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Tiana Luo's avatar

If inertia takes energy to maintain—people being bullied, sent to concentration camps, made to learn sociology—that makes it less like a property of culture than a force driving culture. And is the political pendulum theory accurate after all?

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Mordechai Levy-Eichel's avatar

It is often a driving force, but it's also something many choose to be a driving force, I think it's safe to say. Can you spell out what you mean by "political pendulum theory"?

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Tiana Luo's avatar

I suppose the comparison everyone learns in high school: every few years, politics/policies swing progressive, then there's pushback from the conservatives and they implement conservative policies so politics swings conservative, then there's pushback from the liberals and it swings progressive again? Like a pendulum? So there are two forces at play, which is sort of what I'm getting at with inertia being a force rather than a property.

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Robin Boast's avatar

Excuse me for jumping in here, but I found your point very intriguing. I have never heard of this "political pendulum theory”, probably because I am European. I wonder how much of this political dualism is due to your two party system. Here in Europe we have multiparty systems, which lead to more complex wranglings (not necessarily better). Which, I think, supports Dr. Levy-Eichel’s point that what we have are conventions that are constantly in a state of being remade, propped up and justified. As Neuton pointed out, entropy, in a world of forces, takes work.

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Mordechai Levy-Eichel's avatar

Agreed. And to take Mr. Boast's point a bit further (and not only I never went to high school and so, er, never heard of pendulum theory), that's only true for certain select political eras. Parties also die. (We all miss the 19th century Whig part, don't we...both here in America, and the British one as well, even). Causes are lost (just think of the Lost Cause here, which still peters on, but only marginally), and other major reconfigurations occur. There is plenty of oscillation, especially in a healthy semi-democratic polities, but it's not necessarily any more normal (and historically, less common, sadly) than many other more static, or more revolutionary, regimes (which, ironically, often mutate one into the other).

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