UNIVERSALISM AND PARTICULARISM ARE STRATEGIES
I don’t think universalism has to be ‘taught’. It’s just the rational choice when you are wealthy enough to gamble on the potential to increase the scale of cooperation. Conversely, non-cooperation in a condition of wealth where you forgo opportunities for cooperation is costly. These are evident in all walks of life.
I think universalism arises in periods of empire (colonialism) and declines in periods of contraction – and now that the gains of the enlightenment have been equi-distributed across the world, I think that we are in a period of contraction so that particularism is returning to the ‘natural state’ of man.
I have been looking at history as progressions through economic phases, and the demand for different abilities at each phase and scale and I see a world where calories are of little coast and consequence but VALUE to one another is reduced to zero OTHER than political value. This is what we are ‘intuiting’.
This is a ‘return to normal’ so to speak.