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Notes -
There does seem to be a general trend that whenever you elevate a single aspect of a culture or a single ideology to define an entire society, that society breaks down. To give an example, if you look at most historic western countries post 1776/1789, they tended to function on a mix of liberalism, local denominations of christianity, nationalism (which was historically tied to liberalism), regionalism, and tons of other local values and traditions. It's the same everywhere; all societies inherit tons of different values that are in negotiation with each other. When you try and elevate a singular value system to dominate all the others or erase all the others, that's when you have problems.
Sometimes it can be clearly disastrous, like in the case of Communism or Nazism, but other times the damage is more insidious. "Hypocrisy" often is not just someone lying for self interest; it's often a thoughtful and useful compromise between two or more values both of which are important.
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