Human beings are conditioned like beasts by the social institutions of the status quo, to view all change as threat. Change as opportunity is a mindset generally discouraged by those in power because it suggests the possible deterioration of the traditional power base. The debate over health care that is occurring right now is a very good example of that process.
That's essentially what I'm saying, but I wonder what allows some people to break free of their conditioning.
BTW - the social reforms you mentioned have their roots in Christianity, a fact often overlooked by secular historians...
Yeah, because christianity, and religion in general, have
always been institutions that supported equality. This can
clearly be seen when reading their holy books.
Paulo Frierre in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed makes some very good observations concerning this. However, I might point out that there is a battle that is perennial between the generations, the older generations are always attempting to conserve that which they have won, while the younger generations are relatively liberal. Conservatism is often the fruit of maturity and not the mere upholding of tradition. There are traditional values that need to be preserved and not tossed away to indulge in the youthful ideals of Hedonism.
People have a tendency to want the 'rules of the world' that applied when they were 18 to still apply when they are 65. For many, life is hard enough without having to learn new rules (change) every few years. Those are the SJ types more likely but I imagine it applies for some NT types as well.
I agree with this - I can even see it in myself already with things like music (I pine for the 90's quite often). But, this is because we are raised in that environment, which was the axiom of my proposal: if we are conditioned, or indoctrinated, so much by our childhood to want to retain the 'way things were' when we were children, then how does any change come about at all if we are given our values from our parents?
Very true if opinion polls are to be believed. They show without fail that when issues are separated and taken out of their political contexts, the majority would appear more progressive. Take health care; when people are asked about the public option and describe it as it actually is rather than what it's opponents try to paint it as being (government takeover basically), people are generally in favor of it by around a 55+-40+ margin (roughly). In this day and age at least, change comes about depending on the resolutness of the agents involved. In other words, who has the most effective public relations campaign as it relates to swaying public opinion.
If one were to take the present health care bill back to the early 1800's, it would be considered one of the most anti-american things they could conceive of. What I'm wondering is, if over several generations of those values being passed down to offspring, of being conditioned into peoples minds during school and in the media, how did things ever change so much?
Conservatism as a force fighting against change (not as a political ideology) ultimately always loses in the end but it can, generally speaking, have some value. The original idea that grows to spark any change starts off as a radical idea. Opposing the proposed change can serve to tone down the radicalization that often is a part of the original change idea. Imagine the world today if no one fought against some of the early radical ideas of the environmental movement.
I certainly agree with this. There should always be a left for every right, a skeptic for every believer, an experimentalist for every theorist, a neigh-sayer for every advocate, a dissenter for every status quo. This is why debating is such a useful tool that most would rather not utilize as it 'makes them uncomfortable'.
Ideas start with an individual or small groups that are in their day considered radical. To get it through the gauntlet of a seemingly unyielding population takes certain steps:
1. Get the idea out to a larger audience. This is usually slow and accompanied by ridicule for the original proponents.
2. As the idea gets into more peoples heads, it eventually begins to see debate both internal and external.
3. Soon the idea gets accepted as a matter of public discourse if not believed in.
4. By this point people are used to the idea and the 'shock' value of the radicalization has worn off.
5. Those who are very young when the idea first 'goes viral' (in present day terms) are much more acceptable of the idea as it's notions have always been something they have lived with.
6. Those who remember the times before the idea came out, eventually die off.
The suffragette movement took over 60 years to reach it's goals. Long enough for those who remember times before the notion of women voting was out there to die off. 50 years ago, the idea of a black president would have been abhorrent to the majority and yet last year Obama got elected and he won largely by the under 44 age group (He tied in the 44-59 age group and only lost in the 60+ age group). This seems to me to be the natural progression of change within society.
For those few of us who favor reason, it can be extremely frustrating to say the least.
I still wonder A. where the idea even orginates from, B. how one that's been so conditioned could even formulate such ideas, and C. how other conditioned individuals would accept it.
As for A, I'd propose an evolutionary approach. Evolution works by means of creating small changes, or mutations, in genes when they are passed down. While the vast majority of people will be conditioned by their upbringing, a small minority will not - these would be the small 'mutations' in the genome of a culture. These small mutations, if they work better, will survive and outlive the unchanging views of old.
For B, I'd say modern advancements allow for this to happen. The traditions of old (contrary to what blob may think, usually upheld by the popular religious beliefs) become outdated as we discover just how equal human beings actually are, and the old values get seen for how ridiculous they are, at least by those few 'mutations' that have a more rational mind - which is also imperitive for the propagating of new value systems. Without the threat of being deemed a heretic or rabble rouser, it's much easier for a rational thinker to question the status quo.
Which leads to C. Just as in biological evolution, certain ideas can survive better if they are more fit for it. The old ideas of men at the head of the household, and 'minorities' being inferior, and homosexuals being immoral, are not ideas that will survive in the long run, because scientific advances show them to be outrageously wrong, and because the ideas themselves have no merit, they serve no
practical purpose, they're not logical, and are based only on fear and the distorted idea of how things "should" be.
