The authors list numerous antecedents to the disintegration of a healthy culture, and argue that Hollywood, academics, journalists, and others helped normalize these antecedents. They claim that certain aspects of now-accepted modern culture are ultimately unhealthy:
They readily acknowledge that the 1940s, 50s, and 60s were far from perfect: “Was everything perfect during the period of bourgeois cultural hegemony? Of course not. There was racial discrimination, limited sex roles, and pockets of anti-Semitism. However, steady improvements for women and minorities were underway even when bourgeois norms reigned.”
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Low levels of education, premarital births, poverty, divorce, the lack of a two-parent home environment, and other related phenomena, which are often interwoven, are indeed the antecedents of anti-social behavior, joblessness, criminality, gang-involvement, drug abuse, and violence. This isn't true of every person, but for the public at large, the trend is clear.
Wax and Alexander are simply suggesting, with backing evidence, that getting married before having children, striving to avoid divorce, working hard, and integrating with society is a means to achieve a healthy and successful culture. They are working in a nuanced manner, examining and dissecting the creature of culture in order to better understand what works and what doesn't work while indeed acknowledging what doesn't work.
The authors of the complaint letter, however, due to their inability or unwillingness to think in a manner that's not binary, cannot see the good in history, only the evils of the past. As such, they toss it all out, condemning and harassing those who have a different vision, leading us back to square one.
Binary Thinking Is Preventing Us From Solving Serious Issues In American Society
All cultures are not equal. Or at least they are not equal in preparing people to be productive in an advanced economy. The culture of the Plains Indians was designed for nomadic hunters, but is not suited to a First World, 21st-century environment. Nor are the single-parent, antisocial habits, prevalent among some working-class whites; the anti-“acting white” rap culture of inner-city blacks; the anti-assimilation ideas gaining ground among some Hispanic immigrants. These cultural orientations are not only incompatible with what an advanced free-market economy and a viable democracy require, they are also destructive of a sense of solidarity and reciprocity among Americans.
They readily acknowledge that the 1940s, 50s, and 60s were far from perfect: “Was everything perfect during the period of bourgeois cultural hegemony? Of course not. There was racial discrimination, limited sex roles, and pockets of anti-Semitism. However, steady improvements for women and minorities were underway even when bourgeois norms reigned.”
[clip]
Low levels of education, premarital births, poverty, divorce, the lack of a two-parent home environment, and other related phenomena, which are often interwoven, are indeed the antecedents of anti-social behavior, joblessness, criminality, gang-involvement, drug abuse, and violence. This isn't true of every person, but for the public at large, the trend is clear.
Wax and Alexander are simply suggesting, with backing evidence, that getting married before having children, striving to avoid divorce, working hard, and integrating with society is a means to achieve a healthy and successful culture. They are working in a nuanced manner, examining and dissecting the creature of culture in order to better understand what works and what doesn't work while indeed acknowledging what doesn't work.
The authors of the complaint letter, however, due to their inability or unwillingness to think in a manner that's not binary, cannot see the good in history, only the evils of the past. As such, they toss it all out, condemning and harassing those who have a different vision, leading us back to square one.
Binary Thinking Is Preventing Us From Solving Serious Issues In American Society
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