Has there ever been a time before where so much social change was occuring in quick succession of each other?
I am not really someone who is well-versed in history, I never paid attention in high school, I couldn't wait to GTFO. I know what I know based solely on podcasts/debates/lectures I find on YouTube and what Hollywood brings to my attention.
from my own knowledge, periods of social change (at least in North America):
- the civil rights movement
- women's suffrage movement
- civil war (given it was fought to a great deal to end slavery)
when it comes to social changes in history that is not based in North America, I know of only the broad strokes and none of the specifics, like I know the arrival of the printing press lead to a great deal of struggle in the same way that the arrival of social media has created a struggle, just the balance of power has changed.
I also know that France went through a French Revolution that played a big part of its current political landscape and its secular status quo.
However, something I have found interesting is that within the span of <10 years, we are experiencing a reckoning on several different fronts:
- MeToo movement have rise to a long-needed discussion of sexual harassment and just a general gender reckoning in other ways too
- the murder of George Floyd and subsequent protests gave rise to a global awareness that race-related issues
- the Hamas attack on Israel has certainly pushed the discussion of Israel-Palestine to the forefront. Before the attack, I could not tell you the difference between Erdoğan and Netanyahu. That's obviously no longer the case.
But it makes me wonder if this is unprecedented in human history that so many different issues of social change are being pushed to the forefront in very quick succession of each other or this is a repeat, that it's common for a civilization that experiences one changing in the social norm, to start experiencing other social changes cause they are always in the mindset or something?
On the one hand things like video and social media have vastly improved the speed with which you can spread a message and yes I think that has an effect on the volume of change.
On the other hand I think your scope is a little odd?
MeToo was a movement, and things happened, but it's hardly the first time this has been a thing that's been looked at. It's success in effecting long lasting change is also greatly debatable.
George Floyd is hardly the first issue of its scale, we literally had the LA riots because of Rodney King, and likely will have more in the future due to similar injustices, as state authority (any state, not just the US definition) has been ripe with corruption since the beginning of history.
As for Israel/Palestine, this makes me think you're quite young (not meaning that as an insult), as just in my lifetime this issue has been pushed to the forefront multiple times. Even more for my parents.
I think my point here is that i'm not sure i'd list any of these as major catalysts of social change, or if I did I certainly wouldn't say they just started now.
Further I think historically you have to look at lots of other movements. You have things like prohibition or the hippie movement (just in the US), which pushed societal change and, depending on how you grade it, failed or faded.
I think you maybe misunderstood what I meant. I by no means was trying to say that MeToo movement was the first time there was a discussion of sexual harassment and gender equality or that George Floyd was the first time a black man being killed by the police got the attention of the people, as you rightly pointed out, Rodney King led to riots itself.
I also am not saying that the Hamas attack of Oct 7th was the first time that Israel-Palestine has been an issue.
What I am saying is that while these aspects of social change have had a consistent through-line in North American history (with the exception of Israel-Palestine), the need for social justice that MeToo movement sparked amongst the younger crowd (thinking primarily millennials followed by Gen Z) did not die away before George Floyd happened and then the Hamas terrorist attacks happened.
It makes me wonder if any other generation of people either in North America or anywhere else in any other time in history experienced such impetus for social change on different (long existing) issues in close proximity to each other.
I believe the song "we didn't start the fire" is literally inspired by a similar conversation that was had with Billy Joel
Honestly whenever I see all the bad news going on, I think about that song and laugh a bit at the irony
Like yeah bad things are happening now, but they always have been throughout history
1900-1920: modernization, electrification, industrialization, pandemic, first world war
1920-1940: great depression, prohibition, beginning of WW2
1940-1960: end of WW2, nuclear proliferation, cold war, shifting of American political parties, beginning of Korean war and other proxy wars
1960-1980: Vietnam, hippie movement, birth of computing and 'modern' technology and music, recessions and gas shortage, various drug crises, civil rights, widespread movement of sexuality
1980-2000: "end" of cold war, birth of the Internet (and the preamble to the information age), rise of terror attacks, beginning of 24 hour news cycle, operations desert storm and shield, AIDS crisis, various drug crises
2000-2024 (shut up I'm not doing one for 4 years): 9/11 and the war(s) on terror, rise of the information age, widespread movement of sexuality, various drug crises, pandemic
I'm missing so much, but generally every generation feels like this. It's normal to have way too much going on for any one person to accept or understand. Some things feel so big until we zoom out. We're living in turbulent and terrifying times, sure, but just like your grandparents complain about you being young and knowing nothing, Plato complained about the beardless youths not knowing anything as well.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Are you American? I know that I experienced some of what you're describing, and I think it really comes down to my American public school education. I was taught that the civil rights movement was over, that Israel was founded after WW2 to keep European jews safe and that the current inhabitants welcomed them, and I was taught that basically no more progress was needed for social change. We had already acheived equality in America, work is done. It made the protests in 2020 seem unprecedented to me. I think social media, for all its evils, has been a blessing when it comes to sharing human experiences. Nothing happening today is unprecedented, and unfortunately a lot of it mirrors the 1930s leading up to world war 2. We just don't have as much wool over eyes right now because people are literally livestreaming their actions. I can imagine before smartphones, I would never have even known that Bangladeshi police killed a few hundred protestors last week. Or that fascists are burning down buildings to try to kill immigrants in the UK right now. Or that there is a coup in Venezuela. But this shit has always been happening.
A fun comparison of history if you want to see some repetition, is to look at newspaper articles from the 1918 flu pandemic next to ones from 2020. Damn near identical. Don't trust the doctors! Masks are stupid! [Insert foreign nation] caused this to happen! There are even ones about the dangers of electricity that look the same as ones today about 5g conspiracies. Time is a flat circle.
I am Canadian, or as I often joke, American-lite (we absorb a lot of American culture and news as the American politics, entertainment and media industry very much penetrates in our culture)
Hmm, I am very aware that the issue being addressed are nothing new and it's a tale literally as old as the formation of Canada and America but I think I push back on the idea that the scale and interconnectedness of the reckoning is unprecedented.
I think the biggest difference is the degree to which you know about what's happening. I don't think we're anywhere unprecedented yet in terms of global conflict -- that may change in coming years, but for now I don't think we've surpassed the early 20th century. But your average Canadian guy in the early 20th century is much more likely to be ignorant of political tension in Europe than you are, because he'd have had to go out and buy a newspaper to read about it, and he'd have to find people who gave enough of a shit about it to talk about it in person if he wanted to discuss it beyond small talk. And he almost definitely knows almost nothing about the political situation in China. It's not even a guarantee he knows they don't have an emperor anymore. The world was still heavily interconnected on a higher political level at that time -- this is what made World Wars an actual thing in the 20th century. But unless you were a diplomat or politician or nobility or maybe journalist, you'd know way less about these things than we do about our equivalents today.
History is always a bunch of stuff going on at once, we have the ability of hindsight and narrative to organize it into something comprehensive. Maybe there's more stuff than usual, but the intensity is tied to our awareness to everything going on with everyone at all times, and how algorithms massage that data for engagement or political ends.
There's an old saying, "Every generation thinks it's the first to discover sex." Whether young in chronological age or education, it does appear that you are seeing things for your self for the first time. There is no shame in ignorance, only in remaining ignorant in the face of reality.
Based on my longish years and also having had many discussion with my elders around these issues, it appears we are definitely in a "clamoring" period, where many voices are shouting their displeasure with the status quo. We could be at an inflection point for a number of trends along equity and civil rights lines, we are very likely at an ecological tipping point.
But these times are neither unique or infrequent. Moving backwards in time from now, there was a relatively lulling period in America from a global view, but the explosion that elected Trump had been building since at least the 90s (see, contract with America by Newt Gingrich). Globally though, all kinds of things were happening. There were upheavals across the Global South, and there was brexit, there's was craziness in the slavic sphere. Going back not too far there was major wars in the middle east with direct involvement of the US government, starting at 9/11. The WWW got going strong in the late 90s. We resolved acid deposition and the ozone hole pretty successfully. 80's had Iran Contra, lots of environmental stuff, lost of economic upheaval as heavy industry shut down, the country started swinging right. 70's had watergate, wicked economic upheaval, lots of vietnam fallout, lots of vets with ptsd, crazy opiod addiction. The 60s. Korean War, WWII people literally thought the whole world was going to end. It keeps on going, and don't forget the actual civil war, the revolutionary war, slavery, first nation genocide, all the awful things that happened in Europe . . .
i do think there are more things happening now than before. climate crises, rising fascism, private equity buying up industries and hollowing them out, stronger pushes for equality and human rights of all types, AI, computers, smart phones, home insurers beginning to leave markets, social media itself, hostile school board takeovers, populist movements (like MAGA), the incredible power and wealth of just a few families worldwide, and so on—all happening in the same half century. and those ar ejust off the top of my head.