3 ms·
Your writing style is kind of grandiose and off-putting, and detracts from the point you are trying to make. And your point is also a bit historically melodram
by 3am 13y ago
Your writing style is kind of grandiose and off-putting, and detracts from the point you are trying to make. And your point is also a bit historically melodramatic. The French and American revolutions were both much more socially disruptive than current events, as were the 1930s and the 1960s/70s. This is not close to the "the first time in human history" that social change on the order your are predicting has occurred.
- kijin 13y agoSorry about the writing style. I've been reading a rather grandiose novel lately and it probably affected my writing. I learned English in 4 different countries, so I don't have a consistent style that I can call mine. As for your second point, of course there have been much more disruptive changes in the past. But I wasn't talking about the scale of disruption, only about the cultural backgrounds that underlie social change. Nowadays, there are much fewer common backgrounds (religious, ideological or cultural) to bind people together than ever before. Most people who are affected by your political action will not share your faith, your ancestry, or even your language. They won't even identify you as a compatriot, and you don't care for their traditions and emotional attachments, either. How do you act under such circumstances? I find this question both thrilling and worrying.
- 3am 13y agoNo worries, I meant the comments on writing style constructively and not as an attack. I'm happy you took it in that spirit. Interesting thoughts. I would look a lot more into the changes in the 1960s, though. Personally I see a lot in common.
- kijin 13y agoYes, I think the current trend is a continuation of what has been happening since the Enlightenment, and especially since the 60s. First they rejected religious authority, then they rejected a lot of the "accepted wisdom" about preordained social roles for women and visible minorities, then they began to reject the rest of traditional moral teachings regarding marriage, homosexuality, the value of a tight-knit rural community, etc. Now I think the authority-rejecting spree has reached the state as well. The state has been secularized, but it continues to reserve for itself many of the powers that medieval monarchs claimed to have been granted by God -- and more. A ripe target indeed. Unlike racism and sexism, I'm pretty sure the state will survive the scrutiny in some form or another. We can't afford anarchy. The question is, what will it look like when it re-emerges on the other side of the century?
- Apocryphon 13y agoBigotry aren't institutions to themselves, though. They're traits of society, of the state, of culture. However, maybe cultures in of itself are being rejected alongside traits such as bigotry. The baby with the bathwater.
- eevilspock 13y agoTribalism will always exist, though it may resolve around other things than religion, skin color or national allegiance. Life happens on the boundaries between chaos and stasis (what rayiner says in another comment in different words). It's not a coincidence that life depends on liquid water, the boundary between chaotic water vapor and static ice. It's not a coincidence that either too low or too high a mutation rate would break evolution. This same holds true for all other life-like complex systems such as human culture and society.
- powertower 13y agoIdealism tends to blind those that follow it.