Miles Jackson wrote:
>
> B. wrote:
> > American history has shown the US public can and has
> > been persuaded by things, has changed its mind on some
> > things (or at least significant portions of it have)
> > --sometimes fundamentally important things (like child
> > labor) -- and have even been obnoxiously fickle in the
> > frequency with which they can change their minds.
> >
> > -B.
> >
> But the point here is that attitude change is a product of changing
> social conditions. The social psychological research on this is quite
> clear: attitudes are the outcome, social conditions are the cause.
> --Example: Jim Crow didn't end in the South because all the white
> southerners "changed their attitudes" about race; white southerners
> eventually changed their attitudes about segregation to adapt to new
> legally enforced social conditions.
>
> Perhaps the most pernicious myth about social change is the
> quintessentially American notion that social change is predicated on
> changing individual attitudes.
>
> Miles
Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> On Mar 19, 2008, at 6:27 PM, B. wrote:
>
> > What you said sounds like the worldview of someone
> > who's been through years of psycho-therapy and has
> > internalized the fatalistic psycho-therapy mantra that
> > "You can't change other people -- but you CAN change
> > yourself."
>
> Heck no, Carrol hates shrinkery, esp of the Freudian sort. He's a
> pessimist, or maybe more a fatalist, about much of anything changing.
> Depression is just brain chemistry, and social change just happens
> for mysterious unspecified reasons.
>
> Doug
And if anyone knows how such changed conditions can either (a) be predicted with confidence or (b) can be willed into existence, I would love to hear from them.
Carrol