> I've noticed how casually people say, "that should be illegal" nowadays. Usually it's half-joking, but it expresses a real sentiment about how even mild transgressions are seen as legal matters.
It’s because civilization had to break down our social norms that guided humankind for thousands of years, so that we could build vast and functional social structures outside our local society and families.
A company of 1000 people is an insane achievement in human history. Ancient Rome may have had a senate, an emperor and a few generals to run the army, but in realty, there wasn’t a single sociopolitical structure larger than a few hundred people, and there really hasn’t been, until after modern times.
To do this we gave up the importance of local community, family and such, and devoted ourselves to the modern nation state. Sure there have been countries for a long time, but they used to really just be about taxes and security, and not really local security because nobody gave a rats ass if a town burned an alleged witch.
In return we got individualism and freedom. 300 years ago you would have become whatever profession your dad had, if you were a man and married if you were a woman. Today you’re free to build your own way through life.
This meant that the state suddenly became responsible for a lot of things that families and communities used to take care of though, like determining what is and isn’t allowed. Which is perfectly fine by the way, in a democratic society that values that freedom and that individuality.
The people you talk about, don’t value their freedom though, they have just really gotten used to the state being their mommy/daddy. Which is incredible dangerous but it’s also the inevitable outcome when we increasingly let radical leftists and right wingers and their identify politics dictate our public discourse.
Freedom is provocative, because not everyone agrees, and that’s just fine, but today, we’re have both leftist and right wingers wanting to use legalization to dictate virtually everything based on their identity politics.
It’s really quite terrible.