Disjointed Thoughts On Culture Change

Something I’ve been thinking about for a while yet I’ve not found a “long form essay” way to spell it out so I’ll put my brief and disjointed thoughts here as a place holder and to spur further discussion…

Culture change is very slow. An event or policy or law may be a trigger — a starting point — but the actual change is a process that often takes generations.

We often like to believe that an action or a law comes as a result of a societal change. That somehow passing a law makes everything suddenly better. When, in fact, the law is simply a step that is generally near the start of the journey. A road that will take many generations to walk. Also, that road is not a straight line. That journey is a wave. It is often two steps forward and one step back or worse — the converse of that.

Racism didn’t end with Civil Rights Act of 1964. We are now 3-4 generations past that time and still fighting many of the same fights with things often seemingly getting worse, not better.

Segregation did not end when Ruby Bridges crossed the threshold of that school. Even with laws in place, we largely in American culture and society still segregate ourselves willingly despite it.

All culture change is performative… It is all “fake it until you make it”. I would make the argument that most laws and policies are in place to force the faking.

So, it should be no surprise when a company that was doing DEI way before it was cool can suddenly turn on a dime and decades of DEI policies and practices suddenly disappear or go in reverse. They were faking it all along and, you know what? That’s…

Well… How it works. That’s how culture change happens. It happens by faking it until it just becomes the thing we do and it has been so long that people have largely forgotten that it wasn’t always this way or look at the way it was as completely abhorrent to who we are as a society and culture now.

Like I said, many of these thoughts are still forming into a more logical “Rhone Unified Theory of Culture Change and Societal Progression” but I’ll leave these here for now and welcome any feedback or further discussion.

Update:

I received a wonderful and important comment on these ideas from someone who wishes to remain anonymous but has allowed me to include it here:.

imo the missing idea here is that people create social change. It does not happen simply because a law was passed, or even that some people decided to fake it for a while. Social change is about the dominant culture changing, and culture only changes because people help other people change their beliefs or actions (or they are replaced in the culture by others). It’s people changing others that creates the change:

There are two types of activists: One who believes their side is right, and therefore banishes anyone who doesn’t yet agree. And one who believes their side is right, and therefore tries to convince anyone who doesn’t yet agree. I’ve lived in both camps. The latter is tougher, but it’s the one that fosters social change.

Of course, it’s never all of the culture that changes. Just the dominant part, the right now part, which is why that can shift over time. You can pass laws or change policies but not complete the necessary social change, and—bam—things can revert in a hurry in response. Faking it isn’t enough; if you’re not changing others (or keeping them changed), then the “other side” can do the work of changing others, and unwind the change they want.