Discussion
How many years does it take for something to become "the way it's always done" or "the way things are"?
I'm thinking about what I was told as a grad student 15-20 years ago about the "how the academic job market works." Today's reality doesn't match that. My grandfather's academic career (pre early 1980s) didn't match it either
I'm thinking about saving for college and how that was different for my parents vs me vs (someday) my kids
I'm thinking about what "winter" and "heat waves" look like
My grandfather (born before 1920 in the US) learned to drive a team of horses. Today having a car is treated as inevitable and the way it's always been. Of *course* my older kid expects to learn to drive! That's just how it's done here
The flip of "this is how it is" is "we couldn't possibly"
We couldn't possibly have a locally owned, locally focused newspaper. There wouldn't be enough readers. But this city had that decades ago when there were fewer people here than there are now
We couldn't possibly remove police from the schools. But we didn't used to have police in schools and people have always been people
We couldn't possibly make big changes. But history is full of big changes
The pool my older kid gets swim lessons at has a pool house that was probably built in the 1920s or 30s. It has a very tired and worn underfunded and utilitarian feel on the inside that says "it's always been like this." But the outside is an Art Deco/WPA kind of style that hints at other times. Someone thought it was worth building and making beautiful and giving to the public to use
The prominence of the US in the world is another sort of "this is the way it is" (at least, in the US). But the US's cultural & economic dominance can be measured in decades and history is so much deeper than that
How many years did it take for the change to become the assumption?
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