4 ms·
> I'm not sure Duty had anything to do with nationalism, though there definitely was a "Duty to one's country" that everyone had. It seems to me that duty has
by ardy42 6y ago
> I'm not sure Duty had anything to do with nationalism, though there definitely was a "Duty to one's country" that everyone had.
It seems to me that duty has more to do with collectivist feeling in general than nationalist feeling specifically (which is just one subtype of collectivist feeling). You have duty if you belong to and care about something larger than yourself. I think what's weakened people's sense of duty is the wave after wave of increasing individualism that probably accelerated some time after WWII, and has been going on for as long as I've been alive. A big part of duty is sacrificing your individual interests for another, which has always been hard but is even harder if social attitudes don't give it much support.
- marcus_holmes 6y agoyeah, I agree with that. Duty was definitely something antithetical to individualism, although there was very much a "you must discover your duty yourself" vibe - it wasn't mandated by authority, but determined by the individual. But very much "how can I best serve society"
- ChefboyOG 6y agoI wonder if there has been a trend away from work that encourages collectivism, and if that is relevant here. In the 50s, for example, over 30% of workers in the US belonged to labor unions. Many, obviously, had also recently served in the military. The public sector had just been expanded radically by the New Deal. I can imagine that having a tangible cultural impact, particularly around our sense of collective ownership and duty.