I have too many unfinished drafts so I’m posting this in its skeletal ‘notes’ form. Perhaps I’ll flesh it out later…
“What matters is not so much what a man believes as what he does”
-Paul Johnson
The dialectic:
Thesis > Antithesis = Synthesis
Social beliefs > dissent & reaction = reform
Social beliefs are collective ideas which bind people together and help organize societies. Hierarchies, norms, currencies, political assumptions, etc. are social beliefs.
Social beliefs can assume hysterical and monstrous forms during times of stress and transition. This is the persecutory social contagion (the witch-hunt).
Witch-hunt belief attributes:
Moral dimensions
Connected to status
Includes blame & judgement
The accused (judged) are able to spread blame by accusing others (deflection)
Expressing beliefs and participating in related activities serve a social bonding role (they promote group unity against some threat)
Social beliefs can harden into orthodoxy. This tends to happen when they’re:
Moralistic/normative
Totalizing/systematic
Making universal claims
Institutionalized
Tied to penalties for contradiction or dissent (imprisonment, ridicule, loss of status)
Orthodoxies incentivize public displays of agreement and assent. They penalize resistance and nonconformity. They therefore create the conditions for hypocrisy and disingenuous/cynical display. When all the rewards lie with a certain belief system those beliefs will attract all the cowards and manipulators and psychopaths (accumulation of degrading elements).
“Persecution can only succeed with men of weak will; and then its effect is hypocrisy”
-John Locke
Reactions are shifts in social belief which consciously move away from certain ideas or features of an orthodoxy, or the orthodoxy itself. All social beliefs contain the seeds of their own destruction. The new destination is the reform.
The widespread observation of perceived hypocrisy, greed, abuse, and machiavellianism erodes the credibility of the orthodoxy.
The congealed orthodoxy also becomes stale, tedious, perfunctory. It’s closely linked to power. This process accelerates when they’re unpopular or flawed from the start, or imposed from top-down, or limited in appeal (based on religion, race, lifestyle, etc).
The odd, the brilliant, the creative desire to generate original ideas. Many begin to venture outside the boundaries. Comedy and art begin to turn against the orthodoxy and reject/oppose it. Incentives to conform begin to decline in certain avant- grade circles.
Existing problems are attributed to the orthodoxy. As nonconformists increase and are punished these incidents increase friction and controversy and generate more resistance (feedback loop).
Is this happening with social justice ideology?