions on gun control, abortion, and taxes all tend to correlate very strongly in our country, even though all three are orthogonal (libertarians being an example of people who buck this trend to some degree). In the '60s and '70s, bad things like racism got lumped in with many of the good things we collectively label as "family values," to the point where many of the people fighting against the bad stuff saw the good parts as being part and parcel. This carries over today: my most liberal friends consider "family values" to be an ugly euphemism for "racism," "homophobia," and "misogyny." They don't make any distinction for the good parts like "get married before you have kids," and "marriage is a serious and important commitment which requires a lifetime of compromise and sacrifice." They think that the bad parts are inherent aspects of the culture, which implies that the only way to get rid of them is to radically change the entire culture. I've even read positions more extreme than those of my friends: people who think the parts I label good, like the institution of marriage, to be part of the problem.
- drndown2007 16y ago
  Very insightful. Thanks

lucasjung 16y ago

"I can't put my finger on it either, but there really is something concrete about 'family values' that expresses itself for generations." I wasn't around at the time, but I think that the social movements of the '60s and '70s threw the baby out with the bathwater. There were definite wrongs that needed to be fixed (segregation being the prime example), but in the process of fixing them we inadvertently damaged key aspects of our societal structure. I think that this happened because of the way our culture lumps together completely unrelated positions into strongly correlated groupings that we label "conservative" and "liberal." As a modern example, consider the fact that people's positions on gun control, abortion, and taxes all tend to correlate very strongly in our country, even though all three are orthogonal (libertarians being an example of people who buck this trend to some degree). In the '60s and '70s, bad things like racism got lumped in with many of the good things we collectively label as "family values," to the point where many of the people fighting against the bad stuff saw the good parts as being part and parcel. This carries over today: my most liberal friends consider "family values" to be an ugly euphemism for "racism," "homophobia," and "misogyny." They don't make any distinction for the good parts like "get married before you have kids," and "marriage is a serious and important commitment which requires a lifetime of compromise and sacrifice." They think that the bad parts are inherent aspects of the culture, which implies that the only way to get rid of them is to radically change the entire culture. I've even read positions more extreme than those of my friends: people who think the parts I label good, like the institution of marriage, to be part of the problem.

drndown2007 16y ago
Very insightful. Thanks