We are constantly being bombarded by advertisers and promoters to start doing X or Y. Sometimes we all start doing X, and sometimes we don't. Sometimes we do X for a while and then get bored of it. Tennis was more popular once, and now it is less popular.
There is a reason why Kinsey was so successful in spreading his message: it was a message that people wanted to hear.
There were already lots of movies in the 40's and 50's that hinted at an underground of people straining against the mores of the day. Kinsey just gave people the permission to go ahead and do what their fantasies were telling them to do.
Why so many people continue to engage in such behavior after all of the negative evidence that has come up since: disease, broken marriages, infertility, emotional desctruction, etc. is beyond my comprehension.
I imagine it is similar to what goes on in the head of an alcoholic or someone with a gambling problem: they know that in the long run they're going to regret it, but just then they need that one little drink or that one little bet or that one little sexual transgression to keep them going.
Yes, I have read similar things about Kinsey, but no one truly comments on why his views were such a success. If everyone was really such a prude then his ideas would have never gained credence. He would have been thought of at best a kook.
One reason people continue is that our society continues to lie to them and tell them it’s really ok.
>>There were already lots of movies in the 40’s and 50’s that hinted at an underground of people straining against the mores of the day. Kinsey just gave people the permission to go ahead and do what their fantasies were telling them to do.<<
Goodness!
There have been deviants around forever. Study up on the Hollywood crowd from the beginning. Theda Bara drank her champaign in cocaine rimmed glasses, people believed that Fatty Arbuckle sodomized a young girl because that kind of thing went on.
That doesn’t mean it was normal. That means that for years it’s been “Normalized”.
I admire your attempt to dig into the preconditions for the radicals' success.
If you've ever caught Part I of the documentary The Century of the Self, it recounts how the first PR man linked sexual and political liberation with consumption (of cigarettes, even!). It's possible that one of the "burning fires" was the idea that self-restraint is oppressive, an idea promoted by consumerism throughout the 20th century.
But what if the prime factor was not lust or MSM maliciousness, but rather pride or magnanimity? Adherents of established mores were so self-confident that they thought a few loons couldn't do harm to their society. They presumed that their own children would see through the looniness, not recognizing their duty to form them well.
I mean, how many conservative parents have taken the time to explain to their kids why gay "marriage" is wrong and crazy? Ten years ago, you couldn't have predicted it would be such a major issue. Perhaps the triumph of radicalism feeds off of a typical vice of the conservative temperament: assuming that future generations would be like previous generations without the effort of explicit teaching.