Just got out of my Contemporary Chinese Politics class. I think I’m going to love it. Ideas came up when he was talking about theories on social change.
Soooo apparently Max Weber (kinda important fellow I guess) suggests that if you want to change the world, do it through culture. Culture lasts much longer than institutions. Some argue that culture and ethics create institutions.
How do we establish social norms without imposing ideals? In other words, how do we change the way people think and feel in a way that is intentional without being forceful?
Health care needs to become a norm, because right now it’s just not.
Maybe we need a revolution. Something Mao said that was funny: “a revolution is not a dinner party.” Just kidding, Mao-style revolution might not be the best tactic right now… what about evolution? But the evolution of culture is a much slower process.
I wish someone could teach me how to shift paradigms. Sounds simple enough.
Today Terren and I were talking about how different places have totally different expectations for their governments. Apparently in Ireland city governments don’t shovel snow for them and they find it crazy that they do here. Here we don’t expect our government to provide us healthcare but in other places it’s unthinkable for it to be any other way. The question is how did these paradigms come into being. I think it’s partly a matter of culture… our culture stresses the individual over the collective, which makes it pretty tricky to change our ideas about governance and society. The American Dream/capitalism is the wall that my mind runs into whenever I try to think about revolution of any sort in this country. Hmmmm.
Tricky indeed. So what came first, social norms or institutions? Chicken or egg. But I think–granted I have no idea what I’m talking about–that the emphasis on culture and ideals as drivers of institutions like government and law makes sense. It’s just kinda crazy that the value systems, like the American Dream and Confucianism, set in place hundreds and thousands of years ago still justify the structures and worldviews of modern societies.
It’s weird because something we describe as “just the way things are” seems external to ourselves. Something just “is.” But like you said, how did that something get there? It didn’t just happen because time passed — people must have actively changed the world. Directly or indirectly. Perhaps? I don’t know.
How do things become unthinkable?