Similar for me. I was told this repeatedly when I was younger, but all I heard was “If you get rich and successful then the wealth will corrupt your values”. I’d like to think I could keep my values if I became wealthy, because I know what it’s like to be homeless and hungry. But money does change people.
In my experience in Korea, it’s the opposite. The people who grew up with real hardship are usually the first to hoard any and all wealth that comes their way.
Boomers say that because historically, with increasing age people usually also managed to have some things they might want to conserve, like a home and some financial assets to cover their retirement. I’m in my mid thirties and the only feasible way for me to ever own a home is inheriting one. My retirement plan is to die in the revolution. I have nothing to be conservative about
Yeah, I have zero desire to conserve a system that is actively destroying my future. I’m fortunate that I work in an in-demand field, but even as a member of the professional class earning a professional salary, the cost of housing is insane, and the climate crisis is going to deeply impact the state of the world I live in for the rest of my life.
The main thing I’m out here trying to conserve is the environment before we go past the point of no return, which in all honesty we might have already passed.
Im 100% here. By being massively successful I can afford a working class quality of life from yesteryear and mostly just try to enjoy as much local nature as I can while I still can.
We’ve passed the point of no return for many things, but not everything. We could still improve this world’s standards if we started taking climate change seriously, but unfortunately our system is designed to react as the last moment instead of being proactive about literally anything.
even if you do inherit one you will lose it quickly if you get some medical thing that keeps you from working while concurrently giving you large bills.
Boomers say that because historically, with increasing age people usually also managed to have some things they might want to conserve, like a home and some financial assets to cover their retirement. I’m in my mid thirties and the only feasible way for me to ever own a home is inheriting one. My retirement plan is to die in the revolution. I have nothing to be conservative about
There have also just been shifts in how us younger generations view the world, likely thanks to the internet. I’m in my 30s and own a house, but every year that goes by I seem to get more and more liberal. Partially thanks to how insane American conservatives are in many aspects, but also realizing that the views of the left are the only logical way forward.
I’m in my 30s and fortunate to have a house, but as I age I become more liberal.
I grew up with conservative parents and mostly conservative extended family as well. It wasn’t until I was older and in college that I started to become liberal. Before that I considered myself a Libertarian because I hated the two-party system and didn’t identify closely with any other parties.
I can’t imagine anyone that isn’t in the the top 1% that considers themselves conservative unless it’s based purely on hate or ignorance.
Generally, what it used to be is that people got more liberal as they got older, but society became more liberal faster.
Nowadays, millennials are getting older and mostly keeping up with liberal trends because we have so little invested in the status quo to slow us down from changing with the times. Amongst other factors.
Basically, “people are selfish and will do what benefits them”
There’s nothing selfish about wanting a home and a viable retirement plan. Everyone should have those things.
The way I see it, being selfish isn’t inherently bad – there’s nothing wrong with looking out for number 1, provided it’s not at the expense of others. There’s a difference between being selfish and being greedy, of course. The latter is a pretty bad character trait, IMO.
Except when they vote against their own interest
“Will do what they believe benefits them”
Which I’d say is a pretty right-wing sentiment
Finally bought my first home at 40 using all my life savings. Couldn’t afford to have kids. I got no one to leave any heritage to. Fuck everything.
That always pissed me off. They were basically telling me “You’re going to become a selfish fuckwad by the time you’re my age. You’ll stop caring about civil rights. You’ll stop caring about the environment.” Etc.
My mother was a hippy before I was born, marched in every march going when I was a kid. Anti war, greenpeace, Land Rights the works. The last thing she did on her drive to the hospital for what would turn out to be her last time, was post in her postal vote for gay marriage rights. She was 74 years old. You don’t get more conservative as you get older unless you choose to.
I was born in 1970 and have steadily grown more and more toward the left. Mainly that’s because the right has gone completely insane.
I’m 31, I was most conservative in my teens when I was in a private Christian high school in the south. Then I went to college, worked at a jail, went to law school, and in the process learned about the world and the people in it.
I am still astonished at the people who have done similar things and still don’t have an ounce of compassion for the poor and struggling. Conservative values only make sense when your sense of self only encompasses you, your family, and your religion. Once you realize that you are a part of something bigger, and the gay Hindu man and the black Muslim woman has the same consciousness and feelings as you it’s a lot harder to think of them as enemies or pitiful souls who need to be saved.
When you realize that people are people, and we are all the same, but for our circumstances, then it’s impossible to be conservative.
I think some people have trouble conceptualizing those around them as human. From what I can tell it’s not intentional cruelty, at least at first, they just struggle to conceptualize and understand the idea that all of the people around them have just as dynamic and complex inner worlds as they do. When it’s a struggle to make that connection, it’s easy to go through life ignoring the plight of those around you, disregarding them with the same ease most people dismiss a warning on a computer.
I’m skeptical that many conservatives have dynamic and complex inner worlds … I don’t see much evidence that they think much about anything, but rather offload as much as possible onto others. My mother, as she gets older, appears to actively avoid thinking for herself and has begun the decline into right-wing thinking. She likes the Daily Mail to do her thinking for her.
I think that all people and many non-person animals have dynamic and complex inner worlds, but Conservatives definitely have a blind spot when it comes to political evaluation. Unfortunately, it’s our nature as our species to seek out shortcuts. One of the ways we do this is by finding trusted sources to do some level of evaluation for us, that way we don’t have to think about as much. With Conservatives, many of them learned to trust certain sources from their parents, religion, or their own misguided fear. These sources are conspiratorial and hate-mongering, and they usually don’t apply any critical analysis to them. This leads to a self-perpetuating cycle where their sources tell them to trust no one and to be hateful and from that they don’t pick up any new sources, causing them to enter an echo chamber they can’t escape. It’s honestly kinda sad and I somewhat pity them, but I still will do what it takes to defeat them politically.
It took me years around that sort to realize the common denominators: it’s a fundamental lack of curiosity about the world combined with a legitimate inability to see the world through any perspective but their own.
Throw in some ill-defined fear, insecurity, and anger at their situation in life.
Indeed, I guess as any of us gets truly elderly it’s harder to keep curiosity going - our brains aren’t as flexible, so we try and go with that we know. I think that a lot of right-wing media purposefully courts nostalgia so they can get their hooks in.
As someone formerly in the same boat, I think belief in the Abrahamic religions makes it hard to identify with the plights of others, because if you believe in a just, loving god, then “those people” have the religion and hardships that they do for a reason (and the reason is usually either “it’s part of God’s plan” or “they made bad decisions”).
When you base your entire worldview on a faulty premise, you can use sound logic to get all the way to libertarianism without a problem. Once I reexamined and discarded my belief in the Christian god, it was like flipping a switch; I went from douchey religious Libertarian to bleeding-heart socialist almost literally overnight.
Indeed. That’s one of my biggest problems with religion and why it makes me uncomfortable even though I ostensibly believe that people have their right to spirituality. Ultimately, with spiritual premises, people can come to faulty or unpredictable conclusions even with sound logic, and that somewhat unnerves me.
Ultimately, with spiritual premises, people can come to faulty or unpredictable conclusions even with sound logic, and that somewhat unnerves me.
Definitely.
Although, to be completely fair, as toxic as I believe theistic religions to be, religion and politics are far from the only areas with this problem. Cosmologists, trained philosophers, mathematicians, engineers, and physicists all suffer from this same issue. Something as basic as assuming the universe is finite vs. infinite leads to drastically different conclusions in a wide variety of fields, and there’s a decent argument to be made for each contradictory assumption
Defining your initial and boundary conditions properly has a huge impact on your results, even if you do everything else right. Edit: so it’s even trickier in areas where we don’t know what the initial or boundary conditions are
The huge difference with the professions you mention is that in all of them successful participants don’t wed themselves to any premise. They can allow for the possibility of two competing premises, or even usefully imagine a world with a counterfactual premise, and accurately communicate the uncertainty or incongruence of their views (it is technically possible for political science to work this way too, but rare to find someone who hasn’t picked a “team” outside of academia).
The irrationality and intellectual danger lies not in adopting hypothesis but in granting them the status of dogma.
I would also argue that the potential for real world harm of adopting a wrong premise is way less for a cosmologist or mathematician than for a religious leader or politician. Relevant SMBC: http://smbc-comics.com/comic/purity-3
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think they should be in equal footing. I’m just saying that it’s worth remembering that a healthy dose of skepticism and analysis of the baked-in assumptions is valuable in many fields, and pointing out how otherwise reasonable people can end up voting conservative based purely on a single unexamined assumption.
Edit: and I always appreciate a relevant SMBC link, especially one that properly recognizes the power of chemistry ;)
You’re completely correct. Ultimately this is a problem we suffer from in general with a multitude of topics, and I think the only way to really get around it is by trying to be respectful to people who have different beliefs from your own, as long as that respect goes both ways of course. Important to mention though is that it can be a little harder also to argue with spirituality because while we could theoretically eventually come to a solid proof of whether or not the universe is finite, I am unable to disprove the existence of any given deity and I am also unable to prove or disprove any of the specific tenets of that deity.
Well said.
I think the only way to really get around it is by trying to be respectful to people who have different beliefs from your own, as long as that respect goes both ways of course.
Absolutely. This brings me to my favorite philosophical topic in recent times, The Paradox of Tolerance, described by Wikipedia as:
The seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.
Really, you’ve probably already heard this before, and I only bring this up because it seems like it’s always relevant these days and because it was first described by Karl Popper, who was one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century.
Absolutely, I’m familiar with the paradox of tolerance but I think it’s always good to spread it around a bit more. How I conceive of it is that tolerance is not a principle but a social contract, and when one side breaks that social contract the other side is no longer beholden to it either.
My favorite part of Libertarianism is that Saint Rand collected Social Security.
It exemplifies the shameless selfishness of the libertarian philosophy and really links well with the conservative mindset of “I got mine, fuck you”.
I agree, and I honestly think its the push for individualism over community that causes people to unknowingly become solipsistic like this. I think a lot of people don’t even realize how much trouble they have conceptualizing those around them as human, let alone having empathy for them
That definitely doesn’t help. In an atomized society there are fewer incentives to work with other people which causes people to either not develop proper social skills or to develop malformed ones.
“private christian high school” That sounds really bad…
Yeah, imagine church on Sunday morning, Sunday evening, Wednesday night in addition to once a week chapel, a mandatory Bible class, and most of the other curriculum incorporating biblical teachings (Christian books in literature, young earth creationism, etc) Oh and the church is Southern Baptist and the school is non-denominational (which means they can’t teach conflicting dogmas or the parents will pull their kids out.) So there is no church history other than the creation of protestantism, but we had Catholics so that couldn’t go into detail either.
On the positive side, we had small classes and I got educated enough to get into undergrad and go on to get my JD.
I really have to thank the science educators on YouTube and similar for filling in the gaps of grade school level biology and history that I missed out on. And undergrad for breaking my dogmatic ideologies.
I’m really glad to see the current wave of deconstruction, it seems a lot healthier than the militant atheism that was popular when I was deconverting.
Hey, I went to one of those, too. I eventually went to public school and it was so much better.
All it needs is a little self reflection on your actions in the current world. If you never question yourself and always assume your choices will lead you forward, you will never get even a hint of what’s realistic and what’s just egotistic bs.
Once you realize that … the gay Hindu man and the black Muslim woman has the same consciousness and feelings as you
Therein lies the disconnect. Religious zealots regard people like that as abominations to be destroyed in the name of their god, not people to be loved.
this shit is even worse than the reddit 196
Everyone who’s a conservative right now, is either:
A: completely forgotton their live before turning 25-30
B: Is a massive asshole who actively wants others to suffer for their own gain
C: Is a completely brainwashed morons who legitimately can’t see the problems they’re causing.
The majority of folks 30-60 can look at their current lives. I love the older ones who are conservative except when it comes to social security and medicare.
Idk, I was a conservative up until I was 19 and moved to Philadelphia. I still don’t really know if I’m liberal but I’m registered as a democrat. After Roe vs. Wade I found that I just don’t really care that much anymore about pretending I was a conservative because I care about having “more money in our economy.” Because let’s face it I don’t know jack shit about our economy
A and B can be combined, it’s pretty much two halves of the same mindset
On point, but just a slight clarification on point B. They enjoy watching others suffer even when they don’t gain, and often even if they will be hurt too. Conservatives are all about pyrrhic victorories. There’s an expression I’ve always remembered: a conservative will shit their own pants if their enemies have to smell it.
They see the suffering of others as it’s own victory out of a combination of zero sum mindset, that the pie cannot grow and that others have to lose for anyone to win, and schadenfreude, a German term that really should but doesn’t have an English version as it’s one of the darkest traits of the human condition and American culture gets drunk on it more than most.
Older I get the more the communists make sense. Always been left but I always leaned towards the anarchist stuff when I was younger. It’d be weird if your politics didn’t change at least a little over time, regardless of your leanings, it’s a process of trial and error
I love my anarchist comrades, but yeah at some point the idealism gets exhausting
Actually I went from moderate liberal to pinko-tree-hugging-anarchist-commie-radical thing.
Some folks did the math For me, it was watching shit go down in Ferguson 2014 and then realizing this what America looks like a bit too often. Next thing I knew, I was outraged and reading Das Kapital and singing glorious Bolshevik anthems.
Same here. I became even more left leaning, the longer I had to partake in the shit Show called economy.
When a Boomer complained to me, that our generation never got anything done and I reminder him which generation was responsible for our low incomes and our inability to move upwards in our carrers thanks to there being to much of them and bl9cking the opportunity, he got really pissed.
Funny enough, the youth vote used to be hotly disputed between liberal and conservative candidates. Nixon won the youth vote in 72, Reagan in 80 and 84, before the “Fuck everyone not alive right now” effects of his administration kicked in for the incoming generations. The 20 years of neoliberalism in the 80s and 90s erased all incentive for the youth to support the status quo, and now conservatives are wondering why they’re unpopular with the kids.
Yeah look at our infrastructure and it was massively built from the new deal onward through the silent generation and then in the 80’s hit the breaks nationally. the best stuff we have had since is from liberal states and cities.
I’m european, so I have a slightly different view on who is responsible for this, but as a whole it’s the same result for us as for you americans when it come to infrastructure. For example our railway networks, which are only maintained at the lowest possible level that the companys can get away with. And I don’t want to even talk about thing like streets, bridges, parks and other public infrastructure. Or that more and more youth centres and other such things are closed by the same politicians that then can’t shut up about that the youth has to hang around in the streets.
What they meant was: you’ll become more conservative when you own a home, have kids, and start thinking about retirement.
They were wrong about that too
Only true when you force your views on society and drug those that get more conservative when they get older. Like when your get older you appreciate the professionalism and authoritarian rules. No being more conservative doesn’t mean you hate gays and want death upon them, you libs sure do like to assume and generalise.
Was raised on Rush Limbaugh starting in the 5th grade, did the edgy Libertarian thing and now … now Bernie Sanders is like the only guy in the country that makes any sense. And now I get to argue with most of my family and many of my friends or just never talk politics or walk away completely. And I get to reckon with all the harm I’ve caused.
Know what’s fun? Constantly realizing what a piece of shit you’ve been. Feeling incredibly stupid for not realizing it sooner. Wondering how you can possibly atone.
Man I have like the exact same back story
I’m EXACTLY the same. You don’t need to atone. I own up to my mistakes. I admit I was wrong. People see it as character development, so don’t be ashamed of your story. Own that shit! You have lived and grown! That’s very good thing.
Hey, as a minority I just wanted to tell you thank you. You may feel like shit when you think of the person you used to be, but I appreciate you for becoming the person you are now. Your only “atonement” is to just keep truckin, friend. Keep working on being the person you want to be
Yeah, you seem chill to me. ❤️
I think reflecting on your past and changing yourself is huge.
You might have been dick before but you aren’t anymore guy.
