to change the way an entire nation operates."
The above statement came from a current DailyKos diary on the real on the ground view from a soldier in Iraq. Especially the torture aspect. He was referring to Iraq's culture, and the problems that have evolved over centuries between various subgroups and between men and women, etc. But I thought about that statement in terms of the US, and how much work we have to do to insure that this sort of thing doesn't happen again. And while I know that "corporate culture" of any sort is hard to change, it's not impossible, and the more I pondered this the more I came up with examples of cultural change that have occurred over the past couple of decades, for instance.
I'm going to try to come up with a list of the best examples, and I invite you to think of this as a group exercise. Any large scale change in mindset is good, whether it's brought about by world events, or by design and carefully controlled propaganda or PR.
A couple of examples: The change from 9-5 workforce norms to "work at home, telecommute, "etc. That was a change that I thought could not occur, and yet it did. Another is the change towards women's full equality in the corporate culture, if not in the overall society. That is an ongoing process, but it happened. The change from employing children in droves to do menial labor to considering children as precious individuals who deserve to have a natural childhood in which to grow and learn. The change from Christianity as a loving religion based on tolerance and compassion to one more often based on fear of the other and fear of God's wrath.
I'm going to keep working on this list, but my challenge to you is to come up with examples of large scale cultural change, and lets see if we can change the group mindset from the dangerous one of "things are the way they are because they've always been that way" to one of "it can be done if done for the right reasons with effective methods and a community of thoughtful, engaged world citizens." It can be cathartic to do this.
Let's start with the change Bill Frist just made from being against stem cell research. And we could add the Republican party's change from a true economic conservative group to a radical, out of control, lying bunch of --well, I'll let you guys finish that one. But my hope is that the energy on this diary will be directed towards examples of positive change.
Cross posted at Doublygifted.com