Has sermonizing ever in history moved the mean on virtues, for a group larger than a few hundred, for more than 1 generation?
I’m inclined to think any such effect is transient. Persistent effects can be attributed to tech making it easier to do a right thing than a wrong thing.
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I suspect automation moved the needle a lot more than sermons.
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Yep, familiar with that theory. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about general industrialization of north making it slowly less dependent on southern economy for feeding textile mills, and easier to cut it off.
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?? textile mills, like the cotton gin, automated processes downstream of raw cotton, which still depended on slave labor. pbs.org/wnet/african-a (I'll shut up now since I don't really have any deep knowledge in this area)
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Yes, that’s what I mean. The entire cotton economy was becoming less important.
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Ehh, “paradigm shifts” as Kuhn said. They aren’t really sudden, or at least they build up for decades or centuries, it just seems sudden when an old paradigm falls out of solution. Then there’s reaction and/or consolidation and the process starts again.
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Scientific paradigm shifts aren’t moral evolutions though
We just go from being classical assholes to quantum relativistic assholes.
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