One odd side effect of the slow drift within our culture toward a more socialistic ethic in our society is that, morally, we have shifted away from a more intrusive, personal individualistic morality toward a socialized “shunning” moral culture. Because morality is coming more and more to exist out there, not in here, in effects, not character, there is much more emphasis put on the role of the group in criticizing, censoring, shaming, and shunning deviant individuals. That, of course, leaves a lot of tredom for you to do whatever you want to do, as long as it doesn’t affect anyone else. Previously, this sort of approach to morality was more typical of Eastern cultures, but the gradual easternization of a lot of religious and ethical viewpoints in America, as well as the intellectual drift driven by the overwhelming popularity of Marxist philosophy among the intellectual class of the creative and social sciences in the university, has led to a large cultural rift in our country.
This rift gets more clear when people are sorted and separated by their exposure (or lack of exposure) to those influences. So college educated people have been exposed far more than non-college educated. Rural populations, which tend to be more homogenous and change much slower, because there isn’t any big reason for newcomers to pour in (often the opposite) are less exposed. Even the tendency to spend more time consuming media in an urban environment is a potential factor.
It’s a bit like how capitalism conquered the soviet union. Not by force, but by attrition. Eventually we built a McDonald’s in Red Square, and that was it. Socialism didn’t die, but it did change tactics and expressions. It hybridized itself a bit. And now that the memory of the reality of it as a competing civilization ethic is largely forgotten, it’s making a comeback, in a new, hip cultural form.
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