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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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Unless you are very young, or have no exposure to any kind of religious organization this seems highly unlikely. Religion is an ancient and ongoing social intervention that directly and indirectly impacts some 5 billion (or more!) people around the planet at a conservative estimate just today.

This appears to be a language dispute. I would say that religions are social structures, in the same way that, say, the Police system is a structure. They shape society, but they are generally stable long-term, and so one presumes their effects are also stable long-term.

By contrast, a dramatic change in church doctrine or practice, or a dramatic change in police doctrine or practice, would be an intervention, an acute change in how we do things, usually with the goal of improving our results. The civil rights act and the end of segregation are examples of large interventions. The institution of miranda rights, banning of stop and frisk, the passing of major gun control laws and their repeal or sunsetting, the rise of home-manufactured firearms, these are interventions, changes to the system intended to or plausibly suspected of changing the trend of social outcomes.

My claim is not that BLM is the most impactful social system in existence. It was the most impactful intervention, the biggest, most abrupt change of conditions. It was absolutely a blip. If you're looking for explanations for why the murder rate has abruptly gone through the roof, a blip, an abrupt, unprecedented event, is exactly what one would expect to find.