"To reiterate this one more time - politics is the master identity now."
This makes me sad, but fits my experience. Over about a 10 year period, our previous church had become more and more ideology-dominant. When there was a conflict between scripture and politics, politics won. The politics of the church largely matched ours, but this trend was still unacceptable to us. I think faith has to be first.
We visited about 30 churches to find one that fit our politics and prioritized faith over politics, but couldn't find one. So we ended up at a church denomination that didn't fit our politics.
Sometimes it's hard, but it feels great to be putting first things first again.
I know we have a balance of "validity" and "reliability" measures for public opinion, but I just want to note the debate we've already had about the validity of "gender transition for minors" questions:
I think this explains the gap between the white liberals vs white evangelical liberals. I’m guessing evangelicals are more socially conservative and more likely to interpret “transition” as meaning surgery while the broader sample of white liberals is considering transition related care to include social transition/puberty blockers/etc.
Moderate and centrist are meaningless. There's no "average' position on any moral or religious issue. The real variable is interested vs uninterested. Everyone has a few issues that are absorbing, and many issues that we don't know much about and don't care about. On the points we find interesting, we always have a clear position.
I imagine there are many people who are "moderate" in the way you describe, but that doesn't mean there aren't also measured people for whom "moderate" means they can see merit in both sides of an argument and who support nuanced policies. For example, on the issue of abortion, many survey questions are written in an absolutist way, but most Americans aren't absolutist. This alone suggests that the political parties represent a false and forced dichotomy on the issue. A moderate person might thus see value in both pro-life and pro-choice positions. They might support abortion access for adults but restrictions on access for minors. They might favor legal access to abortion, but also comprehensive and abstinence-focused sex education. They might support public pro-choice policies, but make private donations to pro-life charities like the Stork Bus (savethestorks.com). This is what it means to me to be a moderate.
There's also people like me, who hold somewhat extreme positions on other issues which don't fit the typical categories.
For instance (this is just one example) I'm strongly pro-life but also in favor of radical interventions to forestall climate change. Both of these are priority issues for me.
Fascinating stuff! Love numbers. I am struck by the question, you cannot answer, is whether the shifts will shift back. I also wonder how much of the cause -- again not honestly answerable -- was D running female and black candidates? Will things shift as older people die off and many people get used to diversity?
I don't see what that has to do with it. Obama won more evangelicals than Biden.
I have to think the biggest single thing going on is the left's rapid string of successes in the culture war. First-term Obama was nominally against gay marriage. Now that position is considered completely beyond the pale within polite society.
Evangelicals are mostly social/cultural issue voters, and anyone who was considered a moderate during Obama's first term, and whose views haven't shifted much to the left since then, will now find himself on the right.
No, not intending to be flippant. We've been through a major re-alignment in recent years, where (I agree with you) social issues have been prioritized by more people.
When the implications of A.I. set in, I expect another, even-bigger realignment. Social issues may once-again be center stage, but I'm not confident of that.
It may not actually be a re-alignment of democratic politics, but a different form of government.
Got it. While I'm open to being wrong (and need to be prepared for it), I tend to think that just like previous computing and automation technologies, gen AI will stagnate long before it reaches its loftiest promises, while still proving to be socially disruptive in ways that are hard to fully foresee. Which might still make your point about a different form of government valid.
At some point, social trust and faith in institutions will at least stop declining. If they begin to recover, we'll know we're in a new era.
But at the moment, I'm inclined to think the global fertility crash is the biggest story in the world. Especially if it gains momentum and turns into a spiral, as childlessness begets childlessness. Of course, that's a long-term matter, but I expect it's going to prove to be disruptive to the next decade of politics as we have to make painful choices about pensions, and as the higher ed bubble pops.
I'd actually love to be wrong on my prediction that the changes that AI brings will dominate the next 50 years. Being in tech myself, I pay a lot of attention to those who are building the tools, and the way that they feel about it. With few exceptions (and unlike previous tech revolutions) they're almost universally frightened by both the speed and breadth of progress.
The most striking innovations so far have been in biotech (and part of the reason that IVF is such a hot topic), but at the moment they're focused on building AI processes that can themselves develop the next AI models without dependence on humans. Success in that would accelerate the speed of innovation beyond even the current breakneck pace.
All that said, I agree with you that the global fertility crush may be the second most important major force in human populations in the coming century and perhaps #1 in the century after that. It's closely related to my first issue because (in low infant-mortality societies) the only groups with significant fertility are those who've managed to be communally selective about technology adoption.
I'm not actually sure which trend Ken Kroohs' (original commenter) is wondering about "shifting back" once people get used to diverse political candidates. In general, peoples' tolerance for new technologies, new ideas, new forms of social organization (e.g. that women can be President), and new groups of people (e.g. ethnic minorities) depends a great deal on the pace at which those new things arrive. Peter Turchin's analysis of immigration is a great example. Trends of all kinds will continue to shift, but until the pace of arrival of new things slows down I can't imagine a path by which any kind of major trend "shifts back" to what it was before.
The fertility crush may prove to be that slowing down force, with a big asterisk around the impact of A.I.
"To reiterate this one more time - politics is the master identity now."
This makes me sad, but fits my experience. Over about a 10 year period, our previous church had become more and more ideology-dominant. When there was a conflict between scripture and politics, politics won. The politics of the church largely matched ours, but this trend was still unacceptable to us. I think faith has to be first.
We visited about 30 churches to find one that fit our politics and prioritized faith over politics, but couldn't find one. So we ended up at a church denomination that didn't fit our politics.
Sometimes it's hard, but it feels great to be putting first things first again.
I know we have a balance of "validity" and "reliability" measures for public opinion, but I just want to note the debate we've already had about the validity of "gender transition for minors" questions:
https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/the-culture-wars-2023-edition/comment/58054871
I think this explains the gap between the white liberals vs white evangelical liberals. I’m guessing evangelicals are more socially conservative and more likely to interpret “transition” as meaning surgery while the broader sample of white liberals is considering transition related care to include social transition/puberty blockers/etc.
Moderate and centrist are meaningless. There's no "average' position on any moral or religious issue. The real variable is interested vs uninterested. Everyone has a few issues that are absorbing, and many issues that we don't know much about and don't care about. On the points we find interesting, we always have a clear position.
I imagine there are many people who are "moderate" in the way you describe, but that doesn't mean there aren't also measured people for whom "moderate" means they can see merit in both sides of an argument and who support nuanced policies. For example, on the issue of abortion, many survey questions are written in an absolutist way, but most Americans aren't absolutist. This alone suggests that the political parties represent a false and forced dichotomy on the issue. A moderate person might thus see value in both pro-life and pro-choice positions. They might support abortion access for adults but restrictions on access for minors. They might favor legal access to abortion, but also comprehensive and abstinence-focused sex education. They might support public pro-choice policies, but make private donations to pro-life charities like the Stork Bus (savethestorks.com). This is what it means to me to be a moderate.
There's also people like me, who hold somewhat extreme positions on other issues which don't fit the typical categories.
For instance (this is just one example) I'm strongly pro-life but also in favor of radical interventions to forestall climate change. Both of these are priority issues for me.
Yes, that makes sense!
Fascinating stuff! Love numbers. I am struck by the question, you cannot answer, is whether the shifts will shift back. I also wonder how much of the cause -- again not honestly answerable -- was D running female and black candidates? Will things shift as older people die off and many people get used to diversity?
I don't see what that has to do with it. Obama won more evangelicals than Biden.
I have to think the biggest single thing going on is the left's rapid string of successes in the culture war. First-term Obama was nominally against gay marriage. Now that position is considered completely beyond the pale within polite society.
Evangelicals are mostly social/cultural issue voters, and anyone who was considered a moderate during Obama's first term, and whose views haven't shifted much to the left since then, will now find himself on the right.
I think the biggest thing happening is Artificial Intelligence, though the politics of it haven't really taken hold yet.
I'm not sure if you're being flippant, but I meant in the subject at hand, not in all of creation.
No, not intending to be flippant. We've been through a major re-alignment in recent years, where (I agree with you) social issues have been prioritized by more people.
When the implications of A.I. set in, I expect another, even-bigger realignment. Social issues may once-again be center stage, but I'm not confident of that.
It may not actually be a re-alignment of democratic politics, but a different form of government.
Got it. While I'm open to being wrong (and need to be prepared for it), I tend to think that just like previous computing and automation technologies, gen AI will stagnate long before it reaches its loftiest promises, while still proving to be socially disruptive in ways that are hard to fully foresee. Which might still make your point about a different form of government valid.
At some point, social trust and faith in institutions will at least stop declining. If they begin to recover, we'll know we're in a new era.
But at the moment, I'm inclined to think the global fertility crash is the biggest story in the world. Especially if it gains momentum and turns into a spiral, as childlessness begets childlessness. Of course, that's a long-term matter, but I expect it's going to prove to be disruptive to the next decade of politics as we have to make painful choices about pensions, and as the higher ed bubble pops.
I'd actually love to be wrong on my prediction that the changes that AI brings will dominate the next 50 years. Being in tech myself, I pay a lot of attention to those who are building the tools, and the way that they feel about it. With few exceptions (and unlike previous tech revolutions) they're almost universally frightened by both the speed and breadth of progress.
The most striking innovations so far have been in biotech (and part of the reason that IVF is such a hot topic), but at the moment they're focused on building AI processes that can themselves develop the next AI models without dependence on humans. Success in that would accelerate the speed of innovation beyond even the current breakneck pace.
All that said, I agree with you that the global fertility crush may be the second most important major force in human populations in the coming century and perhaps #1 in the century after that. It's closely related to my first issue because (in low infant-mortality societies) the only groups with significant fertility are those who've managed to be communally selective about technology adoption.
I'm not actually sure which trend Ken Kroohs' (original commenter) is wondering about "shifting back" once people get used to diverse political candidates. In general, peoples' tolerance for new technologies, new ideas, new forms of social organization (e.g. that women can be President), and new groups of people (e.g. ethnic minorities) depends a great deal on the pace at which those new things arrive. Peter Turchin's analysis of immigration is a great example. Trends of all kinds will continue to shift, but until the pace of arrival of new things slows down I can't imagine a path by which any kind of major trend "shifts back" to what it was before.
The fertility crush may prove to be that slowing down force, with a big asterisk around the impact of A.I.