I tend to think of much of this as coming down to coalitions. Different coalitions have different norms/beliefs/etc., and what you want to do is to make more people be in coalitions that support enlightenment norms and ideas.
There seem to be three main ways that this can be achieved:
Create an enlightenment-based coalition that is so attractive that people will naturally tend to want to join it and adopt its norms.
Enter into existing coalitions and gain power in them, and then use that power to shift them towards more enlightenment norms and beliefs.
Use force to destroy the alternative non-enlightenment coalitions, thereby making people need to adopt enlightened norms and beliefs.
Option 3 seems kind of contrary to the enlightenment ideals, e.g. one option for “force” could be censoring them, but censorship violates the enlightenment norm of freedom of speech.
The other two options are basically reliant on impressing the people within the coalitions that currently disagree with enlightenment norms. But there’s a reason people follow those coalitions rather than the more pro-enlightenment ones, because they are not sufficiently impressed by the achievements and goals of enlightenment-aligned people compared to what their own coalitions have to offer. So the things that recruited people to the enlightenment-aligned groups are unlikely to work on the people in these competing groups.
Likely relevant: Raising the Sanity Waterline.
I tend to think of much of this as coming down to coalitions. Different coalitions have different norms/beliefs/etc., and what you want to do is to make more people be in coalitions that support enlightenment norms and ideas.
There seem to be three main ways that this can be achieved:
Create an enlightenment-based coalition that is so attractive that people will naturally tend to want to join it and adopt its norms.
Enter into existing coalitions and gain power in them, and then use that power to shift them towards more enlightenment norms and beliefs.
Use force to destroy the alternative non-enlightenment coalitions, thereby making people need to adopt enlightened norms and beliefs.
Option 3 seems kind of contrary to the enlightenment ideals, e.g. one option for “force” could be censoring them, but censorship violates the enlightenment norm of freedom of speech.
The other two options are basically reliant on impressing the people within the coalitions that currently disagree with enlightenment norms. But there’s a reason people follow those coalitions rather than the more pro-enlightenment ones, because they are not sufficiently impressed by the achievements and goals of enlightenment-aligned people compared to what their own coalitions have to offer. So the things that recruited people to the enlightenment-aligned groups are unlikely to work on the people in these competing groups.