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.
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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.