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The big question when it comes to shifts of society like you describe with your examples for me is always: How much can you actually do? My reflex is to say: Not much. Intentions are a lag measure. That doesn't mean we shouldn't support what we think is important to create the world we want to live in - even if it's only for our own sakes - and support the people and actions the seem to us necessary to make these things more likely, but I do think this stuff is merely necessary but not sufficient to change the course of the world at large. So we'll have to live within the world in which we live, warts and all.
This implies to me that what follows from your observations is no ownership of cause and effect but recognition of our collective limitations. I don't think that we make actual choices in that way as you hope.
I said this - slightly edited here for brevity since not everything is relevant - in a reply to Jason Becker under one of his posts and wanted to shortly explain what I mean by that.
It seems relatively easy to fall victim to attribute to intent what is simply an expression of a system. Since we can’t observe society as a whole we may think that there are intentions involved in the sense that you make a conscious choice to behave in one way or another - in this case it was about having the feeling of not being able to give a complex take because an audience nowadays demands a simple take - and any members of the audience as well as the one talking to said audience has lots of freedom in how to behave here. Rational discourse then can decide the best course of action. Critiques like this suggest that it could be different if we would just choose to behave differently (and here some good reasons for doing it or alternatively some bad reasons to no do the old thing anymore).
Now, the text I replied to here is called Takes spread like wildfire. What I love most about this blog post - and I commented on it before actually - is the title, because it doesn’t assume that anybody is doing anything on purpose. It just happens. This I totally agree with.
I’m generally very interested in the make-do. As in: “I was made to do this”. As I don’t assume intentions I also don’t assume clear-cut flows of cause and effect. I believe in entanglement. Meaning: There are a million little things we are connected to - human as well as non-human actors - and all of these act as weights on our doing and being. In a sense we are these weights. Part of these weights are internal. I do think we have to assume consciousness. But internal or external weights: we are a result. And if we are results then so are our actions. Except that our actions are not the result of us because we are just a part of the chain (or better: net) through which something like a society expresses and reproduces itself.
As an individual that has the capability to learn and observe, we may never untangle any of the entanglements that surround us in real time. But: We may learn to readjust our internal weights, so to speak. And this in turn is observable by people who care. This will never be everyone. And even those who care may not be able to see. But there is a potential here, which lies in a convincing performance and not rational argument.
Which is why I would say that performing a certain way of being is probably more likely - and let’s be clear here: it is still far from a clear a->b thing and not highly probable in the slightest - to inspire others to act with this new way of being in mind. What they do with it individually and as a collective is absolutely not in your hands, though.
So if it is about subtle takes: Make them! Realize a person - make a person a reality - that makes interesting, subtle takes. They may spread. You may get critiqued. People may want simpler answers. If it is about politics they may sort you more to the right and less progressive than you’d think. If you can’t realize a person like that - because it might bring harm to people you care about - that is society protecting itself. Maybe make only some takes subtle that don’t endanger what is vulnerable if a person like this would exist?