To your first point, what is interesting, and often frustrating, is exactly what you’re saying: people resisting change now did not learn from people then. Quite the opposite. The point is that people often defend their status quo ignorant of the fact that it itself is the result of many historical transformations. The institution of marriage is a good example. Another is behavior that is considered gender normative.

It’s quite interesting how even the wording echoes over time. Hawthorne’s belief that firelight is essential to discourse reminds me of the critiques of mass newspaper reading (that modern society would be ruined because everyone would have their face in a newspaper), or how novel reading would bring ruin to women.

The point being that the status quo today, or the status quo in the 1950’s, is itself the result of many changes that people at the time thought were ruinous, from mass reading, to bibles written in colloquial speech, to voluntary marriage.

This does not mean resistance to change is bad: it certainly seems like a useful reflex to keep chaos at bay. Your third point is quite apropos. A good example of that as well was the popular resistance to the automobile. People at the time saw the mounting fatalities, the congestion and pollution, all of which is so normalized today.