Re:What Happens After Prisoners Learn to Code?
by xyzzyz on Saturday December 14, 2019 @03:28PM
(#21791979)
As to whose culture and whose religion: itβs not clear to me the specifics matter so much as the existence of strong, broadly-shared social norms.
It definitely is nice when it is the case, but I don't think it's necessary for America's future to be successful. Certainly, for the first 150 years of its existence, the United States had very widely varying cultures and ways of life throughout. The Puritans in the north lived differently than the Scotch-Irish, who lived differently than Germans in the midwest, who lived differently than the pioneers in the west.
The difference between now and then though was that back then all those people were free to live as they felt like, and if they didn't like it, they could pick up and leave to form new communities, like for example the Mormons did when faced with hostility of people from their origins. Now, however, the mass media and powerful federal government is dictating the one and proper set of moral and social norms, and the correct way to live. People aren't free anymore to do what they want if the feds don't like it, even if their state doesn't have an issue with. Even the states expanded their reach into determining how people should live. This wouldn't have been a problem if, like you suggest, the enforced way of life was broadly shared, but it clearly isn't.
It definitely is nice when it is the case, but I don't think it's necessary for America's future to be successful. Certainly, for the first 150 years of its existence, the United States had very widely varying cultures and ways of life throughout. The Puritans in the north lived differently than the Scotch-Irish, who lived differently than Germans in the midwest, who lived differently than the pioneers in the west.
The difference between now and then though was that back then all those people were free to live as they felt like, and if they didn't like it, they could pick up and leave to form new communities, like for example the Mormons did when faced with hostility of people from their origins. Now, however, the mass media and powerful federal government is dictating the one and proper set of moral and social norms, and the correct way to live. People aren't free anymore to do what they want if the feds don't like it, even if their state doesn't have an issue with. Even the states expanded their reach into determining how people should live. This wouldn't have been a problem if, like you suggest, the enforced way of life was broadly shared, but it clearly isn't.