Emily Dinckinson wrote:

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of victory

As he defeated — dying –
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!

She was correct.

Maybe the progressives should take note of this reality of the human spirit.
Maybe we should take a moment to realize that the balloon of progress is inflated more and more each day, squeezing conservatives against the wall of the unacceptable.
Maybe we all, the open minded folk, should acknowledge the dark clouds of global movement of population bringing the same problems back into societies that have already cleared them, more or less.

I’m not sure! Maybe!

I mean our mentality is barely out of the dark ages. Knowledge is out of the middle ages for hundreds of years, but our collective models of the world, well, they are just seeing the light. So the progressive pressure might be the new steam revolution, for the archetypes of the worlds.

But the main argument still holds: whenever you manage to make your take win remember someone lost. Viscerally, it has zero importance that the argument was obvious, or that “history” is on your side, or that, hell, facts are overwhelmingly with you. Sure, people will dissimulate as much as possible. Most will rationalize the defeat as “lessons”, but there will be a lot who will accumulate defeats.

The defeated don’t give up. They build up. They move from existence to subsistence. And when they emerge, the subsistence made them so sharp that they can pin the entire world to the ground.

Radicals were never the majority, yet since forever, a strong and determined group of people can change their entire world. And sometimes radicalization makes strong and determined groups of people.

And it is about nothing in particular. The wrong is everywhere: in science, in politics, in family life, at work, no matter the setting, the defeat of the ones in the wrong keeps piling up. And we’re all sometimes in the wrong! Sure, there is local defeat which sinks with the dying of generations. But global defeat on concepts and mentalities thrive with the passage of time because we forget how hard we’ve got the freedoms and the progress. Forgetting is the springboard of demagogues.

This year I realized we’re going back to salon manners. Ideas like etiquette gained solid support. Shunning merit because of nodding done behind closed doors is ever more common. The terms of sexist, racist, old, lame are imparted as easily as ever, but today there is a committee of those “in the know” and if they label you as such, you’re done. So medieval.

I also fear the new tech nobility, because it doesn’t matter how enlightened you are if you live in an ivory tower you’ll eventually get tired of the common people, forgetting the fact that:

Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.

Just my 2 cents,

A

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds
https://upscri.be/0d62c1/