WWII, "the greatest generation", almost all of society knew that if they united for a great purpose, they could achieve great things. Of course there were heros, but it was always the team/the group which mattered.
WWII, "the greatest generation", almost all of society knew that if they united for a great purpose, they could achieve great things. Of course there were heros, but it was always the team/the group which mattered.
Are you including the soldiers who rioted in England due to the way black American soldiers were being treated by the host country? (That is, black soldiers were being treated as equals). Meanwhile back in the states, American citizens of Japanese descent were in internment camps.
I guess "all of society" uniting entirely depends on who you define "society"
What purpose do we share?
Democracy has nothing to do with what I've asked. We live in a world of various societies each composed of distinct histories, laws, ideologies, creeds, beliefs, cultures, etc. This is as true today as it was millennia ago, before the existence of modern democracy. None of these societies are or were interchangeable, whether across space or time, and many are mutually irreconcilable with respect to one another. Historically, these differences were "settled" with massacres and revolutions, where the victors stood righteous and the losers denounced as animals, barbarians, deviants, heretics, apostates, reactionaries, terrorists, and other terms of abuse. Today, these battles are waged in parliaments and on Internet forums, where the methods are less bloody the but rhetoric and reasoning (or lack thereof) remain relatively unchanged.
Societies, as they exist in the real world, aren't simply voluntary associations of rational individuals (as much as I would like that). They are, whether by accident or design, sets of historical decisions that have accumulated currency in a sufficiently large or sufficiently powerful group of people. These same people are willing to engage in violence or coercion to defend said decisions with little concern for truth.