The aggressive policing of any deviation from established norms and traditions, punishing even mild reforms as contaminating a supposedly pristine, stable system. This goes beyond resistance to change; it's an active crusade to purge "impure" elements—be it new cultural ideas, technologies, or social roles—to maintain a frozen, idealized version of the past. The goal is a museum-diorama society, sterilized of dynamism.
*Example: "The neighborhood association was a cult of status-quo purity. They fined a homeowner for a non-beige mailbox, fought a new bike lane as a 'moral decay vector,' and demanded the book club remove a novel published after 1995. Their mission wasn't stability; it was the militant preservation of a specific, curated year no one actually lived in."*
by AbzuInExile January 31, 2026
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