Canadian Politics Today

I posted about 'culture' on Facebook today.  I'd like to get some heady ideas if you have them, about the trajectory of 'our' common culture.  Keeping in mind: 1) Most people can't see past their nose and 2) One thing a fish knows exactly nothing about, is water

But for those of us who grew up in the highly-centrally-programmed cultures of the 60s and 70s you must agree that we have had an explosion of all kinds of culture since then.  And we now have platforms for marginal voices, to the extent that forces that oppose our governments and way of life have a substantial following.

The effect is that there is no "we" anymore.  We have a galaxy of perspectives that no longer converge on any kind of centre.

 

The physics of relativity may provide a clue why. There is no absolute center or singularity of agreement for the same reason two physicists can't make the same precise measurement of a single photon's behaviour at the same time.   

My questions:

1) Can we sustain this ?

Maybe its more a matter of accepting it for what it is by realizing the idea of an absolute we is and always has been an illusion that's impossible to resolve. Everything is relative to the observer and even more so as they increase their efforts to pin the same thing down at the same time and place.  Obviously a compromise of some sort is what we get by with because its the only way forward.

2) If not, is it changing or will it change ?   ie. Will the galaxy of perspectives become something else ?

Taken together, Graham's answer to the 2nd question and Michael's 3rd question shaped my next response.

Technology and demographics have a huge part in cultural change.  It's possible to predict future demographics, which will be more diverse, so that will create even more cultural conflict.  We have no way of predicting how technology will change in the future, and thus no way to predict the forms of media we'll consume.  Seems likely to remain less centralized though.

3) How would it change ? Will it change towards some kind of equilibrium ?  Is there a model for this, from the past ?  I'm thinking if there is, it's more like our media topology between the 19th century and early radio days.

Recent events and now this thread have have steered me towards thinking about the psychohistorian Hari Seldon in the sci-fi Foundation Series.  In the story Hari Seldon develops a theory of mathematical sociology and uses it to predict the collapse of a centralized Galactic Empire followed by a 30,000 year interregnum. He crafts a plan to shorten that to a 1000 years based on using his theory to predict the future of large populations[sic].

A key feature of Seldon's theory, which has proved influential in real-world social science,[3] is an uncertainty or incompleteness principle: if a population gains knowledge of its predicted behavior, its self-aware collective actions become unpredictable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_series

   
Sort of like a particle that can't be pinned down.

Technological development and how it shapes society is as big a feature in the Foundation story as it is in this thread but will the bigger influence on what shapes cultural forms in our future be technological or sociological?  The latter I think.

4)  If we can/can't sustain it... how will our mental model for all of this change to accommodate this ?  ie. How will we live in a community with no centre ? 

We'll live in several communities that are changing according to us not the other way around. Technology will be a key feature in each communities cultural and physical sustainability and especially with regards to the natural biophysical environment they occupy but ultimately what people do will be the determining factor and predicting what that will be is the rub. In any case the future is ahead of us not in the rear-view mirror.