I'm not saying there aren't a lot of people who are natural conformists, who do whatever they're told to, and hate or love whatever the prevailing culture hates or loves. They may be a majority. And yes, a prevailing culture can take even the revulsion of murder out of people to some extent (although check out the state sanctioned degree of alcohol and drug use among SS officers and you'll see it's not quite so easy to make people do acts of murder and torture every day).
What I am saying is that the conformists don't drive the culture, they're just a blunt weapon of whoever is driving the culture. That weapon can be turned toward gay rights or toward burning people at the stake, but what changes a culture are the individuals with either a conscience or the individuals with wicked plans. Both of which exist outside the mainstream in any time and place.
Maybe another way of saying this is that I think most people are capable of murder and most people are capable of empathy (and therefore trauma) with someone being tortured, but primarily they're concerned with being a good guy. What throws the arc of history towards a higher morality is that maybe >0% of people naturally need to perceive themselves as "good" by defending life and the dignity and humanity of other people, to the extent that needing to be a good person overrides their cultural programming. And those are not the only people who change a culture, but 51% of the time they change it for the better instead of worse.
What I am saying is that the conformists don't drive the culture, they're just a blunt weapon of whoever is driving the culture. That weapon can be turned toward gay rights or toward burning people at the stake, but what changes a culture are the individuals with either a conscience or the individuals with wicked plans. Both of which exist outside the mainstream in any time and place.
Maybe another way of saying this is that I think most people are capable of murder and most people are capable of empathy (and therefore trauma) with someone being tortured, but primarily they're concerned with being a good guy. What throws the arc of history towards a higher morality is that maybe >0% of people naturally need to perceive themselves as "good" by defending life and the dignity and humanity of other people, to the extent that needing to be a good person overrides their cultural programming. And those are not the only people who change a culture, but 51% of the time they change it for the better instead of worse.
That's just my view on it.