Where does change have to happen first, In the structure of a society or In the people within that structure?

In the people within that structure.

This feels like a chicken and the egg scenario but I’ll bite. (Chicken by the way.. clearly the chicken)

It seems that you could take any group of people and put them into a different social structure and they would change that structure to fit themselves like Santa’s bag of crazy toys. So in that case, the people within the structure need to change first.

However, if you take just one person and place him into a basket of a dissimilar social structure to one he/she is familiar with, the change in that one person won’t be enough, making that option a null choice.

All things considered, I think changes in structure are necessarily caused by changes in the people within that structure.

The people, of course. They create the structure.

@Apparently_Im_The_Grumpy_One Great Answer!

With the people first. It took a few outcast artist/writer types to get together in the late forties to turn into the Beat movement, which turned into the Free Speech Movement, which turned into Hippies and the Generation Gap, to change much of the societal structure in the late 60s.

@Apparently_Im_The_Grumpy_One The egg came first. The egg was laid by an almost-chicken, and just enough genetic changes in the offspring of the almost-chicken resulted in a chicken hatching from the egg.

People then structure. Much like evolution, society will plod along with small, minor changes or modifications but nothing that drastically alters the basic structure of it. Then, in a manner analogous to the theory of punctuated equilibrium, at an ever accelerating pace more and more people will decide that the way things are being done is not the right way and will modify their behavior accordingly. The old ways of thinking or doing will linger on for a while, along with the new belief patterns but eventually the older ways will be relegated to those backwater pockets where progress and change are feared and will slowly die off while the new paradigm becomes the norm.