Do all societies tend to become more socially liberal over time?

Factual Questions
1

I look at the U.S. As an example. About 120 years ago men and women went swimming nearly completely covered. In the 1920s an attempt to outlaw alcohol failed, and in 2014 we see legalization of marijuana. In the 1950s you didn’t say the word “pregnant” polite company.

These items by themselves don’t prove the trend but they are examples of how our culture seems to be marching towards a more and more liberal social climate over the long haul. There seems to be a similar trend in most western countries.

Is this true of most cultures? Are there any cultures that have followed the opposite trend over a long period of multiple generations?

2

All societies change. And any change in social conventions will involve the relaxation of some restrictions, and the introduction of others. If you focus on just one aspect of that, yes, society is becoming more socially liberal.

On matters of sexual morality, a lot of European societies became noticeably more illiberal as the nineteenth century progressed - we note the transition from a Regency sexual culture to a Victorian one, and not just in the UK. But at the same time those societies were becoming (relatively) more democratic and egalitarian. Conversely in the twentieth century and into our own time, we have seen liberalisation in sexual matters, but a degree of state intrusion into citizens lives and affairs that would have been unthinkable in the nineteenth century. And, even as we gain the right to print the word “fuck”, we encounter a whole new set of restrictions and limitations with regard to how we speak about gender, class and ethnicity. For the most part these are social, not legal, restrictions, but the OP asks about social liberalisation, not legal restriction.

3

No, of course not. There is no such thing as the general march of liberalism or even social progress even if there is such a thing except as defined by relative standards. This is a huge question you are asking about that would require whole volumes to fill. A lot of historical research is focused on such questions.

I believe my job here is to come up with a few short examples but others can add to them:

  1. Biblical creationism and fundamentalism are very recent beliefs (we are talking about 20th century, almost no one in the 1st or even 18th century believed that the Bible was to be taken literally but we have a hotbed of that today in the U.S.). Most of it came from one person just like anti-vaccine beliefs are also coming from a small group and I can’t call that liberal by any stretch of the imagination.

  2. Homosexual acceptance - that one has come and gone over time but there is nothing recent about it either. The ancient Greeks weren’t progressive at all towards women (except when they very much were) but they did love a nice chiseled male physique even if they didn’t think they were gay. Being gay wasn’t even really a concept to them nor was it to people until very recently. It was considered a perversion for a while in the U.S. 20th century but even that wasn’t typical for world history. See also housewives - those generally only existed in short bursts and places.

All of these things are relative. Many things that are considered a major sin today even by non-religious people were once widely practiced even in the U.S. including more drugs, alcohol and sex than people would even consider today. I am not kidding in the least when I say that high school students today are generally more puritanical than the real Puritans ever were and even moreso than their great-grandparents.

You can label it progressive, repressive, liberal or whatever else you want to but there is no one standard you can apply to everything.

Here are a few more examples but there are a whole lot more. If you want sexually explicit graffiti and general decadence for example, look no further to Pompeii, Italy for example. Presumably, all Roman cities around that time would make people blush today but that one got buried by a volcano and proved it once and for all.

4

I don’t see what the legalization of drugs has to do with liberalism in general but you are arguing against your own thesis here. Legalization of drugs is more of a libertarian issue than a liberal one. It was a liberal cause that instituted Prohibition mostly in the name of women and children’s rights. It was also a liberal and progressive issue that got it repealed years later because it completely failed and cranked up crime and general lawlessness. That is why I say there is no such think as general progressivism. It claims to know the outcome in advance and that one is a perfect case about why that isn’t true. You can’t have opposite policies under the same political umbrella just a few years apart and claim they are part of the same philosophical framework.

Drugs are a poor example to argue for the march of progressive ideals in general. Look up what drugs were legal in 1900 versus today and then get back to us. You used to be able to buy cocaine and heroine as patent medicine. Marijuana may be good or bad (or both) but your great-grandparents could simply walk down to the local pharmacist and buy stuff that will land you in maximum security prison today.

5

The OP displays a common presumption that Victorian social mores were something that prevailed throughout history and everywhere which is palpably untrue. The above two posters have rebutted that theory, but just to point out they in the Middle Ages brothels used to be licensed by the State and the Church.. For some reason, I can’t see Francis doing that today.

16th century Kabul had a reputation of being a hard partying, hard drinking, hedonistic town. Not today.

6

Francis is not really in a position to do that today. But this wasn’t just a Middle Ages thing; right up until the Papal States were extinguished in 1870, they had licensed brothels. The successor state to the Papal States, Italy, continued to licence and regulate brothels until 1958. And countries with generally Catholic social and political culture are, historically, much more likely to have done this (or to do it still) than more Protestant countries.

There’s two things at work here: First, the idea that the proper use of civil power is to “legislate for morality” is much stronger in the Protestant tradition than in the Catholic tradition. Catholicism always condemned prostitution and patronising prostitutes, but didn’t think that it was the role of civil power to enforce compliance. That’s why we don’t have any examples of Catholic countries trying to prohibit alcohol, to take another example. Secondly, the assumption that sexual morality is the dominant and normative aspect of morality is a Puritan one and puritanism, of course, is a stronger note in Protestant culture than in Catholic culture. So even to the extent that Catholics did seek to legislate morality, it wouldn’t have been their instinct to start with sexual morality.

7

Those aren’t restrictions. It’s just the fact that people won’t like it if you don’t attempt to be kind of understanding about who they are. That doesn’t seem illiberal.

8

“Liberal” in the US has come to mean or be associated with a bunch of things–eg, support for teacher’s unions–which don’t necessarily jive with what the OP is talking about, which I suppose is why social liberalism is what’s specified. There is of course overlap between social liberalism, classical liberalism, and “libertarianism,” though “libertarianism” as an ideology is really mostly peculiar to the US–there was a thread about this recently.

In answer to the OP, socially liberal attitudes are very much in ebb and flow. Uptight Victorian women went for treatment with what amounted to a vibrator to give them orgasmic release. Can you imagine ads in the “liberal” New York Times and the Washington Post for such treatments, even in coded language, as there were in Victorian-era newspapers?

9

Banning alcohol was not in any sense a liberal cause, any more than banning abortion is a “liberal cause” because its proponents say it is about protecting women and children.

10

Yes, they are.

See? I told you they were restrictions. You speak or write that way, you get sanctioned for it. That’s a restriction.

Depends. I’m not going to speak to you [or: there is a barrier to communication between us] if you don’t start out by already accepting, and reflecting in the language you use, certain of my attitudes and values.

Note, I’m not saying this is bad. It may be a very good thing. But whether it’s socially liberating or not is a more finely balanced question, and the answer may depend on which side of the exchange you find yourself. It is an attempt to close down debate about certain issues. Whether that’s a liberating thing depends on what those issues are, but it’s certainly not an intrinsically liberal position.

11

I think people are trying hard to think of counter-examples but the general pattern has indeed been of increasing liberalism, particularly in the developed world.

I think that as long as you give everyone an education, and give everyone a voice, then gradually societies become more liberal over time.
I don’t think there’s a slippery-slope however, as there comes a point where my freedom impinges on yours, and things get complex. And for the most part, we’re not there yet – we still deny some freedoms that don’t really affect the next man.

12

This thread is probably much more a GD topic.

When it comes to social liberalism, “subject to opprobrium of some, many, or most people” is not the same as “forbidden to say or subject to official sanction for saying so.” This is a favorite canard of, mostly, the right wing in America. Anyone can express literally any opinion here, no matter how hateful or distasteful to others, on the internet or in printed pamphlets or engraved stone tablets.

The fact ANY views–as long as they do not openly encourage violence–can be expressed in the US, is liberal. Some may not like the fact that in the US many people can disapprove of what they construe as racist speech, and express that opinion vocally and vehemently–but nothing constrains people who hold those views from expressing them just as vehemently.

Liberalism doesn’t protect anyone from being outvoted, either politically or in the court of public opinion.

13

Isn’t Pakistan itself a great recent counter example to the OP? From what I’ve read, Pakistan in the 60’s and 70’s used to be much more socially liberal than it is today.

India is also a pretty good example, but over a longer time period. The Kamasutra, the temple carvings in Khajuraho and many other places, all point towards the subcontinent being a more sexually liberated place than it became later in history.

14

I take your point, TSBG. But surely questions about social liberty are answered by looking at what society permits or restricts, rather than what just at what the law permits or restricts? The law, after all, is just one instrument of social control - and by no means the most effective.

There is a passage in I can’t remember which of Edith Wharton’s novels where a non-American character, living in New York, expects that she will be able to divorce her (deeply unpleasant) husband and have an excellent prospect of making a desirable second marriage. One of the other characters explains to her that “our laws favour divorce, but our social customs do not”. The class of man that she hopes to marry will certainly be reluctant to marry her, as a divorced woman, and she will suffer various other social consequences, should she divorce.

That was then, of course, and this is now, and divorce is much more socially acceptable. In addition, it is legally easier, but these are distinct things.

Similarly, the US has always had strong laws on freedom of speech. But what it is socially acceptable to say or write can and does vary from time to time and from milieu to milieu, and if you are asking question about how socially liberal the US is, that’s what you need to be looking at. If you are marginalised and excluded for saying certain things, then you are not socially free to say them.

It may of course be morally right that you are not free to say them. I have no problem at all with people suffering social exclusion for espousing, say, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. (And there’s no doubt that a hundred years ago you would have suffered less social consequences for explicit antisemitism than you would today.) But the OP doesn’t ask whether inexorable social liberalisation is or would be a good thing; just whether it’s a thing.

And I think the answer has to be “no”. All societies impose constraints on their members. The particular constraints that are imposed will vary from time to time, so at any time there is always some constraint that is being relaxed or dismantled and, if you just look at that, you may have a sense of constant liberalisation. But if you carry that to its logical conclusion society must eventually cease to function as all constraints disappear. I’m pretty sure that’s not a thing.

15

No, if anything its a lot more so today than it has ever been.

16

Missed Edit:
UDS, I take your bit about the differences between Catholic and Protestant. But, while we are at it, maybe its a North/South Europe divide? Tacitus seemed to think (approvingly) that Germans were much more prudish than Romans were.

As it is, I would say that the last 400 years have been bad for sexual freedoms generally, until the 1960’s. Of course that dates to the arrival syphilis from the New World. The 1960’s are just after the antibiotic revolution and the pill…hmmmmm I wonder maybe if that played a role?

17

Well, except for when they swam nude, which continued well into the lifespans of several of our posters and which nobody at the time found sexually troubling.

18

Could be. Maybe that’s why Northern Europeans embraced Protestantism with more enthusiasm than Southern Europeans. Something about all that warm Mediterranean sunshine and fruity red wine versus the long dark nights and bitter beer of the North! :slight_smile:

19

Depends on the money. If they don’t need it they become more inclusive.

20

This article is an example of where I’m coming from. It’s a four part series that chronicles how Pakistan used to be more liberal. Among other things, the examples it includes are alcohol availability, the nightclub ‘scene’ in Karachi, scantily clad tourists, and complaints about Zia ul Haq’s Islamisation. In particular, that last is one I’ve read in multiple places. Not accurate?