Societal consciousness

Earlier today I’ve rewatched the movie The Imitation Game (2014), which is a historical drama directed by Morten Tyldum and written by Graham Moore. His writing is based on the biography Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges. Benedict Cumberbatch is playing the lead role.

The movie tells the tale of Alan, a genius mathematician, who is recruited to work on a very challenging puzzle, to break the code of Enigma, a machine the Nazis use to send encrypted messages. I don’t want to go into details, for if you have not watched the movie yet, it would almost certainly ruin your experience. 

One of the elements of the movie that intrigues me is how it represents the worldview of Britain during that time, what some might call societal consciousness, the norms and beliefs of the British society during the 2nd World War.

I wonder how norms in regards to what is acceptable behavior and what is not, even by law, evolve. How do they actually change and who are the people who make it happen? What exactly determines how fast norms change? How does culture change and how does it manifest?  

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