"Looking at These Epoch-Making Events Also Suggests, I Think, That They May All Share a Single Cause"

"The decline of deviance is mainly a good thing. Our lives have gotten longer, safer, healthier, and richer. But the rise of mass prosperity and disappearance of everyday dangers has also made trivial risks seem terrifying. So as we tame every frontier of human life, we have to find a way to keep the good kinds of weirdness alive. We need new institutions, new eddies and corners and tucked-away spaces where strange things can grow."

David Mastroianni at Experimental History argues that "[p]eople are less weird than they used to be."