Perhaps it’s just my ignorance of world history but it seems that in the last century or so, in some countries, mores have changed much faster than they have in the past. I’m casting a wide net when I say 100 years, one might also say in the last half century.
For example, 100 years ago many US blacks and no woman could vote. The last US Democratic race was between a black man and a woman.
100 years ago, racists didn’t have to couch their racism, they could speak plainly and openly which is no longer the case. Interracial marriages are not controversial. No one would post a sign saying “Irish need not apply” except as a joke on St Patrick’s day.
Women having careers and not being equated with intellectually inferior domestic caretakers. Homosexuals no longer being punished but rather allowed to marry. The reduction in piety. The acceptance of evolution.
Sex, gender roles, race and religion are all topics where it’s difficult to change someone else’s mind. Yet that’s what happened.
I’m sure you can think of many more examples of social changes in the last 100 years.
What caused or allowed them to occur?
What do you think are the social changes that are coming?
Probably greater communication technology. The curve started with the printing press but really took off when the telegraph allowed instantaneous communication over long distances.
Here in the 19th century there was the abolition of slavery, atheists were allowed to become politicians, and a huge influx of people from the countryside into cities. Middle class people got the vote, then poor people got the vote. And the last real power of kings was replaced by the power of parliament. Young children were prevented from working down coal mines, and mandatory education from the age of 5 to 10, later raised to 13 was introduced.
And that’s just what I can think of on the spot of the 19th century. A century I’m much, much less familiar with than the 20th century, given that I lived in the 20th century, and not the 19th.
I would have to go with global communications, too. Everybody knows what is going on with everybody else in the world now, like we have never been able to in the history of mankind.
I would have to say global travel is part of this, too; people are travelling and moving around like never before, too.
Aside from technology, I imagine population is a big factor: the more of us there are, the more likely it is that somebody will come up with any given idea, and the easier it is for ideas to become movements.
Only in the last century has your average person gone from a state of living in fear to living in comfort. Before that time, just staying alive and fed was a pretty big concern for most people. Massive social changes had the potential to endanger your life, for all you knew.
These days your average person has the free time, education, and luxury to sit about on the internet and argue the finer points of humanistic philosophy. We’re secure enough to give change a chance. We don’t have to stick religiously to a social order where one person stays home turning out babies and cookies, and the other goes out and labors from dawn to dusk. We don’t have to cut out on familial strife by ordaining one person the master and the other the subject. All of these changes make the world more complex and hard to handle, but with the luxury to deal with that complexity, the philosophical arguments win out.
As we understand more about the natural world, we lose the bad knowledge that seemed right before. Women aren’t stupider than men. God isn’t the authority to tell us how to behave. Disease isn’t cause by the devil or bad air. Homosexuality isn’t a mental illness. Premarital sex isn’t going to damn you to hell.
Better communications, better travel, and science as said. Not just because science shows us where the old beliefs were wrong; but because the sheer effectiveness of science requires societies to develop a habit of giving scientific results primacy over political and religious dogma. Not all do of course, but that hurts them in the long run. All the prayer in the world won’t improve your tank armor or stop a plague.
The weakening or destruction of the old institutions also helps. The general collapse of aristocracy, the severe weakening of religion helped make progress possible. And related to this, the general drop in effectiveness in tyranny as a system of government; the more complex societies become, the more trying to maintain harsh controls cripples them. While at the same time, tyrannies become more effective at being tyrannical with modern technology and techniques; that increases the damage they do and leads them to self destruction.
Another subtle but important factor I think is the general acceptance of the idea of progress, social and otherwise. The belief that it can be achieved, and that it matters. “It’s traditional” or “we’ve always done it that way” are no longer considered sufficient reasons to keep doing something a particular way; while the fact that a new way of doing things is more efficient or just is considered a good enough reason to do it. And the fact that people see progress work, that societies can become more just, that they can become more free and more equitable encourages people to try.
This is sort of hinted above, but: wealth. Over the last hundred years the average standard of living in the Western world has advanced to the point where even the poorest among us (with the exception of the actual homeless) have conveniences available t
hat kings couldn’t have in prior centuries. This gives us the leisure to work on making changes to our society, whether for good or for ill.
What, the rise of a disposable culture doesn’t count under “many more social changes” as stipulated in the OP? Did people lease new chuckwagons every three years or tell themselves they needed This Year’s Grindstone in the 19th century? Constantly being told we need new stuff that’s just like what we already have simply because we’ve had it for a while is a new development, isn’t it?
No, The Tooth is making a good point - my husband and I have lots of used furniture in our house and both drive used cars, and it’s only recently that that’s become an okay thing to do.