Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

How diverse can a society be? Can it simultaneously contain completely abhorrent fundamental beliefs and remain intact? If half the members of society believe in slavery and the other half doesn’t, can that society remain cohesive? Can democracy solve the problem? What if the majority want slavery? Or to prohibit religious worship? Or randomly kill its citizens? Rome was a society based on slavery and it lasted a thousand years. The Soviet Union was forcibly secular. The mesoamerican societies were based on blood sacrifice. So yes. But can a society serve opposing ideologies? For example, can it put the needs of the group over the wants of individuals yet still allow personal autonomy? Obviously, yes, as demonstrated by the various levels of socialism in countries all around the world, but there is a point where the individual is completely subsumed into the group as with Marxism, where equality is the goal, which is at complete odds with liberty: individuals reaping the rewards or suffering the consequences of their own actions, because that causes inequality. So no, opposite ideologies cannot exist in a single society but it can someplace else, so it’s not diversity within a society that’s good, it’s a diversity of societies, then you can get out of the blood sacrifice one and go someplace else.