You're a bit of a mountaineer. You spend your vacations climbing the most majestic mountains in the world. Finally, you get to travel to that one famed peak. You get up at day-break, put on your new hiking boots and you're off.

After some hard going, you hike a path with a steep drops on either side. There is no alternate route. But then your way is blocked by a fence with the sign 'danger'. What to do?

One option is to scale the fence and continue on your way. You may assume that the fence was put up for a snow storm, but it now looks like a beautiful day. Or perhaps you know more about mountaineering than the morons that erected the fence. Or the fence was just put up to waive legal liability, but there is no real danger on the path ahead.

The other option is to return to your hotel. You understand the limits of your knowledge and assume that the people that erected up the fence are serious, knowledgeable locals.

The problem here, of course, is that you don't know. You don't know who put it up, or why. You may even lack an understanding of your own mountaineering skills. But there is one thing we do know: like all grave and consequential questions, it will be decided on a whim.

Whether we possess the cavalier attitude to scale the fence, seems like a fundamental question. Broadly speaking, society was not cavalier up to WW II. We assumed that the structures put in place were there for a good reason, even if we did not fully understand them ourselves.

After WW II, society became cavalier. The baby-boomers told each other that the preceding generations were malignant fools, and everything had to go.

An evil patriarchy was said to keep women subdued. Borders were there to divide people. Drugs were outlawed to keep people from enjoying themselves. Sexual mores were intended to eschew women and children from sexual pleasure.

Like the mountaineer freezing to death in the snow-storm on north face, we now discover that the baby-boomers confidence was unearned. Their cavalier attitude was founded on the twin stupidities: ignorance and arrogance.

There was never an evil patriarchy. Borders are there to protect people. Drugs are outlawed to save the ones with the addiction-gene from themselves. Sexual mores protect women and children from predatory males.

But now, we have invested heavily in stupidity. There are a lot of sunk costs, especially for the elite who derive their money and status from the new status quo. This pretty much sums up the Labour party, ironically choked up with hatred for the working class.

Because, of course, the sexual mores, the borders and the outlawing of drugs was never needed for the elite. They were there to protect the vulnerable.

by Renkema