Whether 'we' 'realize' the correct source of the traumas that will surely come, depends on which 'we' is fed which misinfo by the misinfo bros, and whether what 'we' 'realize' is actually true.
There are a lot of people who strongly believe incorrect things - and have their entire lives. And the strength of that belief is often proportion…
Whether 'we' 'realize' the correct source of the traumas that will surely come, depends on which 'we' is fed which misinfo by the misinfo bros, and whether what 'we' 'realize' is actually true.
There are a lot of people who strongly believe incorrect things - and have their entire lives. And the strength of that belief is often proportional to its ABSENCE of objective validity.
It is NOT clear to me that there will be a 2026 corner to our current project 2025 trajectory, but I DO expect it is the best opportunity.
Mark, my apologies for not seeing your insight until now (13jan25; 1:45 p.m., E.S.T.). The hard part -- it seems to me -- is undoing that misbelief. For me to supplant a mistaken belief requires that stark enlightenment of others and an openness, perhaps commitment, by me to change. That requires a sustained effort.
Your idea could be extended to cultures. Moses taught us that it takes two generations to change a culture. Sounds impossible or disheartening. Yet one starts to eat an elephant at the first bite. Thank you, again, Mark, for disabusing me of the illusion of a Hollywood ending in 2026. But, as you imply, we must try.
Ned, agree with you here - societal change for the better takes a fair bit of time.
In just the past couple weeks I’ve referenced that same 2-3 generation time frame for fastest plausible rate of meaningful norms and ethics retrenchment. This is why civilizations fall, even when many can see it coming for decades - the enormous ship of culture & state takes too long to turn.
Edward Gibbons (in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) said the fall was the inevitable result of immoderate greatness. This is my reading of other histories as well - another that comes to mind is Paul Kennedy’s Decline of Great Powers (~1990?).
I think there would be wisdom in right-sizing governments, and US has long benefited (as well as struggled) by its frequent devolution of authority to states.
In medicine there are a number of ailments that we reverse gradually to avoid a cure worse than the disease, and we are taught to consider how long the dysfunction took to develop, as we calibrate how quickly it might safely be reversed. But I’m not sure the pathophysiological rationale in that example applies to social dysfunction. Actually it may not, since, for both better and worse, people think - and, at rare times, can be led forward instead of backward.
Social dysfunction repair has several headwinds: a) individual habit, b) mutually reinforcing community habit, c) rationalization of those habits as desirable social norms, d) ‘belief’ in those norms as truth, e) institutionalization of those beliefs in law, f) inculcation of those beliefs in the next generation via education and home training, education, and acculturation - in short, intergenerational cultural momentum.
In light of these considerations about ‘correction’ of a civilization’s (net, dysfunctional) values, one might readily see that multi decade timeframe is necessary for a societal wide revision of, say, dishonesty and greed, at minimum.
Practically, given rigidity of culture (in the past), it might seem many of such people would need to die off (‘age out’) and most of the remainder would need to have experienced an ongoing severe censure as the direct natural (or ‘karma’-like feedback) result of any such behavior/character flaws one hopes might be improved.
A few will be inspired by life experiences, a philosophy, a constructive a priori faith, to make these self improvements. But for such change, it seems the entire societal environment must become inimicable to such behaviors and characters and to remain so for a long time, before an entire society effects a net ethics revision… for the good.
And, it usually requires a widely felt hardship to be CORRECTLY attributed to those same failed values (‘ME, first’, ‘the best deception wins’, ‘greed is good’, ‘hedonism yields happiness’, ‘unregulated capitalism helps society’ etc.) to turn the ship.
The Great Depression of 1929, and the terrible years after, are an example of such a hardship that indeed reversed some of the roaring 20’s extravagance and wealth consolidation, and reset social values under 4 terms of FDR (and Francis Perkins).
Even with such a clear national trauma and such a clear cause, one can say it took the confluence of astounding leadership, a national economic collapse, a 16 year presidency, and a world war, to turn the ship.
Another book, The Great Levelers, by Walter Scheidel, also speaks to how difficult it is to turn a civilization of ever-increasing wealth/power consolidation, into one of greater equity.
In short, he says history shows it requires an apocalypse. He lists four types of such terrible societal change that have sufficed to move a state from conditions of huge wealth disparity to one harboring wider economic benefits for the population. And in most cases, the bigger the power gap, the harder the fall, & the longer before a new more even keel obtains.
Looking back over this TLDR note, I’ve mixed two entertwined but distinct topics - how long it takes for a lost civilization to recover its lost civility, and the nature of both the cataclysms and environments that are necessary but likely not sufficient to bring such change.
One missing piece is the formula for how to get from where we are to where we would better be. Aside from citing the FDR instance and the associated reset of American culture from the roaring 20’s to the shell-shocked conservative 50’s, and then the reflowering of social conscience in the 60’s, I am not prepared to say there is a process that I can espouse.
Some peoples live in a destructive and hateful internal conflict that has been their lot for a millennium. But some look at trends, learn, and (in a few decades), move forward.
But according to Scheidel, things may need to get worse before they get better, if one seeks to bring the powerful low, and raise the poor.
Have you forwarded your thoughts to Dr Richardson and / or Dr Snyder? I bet they would like reading your essay. Truth be told, my assertion of two generations to change a culture came from 'The Exodus' with Moses leading the ancient Hebrews through the desert for forty years. A former colleague had pointed that out to me. 😊
In this day with the algorithmic reinforcement of social media may make two generations unrealistic for a peaceful change. Something more difficult than evolution -- as you suggest -- may be necessary. Thank you again, Mark, for your insightful essay. 🤝
Thanks for the investment in reading it - knew you were the only audience, but I read some of your postings and thought speaking directly to you was worth my time. ;) (this thread is too stale, and too nested, I expect for any other random readers to find!) Pleasure to meet you, Ned.
Oh, get a lot of good ideas from both HCR (loved Democracy Awakening, and the similar Pulitzer book by James Cowie, Freedom's Dominion (may have mentioned) and Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny... just got the graphical version today, for my 21 yo, it's sitting on a book box in reach! Thanks for the compliment, but I'm just a 'student' on these pages!! 71 this week and still learning to write. :)
May have gotten my rough timeframe for even a small society to 'repent', from the same source as you, as a preacher's kid! Also I think about the verse saying that God visits "the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation' (or one can think of karma!), when I think about Israel and the Palestinians, the holocaust and the nakba, and the tragedy of religious entitlement that seems to bind the 'chosen' peoples of the middle east to each other's 'promised land' in conflict down through history.
Not religious (haven't been to Quaker meeting since telling my Dad my beliefs were different than his, at age 16). But there's a lot of wisdom in the ancient human stories, and an as yet undigested radical social philosophy in the teachings of Jesus the man, that most of humanity might learn from... the golden rule, & the love thy neighbor bit.
And only recently have game theorists reached a conclusion, that while tit for tat is very effective feedback (recall eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth OLD testament wisdom), that an even superior game strategy, is to every so often 'turn the other cheek', and absorb a loss, on the chance that one is in an unnecessary reciprocal conflict that can END with a single omission of 'hitting back'.
Whether 'we' 'realize' the correct source of the traumas that will surely come, depends on which 'we' is fed which misinfo by the misinfo bros, and whether what 'we' 'realize' is actually true.
There are a lot of people who strongly believe incorrect things - and have their entire lives. And the strength of that belief is often proportional to its ABSENCE of objective validity.
It is NOT clear to me that there will be a 2026 corner to our current project 2025 trajectory, but I DO expect it is the best opportunity.
Mark, my apologies for not seeing your insight until now (13jan25; 1:45 p.m., E.S.T.). The hard part -- it seems to me -- is undoing that misbelief. For me to supplant a mistaken belief requires that stark enlightenment of others and an openness, perhaps commitment, by me to change. That requires a sustained effort.
Your idea could be extended to cultures. Moses taught us that it takes two generations to change a culture. Sounds impossible or disheartening. Yet one starts to eat an elephant at the first bite. Thank you, again, Mark, for disabusing me of the illusion of a Hollywood ending in 2026. But, as you imply, we must try.
Ned, agree with you here - societal change for the better takes a fair bit of time.
In just the past couple weeks I’ve referenced that same 2-3 generation time frame for fastest plausible rate of meaningful norms and ethics retrenchment. This is why civilizations fall, even when many can see it coming for decades - the enormous ship of culture & state takes too long to turn.
Edward Gibbons (in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) said the fall was the inevitable result of immoderate greatness. This is my reading of other histories as well - another that comes to mind is Paul Kennedy’s Decline of Great Powers (~1990?).
I think there would be wisdom in right-sizing governments, and US has long benefited (as well as struggled) by its frequent devolution of authority to states.
In medicine there are a number of ailments that we reverse gradually to avoid a cure worse than the disease, and we are taught to consider how long the dysfunction took to develop, as we calibrate how quickly it might safely be reversed. But I’m not sure the pathophysiological rationale in that example applies to social dysfunction. Actually it may not, since, for both better and worse, people think - and, at rare times, can be led forward instead of backward.
Social dysfunction repair has several headwinds: a) individual habit, b) mutually reinforcing community habit, c) rationalization of those habits as desirable social norms, d) ‘belief’ in those norms as truth, e) institutionalization of those beliefs in law, f) inculcation of those beliefs in the next generation via education and home training, education, and acculturation - in short, intergenerational cultural momentum.
In light of these considerations about ‘correction’ of a civilization’s (net, dysfunctional) values, one might readily see that multi decade timeframe is necessary for a societal wide revision of, say, dishonesty and greed, at minimum.
Practically, given rigidity of culture (in the past), it might seem many of such people would need to die off (‘age out’) and most of the remainder would need to have experienced an ongoing severe censure as the direct natural (or ‘karma’-like feedback) result of any such behavior/character flaws one hopes might be improved.
A few will be inspired by life experiences, a philosophy, a constructive a priori faith, to make these self improvements. But for such change, it seems the entire societal environment must become inimicable to such behaviors and characters and to remain so for a long time, before an entire society effects a net ethics revision… for the good.
And, it usually requires a widely felt hardship to be CORRECTLY attributed to those same failed values (‘ME, first’, ‘the best deception wins’, ‘greed is good’, ‘hedonism yields happiness’, ‘unregulated capitalism helps society’ etc.) to turn the ship.
The Great Depression of 1929, and the terrible years after, are an example of such a hardship that indeed reversed some of the roaring 20’s extravagance and wealth consolidation, and reset social values under 4 terms of FDR (and Francis Perkins).
Even with such a clear national trauma and such a clear cause, one can say it took the confluence of astounding leadership, a national economic collapse, a 16 year presidency, and a world war, to turn the ship.
Another book, The Great Levelers, by Walter Scheidel, also speaks to how difficult it is to turn a civilization of ever-increasing wealth/power consolidation, into one of greater equity.
In short, he says history shows it requires an apocalypse. He lists four types of such terrible societal change that have sufficed to move a state from conditions of huge wealth disparity to one harboring wider economic benefits for the population. And in most cases, the bigger the power gap, the harder the fall, & the longer before a new more even keel obtains.
Looking back over this TLDR note, I’ve mixed two entertwined but distinct topics - how long it takes for a lost civilization to recover its lost civility, and the nature of both the cataclysms and environments that are necessary but likely not sufficient to bring such change.
One missing piece is the formula for how to get from where we are to where we would better be. Aside from citing the FDR instance and the associated reset of American culture from the roaring 20’s to the shell-shocked conservative 50’s, and then the reflowering of social conscience in the 60’s, I am not prepared to say there is a process that I can espouse.
Some peoples live in a destructive and hateful internal conflict that has been their lot for a millennium. But some look at trends, learn, and (in a few decades), move forward.
But according to Scheidel, things may need to get worse before they get better, if one seeks to bring the powerful low, and raise the poor.
Have you forwarded your thoughts to Dr Richardson and / or Dr Snyder? I bet they would like reading your essay. Truth be told, my assertion of two generations to change a culture came from 'The Exodus' with Moses leading the ancient Hebrews through the desert for forty years. A former colleague had pointed that out to me. 😊
In this day with the algorithmic reinforcement of social media may make two generations unrealistic for a peaceful change. Something more difficult than evolution -- as you suggest -- may be necessary. Thank you again, Mark, for your insightful essay. 🤝
Thanks for the investment in reading it - knew you were the only audience, but I read some of your postings and thought speaking directly to you was worth my time. ;) (this thread is too stale, and too nested, I expect for any other random readers to find!) Pleasure to meet you, Ned.
Oh, get a lot of good ideas from both HCR (loved Democracy Awakening, and the similar Pulitzer book by James Cowie, Freedom's Dominion (may have mentioned) and Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny... just got the graphical version today, for my 21 yo, it's sitting on a book box in reach! Thanks for the compliment, but I'm just a 'student' on these pages!! 71 this week and still learning to write. :)
May have gotten my rough timeframe for even a small society to 'repent', from the same source as you, as a preacher's kid! Also I think about the verse saying that God visits "the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation' (or one can think of karma!), when I think about Israel and the Palestinians, the holocaust and the nakba, and the tragedy of religious entitlement that seems to bind the 'chosen' peoples of the middle east to each other's 'promised land' in conflict down through history.
Not religious (haven't been to Quaker meeting since telling my Dad my beliefs were different than his, at age 16). But there's a lot of wisdom in the ancient human stories, and an as yet undigested radical social philosophy in the teachings of Jesus the man, that most of humanity might learn from... the golden rule, & the love thy neighbor bit.
And only recently have game theorists reached a conclusion, that while tit for tat is very effective feedback (recall eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth OLD testament wisdom), that an even superior game strategy, is to every so often 'turn the other cheek', and absorb a loss, on the chance that one is in an unnecessary reciprocal conflict that can END with a single omission of 'hitting back'.