GOOD IDEAS, BAD IDEAS

 I'm composing a forum-response to the following assertion here before posting it to said forum. The comparison of Western and Middle Eastern culture originated with me. 

The only difference between western culture and the Middle East today is that western culture has learned to be open to new ideas, experimentation, and cultural change. It learned not to be afraid of change and learned how to grow, while the Middle East has continued to want to stick to its “traditional values” and “ultimate truths”.

First, there are comparably new ideas, but new ideas are not inevitably good ideas. In fact, there is no idea that is so good-- however one defines "goodness"-- that human beings cannot make it bad, at least in particular applications. 

Granting that there are no *purely-good* new ideas, the only way to distinguish between the *dominantly good idea* and the *dominantly bad idea* is the method of statistical predominance. 

Back in the 1800s, Marxist socialism was a new idea. Marxist adherents cannot claim, statistically, that the idea has been predominantly beneficial in its various applications in the last century-plus. They can only claim that (a) it's still better than the capitalist alternative, despite abuses, or (b) it will all become better once the world as a whole has become socialist. These are both sophistic arguments, so socialism is dominantly a bad idea, even its adherents *may* be able to point to particular applications that they deem *good."

The question of inherent human rights was essentially a new idea-- which bears directly upon the discussion of feminism here-- when it began to dominate European intellectual discourse in the 1700s. Before that, the basic credo of most if not all cultures was "what's good for my ingroup is good," and women generally believed it as much as did men. That "old idea" has never gone away and it never will. But the newer idea of inherent human rights has become an inexorable counterbalance. Has the new idea engendered a lot of strife? Sure, but arguably that was in the nature of "growing pains," and only outliers argue that we should all go back to the days when "the ingroup was always right." In contrast to socialism, one can point to dominantly positive effects of the human-rights idea, even if, as I specified, there's nothing so good that humans can't misuse it.

Statistical dominance is also demonstrated by the fact that in the US at least, both sides on the political spectrum represent their enemies as conspiracies oriented upon creating a tyrannical new world order. This use of the same rhetoric, whatever the specific differences, indicates that both sides are speaking to the fear of having one's rights nullified. It's become part of the implied social contract that such rights exist within the sphere of culture, or the myth wouldn't appeal to both sides. In this thread I'm sure I can find at least a half-dozen Leftie attempts to project the tyranny angle on the Right. But only a really dishonest Leftie would pretend that the Right doesn't utilize the same model and speak to the same fears.