Youth Drive Cultural Drift

Young people are literally wired to challenge the status quo, to think outside the box. (more)

Strategy that an evolution could follow, would be to create a vehicle that reliably tended to start believing that the old power-structure was corrupt, and that the good of the whole tribe required their overthrow... young revolutionary's belief is honest. (more)

The young often compete with the old. For resources, attention, respect, and mates. In times of peace, stability, and practical minutia, the old have big advantages over the young. They have more skills, resources, allies, and knowledge. But the young have better looks, energy, and passionate fervor. And the young often coordinate to create contexts where they can shine. For example, a club is a space that highlights looks, energy, and passion, and suppresses talk, resources, and most skills.

On larger scales, foreign wars can be seen as advantaging the young. Soldiers tend to be young, and the spoils of war go first to them. And in defending the homeland, the young will be seen as heroes, and more will be invested in defending them than civilians. Yes a few old folks will run the military, but they are a tiny fraction of the old. In a civil war, the young will determine who are the new rulers, and who gets deposed, killed, and robbed. And in sports, which we use to hint to foreigners our readiness for war, the young shine as well. 

Even in a non-violent political conflict, activists will tend to be young, having more passion and free time, and more eager to socialize with each other via such activities. And they often try to evoke the possibility of a civil war as an implicit threat. And if the result of a political revolution is redistribution and economic and structural changes, it is activists who more influence such changes, and the old lose more having more resources to grab and investments in prior structures. 

When societies invest in sending out groups to explore and colonize other places, such groups will tend to be young, and the spoils of success will tend to go to such young. 

As many advantages of the old come from investing in prior ways of doing things, the young tend to gain from changing most everything. So the young gain more from new religions, religious revivals, new intellectual and artistic frameworks, changing fashions and technologies, changing practices, institutions, and regulations, and changing norms and values. 

In the last few centuries, we have seen fewer foreign wars, civil wars, new religions, and religious revivals. But we have had more technical, institutional, and intellectual change, and also change in wealth, density, and lifespans. All of which have given more excuses and openings to add in more changes in fashion, institutions, regulations, political alignments, norms, and values. 

As a response to these changes, I think the young have adjusted their efforts to advantage themselves. They might not be doing this consciously, but they are still doing it. So they are in fact using these openings to induce more changes in fashions, institutions, regulations, and political alignments. And they are more framing all these changes, including the fewer wars and religious changes that we see, all in terms of norms and values.

And this is my current best guess explanation for why cultural norms and values seem to change so fast these days, compared to in previous eras. This is the main opening today for inducing changes that favor the young over the old. So the young push for them, and they happen. They push for changes in as many places as they can, but typically justify other changes in terms of norm and value changes. If you oppose those changes, you must be just “on the wrong side of history.”

As rapid cultural value changes seems to be the main cause of cultural drift, this youthful eagerness for value change is a main reason our civ will soon decline. Even though we now have far more old, compared to young, than in past eras, even so our old can’t manage to reign in the young on this key front of the young-old conflict.