It needn’t be one or the other. It is not logically necessary that human history, or the history of any particular society, have any kind of coherent direction, linear or cyclical or dialectic.
No, not logically necessary and “past performance does not guarantee future results.” But it provides a best bet. That said JDR’s point is quite valid. Cutural change may cycle more like bull and bear markets cycle, neverless moving somewhere over time.
To cycle back to the intent of the op … the generations themselves cycle as they grow. Look at just “The Boomers” as a case in point. They began adulthood with heavy liberal leanings and now they tend to be more concerned about their taxes and 401Ks. Perhaps those who are starting off more self-interested will become more interested in issues of social justice as they get older. According to my Schlessinger cite, each generation spends its youth coming into power and then reacting to and repudiatiating the policies that the previous generation had enacted. By that analysis, the next generation will be more concerned with issues of personal freedoms and responsibilities to each other as a reaction to the current preoccupation on limitting personal freedoms and ignoring issues of social justice.
Again, I think that generational factors may be swamped by global factors: the integration (by fits and starts) of the Islamic world into the world intellectual community; the reactionary tendencies of fundamentalist faiths of all sorts; and the economic ricochets of global business and transactions. Overall, I can’t help but conclude that a certain tolerance of divergent perspectives will be requisite as broad direction.
The “cultural war” is a Baby Boomer creation and when they start dying off 15 years from now the cultural war will die with them. Our children’s children will look back on these years and wonder what all the fuss was about.
By modern standards they were; and besides, they didn’t have to compete with modern secular states. The lack of competition helped prop them up.
It’s just like slavery, or the oppression of women. Both are unjust, and a drag on a society; but if everybody does it, your society won’t stand out for doing it. When societies discard such behaviors it becomes more obvious how foolish and self destructive they are. When the South insisted on maintaining slavery, the destructive consequences became more and more obvious over time become the North didn’t have slavery; if it had had slavery as well, them the problems caused by it wouldn’t have been blamed on slavery. They would have been considered “just the way things are”.