I always feel like we’re off to a weird place when someone categorizes things as “western”. There are countries with radically different approaches to life and government being lumped into this weird, dated catch-all.
I found your post above really interesting, and well thought out. This said, I don’t agree that everything boils down to individualistic and conformist subcultures. I think it really does boil down, more often than not, to media consumption and skepticality.
I have members of my family that are hard-right Trump supporters. They all came from one of the largest cities in California, and now have an irrational hate for their home. I’ve spoken with them about political topics, and they aren’t capable of defending their viewpoints at all. They always seem to indicate that everyone who disagrees with them is perversely ignorant.
If anything, the cities are the conformist cultures. People who live close to others are forced to often hear viewpoints that may force them to challenge their own world views. This is often surrounding accepting others, and understanding and calling out bad behavior. In this way, there is a very real forced conformism taking place. If you’re going to live in a big city, you need to be tolerant.
And that right there… US Conservatives hate it. They don’t want to change, not even when it means shedding a cruel trait they learned from a backwards person. On the other end, the far-left can often get carried away and conflate ignorance with cruelty (e.g. An old dude calling a trans woman by the wrong pronoun by mistake.)
It’s become a vexing culture war where everyone seems to want to destroy the opposition. And it’s being stoked by foreign influences like Russia to no end, too.
Your dead on about your analysis of the “bubbles”, though. If people can’t recognize the other side is the same as them in more ways than it’s different, then this division will only grow nastier and nastier until it destroys and/or destabilizes life as we know it.
I always feel like we’re off to a weird place when someone categorizes things as “western”. There are countries with radically different approaches to life and government being lumped into this weird, dated catch-all.
I found your post above really interesting, and well thought out. This said, I don’t agree that everything boils down to individualistic and conformist subcultures. I think it really does boil down, more often than not, to media consumption and skepticality.
I have members of my family that are hard-right Trump supporters. They all came from one of the largest cities in California, and now have an irrational hate for their home. I’ve spoken with them about political topics, and they aren’t capable of defending their viewpoints at all. They always seem to indicate that everyone who disagrees with them is perversely ignorant.
If anything, the cities are the conformist cultures. People who live close to others are forced to often hear viewpoints that may force them to challenge their own world views. This is often surrounding accepting others, and understanding and calling out bad behavior. In this way, there is a very real forced conformism taking place. If you’re going to live in a big city, you need to be tolerant.
And that right there… US Conservatives hate it. They don’t want to change, not even when it means shedding a cruel trait they learned from a backwards person. On the other end, the far-left can often get carried away and conflate ignorance with cruelty (e.g. An old dude calling a trans woman by the wrong pronoun by mistake.)
It’s become a vexing culture war where everyone seems to want to destroy the opposition. And it’s being stoked by foreign influences like Russia to no end, too.
Your dead on about your analysis of the “bubbles”, though. If people can’t recognize the other side is the same as them in more ways than it’s different, then this division will only grow nastier and nastier until it destroys and/or destabilizes life as we know it.