Guest post: The next moral paradigm shift

Originally a comment by Artymorty on The dream has curdled.

If we’re being charitable, we can look at the The American Dream as a symbol of the moral system that America embodied for two centuries: a dignity culture: “opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.”

Sociologists have argued that societies tend to develop from honour cultures to dignity cultures to victimhood cultures as the role of government grows.

The US started out with little centralized, organized authority to keep the peace. Conflicts had to be resolved personally, so blood feuds and duels became commonplace, and honour was the moral currency of the time.

At the turn of the 19th Century following the establishment of the U.S. Constitution, the government started to become stable enough to maintain law and order, and people began to derive moral worth from demonstrating resilience and personal achievement.

That moral paradigm shift was best exemplified when Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel in order to restore his moral standing following a personal insult. The outcry that ensued showed that the honour culture Burr adhered to had been replaced by the dignity culture espoused by Hamilton. In the new moral paradigm, Burr’s act was viewed as deplorable, not respectable.

It looks like we’re in the midst of the next moral paradigm shift, to a victimhood culture. They emerge as it becomes clear that, while a moral emphasis on personal achievement does keep the peace, it does not eliminate unequal outcomes for all citizens, so appeals to authority are increasingly made to correct perceived injustices. Both the left and the right in the US appear to have taken on that mindset.

They tend to spiral out of control and bring about powerful, totalitarian states. In victim cultures, high moral worth derives from allegiance to a powerful authority (a governing body, or a collective mob) which is held up as the sole means to correct the perceived injustice that permeates the world and prevents everyone sharing in equal amounts of dignity.

Many of the countless communist revolutions across the world in the 20th Century quickly descended into bloody and brutal totalitarian regimes. Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, etc, etc.

Here in North America, whether we go MAGA or woke: both sides are hell bent on tearing down the checks and balances that keep the system from breaking down.

The moral balance between personal responsibility and appeal to authority, which the US has kept running for 200 years, is rapidly collapsing.

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