Material developments drive history more than spontaneous ideas do.
The Reformation wasn’t really about a new way of interpreting scripture or faith. It was about what people should think after the invention of the printing press.
Galileo didn’t make such a storm because of an idea. It was because he had a telescope with finer lenses than were previously possible. Copernicus didn’t publish until after Galileo.
Feminism didn’t catch on because all of a sudden women were standing up for their rights. It caught on because the Industrial Revolution made lots of jobs where for the first time women could make money independently of their families and husbands.
Contraception didn’t become widespread because people decided that they needed to have fewer children to balance the books. It became cheap following the invention of latex rubber and later, the industrial production of human hormones.
Abortion wasn’t legalized because of some novel way of thinking. It was legalized because antibiotics, following on the germ theory, made abortion safer, like many other surgeries.
Gender-affirming medical care didn’t become the normative description of sex change surgery because people became enlightened. It’s because drug companies had excess manufacturing capacity for the drugs they had produced for chemical sterilization of inmates.
Republican and Democrat may differ on ideology, but in average they live in very different locations with very different lifestyles.
These are all examples of why I start with material causes of events.
