Time was not too long ago when people knew their places in the world. A son became a lawyer because his father and grandfather were lawyers. A woman got married, had children and stayed at home. Children were seen and not heard. People went to school and stayed there till they finished their studies. Priests were seen to be all holy, knowing and, yes, celibate. Marriages were permanent. Men married women, and vice versa. All these seemed like the normal, natural flow of things.
Those who did not fit into this natural order were somewhat looked at as strange and were considered as outcasts in a way. I still remember how the few obvious gays in school were mocked and made fun of. When I was young, I heard about one or two priests leaving their orders, but those were spoken of in hushed tones. And the women who were separated and left their husbands were looked at as women of somewhat dubious reputation. They were considered too “bold†and wild to have done what they did.
The world was like a ‘50s movie where stock characters were seen as the “real†characters. If you weren’t like them or did not strive to be one, you were a weirdo or an anti-establishment guy, or simply an undesirable character. Everyone came from or strove to be of a certain acceptable template. That was just how it was.
In the ‘60s, one could begin to see the cracks in the wall. Long-haired men, braless, “liberated†women, drug use, “tuning in, turning on and dropping out†were becoming more and more common. Musical tastes where changing quickly. Displays of physical love were quite candidly expressed in songs and in public.
It seemed not too long ago when my mom pointed out a line from a Roberta Flack song that went, “The first time ever I lay with you,†and judged it as shocking and close to obscene. And yet by the very early ‘70s, the lyrics of Cat Stevens’ Father and Son, which went, “Find a girl, settle down, if you want you can marry,†were playing everywhere with hardly an eyebrow raised. “Living in†was already on the table of options for young couples, not just marriage. Things were quickly transforming almost overnight. And it was just beginning.
Now, gay rights including marriage, marijuana legalization, contraception use, the amount of sexual content in media, work, new ways of raising children and so many other controversial issues are undoubtedly gaining societal acceptance.
How did everything change? How did things become so different in just a few decades?
I am not too sure. But more important for me is why it changed, and at the pace that it did.
If all of life and civilization is about the building of common physical, psychological moral structures where people gather as societies and pledge a tacit allegiance to operate within them, are we moving backwards by giving up and turning our backs on what took us centuries to build? Are we being reckless? Are we simply destroying without building new structures in their place?
If we examine the underlying glue that held things together before things started falling apart, the dominant world software operated on the following premises: Men were superior to women and were the breadwinners. Women followed men’s orders. Good men and women were religious. The Church was God’s institution and was always correct in all matters especially regarding sexual behavior. God’s laws were black and white. Whatever the Bible said had to be followed. To have the “wrong†sexual orientation was not only shameful, it was downright sinful. These were only some of the rules that defined the world and we simply followed accordingly.
The world and life, as much as it could be controlled by society, seemed to unfold in linear fashion, not unlike the act of reading, which went from left to right suggesting an order, logic and rationality. The child was raised and entered adulthood with these sets of beliefs “coming together†inside him.
Enter the digital world where the acquisition of knowledge and the way we perceive the world has suddenly stopped being just linear, but has become intuitive. Where there used to be the math language measure of IQ, there are now at least seven intelligences that are being recognized and developed. The modes of perception have changed.
The aggressive, exponential growth of knowledge in the scientific fields and the challenge that their new data posed to the fixed beliefs and static stance of religion and society’s myths were trampling on the ways we looked at everything. The myths and beliefs could not withstand the onslaught of so much questioning. Sooner or later, the things we used to hold sacred and unquestionably true started to slip away.
A study of animals will tell us that each species has fixed ways of doing things. One can tell the type of bird by the way it builds a nest. Bees will always form beehives. Among living beings, man is the only specie that is not as predictable. Human societies are hardly static. The strong ones can become weak, and the backward and weak can be dominant at another time. And the equilibrium changes when society’s underlying beliefs lose their relevance and reach their expiry dates.
More than ever, dogmas in every field are being challenged by science and physical mobility. Ethnic purity is being diluted by mass migrations and travel. The beliefs about sexual or racial superiority are fading fast. In a world that has lost most of its boundaries, a set of new myths and values are fast emerging. So what will be holding human societies together now? What sets of values are replacing what we are quickly abandoning?
From the looks of it, here are some of its new ideals.
• People, regardless of race, sexual orientations, age, religion, economic status or any other categories they may fall into, are inherently equal and must be accorded the same rights.
• We all live in one world. If there is to be peace, it must be present everywhere. If we destroy the world, all of us eventually suffer. As a clear example, for the first time in mankind’s history, we are being called upon as one human race to address climate change, or suffer its consequences.
• The economic inequality in the world today is unconscionable and must be addressed so that more people share in the prosperity.
• Education is a human right. And it is a never-ending process.
• Religions must at the very least be tolerant of each other and must work out and embrace commonality more than differences.
• Science and spirituality must come to an understanding and respect one another’s domains.
• Solutions to problems big and small can come from anywhere, or anyone in the world.
• Everything is interconnected now, more than at any given time in mankind’s history. This fact alone opens us to greater cooperation, tolerance, maturity and understanding among all peoples.
• The sum total of all political and social movements is about ever greater involvement and freedom for everyone.
Life was not made to be static, forever playing out the game plan made by ancestors of long ago. It is a dynamic place being constantly remade in the image and likeness of its current inhabitants.
Conservatism for its own sake is fear playing out, afraid of what the new may bring. Modernity can also dangerously become like aimless rebellion, devoid of real creation or a spiral step up the evolutionary ladder seeking only to destroy the old order.
The balance can be achieved by encouraging an ever-increasing world consciousness. We need more world-centric people, those who think of themselves firstly as humans than those who still think in tribal terms.
If the talking points above are indeed as commonly shared as many would like to believe, I am optimistic of the way things are about to become.