The culture wars of the last few years seem to have calmed down post-pandemic. Maybe people are more focussed on a return to the new normal than on virtue signalling on social media. Big business like the US movie industry has also realised that woke movies do not make much money.
Nonetheless I would like to put down some thoughts on the culture wars. There seems to be confusion between two things. There is the world as it is, the actual way things currently are, our imperfect world which actually exists. Then there is the world as we would like it to be. This can be to do with ideologies or political systems or way of living or whatever. There is no consensus on the world each of us would like to live in but there is a common factor that many people would like to see change for what they perceive to be better.
In the last few years a vocal minority has been getting a lot of attention on social media and mainstream media. I would contest that the vast majority of the younger generation, be that Generation Z or Millennials, are really good people with good judgment, well-intentioned, tolerant, with a sense of right and wrong and who really care about things. This is great and, I think, there has been ethical improvement compared to the previous generation or two. However, there is a loud minority who are outraged and they have been getting a lot of attention. I think part of the problem is that they are confusing these two things I mentioned earlier: the world as it is and the world as we would like it to be. So they put their expectations of the world as they would like it to be onto the world as it is, then they are outraged when the world as it is does not match their expectations. Someone once told me that expectations make people unhappy and I think there is a lot of truth in that apparently simple statement.
As well as confusion around personal expectations, there is arrogance about the details of the world as we would like it to be. There is no consensus about this. Maybe more socialism or Marxism even would make the world a better place. Or maybe more conservatism or more free-market capitalism would make the world a better place. What do we even mean with ‘a better place’? Better, how? These are important discussions and I think that it is right that students at universities ask these questions and think about how to improve the world. It is, however, just silly when they come out of their comfortable and, dare I say it, privileged university existence and impose their expectations on the world as it is. The world is a complex place, there are often unexpected consequences to our actions and, as I used to hear when I was young, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Maybe the world needs less arrogance from the loud minority. Your beliefs might be good in theory but what makes you so unshakeably certain that the theory which you learned in university is really going to make the world a better place. If it were that easy, then why is it not already so?
There is a saying that the stupid are full of confidence and the intelligent are full of doubt. Maybe we need less self-confidence among the loud, self-proclaimed ‘influencers’, maybe some healthy self-doubt is the route to a better world.