Oh man this was GOOD! Carlo nailed conservative drift perfectly:
"This history holds a lesson for the left: you will get the Right you deserve. For example, by ungenerously underplaying the better religious and philosophical ideals that animated many conservative thinkers, and by giving prominence to their putative embrace of “inequality,” you are objectively contributing to the process that leads to a more nihilistic right."
I have been joking that I'm too true of a conservative to ever vote for Trump, after this conversation it turns out I was more apt in saying so than I realized!
As for equality... what equality? Equality of the sexes, of the races, of the classes, all of the above? I am pretty sure I am for all of them. And because I am NOT an individualist first and foremost (no true conservative can be, individualists are derided as libertarians for a reason) I have to say I am for equality of all... before the law, before God, before fellow human-beings... Now I did have to shake off the lie of meritocracy to get there, but still...
Tho I never studied philosophy and never read the whole Bible I have been fascinated by how philosophy and biblical teachings interact with each other and play out in day to day living.
At the age of eight I went to a boarding school in Palm Beach, Florida (snowbird fashion) and vacations (winter) were spent completely at the islands two most “exclusive” clubs. At the age of nine I ran into the issue of “superior thinking” when I was invited to the birthday party of a classmate at the “Jewish” country club. My parents would not let me go because I could not reciprocate by inviting her to “our” club. I thought this was ridiculously stupid but got the picture quickly. Afterwards I harbored a deep seated resentment to the idea of superiority and, I guess, got plopped into the egalitarian group at a very early age. On a simple child’s level of course, but indelible enough to leave me with a resentment toward exclusive club people. I nursed my own moral superiority till sometime in my twenties when it dawned on me that I was being judgmental, just about another area of superiority group think. I also realized that I found the club people boring because their thinking on most every level was so predictable. So I had no reason to resent their need to preserve their
self-defined safe space. Being freed of that particular brand of superiority judgement taught me that having a judgmental attitude is like carrying around a stupid heavy stone that just wasted my thought energy. But I do think the ego exerts a strong pull to see life in a hierarchical arrangement of levels where we can choose to define ourselves. Of course the arrangement exists within the category of living ,which we also chose, in order to satisfy our need for self esteem. There are endless categories to pick from in which we can see ourselves as superior but I think one fundamental one is decency.
Seems sort of barebones, and there are so many ways of rationalizing why we see ourselves as decent human beings no matter what our choices of behavior are. In sum, I wonder if we live in such artificial constructs that the theories that man proposes, whether in regard to politics or law or intellectual level or anything, is really a matter of assuaging our ego needs. If that is true I can’t see why anything matters except what is constructive or destructive to your community as a whole. To me, politically, this means investing in the country we live in whatever way we can. And accepting that we all see things differently. As such I guess I am still an egalitarian but don’t want to be burdened with judgments about other’s choices. The smoother the whole works, both materially and socially, the more latitude I have for being myself in my little corner of the whole. However I also think that there are always people who sincerely think they are better suited to regulate the whole. That is why, personally, I think it better to preserve a frustrating and contentious political system than trust any individual or small group with constructing the physical reality that we all live in. I’ve never tried to sort this out before, so I hope I make some modicum of sense. It’s just that growing up around very successful people that consider themselves both superior and decent, I would rather throw my lot in with the random mix of many people and many ideas.
Oh man this was GOOD! Carlo nailed conservative drift perfectly:
"This history holds a lesson for the left: you will get the Right you deserve. For example, by ungenerously underplaying the better religious and philosophical ideals that animated many conservative thinkers, and by giving prominence to their putative embrace of “inequality,” you are objectively contributing to the process that leads to a more nihilistic right."
I have been joking that I'm too true of a conservative to ever vote for Trump, after this conversation it turns out I was more apt in saying so than I realized!
As for equality... what equality? Equality of the sexes, of the races, of the classes, all of the above? I am pretty sure I am for all of them. And because I am NOT an individualist first and foremost (no true conservative can be, individualists are derided as libertarians for a reason) I have to say I am for equality of all... before the law, before God, before fellow human-beings... Now I did have to shake off the lie of meritocracy to get there, but still...
Tho I never studied philosophy and never read the whole Bible I have been fascinated by how philosophy and biblical teachings interact with each other and play out in day to day living.
At the age of eight I went to a boarding school in Palm Beach, Florida (snowbird fashion) and vacations (winter) were spent completely at the islands two most “exclusive” clubs. At the age of nine I ran into the issue of “superior thinking” when I was invited to the birthday party of a classmate at the “Jewish” country club. My parents would not let me go because I could not reciprocate by inviting her to “our” club. I thought this was ridiculously stupid but got the picture quickly. Afterwards I harbored a deep seated resentment to the idea of superiority and, I guess, got plopped into the egalitarian group at a very early age. On a simple child’s level of course, but indelible enough to leave me with a resentment toward exclusive club people. I nursed my own moral superiority till sometime in my twenties when it dawned on me that I was being judgmental, just about another area of superiority group think. I also realized that I found the club people boring because their thinking on most every level was so predictable. So I had no reason to resent their need to preserve their
self-defined safe space. Being freed of that particular brand of superiority judgement taught me that having a judgmental attitude is like carrying around a stupid heavy stone that just wasted my thought energy. But I do think the ego exerts a strong pull to see life in a hierarchical arrangement of levels where we can choose to define ourselves. Of course the arrangement exists within the category of living ,which we also chose, in order to satisfy our need for self esteem. There are endless categories to pick from in which we can see ourselves as superior but I think one fundamental one is decency.
Seems sort of barebones, and there are so many ways of rationalizing why we see ourselves as decent human beings no matter what our choices of behavior are. In sum, I wonder if we live in such artificial constructs that the theories that man proposes, whether in regard to politics or law or intellectual level or anything, is really a matter of assuaging our ego needs. If that is true I can’t see why anything matters except what is constructive or destructive to your community as a whole. To me, politically, this means investing in the country we live in whatever way we can. And accepting that we all see things differently. As such I guess I am still an egalitarian but don’t want to be burdened with judgments about other’s choices. The smoother the whole works, both materially and socially, the more latitude I have for being myself in my little corner of the whole. However I also think that there are always people who sincerely think they are better suited to regulate the whole. That is why, personally, I think it better to preserve a frustrating and contentious political system than trust any individual or small group with constructing the physical reality that we all live in. I’ve never tried to sort this out before, so I hope I make some modicum of sense. It’s just that growing up around very successful people that consider themselves both superior and decent, I would rather throw my lot in with the random mix of many people and many ideas.