That’s a deliberately provocative statement, but it points to a common error in our thinking.  When aspects of our culture strike us as bad, or at least wrong, we tend to think of them as lingering shadows from our benighted past.  We see more clearly these days, right?

But some of those things — maybe many or most — could have developed for a reason and evolved in subtle ways to provide multiple benefits that we cannot see because we take them for granted.  Subjecting kids to a Lord of the Flies environment in which they resolve their own problems, for example, does teach them to… resolve problems.  Naturally, they frequently do so in ways we don’t like, such as bullying, but we should arguably trust an evolved culture to have balanced the pros and cons better than we can reactively accomplish from within it.

I’ve thought about this as stories emerge of girls physically hurt during sporting competitions to which males have only recently been permitted.  In the past, perhaps boys choosing to play those games would have been aware of the risk that harming girls would bring the unwelcome attention of boyfriends.  Maybe they would have thought twice about playing, or maybe they’d have been more careful while doing so.

To be sure, the progressive always wishes to march on, so he or she will now object that this is tantamount to inviting bullying of transgenders. In addition to defining every conflict they don’t like as “bullying,” this only brings us to the next level of thinking we know all the consequences of the modern social innovations they support.