Re:How to Think for Yourself
by whimsicalism on Friday November 27, 2020 @12:00PM
(#25230355)
> In recent years conformists have gotten louder and louder, and more and more insistent that everyone should conform.
You grew up in America and think that? Let me guess, you think that pushing for something like trans access to bathrooms is the "conformist" position.
Based on the values my parents told me to conform to, there's been a massive collapse of conformity in the last two decades.
If one pictures the changing of norms as a process that behaves like the shifting of domain boundaries within a magnet, then you could both be right!
Re:How to Think for Yourself
by whimsicalism on Friday November 27, 2020 @12:53PM
(#25230922)
Why would I have any reason to picture it in that way?
Well, as a toy model to compare to reality to see if it improves your insight into how societal changes happen, I guess. And if it doesn't, you can discard it.
But if you entertain it, it suggests that sudden shifts in culture (acceptance of gay marriage, for example) proceed along the boundaries of social groups, where people are influenced by both their closest friends and family and the prevailing external "field", until they "flip their poles" and align with the neighbouring domain, at which point it becomes more likely that their other friends and family will do the same, and so on.
In recent years conformists have gotten louder and louder, and more and more insistent that everyone should conform.
His recent essays are his reaction to that.
It would be a strategically bad response for someone of lesser stature, but in his place he can afford to weather the storm and it's valuable for the tiny, narrow target audience of this essay to hear.