Culture Wars Era - is it moving into its final phase?

[Eric the Green]

(02-28-2019, 10:21 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:

(02-27-2019, 11:45 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-26-2019, 04:11 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: The Missionary Awakening followed the Civil War and the Gilded Age.  As I understand it, that 2T included a particularly strong emphasis on worldly affairs; and did not explore or trail blaze the spiritual to anywhere near the level as the Transcendental Awakening.

The Missionary Awakening wasn't entirely dead spiritually-the Missionaries were associated with traditional religion.

Your last sentence makes a good point.  The Missionaries DID focus on religion, but they defined as "doing good deeds" rather than "having an abiding faith".  They are the two poles of the religious life that pull at one another, with the "faith" group fully in command today.  Personally, I'll take the Salvation Army over the Southern Baptist Convention any day.  Simply believing is no justification for otherwise bad behavior, but the faith-community assumes it's the one and only ticket to heaven.  They're wrong!

Would this be a difference between Dionysian and Apollonian prophets? Missionaries were Apollonian and focused on ethics/morality. Transcendentals and Boomers were Dionysian and focused on having a relationship with God.

Also, back to the OP: I think the culture wars are resolved. Homosexuality and marijuana are now widely accepted all over the Anglosphere, while hard drugs are now fortunately out of fashion. The sex-positive movement has mostly died out, feminists are now firmly against porn and prostitution, and their arguments are sometimes similar to the old Christian Right. Millennials generally don't tolerate cheating on your husband or wife, although they delay marriage to give themselves time for some sexual self-discovery. Weird Satanic and Hindu-inspired cults of the last 3T are also mostly gone.


The current clash of ideologies is tribalism vs cosmopolitanism rather than Rajneesh vs Jesus.

You make some good points there. The culture wars seem to have been resolved for now in favor of some social taboos having fallen, but repression and old-fashioned morality having returned as well.

The sexual revolution will definitely return too in the next 2T, and it will be quite strong and freewheeling. Sex is something else that Americans like to suppress, traditionally, but it can't be done for long; it comes back. That doesn't necessarily mean a boom in porn and prostitution; that was not a big Awakening trend last time; it was mostly left over from the 1T or the previous 3T, and feminists have never been in favor of porn. The legalization of prostitution never got very far as a movement in the 2T, so it may not again next time. How weird the cults will be next time seems unclear to me. The next Awakening will be less drastic in its sexual and other mis-behavior, because this will not seem so attractive, considering how repressed society had been last time. I see a more peaceful and constructive approach.

The me-too movement will go away by then, but perhaps after having done its job of restraining old-fashioned male domination. In real sexual liberation, such mis-behavior is not necessary. So perhaps we can hope that in this pendulum swing, moral and cultural progress is happening.

As for the current clash of ideologies, although the immigration bashing during Trump's era does arouse tribalism and a cosmopolitan counter-movement, and globalization has been an issue because of free trade causing industrial decline and drug use, the key divide in this country remains the neo-liberal economics vs. neo or watered-down socialism, and racism (which also stokes anti-immigration) plays its role in this issue between the red and blue states. 

Classic Xer is illustrative here among posters here; the key issue remains whether people are willing to support taxes for government programs for poor and ethnic folks, or whether they are viewed as dependent freeloaders whom people who "work" are being "forced at gunpoint" to pay for in order to provide them with "free stuff." That is the key red/blue divide, along with the gun issue, which the reds feel guarantees their freedom, and the blues know that guns bring on tyranny and death. Along with this is the issue of the use of guns by police, whose frequent fear-based, gross mis-behavior is aroused by both racism and the prevalence of guns. And reaction to climate science is also based on neo-liberalism, because the deniers are afraid that government action on this will bring more "control" and more "taxes." Conspiracy theories also cloud thinking today across the ideological spectrum; the irrational has expanded during this 4T.

The culture war remains in the background. It may be mostly over for now, as the 3T has ended, but party identification by religion remains, and the fundies are Trump's and the GOP's biggest supporters. Abortion remains a hot issue, and opinions on all the other issues remains conservative among many people in the red states.