Throwing a half-formed idea out there for feedback.
For the past few decades, or perhaps even centuries, it seems younger people have consistently been right in their position on social issues. Perhaps society should take that into account, and weigh their opinions more heavily. Right now, this would mean that gay marriage, marijuana legalization, abortion, etc would all very quickly become legal (In the US at least).
Possible counterarguments:
Younger people haven’t been right, they merely won the demographic battle and had their way. Current norms are worse than traditional ones.
Younger people haven’t been consistently right. They support bad ideas as often as any other group but those are rejected and forgotten.
Younger people have been consistently right, but this trend may not continue.
Younger people have been consistently right, and this will continue to be so, but it’s still a terrible idea to privilege their opinions.
I think there’s some truth to your counterarguments 1 and 2. Young people are easier to sway into any change-oriented movement, so any push for sweeping change will have a lot of youth behind it, even if it’s an older person pulling the strings and reaping the benefits.
It was the youthful Red Guards who were guilty of the worst Cultural Revolution atrocities, and Pol Pot’s regime was even more reliant on adolescent murderers killing everyone who had criminal traditional values or had received a traditional education.
In contrast, Deng Xiaoping was over 70 years old when he instituted his post Cultural Revolution reforms.
Aside from teaching basic mathematical skills and literacy, the major goal of the new educational system was to instill revolutionary values in the young. For a regime at war with most of Cambodia’s traditional values, this meant that it was necessary to create a gap between the values of the young and the values of the nonrevolutionary old.
The regime recruited children to spy on adults. The pliancy of the younger generation made them, in the Angkar’s words, the “dictatorial instrument of the party.”[citation needed] In 1962 the communists had created a special secret organisation, the Democratic Youth League, that, in the early 1970s, changed its name to the Communist Youth League of Kampuchea. Pol Pot considered Youth League alumni as his most loyal and reliable supporters, and used them to gain control of the central and of the regional CPK apparatus. The powerful Khieu Thirith, minister of social action, was responsible for directing the youth movement.
Hardened young cadres, many little more than twelve years of age, were enthusiastic accomplices in some of the regime’s worst atrocities. Sihanouk, who was kept under virtual house arrest in Phnom Penh between 1976 and 1978, wrote in War and Hope that his youthful guards, having been separated from their families and given a thorough indoctrination, were encouraged to play cruel games involving the torture of animals. Having lost parents, siblings, and friends in the war and lacking the Buddhist values of their elders, the Khmer Rouge youth also lacked the inhibitions that would have dampened their zeal for revolutionary terror.
The Nazis, Bolsheviks, and Italofascists were also Young Turk movements, although the generation gap was not quite so extreme. In the case of the Nazis, the weakened conservative Junker elite (epitomized by the elderly Paul von Hindenburg) first tried to reign them in, then tried to use them, and wound up losing everything to them.
I’m Against Moral Progress. I don’t think moral progress the way we usually talk about it is well founded. We observe moral change, then we decide since past moral change made values ever more like our present values on average, something that is nearly a tautology, the process itself must be good, despite us having no clear understanding of how it works.
Such confusion fogs many people on a similar process, evolution, having noticed they like opposable thumbs and that over time past hominids have come to resemble present hominids ever more they often imagine evolution to be an inherently good process. This is a horribly wrong perception.
Younger people haven’t been right, they merely won the demographic battle and had their way.
Young people in general are good at picking winners, and quickly adapting to what is popular. Younger people’s status quo bias will also fixate on newer norms compared to older people with aliefs the status quo is something else. Winners will also tend to try and influence them, especially in our society where voting power and public opinion grant legitimacy.
Younger people haven’t been right, but despite being a young person who has over the past 3 years drifted strongly towards traditional values, I can’t say they were wrong either. They simply had a different value set from the older generations before them.
Consider that currently monogamy or not flaying people alive is still valued both by the old and the young. We don’t feel a need to explain why this is so. But should very convincing PeopleFlayers land in Central Park (LW2014 would think this bad) or should Polyamory continue to gain ground (LW2014 would think this good) in 20 years we would be wondering why young people are into PeopleFlaying and Polyamory and older people are not as much, and if this says something important about the nature of morality.
For the past few decades, or perhaps even centuries, it seems younger people have consistently been right in their position on social issues.
I guess you’re not from a country that had Stalin Youth around in the 1970s. (We weren’t an Eastern Bloc country either, they were just useful idiots.)
1970s intelligent young American students at Harvard favored the the Khmer Rouge.
Since the U.S. incursion into Cambodia in the spring of 1970, and the subsequent saturation-bombings The Crimson has supported the Khmer Rouge in its efforts to form a revolutionary government in that country. …
In the days following the mass exodus from Phnom Penh, reports in the western press of brutality and coercion put these assumptions into doubt. But there were other reports on the exodus. William Goodfellow in the New York Times and Richard Boyle, the last American to leave Phnom Penn in the Colorado Daily reported that the exodus from major cities had been planned since February, that unless the people were moved out of the capital city they would have starved and that there was a strong possibility of a cholera epidemic. The exodus, according to these reports, was orderly; there were regroupment centers on all of the major roads leading out of Phnom Penh and people were reassigned to rural areas, where the food supplies were more plentiful.
There is no way to assess the merits of these conflicting reports—and if there were instances of brutality and coercion, we condemn them—but the goals of the exodus itself were good, and we support them. …
The new government of Cambodia may have to resort to strong measures against a few to gain democratic socialism for all Cambodians. And we support the United Front [i.e. the Khmer Rouge] in the pursuit of its presently stated goals.
Congress and the public have come to accept that the U.S. must stop interfering in Cambodia’s affairs, which will surely result in well-deserved victory of the revolutionary forces led by Prince Sihanouk and the Khmer Rouge.
The idiocy of the former group seems greater to me, because there the horrors have happened geographically closer (should switch them more to “near” mode), and they had enough time to learn about what happened (enough evidence). EDIT: On the other hand, the former group had a realistic chance to become the new leaders, while the latter praised someone who would kill every single one of them.
But otherwise, both are examples of: “yeah, seems that millions have died horribly, but our beliefs that our role models are the good guys remain unshaken.”
There is no “right and wrong”, it’s a subjective value judgement, and similar to #1, they ultimately are the one’s who’s subjective values are taken to be objectively “right”.
This gallup report suggests that views on abortion are more complicated. Young people are most likely to favor no restrictions on abortion, but also most likely to favor a categorical ban (even more likely than the 65+ crowd).
Right now, this would mean that gay marriage, marijuana legalization, abortion, etc would all very quickly become legal (In the US at least).
In the US, under-30 adults have less liberal views on abortion than middle-aged adults, and the under-30s were getting less liberal about it more quickly than older adults until 2010 or so. (Also, abortion’s been legal in the US for four decades.)
What were the equivalents of marijuana legalization and same-sex marriage 20 years ago? 40 years ago? Etc. And what policies did young people support that weren’t enacted?
Let’s see. In terms of youth subcultures, 1994 would be a little after grunge had peaked; punk would have been on its way out as a mass movement rather than a vestigial scene, but it still had some presence. Rage Against The Machine was probably the most politicized band I remember from that era, although it wasn’t linked to any particular movement so much as a generalized morass of contrarian sentiment.
Anti-globalization wouldn’t peak for another five years, but it was picking up steam. Race relations were pretty tense in the aftermath of the 1992 Rodney King riots. Tibetan independence was a popular cause. I also remember environmentalism having a lot of presence—lots of talk about deforestation, for example. I don’t remember much in the way of specific policy prescriptions, though.
Bill Clinton had just been elected, and I think he introduced his health care reform plan about that time. That one failed, but I don’t remember it showing the same generational divisions that marijuana legalization and same-sex marriage now do. ’Course, I could be wrong; I was pretty young at the time.
Are you saying that these were distinctively supported by young people?
If so, I’m skeptical that “stopping the red scare witch hunts” falls in that category, at least if you mean McCarthyism. The others seem more reasonable to me.
Which one? I mean, superficially, the second option on the list (“Non-aligned countries”) is not actually a policy proposal, but I’m assuming the charitable reading is something like “Support for non-alignment”. Is that what you meant, or something else?
Neither was ending the Vietnam war. For that matter, did the Non-Aligned movement accomplish much of anything besides providing cover for various dictators?
I considered those two options but figured that they’re more muddled cases. Africa decolonization was clearly an order of magnitude worse than the worst-case interpretations of Vietnam+Nonaligned.
Of course. The observation is that different demographics show markedly different attitudes on social issues, and that one such demographic seems to have a tendency to get things right. There are many possible counterarguments, but I am not convinced that the basic idea is unworkable.
One thing about which I feel pretty safe generalizing is that the youth has considerably higher risk tolerance than the elderly. A consequence of that is that the young will actually go out and try all the ideas which swirl around any given culture at any given time. Most will turn out to be meh, but some will turn out to be great and some—horrible.
Fast-forward about half a century and you know what? The elderly very clearly remember how, when young, they supported all the right ideas and very thoroughly forget how they supported the ideas which now decorate the dustbin of history.
Younger people haven’t been consistently right. They support bad ideas as often as any other group but those are rejected and forgotten.
This can be tested. Organize a huge youth conference that will provide dozens of new ideas. Record the ideas, wait 20 years, and review them; wait 50 years and review them yet again. Also, compare with new good things that happened meanwhile, but were not suggested at the conference.
I suggest trying to find evidence about issues that made a larger difference, such as support for Mao or for fighting major wars. Maybe there’s a principled definition of “social issues” that excludes things about which the young are wrong, but I’ll guess that it’s hard to find consensus about such a definition.
It only seems this way because of selection bias. Young people generally want to change stuff, and history/ethics is written by the victors. In cases where young people lost, the status quo was maintained, which means we don’t pay as much attention.
I think, in practice, young people would have to start voting more in order to have their opinions reflected in politics. Voter turnout among young adults is very low, so when politicians make decisions, they feel like they can safely ignore their concerns.
Throwing a half-formed idea out there for feedback.
For the past few decades, or perhaps even centuries, it seems younger people have consistently been right in their position on social issues. Perhaps society should take that into account, and weigh their opinions more heavily. Right now, this would mean that gay marriage, marijuana legalization, abortion, etc would all very quickly become legal (In the US at least).
Possible counterarguments:
Younger people haven’t been right, they merely won the demographic battle and had their way. Current norms are worse than traditional ones.
Younger people haven’t been consistently right. They support bad ideas as often as any other group but those are rejected and forgotten.
Younger people have been consistently right, but this trend may not continue.
Younger people have been consistently right, and this will continue to be so, but it’s still a terrible idea to privilege their opinions.
Thoughts?
I think there’s some truth to your counterarguments 1 and 2. Young people are easier to sway into any change-oriented movement, so any push for sweeping change will have a lot of youth behind it, even if it’s an older person pulling the strings and reaping the benefits.
It was the youthful Red Guards who were guilty of the worst Cultural Revolution atrocities, and Pol Pot’s regime was even more reliant on adolescent murderers killing everyone who had criminal traditional values or had received a traditional education.
In contrast, Deng Xiaoping was over 70 years old when he instituted his post Cultural Revolution reforms.
The Nazis, Bolsheviks, and Italofascists were also Young Turk movements, although the generation gap was not quite so extreme. In the case of the Nazis, the weakened conservative Junker elite (epitomized by the elderly Paul von Hindenburg) first tried to reign them in, then tried to use them, and wound up losing everything to them.
I’m Against Moral Progress. I don’t think moral progress the way we usually talk about it is well founded. We observe moral change, then we decide since past moral change made values ever more like our present values on average, something that is nearly a tautology, the process itself must be good, despite us having no clear understanding of how it works.
Such confusion fogs many people on a similar process, evolution, having noticed they like opposable thumbs and that over time past hominids have come to resemble present hominids ever more they often imagine evolution to be an inherently good process. This is a horribly wrong perception.
Young people in general are good at picking winners, and quickly adapting to what is popular. Younger people’s status quo bias will also fixate on newer norms compared to older people with aliefs the status quo is something else. Winners will also tend to try and influence them, especially in our society where voting power and public opinion grant legitimacy.
Younger people haven’t been right, but despite being a young person who has over the past 3 years drifted strongly towards traditional values, I can’t say they were wrong either. They simply had a different value set from the older generations before them.
Consider that currently monogamy or not flaying people alive is still valued both by the old and the young. We don’t feel a need to explain why this is so. But should very convincing PeopleFlayers land in Central Park (LW2014 would think this bad) or should Polyamory continue to gain ground (LW2014 would think this good) in 20 years we would be wondering why young people are into PeopleFlaying and Polyamory and older people are not as much, and if this says something important about the nature of morality.
I guess you’re not from a country that had Stalin Youth around in the 1970s. (We weren’t an Eastern Bloc country either, they were just useful idiots.)
1970s intelligent young American students at Harvard favored the the Khmer Rouge.
Another article “The Will of The people” concludes:
The idiocy of the former group seems greater to me, because there the horrors have happened geographically closer (should switch them more to “near” mode), and they had enough time to learn about what happened (enough evidence). EDIT: On the other hand, the former group had a realistic chance to become the new leaders, while the latter praised someone who would kill every single one of them.
But otherwise, both are examples of: “yeah, seems that millions have died horribly, but our beliefs that our role models are the good guys remain unshaken.”
Taboo “right.”
Alternatively:
There is no “right and wrong”, it’s a subjective value judgement, and similar to #1, they ultimately are the one’s who’s subjective values are taken to be objectively “right”.
This gallup report suggests that views on abortion are more complicated. Young people are most likely to favor no restrictions on abortion, but also most likely to favor a categorical ban (even more likely than the 65+ crowd).
i.e., young people are most likely to have the least complicated views on abortion!
In the US, under-30 adults have less liberal views on abortion than middle-aged adults, and the under-30s were getting less liberal about it more quickly than older adults until 2010 or so. (Also, abortion’s been legal in the US for four decades.)
What were the equivalents of marijuana legalization and same-sex marriage 20 years ago? 40 years ago? Etc. And what policies did young people support that weren’t enacted?
Let’s see. In terms of youth subcultures, 1994 would be a little after grunge had peaked; punk would have been on its way out as a mass movement rather than a vestigial scene, but it still had some presence. Rage Against The Machine was probably the most politicized band I remember from that era, although it wasn’t linked to any particular movement so much as a generalized morass of contrarian sentiment.
Anti-globalization wouldn’t peak for another five years, but it was picking up steam. Race relations were pretty tense in the aftermath of the 1992 Rodney King riots. Tibetan independence was a popular cause. I also remember environmentalism having a lot of presence—lots of talk about deforestation, for example. I don’t remember much in the way of specific policy prescriptions, though.
Bill Clinton had just been elected, and I think he introduced his health care reform plan about that time. That one failed, but I don’t remember it showing the same generational divisions that marijuana legalization and same-sex marriage now do. ’Course, I could be wrong; I was pretty young at the time.
A whole lot of things having to do with race, I believe.
This is what I don’t know, and would like to pick LW’s brains for.
Nuclear disarmament, Non-Aligned countries, decolonization of Africa, ending the Vietnam War, and stopping the red scare witch hunts.
Are you saying that these were distinctively supported by young people?
If so, I’m skeptical that “stopping the red scare witch hunts” falls in that category, at least if you mean McCarthyism. The others seem more reasonable to me.
One of these things is not like the others …
Ending the Vietnam War? Although young people in 1969 reported being more likely to sympathize with anti-war demonstrators’ goals, they were generally less likely to call the war a “mistake”, at least between 1965 & 1971.
Which one? I mean, superficially, the second option on the list (“Non-aligned countries”) is not actually a policy proposal, but I’m assuming the charitable reading is something like “Support for non-alignment”. Is that what you meant, or something else?
Decolonization of Africa.
I don’t get it. In what respect is that not like the others?
It wasn’t a good outcome.
Neither was ending the Vietnam war. For that matter, did the Non-Aligned movement accomplish much of anything besides providing cover for various dictators?
I considered those two options but figured that they’re more muddled cases. Africa decolonization was clearly an order of magnitude worse than the worst-case interpretations of Vietnam+Nonaligned.
This kind of feels like suggesting “if you notice that your tribe is becoming extinct, you should help to speed up the process”.
[Citation needed]
Not to mention that you treat “younger people” as a homogenous group which, quite clearly, it is not.
Of course. The observation is that different demographics show markedly different attitudes on social issues, and that one such demographic seems to have a tendency to get things right. There are many possible counterarguments, but I am not convinced that the basic idea is unworkable.
Let me offer you an alternate explanation.
One thing about which I feel pretty safe generalizing is that the youth has considerably higher risk tolerance than the elderly. A consequence of that is that the young will actually go out and try all the ideas which swirl around any given culture at any given time. Most will turn out to be meh, but some will turn out to be great and some—horrible.
Fast-forward about half a century and you know what? The elderly very clearly remember how, when young, they supported all the right ideas and very thoroughly forget how they supported the ideas which now decorate the dustbin of history.
Rinse and repeat for each generation.
Solvent offered this hypothesis as #2.
Yes, and I suggest a plausible mechanism for that.
I’m just saying that your first hostile comment is inappropriate and calling it “alternative” is misleading.
I rarely engage in hostilities on LW, but your readiness to assume such things is interesting :-P
Do note that the OP started by saying “Throwing a half-formed idea out there for feedback.”
This can be tested. Organize a huge youth conference that will provide dozens of new ideas. Record the ideas, wait 20 years, and review them; wait 50 years and review them yet again. Also, compare with new good things that happened meanwhile, but were not suggested at the conference.
I suggest trying to find evidence about issues that made a larger difference, such as support for Mao or for fighting major wars. Maybe there’s a principled definition of “social issues” that excludes things about which the young are wrong, but I’ll guess that it’s hard to find consensus about such a definition.
It only seems this way because of selection bias. Young people generally want to change stuff, and history/ethics is written by the victors. In cases where young people lost, the status quo was maintained, which means we don’t pay as much attention.
I think, in practice, young people would have to start voting more in order to have their opinions reflected in politics. Voter turnout among young adults is very low, so when politicians make decisions, they feel like they can safely ignore their concerns.