“Norm change is more like what law would be like if lawyers did songs and dances to make their cases.”
You seem to echo Book IV in Plato’s The Republic here:
“The care of the governors should be directed to preserve music and gymnastic from innovation. Alter the songs of a country, Damon says, and you will soon end by altering its laws. The change appears innocent at first, and begins in play; but the evil soon becomes serious, working secretly upon the characters of individuals, then upon social and commercial relations, and lastly upon the institutions of a state; and there is ruin and confusion everywhere.”
If norms are things most people believe, it would seem theoretically impossible for most people to believe norms are getting worse. Yet it seems to be the norm to believe that norms are getting worse.
I've always viewed culture as more like the fashion business than the law business. Which is to say, the "leaders" don't truly lead, but fast-follow in a visible way. Their skill is early-detecting trends bubbling up from the masses and broadcasting those back out as their own ideas. They are no more in charge than a seagull flying off the bow can steer a ship.
“just not clear what decision is implied by prior precedent. “
More often, in difficult, novel cases, two or more precedents disagree regarding which decision would be appropriate. What was previously ambiguous or even contradictory previously must be articulated and made consistent.
Why were norms more stable in the past? It’s God. Without God (for cultural elites, by and large) there is no agreed upon objective basis for morality. Norms are now subject to random fads and deliberate subversion in a way that was not possible when we had God to point to as the originator of morality. I don’t see a way to stabilize culture without a return to God.
Static environment->static norms. A Dynamic environment will lead to dynamic norms, at least “in the short run,” while norms converge to something more compatible with a dynamic environment (if that is possible).
Surely true, but something is different now. The West has experienced dynamic periods in the past, but never have norms changed as wildly as in the last 50 years. The decline of Christianity and faith in God removed some cultural guardrails, enabling wilder fluctuations in (and more pervasive sabotage of) the culture than would have been possible in a religious society.
If people are ruled by uniform laws and penalized uniformly they’ll try to avoid punishment but never develop a sense of shame. If they’re inspired by the good example of admirable leaders they’ll emulate them, internalize their ethics, and themselves gradually become good. – Confucius.
The ethical is always more robust than the legal. Over time, it is the legal that should converge to the ethical, never the reverse. Laws come and go but ethics remain. – Sextus Empiricus, 200 AD.
When postwar US imported Keynesian economics, its leaders and economist deliberately gutted its moral core, as Joan Robinson, Keynes' chief collaborator, observed at the time. Now our lack of a shared moral code–accelerated by the destruction of Christianity–renders us incapable of agreeing on, let alone adhering to a plan for doing so.
Keynes: “Planning should take place in a community in which as many people as possible, both leaders and followers, wholly share your own moral position. Moderate planning will be safe if those carrying it out are rightly orientated in their minds and hearts to the moral issue.”
So robust is is their Confucian moral code that 1.4 Chinese have remained morally united for two millennia.
Keynes again: “Planning should take place in a community in which as many people as possible, both leaders and followers, wholly share your own moral position. Moderate planning will be safe if those carrying it out are rightly orientated in their minds and hearts to the moral issue.”
“Norm change is more like what law would be like if lawyers did songs and dances to make their cases.”
You seem to echo Book IV in Plato’s The Republic here:
“The care of the governors should be directed to preserve music and gymnastic from innovation. Alter the songs of a country, Damon says, and you will soon end by altering its laws. The change appears innocent at first, and begins in play; but the evil soon becomes serious, working secretly upon the characters of individuals, then upon social and commercial relations, and lastly upon the institutions of a state; and there is ruin and confusion everywhere.”
If norms are things most people believe, it would seem theoretically impossible for most people to believe norms are getting worse. Yet it seems to be the norm to believe that norms are getting worse.
A good question.
If your standards form in your youth then as you age and things change, they seem worse, no?
Norms change. The changes need not all be equally pleasing to a specific person. Many persons will find at least a few changes uncomfortable.
I've always viewed culture as more like the fashion business than the law business. Which is to say, the "leaders" don't truly lead, but fast-follow in a visible way. Their skill is early-detecting trends bubbling up from the masses and broadcasting those back out as their own ideas. They are no more in charge than a seagull flying off the bow can steer a ship.
Norms change faster now because we have more people, in better communication with each other, and so we have more innovation of all kinds.
The environment is changing faster, so norms have to change faster to adapt.
> even expect them to imitate more larger changes
Do you mean _initiate_?
“just not clear what decision is implied by prior precedent. “
More often, in difficult, novel cases, two or more precedents disagree regarding which decision would be appropriate. What was previously ambiguous or even contradictory previously must be articulated and made consistent.
Why were norms more stable in the past? It’s God. Without God (for cultural elites, by and large) there is no agreed upon objective basis for morality. Norms are now subject to random fads and deliberate subversion in a way that was not possible when we had God to point to as the originator of morality. I don’t see a way to stabilize culture without a return to God.
Economics seems like a more reasonable guide.
Static environment->static norms. A Dynamic environment will lead to dynamic norms, at least “in the short run,” while norms converge to something more compatible with a dynamic environment (if that is possible).
Surely true, but something is different now. The West has experienced dynamic periods in the past, but never have norms changed as wildly as in the last 50 years. The decline of Christianity and faith in God removed some cultural guardrails, enabling wilder fluctuations in (and more pervasive sabotage of) the culture than would have been possible in a religious society.
I really like the sentence "Norm change is more like what law would be like if lawyers did songs and dances to make their cases."
Many thanks, as always!
If people are ruled by uniform laws and penalized uniformly they’ll try to avoid punishment but never develop a sense of shame. If they’re inspired by the good example of admirable leaders they’ll emulate them, internalize their ethics, and themselves gradually become good. – Confucius.
The ethical is always more robust than the legal. Over time, it is the legal that should converge to the ethical, never the reverse. Laws come and go but ethics remain. – Sextus Empiricus, 200 AD.
When postwar US imported Keynesian economics, its leaders and economist deliberately gutted its moral core, as Joan Robinson, Keynes' chief collaborator, observed at the time. Now our lack of a shared moral code–accelerated by the destruction of Christianity–renders us incapable of agreeing on, let alone adhering to a plan for doing so.
Keynes: “Planning should take place in a community in which as many people as possible, both leaders and followers, wholly share your own moral position. Moderate planning will be safe if those carrying it out are rightly orientated in their minds and hearts to the moral issue.”
So robust is is their Confucian moral code that 1.4 Chinese have remained morally united for two millennia.
Keynes again: “Planning should take place in a community in which as many people as possible, both leaders and followers, wholly share your own moral position. Moderate planning will be safe if those carrying it out are rightly orientated in their minds and hearts to the moral issue.”