You’re right the world is a lot more accepting. No matter how much things improve and how positive the trajectory though, there will be someone online who tells us it’s not enough
You can see this playing out in real time with religion which went from societies that were highly religious to secular to militantly anti-religious, and now gen-z is suddenly some ~400% more religious than previous generations. [1] The most interesting thing is that that's also a global trend, probably owing to the relative global homogenization of societies in many ways.
[1] - https://www.axios.com/2025/05/10/religious-young-people-chri...
>He told his fellow Russians in his entourage that if their people, who often must wait in line for most goods, saw the conditions of U.S. supermarkets, "there would be a revolution."
https://www.chron.com/neighborhood/bayarea/news/article/When...
> On 2 January 1992, Yeltsin, acting as his own prime minister, began a major economic and administrative reform ordered the liberalization of foreign trade, prices, and currency. At the same time, Yeltsin followed a policy of "macroeconomic stabilization", a harsh austerity regime designed to control inflation. Under Yeltsin's stabilization programme, interest rates were raised to extremely high levels to tighten money and restrict credit. To bring state spending and revenues into balance, Yeltsin raised new taxes heavily, cut back sharply on government subsidies to industry and construction, and made steep cuts to state welfare spending.
> In early 1992, prices skyrocketed throughout Russia, and a deep credit crunch shut down many industries and brought about a protracted depression. The reforms devastated the living standards of much of the population, especially the groups dependent on Soviet-era state subsidies and welfare programs.[108] Through the 1990s, Russia's GDP fell by 50%, vast sectors of the economy were wiped out, inequality and unemployment grew dramatically, whilst incomes fell. Hyperinflation, caused by the Central Bank of Russia's loose monetary policy, wiped out many people's personal savings, and tens of millions of Russians were plunged into poverty.[109][110]
So yeah, people drank a lot and got the fuck out when they could.
>In political-left world, everybody has health care, access to housing and a liveable salary. In a political-right world, people are deported and killed, and the unlucky ones (i.e. the poor) live on the streets and can't afford to visit a doctor.
The comparable people today telling us we have have to live under constant surveillance and be subjugated by all powerful governments and government intertwined institutions and organizations or otherwise losing all our rights and practical autonomy to various collective interests don't even do us the courtesy of pretending that the goal is to everything better and nicer. They just tell us that we'll all gaslight ourselves into liking the bugs or whatever and that despite everything being worse it's somehow better because stonks up and microplastics down, or whatever other metrics they also control.
You're claiming Mao killing millions with idiotic policies (not to mention all the scapegoats he killed intentionally) was okay because he was "trying"?
Or are you talking about Stalin, Lenin, or Castro?
Who is telling you that you "have to live under constant surveillance" and so on?
You'd rather have someone run the country into the ground while lying to you about than intentions (which you're gullible enough to believe apparently, for better or worse) than not?
I have no idea what is happening in our schools these days, but obviously something is lacking.
I was born in the US, didn't have a choice!
>Around one-in-five Millennials think society would be better off if all private property were abolished.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-Finnggps7JDvgoylYYWc_onPtP...
The most fundamental problem we haven't isn't the system, but the people. It seems that all electoral systems are unable to avoid putting people in power that shouldn't be there. Look at basically every Western country and we all seem to be ruled by idiots who have no real vision for anything besides being in power. And so it's not exactly a shock that you get 'systemic' failures.
The same was true in the ancient empires with their dictators and emperors. During the time of enlightened and wise leadership they've have remarkable cities and justice that are inspiring even today. But then of course during times of power hungry hedonic idiots ruling, the societies would crumble and injustice would be ubiquitous. It was never about the system - it was always about the people. The goal should be to have a system that picks great people, but we seem yet to have discovered that. And indeed it may not exist. People that want to be in politics are the last people that should ever be allowed in politics, which poses quite the dilemma!
Doe that mean it's perfect? No, of course not, there is always room for improvement.
Conservative Muslim countries show a pattern of overwhelming male dominance in religious service attendance. At the same time, over half of the Muslims in the US are recent immigrants [1]. This raises the question to me: is the resurgence in religious service attendance among men driven primarily by a broad return to the Christian church? Or is it largely an effect of the growing Muslim population in western countries?
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/04/14/muslims-in-a...
The sex issue also seems to be just Axios' spin. By their own numbers it looks like church attendance is up 3x for women and 5x for men amongst Gen Z. Definitely a significant difference, but not really in line with their spin on the topic.
[1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2025...
To show a proper “return to religious observance” (any religion, not just Christianity) means showing a large number of people who attend religious services regularly but whose parents do not.
My hypothesis is that we’re not seeing much of a “return to religious observance” from children of parents with low/no religiosity and that nearly all of the resurgence is driven by the aforementioned religious subgroups.
Focusing on jewish women, fertility rates for different levels of religion in 2021-2023:
Ultra-orthodox 6.48
Religious 3.74
Traditional-religious 2.81
Traditional, not so religious 2.20
Not religious, secular 1.96
This also has implications for the long-term population of Earth. The claim we'll reach a "max" population sometime this century is quite silly. It'll be a local max, not a global max. Because if even a single group maintains a positive fertility rate, that group will eventually drive the population to start increasing again (and basically take ownership of the gene pool while they're at it).
There really isn’t any way to know this for a fact. The future could hold technology that allows us to expand far beyond the current population, but it also could lead to setbacks that the population never recovers from. It is reasonable to guess it’s a local max.
As an interesting factoid the Roman Empire, which for many people of the time would have had some analogs to 'the world', also had a fertility collapse prior to its end, that they tried to combat with quite strict laws, but ones which were ultimately ineffectual. Of course that was hardly the end of the story!
Is "Traditional-religious" a strict subset of "Religious"? Is Ultra-orthodox a strict subset of "Traditional-religious"? If so, it's odd that Traditional-religious has lower fertility than Religious.
tolerance is a peace treaty, but there are a ton of gaps in how we implement it because our default socially and politically is more-so based in privilege than co-existance.
If you were part of the latter, you would instantly understand why we still have a lot of work to do.
And that applies for many definitions of "normal". A person outside the "norm", in whatever category, is accepted far less than you claim. Sometimes it may not be visible or even intended, but it's there.
There's a lot of people that have woken up to this and are loving and accepting, and sometimes it can feel like this is becoming the norm when you're able to surround yourself with that kind of person... but you're right. It isn't "the norm" it just normal enough for some lucky people.
Could you please expand on that? I have no idea what you are talking about.
I think a lot of social acceptance today is a mask. It's something people put on to virtue signal in the age of social media, and they expand their appearance of tolerance as wide as is currently socially acceptable to avoid anything being used against them in the future. You can see these masks slip occasionally.
My wife was originally born in Russia. She's lived outside the country for over 2 decades, is as little aligned with that country's politics as you can be, and is generally a very likeable charismatic person.
I've seen some incredibly "tolerant" and "accepting" people (of religious, ethnic, sexual, nationality aspects) who are unaware of her nationality spurt out the most vitriolic opinions of Russians (mostly when something relevant appears in the news), sometimes pretexted with "all" or "majority". In the environment these "tolerant" people live in, Russians are an acceptable group to hate en-masse. Many other nationalities also apply.
Many times she doesn't say anything, but when she has, you can see the mask going on in real-time. "Not all", "not you", "except you", backtracking and saving face.
On a serious note, if the world is a lot more accepting, it's mostly because the youngest generations are a lot more accepting, and the more bigoted among us (which tend to skew older) are slowly dying off.
Far too slowly, I might add.
Nothing went away, it just got hidden under a thin veneer.
And they would be right. And I say that as someone who’s hard anti-woke.
You're also wrong: there were plenty of "anti-war protestors" during the Holocaust, who lost, and were wrong; plenty of radical feminists who were (and are) anti-trans; and the idea that the American Revolution was primarily about maintaining slavery has been debunked — for one thing, it was often led by Northeners who had already banned slavery. (The 1619 Project eventually conceded and issued corrections.) Environmentalist groups in the 70s doomed the planet by making it near-impossible to build nuclear energy in the US, and then later drove the US into spiraling inequality by making it near-impossible to build enough housing. Opposing eugenics was once a conservative opinion, whereas the "science" of eugenics was favored by academia — and most of the suffragettes! The largest anti-eugenics movement came from the Catholic Church.
Of course, new ideas that were better than old ideas usually came from people now termed "progressive" — the term is self-defining (if it wasn't "progress" no one would look back and call it "progressive.") But plenty of bad ideas have also come draped in the cloaks of people who term themselves progressive, and opposed by people who at the time were termed conservative: it's only in retrospect that we rewrite the people in the wrong as not-progressive, and consider the people then termed conservative as the true-progressives. Ultimately most people want good things for most people, and mainly argue — sometimes vociferously, and acrimoniously — about what the best way for that to happen is.
If you read early radfems' complaints about trans women, you'll see concerns about men infiltrating the burgeoning movement to subvert or destroy its ability to effect much-needed substantial societal improvements for women. Nowadays, internet access and 10 minutes can disabuse you of this notion – but in the past, you'd have to have talked to an out, activist trans woman (who would often adhere to a different school of feminism to you, which if anything is evidence that she is dangerous to the Cause!) or had the right zines circulated to your doorstep (not really an option until the 90s, by which time it was generally understood that Transphobia Bad, the debate was about to what extent trans women's experiences were central to the Cause ("only tangentially" versus "in every respect"), and everyone knew you could pick up a Judith Butler book from your local library), to receive evidence to the contrary.
Likewise, the Catholic Church's conservative opposition to eugenics: they raised concerns about the human rights of those subject to eugenics practices, and later added secular arguments as justification. Contrast their opposition to trans people, which is… theologically confusing, to say the least: the existence of trans people "erases differences" (Galatians 3:28), distorts the image of God (Genesis 2:22), and (I seem to remember one bishop claiming) has already killed God… somehow. (Perhaps Pontius Pilate was secretly transgender? (This is me being silly.)) The justifications are all over the place, as is characteristic of post-hoc rationalisations of Conservative bigotry: replace the vague unevidenced claims about God with vague unevidenced claims about "nature", and the Catholic claims become the same rubbish as TERF claims. (Obligatory note: many Catholics do hold coherent views on this topic: I'm talking about the overarching organisation, not the people, or even all parts of the organisation.)
Small-c conservatism is a strategy, and isn't right by accident: it's an application of the same principle as Chesterton's Fence. Capital-C Conservatism is about denying resources and happiness to perceived enemies, while harming them as much as you can rationalise while still calling yourself a good person. (There are no capital-C Conservative policies that do not involve hurting people, prohibiting social mobility, or restricting what kinds of people are allowed to exist: many of them can't possibly qualify as small-c conservative policies, because they're only "conserving" an imagined past. Anti-immigrant sentiment in North America is one example: https://xkcd.com/84/.)
To undrape the cloak, we can look at how people talk about their ideas, and how they respond to criticism. (And remember not to focus on those calling themselves "conservative". Many "progressives" are actually capital-C Conservative, with a different – but no less harmful – idealised-state-of-nature: many modern-day eugenicists work in autism "charities", promoting "progressive" torture "therapies".) Unfortunately, this does not tell us which ideas are good, and which are bad: to find that out, you have to look at reality, not study rhetoric.
Most people may want good things for most people, but many people wilfully delude themselves about what "good things" means. Those, perhaps more so than the liars, are the dangerous ones.
False dichotomy [0]. Basically a bunch of sophistry to say "all conservatism is bad."
> the existence of trans people "erases differences" (Galatians 3:28),
You can't just quote the Bible without providing a translation, and I can find no translation with this wording. I would suggest that you refrain from commenting upon other cultures that you are ignorant of, as this is a form of cultural appropriation at best, and active bigotry at worst.
Same with your supposed "quotations" of Genesis 2.
> Capital-C Conservatism is about denying resources and happiness to perceived enemies,
Apply principle of charity [1].
> [...] while harming them as much as you can rationalise while still calling yourself a good person.
> Many "progressives" are actually capital-C Conservative, with a different – but no less harmful – idealised-state-of-nature: many modern-day eugenicists work in autism "charities", promoting "progressive" torture "therapies".)
On this we can agree - I don't actually see much difference between progressives and conservatives; they all fall prey to religious and superstitious thinking. All this self-aggrandizement about how diverse and inclusive one is, all the moralizing and ethical high-horsing, is really just a series of magic incantations the progressive chants to themselves to "psychologically manage the results of living in a materially deeply unequal society," [2] without actually needing to do anything about the material reality. Not so different from the way the sinner takes a dunk in a bathtub of water and is now "born again, free from sin," doesn't take the Lord's name in vain, uses gender-neutral pronouns, and wears a crucifix or a Pride flag - take your pick of religious idol.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity
[2] Liam Kofi Bright, "White Psychodrama." https://philpapers.org/archive/BRIWP.pdf
The quotation was from Pope Francis. The Bible reference (one of Saint Paul's letters) was me being facetious. Same with the Genesis reference: transphobic Catholics cite Genesis 1, but if you try to interpret Genesis 2 by the same logic, it says the opposite (and more definitively): the bigoted reading is eisegesis, and not even particularly good eisegesis.
For the record: I also think "my" reading of Genesis 2:22 is eisegesis. Very little of the Bible has to do with trans people specifically. Those passages of the Old Testament which do are best interpreted by an Orthodox rabbi, since they can't really be understood out of context (which hardly anyone else bothers with learning); and the few things Jesus is recorded as having said about trans people (that is, people who'd fall under the modern umbrella category "transgender") were positive; but trans people have little spiritual significance in the major Abrahamic religions (as compared to, say, Hinduism) and aren't major characters of any of the narratives, so there was little reason to say much about them (until the Talmud, which has rulings about a lot of uncommon situations, such as the appropriate treatment of many minority groups – but dates to after Christianity's split from Judaism and isn't really regarded by Christians).
This specific example wasn't my point. The Catholic Church is one of the few organisations in reissbaker's comment that's been around long enough to have taken a strong stance on two of the topics mentioned in the comment. (And I don't know enough about their take on slavery to neatly categorise it as small-c conservatism or capital-C Conservatism: from what little I know, it seems more like Realpolitik.)
> Apply principle of charity
That is me being charitable. There are harsher ways to apply "the purpose of a system is what it does", here.
>> Apply principle of charity
> That is me being charitable. There are harsher ways to apply "the purpose of a system is what it does", here.