It seems that socially and sexually restrictive norms overpower and beat more liberal and permissive conditions every time. For example:
The supposed transition of relative female liberty to the strict patriarchal system in the Middle East (less confirmed than the subsequent examples, it might be just a lie).
Archaic Greece to Classical Greece. ON the one hand we have the so called presocratic philosophers, who dared to approach the matters of creation and working of the world from a more naturalistic as opposed to a mythological perspective, and rarely got punished, and on the other hand we have Socrates, Plato, Aristotle who were proponents of the one and only truth, strict values, etc, and dissent was commonly punished.
Preconfucian, Taoist China with Confucian China, with strict, set roles for each one in society, respect to hierarchy, conformity and of course subordination of women.
Classical Japan and feudal, militarized Japan, with the samurai ethic.
Germanic places like Scandinavia, and many other non-European places before Christianization and or islamization. IN many cases the people adopted the new values even with out the threat of arms.
Georgian period and Victorian period in Britain, perhaps the most cited example.
The end of the hippy movement, and the end of sexual revolution in sight of the aids epidemic some time later as borderline more recent examples.
Social changes that materialized under a very short span of time under severe threat, like after a rise of a harsh dictatorship, like the Islamic revolution in Iran, will not be included.
Why does the same pattern happen all of the time? Do proponents of ‘stricter’ models of society and conduct garner more support from the people? And why does that exist? Do the people feel more safe in these models? Also, once adopting this model is much more difficult to break free of it, while on the other hand slipping into a Puritanism is much easier.
I’m not sure your hypothesis is valid. Overtime in most places behavioral norms, certainly in Western Europe and North America, have become more liberal.
As examples:
Same sex relationahips and to some degree marriage is fairly normalized.
When you say “beats” are you asserting puritanism is objectively better? Or are you saying that over time puritanism replaces libertinism?
In either case IMO history shows you’re wrong. Every instance of libertinism you’ve identified was itself preceded by a more puritan era. So in that sense libertinism “beat” puritanism.
A better way to think of it is that societies oscillate between two extremist poles, spending the majority of their time in the middle half of the range, but always moving one way or the other.
Over time there is a slow secular trend of increased liberty and enlightenment imposed on the cyclical trend moving both ways. Even that supposedly trend is probably subject to minor supercycles of retreat.
I think it’s because libertine ethos tends to coincide with times of economic overabundance, and more ‘spartan’ ethos with times of more economic hardship and scarcity.
The sexual revolution of the 60s coincided with the huge economic boom America received after WWII, and likewise the less extreme ‘roaring 20s’ with the post WWI-economic boom.
Problem is people get too apathetic and carefree, and overindulge both sexually and financially, the end result is a slide into economic depression, with society becoming more austere as a backlash. Likewise people who become too undisciplined to govern themselves due to overdependence on pleasures such as porn, fast food, and cable TV become easier targets for authoritarian control than the self-disciplined and moderated.
I think this also applies to ancient Greece and Rome; during the more prosperous times, society slid into more apathetic and libertine behaviors, which contributed to the fall of Rome, and the therefore the drift into the stricter society of the dark ages.
I have a feeling that this is the direction we’re headed in now, what with the economic recession, and I can’t say it’s totally a bad thing, since much of our media and entertainment is so rancid you’d have to go back to some of the more perverted Roman emperors to find anything comparable.
I don’t think “libertinism” is the opposite of puritanism. In puritanism there are strong social pressures to conform to tightly restricted sexual mores. The opposite of that state of affairs is not individual disregard of authority or convention in sexual matters, which is the definition of libertinism. Rather it is a general loosening of sexual mores by common consent, and a reduction of social pressures in sexual matters.
In other words, a libertine is a sexual rebel. You can only be a libertine in a strict or puritanical society. There may not be a good one-word term as the opposite of puritanism, but as a concept I would call it greater freedom of thought and action in sexual matters.
Not at all, that would just mean that the society is objectively libertine, since the entire society is sexually rebellious against objective norms.
Hence if a societies individual norms conflict with objective norms, this means the society its self is deviant.
Just like how in mathematics, a crooked line is objectively crooked (abnormal) while a straight line is objectively straight (normal), even if 4 out 5 lines were crooked and the straight the odd one out in that sampling, it would still be the straight line which is normal, and the others abnormal objectively speaking.
That makes no sense, mathematics like logic, is a formal science of the universe, hence the abstract concepts have objective meanings that transcend any physical object they describe.
So again, a straight line is objectively straight, a crooked line objectively deviant. And of course the objective norms of universal laws overrule the subjective ones of individual cultures.
Just as in the theory of relativity, the objective speed of a passing train is always the same if properly measured, regardless of the individual ‘perspectives’ of the observers, such as one inside the train or one outside it.
All language is subjective, but it’s being used contextually to refer to objective realities.
Much as whether an apple is called an apple or a tuna fish, the physical object it refers to is nevertheless, still objectively the same.
Hence for example, while specific cultural notions of modesty may vary slightly, the objective concept of modesty is universal, with some cultures conforming to it, or deviating from it moreso than others.
If I understand you correctly, there are objective norms of human sexuality, but they cannot be described or defined in an objective way. Is that right?
They can be objectively defined, but if you want me to just give you a word to describe it, no, since they would be objectively defined by the formal laws of the universe, mathematics, aesthetics, etc - not “words” or “cultural rules”.
Just like the Big Bang is an objective physical concept, but whether or not it’s called the “Big Bang” or the “Big Bong” doesn’t change the concept itself, or all of the physical proofs one would have to write out to describe it in physics terms.