Conservatism Kills
The meme that compares the present day United States to the days of the Fall of Rome has been active in our society for decades. It’s a meme that you are all familiar with, and one that many of our radical right friends embrace.
In their own minds, Delaware Liberal’s Christian theocratic commenters are doing all they can to stop us from going down the Caligula’s path. One of the biggest items in their arsenal is the club of conformity — roll back the clock, restrict people’s right to marry, tell a woman what they can and cannot do with their body, bring prayer back into the classroom, teach faith as science, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
However, it is their conformity that might be the weapon that is destroying civilization, reports Nature.
They found that conformist social learning — imitating and emulating what the majority are doing — may also cause the demise of societies. When environments remain stable for long periods, behaviour can become disconnected from environmental demands, so that when change does come, the effects are catastrophic.
[snip]
These results might explain some well-known historical crashes, say the authors. Mayan civilization famously went into free fall some 1,200 years ago — the cessation of temple building shows this — and was plausibly driven by a combination of ecological change and cultural inertia.
Similarly, Norse settlers in Greenland around AD 1000 were culturally conservative, carrying on much as they had in Scandinavia. They failed to adapt to an increasingly harsh environment or adopt the more effective behaviour of the Inuit, and eventually died out, possibly as a result of malnutrition.
But sometimes, society breaks the chains of conservatism and conformity by moving forward, embracing change. As Woody Allen famously said, “A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.” Substituting one word you get:
A nation, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark.
Moving forward, evolving, that is has always been the direction society and a country move in — a society that wants to survive and prosper. If you look at the history of England or France or the United States, you can actually track how liberalism has trumped conservatism time and time again changing society for the better.
In the last twenty years, liberalism in Eastern Europe and Russia defeated conservatism again. Over the last week, we have witnessed liberalism marching against conservatism on the streets of Tehran. And tonight in Delaware, liberalism has taken strides when the legislature passed Bill 121 to protect gays and lesbians against discrimination. We as a society are using liberalism to move forward, because if we don’t, conservatism and conformity will kill.
Tags: Delaware
The rather simplistic definitions of conservatism are misleading and border on intellectual dishonesty.
Many of our current breed of conservatives are akin to classical liberals in the European scheme of things. In the old USSR, the so-called ‘conservatives’ were the supporters of socialism at the point of a gun. The ‘liberals’ sought more individual economic freedom and the downfall of Big Brother. Note that ‘progressive’ history-cobbler Howard Zinn was a long-time Stalinist.
When Wallace tried to undermine the Truman re-election effort in 1948, he adopted the ‘progressive’ label. He did seek financial help from Moscow.
While it is essentially immaterial to your major point, the Greenland example doesn’t hold up. Its last hurrah was Jared Diamond’s poorly conceived Collapse, and Diamond actually ended up providing the fodder for other researchers to point out that the Vikings in Greenland were incredibly adaptive in the face of essentially insurmountable odds. Very few if any societies tried more and varied strategies to survive in the face of changing climate.
Again, people confused over the political meaning of conservatism. A true conservative wouldn’t be bogged down with religion or sexual discrimination. They would be for a small government which would give control to the individual and how they direct their life. Unfortunately, that definition has gone they wayside.
Besides your awesome little article dealt more with their enviroment. Oh and in the end it pretty much admits that its just their opinion.
“The validity of these prescriptions may, however, turn on further work. “We lack empirical data on human behaviour with which to test these models,” says Rendell.”
It’s an interesting hypothesis.
writing accessible e-mails kills too:
http://www.thestate.com/sanford/story/839350.html
Caligula meant “Little Boots.” It was a childhood nickname from when he was frequently dressed as a little soldier.
He wasn’t called that during his day, but came back a a term of derision after his death.
The whole story of Caligula reminds me of George W. Bush.
Yeah, I really wonder about those emails. How did the newspaper get them? Obviously the newspaper knew something was going on and hadn’t published yet?
Apparently the paper couldn’t confirm their authenticity from a second source until this week.
Best Headline in 7-11 this morning:
“Sanford and Hon”
What killed Rome was stagnation….it existed only to perpetuate its own existence.
Christianity provided a new and exciting venue for creative expression, eventually spreading throughout Europe (Lithuania was the last ‘pagan’ country in Europe).
Minoan to Greek to Roman to the Universal Church to the Western Universal state. If the pattern of the evolution of civilizations established by Toynbee holds true (A Study in History, Volumes 1-10), our civilization is likely in a state of disintegration. However, it may take decades or centuries, and the nature of the current state of affairs is speculative.
Rome also had an expanding welfare state provided free wine in the final stage. There was also a debasement of the coinage.
Obanomomics may push us to a hyperinflation in the double-digit range. The rape of the investor class could create a middle class seething with anger. These were the folks who created the French Revolution, not angry peasants.
But we have Obama, a glib shyster who, like Joe Biden, never held a real job in his life. Playing politics does not count.
Note that the Norse settlers in Greenland were prosperous during a period of global warming. This Medieval Optimum Warm Period was followed by a period of global cooling. There were crop failures and famines and social and political unrest. There were snowfalls in New England in springtime and Valley Forge did have a nasty winter. Then there was a period of global warming that began during the middle of the 19th Century.
The Chicken Little crowd may get some of the hack shysters who infest Congress to push an agenda that drastically escalates energy costs for most Americans. Our aristocrats really do not care.
When will the subjects wake up?
Hey Art, where are your articles in the climate and atmospheric science journals?
I’d love to read them.
Thanks, dude.
A1,
We ignore Art talking about anything science-related.
Anone resorts to a common sophomoric fallacy in challenging an opinion with an oblique appeal to authority.
My argument is rather clear.
There was a rather nasty Little Ice Age. Why did it start and why did it end? Were there any anthropogenic triggers at the origin and termination?
Are there long-time variances in insolation? Is specific energy density on the surface of the earth varying in proportion to that on Mars (or sensed by orbiting spacecraft)?
Is it possible that the variations in neutrino output may give a hint as to insolation variance?