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Notes -
On Social Norms
One thing I dislike about critics of social norms is how bad they tend to be at understanding why people had certain norms in the past. Many people believe that everything was simply oppressive and to shit on people, without critically thinking about anything in particular.
Feminist for example, love to dunk on slut shaming, without thinking about the alternative, which is basically people getting sick as shit from disease, and various illegitimate children with multiple mothers/fathers. Of course, as long as you get checked for STD's and use protection, you could avoid many of those problems, but the fact we see large amounts of STDs, abortions, and single motherhood among various racial groups withing society (blacks, Hispanics, & native americans) doesn't make that argument convincing at scale. I've known of men & women who deliberately for go condoms because it doesnt "feel good", and then get a pikachu face when they are given diseases or get pregnant.
Its become more and more apparent to me that there are many people in our society who simply dont or cant make good decisions, even if given an optimal environment. Perhaps there is a discussion to be had around norms about dating and sex, even if we conclude slut shaming isnt an ideal solution?
Chesterton's fence is a very useful concept. However, sometimes the fence actually isn't useful. To me that's the point of Chesterton's fence - you have to actually figure out whether the fence is useful or not, not just reflexively accept or reject tradition.
To me, much of social conservatism seems like the kind of norms that are well suited for communities that deal with a lot of material scarcity and threats from nature. Think what the typical farming village was like until some point in the 20th century. For example, in such communities the economic and family-uniting value of sexual relationships is more important than the pleasure value or the becoming-a-better-person value (getting to know oneself and others better, spiritual growth, etc.). Hence the told-a-million-times story of "my parents want me to marry the safe and economically pragmatic person A but I want to marry the more exciting person B". Another example is the emphasis on the socially uniting quality of shared religious belief and practice.
Now, when I say this, I'm not thereby rejecting all of social conservatism. I'm just saying that it evolved in certain material conditions, and is a good adaptation for those conditions, and it may not necessarily be a good fit for the modern developed world. It is quite possible that it is simply a local maximum for certain conditions and it is possible for society to actually move to a higher maximum.
As for slut shaming, there are other alternatives besides just "slut shaming" and "disease and illegitimate children". The prevalence of STDs, abortions, and single motherhood among some ethnic groups is a real phenomenon, but in large part the question of what to do about that phenomenon boils down to the question of "to what extent should people be free to make stupid choices?". And this is a very real and broad topic. Good arguments can be made for various positions.
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