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Psychological Momentum
Exploring the concept of inertia in thoughts, ideas, and beliefs through the lens of psychology and computer science
I was talking with friend during lunch recently about how we didn’t get along with our parents because we felt more progressive than them. We talked about how my friend’s Indian background affected his life, like how Indians can covet White people yet prohibit marriage to them, or talk down to White people and move to the West. I also mentioned how I never really thought much about racial bias as an East Asian, but with the recent surge of attention on race, my subconscious preference for White people and culture. I told him how my perspective on White behaviors became more salient, like how normal it was for them to be joking, sarcastic, and making faces all the time. It made me question why I thought they were attractive though I didn’t really find these behaviors attractive.
The norms in society are usually talked about through culture as a kind of amorphous, fuzzy entity. There law, society, arts, sciences, education, and so on, that encompass all the different aspects of civilizations, each with their own general impact on the individual. But I’ve always thought of this was too indirect and high-level of an explanation. What exactly causes these convention to stick around for multiple generations and sometimes throughout the entire lifespan of a civilization…
