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I think something like gay rights provides a great example of hundreds of millions of people becoming drastically less judgmental over just a few decades. Of co
by ksdale 5y ago
I think something like gay rights provides a great example of hundreds of millions of people becoming drastically less judgmental over just a few decades. Of course it involves changes in the law as well, but massive cultural shifts do happen!
- laurent92 5y agoWe shouldn’t describe the past as extremely one thing. Because when I discovered there was a gay street and plenty of gay clubs in Berlin up to 1934, I started to entirely distrust a lot of things I had been taught about the past. The wedge got driven even further when I learnt Archimedes didn’t say Eureka, Galileo didn’t say “E pur se mueve!” to the pope (so… was he ever imprisoned? did Christians even question the round earth?) and the ILO 1930 treaty against slavery included all humans… except men. Until 1957. Which quite relativizes the narrative about women’s suffrage. It’s dangerous to transform History into storytelling for one cause, because it makes people distrust it profoundly.
- ksdale 5y agoYeah for sure, that's not to say it was always a certain way or that it's an inevitable march towards anything, just that massive shifts in culture do happen (and I think as your comment illustrates, cultures changes much faster than we think!). We tend to think it's easier to change the law than to change how people feel, and that's not always true.