Some of history's greatest battles have been over the definition of the world and how best to interact with it. When people are particularly concerned with their fate as defined by an afterlife, they concern themselves with how best to attain a desirable position in it. This historically manifested in the Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and Thirty Years' War, and played a part in the earlier Crusades. Of course, there were agents who used religious conflict to negotiate and attain material wealth, power, and other assets outside the purview of a Christian afterlife. Still, the fact that religion served as such a notable vehicle to those ends speaks to the orientation of societies at those times.
As society came to focus more on outcomes in people's lives—in contrast to their afterlives—we see greater focus on questions of how best to organize and run society, such as in the Renaissance, Enlightenment and later movements. I believe this change in orientation came about as a result of improvements to productivity, increases in quality of life, accumulation of wealth (including such simple things as surplus food), disposable time and other factors that facilitate education, related investments, reflection, and innovation. Once typical people were freed (or relative freer on average) from the time and mental demands of a subsistence lifestyle and this development went noted by aristocrats, society came to focus more on ends and means in this life.
The trend has continued as we've redefined our locus of control from faith to the political system and beyond. We've redefined what it is to be human—this tying into the history of race in the US and other countries. We've redefined what it means to be a citizen, a decent person, a successful person, etc. Many of these redefinitions have resulted in the enfranchisement of more people. Think of the waves of feminism: the first priority was equal legal rights and the later priority became equal social and professional opportunities. These developments have broadly coincided with great global productivity, wealth, and leisure time. Today a lot of rhetoric is focused on the level of individual interactions. Is it acceptable to employ aggression to dominate and control interactions and their outcome? What about prejudice and other heuristics that reinforce problematic historical patterns? How much should one benefit from being born into a well-connected family or other windfalls? Our lot, or at least how we perceive it, is no longer so much a function of how devout we are. Nor are we entirely concerned with the influence of legal and political protocols. We're identifying levers of the world and our lives in more granular, less formal interactions and patterns.
As society came to focus more on outcomes in people's lives—in contrast to their afterlives—we see greater focus on questions of how best to organize and run society, such as in the Renaissance, Enlightenment and later movements. I believe this change in orientation came about as a result of improvements to productivity, increases in quality of life, accumulation of wealth (including such simple things as surplus food), disposable time and other factors that facilitate education, related investments, reflection, and innovation. Once typical people were freed (or relative freer on average) from the time and mental demands of a subsistence lifestyle and this development went noted by aristocrats, society came to focus more on ends and means in this life.
The trend has continued as we've redefined our locus of control from faith to the political system and beyond. We've redefined what it is to be human—this tying into the history of race in the US and other countries. We've redefined what it means to be a citizen, a decent person, a successful person, etc. Many of these redefinitions have resulted in the enfranchisement of more people. Think of the waves of feminism: the first priority was equal legal rights and the later priority became equal social and professional opportunities. These developments have broadly coincided with great global productivity, wealth, and leisure time. Today a lot of rhetoric is focused on the level of individual interactions. Is it acceptable to employ aggression to dominate and control interactions and their outcome? What about prejudice and other heuristics that reinforce problematic historical patterns? How much should one benefit from being born into a well-connected family or other windfalls? Our lot, or at least how we perceive it, is no longer so much a function of how devout we are. Nor are we entirely concerned with the influence of legal and political protocols. We're identifying levers of the world and our lives in more granular, less formal interactions and patterns.
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