The Clash

THE CLASH: I've done A LOT of studying on this in the last three years (for what it is worth).

I'm coming to the conclusion we're seeing a replay of the struggle between two competing worldviews (cultural realities, actually) from the 19th century.

We (as in, the Western world) have a culture that responds positively to the liberal, rational, and empirical values of the Enlightenment ("liberty, equality, fraternity") and the progress resulting from technology and the Industrial Revolution.

Characteristics include:
* individual autonomy
* abstract global ideals (multiculturalism, internationalism)
* logical thinking and public evidence
* economically mobile (mentally and geographically flexible)

And we have a culture that responds negatively to those things and resisting "progress" through the Counter-Enlightenment and Romantic Nationalism.

That culture values:
* inherited community tradition (morality, social roles, institutions)
* specific local realities over abstract global ideals
* irrational (or I'd say "transrational") feeling and private intuition over cold, objective scientific study of a dead, ultimately meaningless univers
* economically rooted (mentally and geographically traditional)

If one reads the following link and imaginatively substitute the modern and post-modern equivalents of the various technological and political entities described I believe you'll find significant connections between what OUR society is going through and what our ancestors of a century or two ago were going through.

#TwoWesternCultures

The Social Impact of the Industrial Revolution