The pendulum does swing back and forth, but that does not make history inevitable. We, collectively, are the ones swinging it. Nudge the crowd and you nudge the pendulum. And you are swinging it yourself in your own way.
If we collectively cash out for a sort of historical fatalism or determinism then we become like the heartless observers in the old Bruce Hornsby song, "that's just the way it is." I think we can reasonably observe where the pendulum is swinging relative to the new Pepsi generation of Zoomers, TikTokers and Twitteratti, but still reasonably speak our minds. And we should. History as wild-fluctuations of the pendulum, swinging from one extreme to another is not optimized for human flourishing. The more developed and mature a culture, the smaller the swings should be as we fine-tune for human flourishing.
In a very small way, our conversations here and elsewhere influence the movement of the swing. And isn't that why we talk to each other in the first place? To move and to be moved?
If we collectively cash out for a sort of historical fatalism or determinism then we become like the heartless observers in the old Bruce Hornsby song, "that's just the way it is." I think we can reasonably observe where the pendulum is swinging relative to the new Pepsi generation of Zoomers, TikTokers and Twitteratti, but still reasonably speak our minds. And we should. History as wild-fluctuations of the pendulum, swinging from one extreme to another is not optimized for human flourishing. The more developed and mature a culture, the smaller the swings should be as we fine-tune for human flourishing.
In a very small way, our conversations here and elsewhere influence the movement of the swing. And isn't that why we talk to each other in the first place? To move and to be moved?