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
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.
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.
Basically, "people are selfish and will do what benefits them"
Except when they vote against their own interest
“Will do what they believe 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.
Which I'd say is a pretty right-wing sentiment
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 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.
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.
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".
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.
You and I may have had a very similar conversation back on that "other" site, lol. At least that's where I first heard about the "social contract" model as a way to explain why it's not a paradox at all.
Quite possibly, though I've forgotten where I originally learned it so it's possible we just both learned it from the same place. I'm just glad to see the knowledge becoming more common, it was really annoying during the era when people would be like "Doesn't choosing not to tolerate nazis make you just bad as them?" The answer's obviously no, for so many reasons, but people understanding the paradox of tolerance makes it less common to be asked that.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
Past generations saw some level of stability by their 40s and felt that something worked.
Ain't nothing worked for any of us and those people who did turn conservative in their 40s are now 80 and voting to literally murder gay and trans folk.
Anyone who believes this is just as deranged as the Q people lmao. What an outright fabrication of anything resembling the truth. Nobody on either side of the spectrum, be it left or right, are voting to murder anyone. Maybe take a peak outside your Reddited echo chamber because the real world has much more nuance than it’s allowing you to see.
I'm in a demographic that's probably not common on this site. I work a physical, traditionally "blue collar" job. It's the kind that attracts the "male with no college education, conservative politics" -- you know the type.
The thing is, I am also a white guy that looks and sounds like them. I own guns, I'm an outdoorsman, I can crack off-color jokes with the best of them. They assume I'm "one of them" and openly share shit with me they'd never say out in the open.
I hear Qanon adjacent crap far more than I care too. A current favorite of theirs is the "Trans people and drag queens are grooming kids!" A disturbing number of them frequently speak in support of violence against or even the murder of LGBTQ/leftist/woke people. Hell, listening to them talk I'd expect a few of them would probably do it themselves if they thought they could get away with it. This is the sort that got excited when they heard there was a shooting at a Pride (unrelated to Pride it turned out) event near our town.
So you're right: nobody is voting to murder anyone ... yet. But the aforementioned exist and vote for those that absolutely would if they could. That happily support policies pushing society in that direction, and would be thrilled if murder of their political "enemies" were a reality.
I have the same problem in a heavily conservative city - I have a big beard so many of my social conversations go from "shitty job market eh?" to "Target funds antifa terrorists" in record time.
Literally under 30 seconds one time, gave me whiplash. 😂
Reddited chamber?
We on Lemmy...
Is this a bot account? Do I have to start looking to see if bots are posting here as well?
Reddited echo chamber.
I’m aware of where we are and comments like that person’s are no less outlandish than that of Reddit’s delusional tankies.
I’m a human, beep boop.
A human? Must exterminate all humans.
We on Lemmy
No shit. Didn't you get the memo that Lemmy was filled with Reddit transplants over a month ago?
Damn those redditor invading our social... Not me though.
I would give this more upvotes, because I’m feeling exactly this.
“Just wait till you’re my age…” is the dumbest bs I will ever hear from older people. As if everyone will inevitably turn into an old, bitter, narrow minded, conservative person some day.
Maybe it'll happen the same time we all forget how to use any technology as complicated as a tv remote.
Maybe 🤔
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.
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.
A and B can be combined, it's pretty much two halves of the same mindset
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
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.
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
I think reflecting on your past and changing yourself is huge.
You might have been dick before but you aren't anymore guy.
Yeah, you seem chill to me. ❤️
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.
I was born in 1991 and I've noticed a trend amongst people my age reaching their 30s which I call "the middle generation conundrum"
Basically, most of us grew on our parents belief that hard work meant a good life.
But as time passed we started to notice a couple of things:
Our parent's way became more and more out of reach, even with the same involvement in our work. No more traditional way of life on a single salary, even starting out in the middle class
We tend to feel closer to the next generation's way of life which is "work to live" and not "live to work"
We are also feeding on the general nihilism towards our planet's future which is making some of us less likely to aim for the traditional "family lifestyle"
The result is that whereas me and my friends would have tended to move right on the political spectrum, the majority of us are actually moving far left as we age.
Last (French) presidential elections, I actually couldn't believe how many people around me voted left. It would have been unthinkable a couple of years before
Maybe GIVE ME SOMETHING WORTH FUCKING CONSERVING YOU GREEDY FUCKS
I feel like this often.
I want to conserve the fucking planet, but they won't even let me have that.
In my case it has been the exact opposite tbh. The more I have to deal with reality there more I wander to the left. I’m kinda ashamed for my edgy centrist years as a teenager. Fuck that guy.
Damn, I feel that in my soul. Edgy centrist 13 year-old me and edgy nihilist 15 year-old me would be aghast at the bleeding-heart liberal I became.
Satan. You were into politics at 13!
I was into politics at 11, but I was a libertarian then (mega-cringe).
I mean you were eleven. I breifly flirted with it in college and thought it might be a the way to go. This was the long ago libertarian though that would go with legalization of drugs and a citizens income. Even then the philosophy ultimately falls apart. This might be one reason its gotten to where it has as the liberal types realized it won't work and left but the right side of it hung around.
I would rather be ashamed of my past self than to have grown so little as a person that I cannot experience such shame.
Yeah overall I have become more liberal. I would still say im a bit left of center but of course by modern skewed standards that makes me way liberal. I have seen many of my peers though fall to nutter right levels.
As a Millennial, the only thing I want from the younger generations is to see them restore my faith in humanity. We're so tired, but we won't stop fighting. Attrition is on our side and it will be on your's too. Chin up.
The kids are alright.
Other than their cringey Fortnite obsession. Damn, maybe I should vote to fuck their future over, just for that....
rather they be cringe than idiots or evil
Damn dances! I hope you stay in debt forever to pay for my social security!
I understand that feeling, and the key is to find a healthy outlet for it. I've discovered embarrassing them by intentionally misusing their slang is hilarious.
Last week I pretended to confuse bussy (I pronounced it "Bus E") for bussin'. When I was informed I was using it wrong I demanded they explain what bussy means.
But bussy is an incredibly useful and versatile addition to the lexicon
Oh it is. It's also a great way to embarrass young adult relatives.
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.
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.
I was always leaning liberal and now I'm even more leftist.
Mainly because conservatives got even more dumb.
And I'm someone who grew up with parents that were staunch republicans and made me go to church every Sunday. Then I turned 18 and my parents are still christian, but they don't do church anymore. hmm wonder why. Also one of them hates republicans now and switched registrations. I don't even think older people even believe that whole "you get more conservative as you get older" garbage.
This will never stop being weird to me, or at least unfamiliar.
Reason; I was raised by boomers, but they were legitimate 1967 Haight-Ashbury hippies (actually my dad derosed out of Vietnam in '67, so he wasn't in SF until '68, but leave us not quibble) who even now, though both my parents are dead, are still far to the left of me, and I'm basically a Bernie-style democratic socialist.
To put in perspective, while my parents weren't actually part of the SLA, they personally knew and were friendly with some of the most notorious of the lot, though they had parted ways by the time the SLA started to get seriously crazy.
All of which is just to say that growing up with Boomer parents in NorCal was a very different experience for a lot of gen Xers like myself.
Also conservatives: let's murder the gays!
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
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.
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.
Keep drifting left and I've gotta say, that sweet sweet Libertarian Anarchism/Communalism seems pretty level headed to me. Vertical hierarchy inevitably leads to abuses/corruption and representative democracy infantilizes and negates the will of the people. Direct democracy and horizontal organizing structures keep everyone accountable and makes every voice heard. A world of contemporaries working towards our common goals sounds like the kind of thing you build a future (that's not on fire) out of.
representative democracy infantilizes … the will of the people.
The people keep voting for representatives like Donald Trump and Marjorie Greene, so I'm not sure that infantilization is unjustified.
I've battled with the idea that people as the whole perhaps can't see the picture that others can, but lately I've come to see it differently. Both of those people you mentioned are products of a highly corrupt system nearing it's later stages. People vote for them, or their opposites mostly due to a system of binary politic (red or blue) that is largely influenced beyond them and has been radicalized in an effort to establish brand difference and deflect from realistic policy agenda. It's a system that often rewards some of the worst traits in leadership and then builds on the grift over successive cycles by moving expectations of what these representatives look like. Alternatively, something like Digital Direct Democracy would allow us to defuse so much of the pageantry and tension relatively quickly, because it let's people have a greater say in their life's direction from city to state and can remove so much of the negativity and vitriol that our modern politics uses to divide and conquer the lower-middle class. It's when you remove the binary choice that people very well may take more initiative to educate themselves on the world and people around them. And maybe by lending a more nuanced vision to the rest of our country folk we can all have more of what we want, while increasing the liberties and rights of the individual in ways that no longer seemed possible.
Could you provide an example of horizontal organizing structures? Im interested in learning more.
This is a business example. A wildly successful one at that.
Wow, thanks for the information! This is a really cool example I'd not heard of. There's a lot in that business philosophy that mirrors the ideas that are floating around in the spaces I've been in. It's interesting to see these things pop up, arising from different areas, but highlighting the same structural failings of systems and organization. The more I'm learning, the more I tend to believe that instances like this are indicative of something less akin to parallel thought and more so convergent thought.
hey thanks! Just read through it. It’s definitely a refreshing take on running a company.
Wow this was an interesting read. Got any book recommendations along the same lines?
Just piping in that agile is pretty horizontal.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We don't have lead in our veins this time around.
The older I get the more I learn about the workers history that the rich have hidden from us, so of course I become more socialist.
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 had what turned out to be Semi leftist ideals as a kid. As a teen I went through an Anti Conservative edgy Atheist ark.
Intellectual dark web tried to turn me conservative, but while I was watching Sargon and other Alt Shite content I was always watching some leftists.
My homepage was a nightmare. I believed in the marketplace of ideas, free speech, and socialism.
But I didn't know the word socialism. I was a no theory having motherfucker.
So, I became an anti liberal mad at SJWs for thinking everything was more important than class and that Class wasn't important at all.
However, the right ended up being homophobic and shit with no principles and also didn't care about poor people are class.
So I'm a communist cause I finally found the politics that actually cared about humans. The politics that were treated as "impossible" my whole life. As I age, I only drift further and further left. I challenge more of the grand narratives I was raised with. Even if I was to "get something to conserve" there is more out there than my crumbs.
We need to end capitalism so there is a future.
Question...what drove you to Communism specifically? As opposed to, say... democratic socialism? I've read the communist manifesto by Marx...and I have to say, while tend to agree with some of the points made throughout...there is definitely some parts of the manifesto I do not align with. Do you have any more modern recommendations for a good communist society outline? Im trying to bridge the ideological gap in my mind because I despise capitalism in it's current form.
As for recommendations. Not really. I have my own ideas, but frankly I believe in local community, education, and autonomy. I don't believe the final form of society will resemble a central authority saying what it ought to be. So I feel what matters is giving everyone the freedom to solve their local problems in their own work, place, and community. I think this will be achieved via a government structure built around workers, unions, and democracy.
I see the workers banding together to run the business and business unions forming unions around trades and then these interacting with local government for resource allocation.
I feel like more details is me trying to prescribe what it must be. My primary issue is capitalism and I'm open to discussions about the next step. I'm open to imperfect solutions.
Capitalism isn't perfect. It has market crashes, recessions, depressions. We would be fools to believe communism must be perfect and not just better.
Sorry, I'm late responding. Haven't been on here enough. I fundamentally see Democratic socialism as insufficient. I see capitalism as the problem.
Theres the TLDR up front. For clarification, Capitalism is a system that splits us into two groups. Those being owners and workers.
Owning your home or a business you work at isn't what we mean. Owning the means of production that give you the ability to extract value from workers is.
This is class struggle. The rich owners want as much work for as little money. The workers want as much money for their work.
Now, I'm not trying to get into a debate on this, but this is bad. It creates a conflict and tension in society where one side has the power. Now, lets look at another system for a moment. Slavery is bad and had to abolished all at once. For if the slaver kept any power and leverage all improvements in the conditions of slaves could be retracted to suit the slaver's needs.
We could say "don't abolish slavery, but try make it ethical", but not only does this fail to address the moral issues with slavery, but its also ineffective at preventing future abuses and the reduction in rights for the group of people without power.
So, return to capitalism. You have media, beholden to ad companies (the rich by proxy) and the rich who fund it and invest. You have politicians who rely on donors. The more you look the more you find that capital is power and leverage.
Those without have little beyond labor power and the threat of things like violence or sabotage. So, what little treats we win in a demsoc or socdem model will be always subject to the capitalist class allowing it and us maintaining the tension that won it in the first place.
Thus, like the slave owner would worsen the conditions of slaves again. The owner class would worsen the conditions of workers. You can't reform this or slowly improve it to a bearable state. It has to be abolished. And it has to be replaced with a system of collective ownership of natural resources, automated industries, and the ownership of the means of production by the workers who work there.
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.
When I was 18 I was a right wing libertarian. When I became a software engineer and started making good money I became a progressive democrat. Now that I make 6 figures I'm an Anarchist Communist. Question: when does my career of the last decade become a "real job" and make me a conservative asshole? Because I'm still waiting.
I think we radicalize when we get older. The issue is that the boomers have radicalized to the extreme, turning into the people their parents gave their life to fight against. So we are turning ourselves to the other direction. Also, the center in the us would already be considered right in Europe so having a mild leftist opinion is perceived as extremist.
hey it me
Additional possible data point that the current US conservative movement isn't all that motivated by economic issues and is spending most of its time talking about social stuff like "groomers," woke culture, abortion, CRT, etc.
They are losing ground with suburban voters and gaining with non-college educated voters because of these issues. So those factors are probably working against the traditional trend of "make it in your career, move to the suburbs and then start voting with your pocket-book"
(In addition to the whole you're-never-going-to-own-a-house thing others have already pointed out)
This post is wild to me, where I live it's certainly true people are becoming more conservative as they age, and they're the most kind generous people I know.
Where are you living? This post I'm fairly sure is true in most Western countries and many non-Western ones.
Conservatives can be friendly as long as you look and act exactly how they think you should.
Have you seen the kind of people they vote for?
The kind of laws they get enacted?
Not very nice.
Would they still be kind and generous if your skin color was different? Your religion? Your pregnancy status?
Conservatives are, at best, selectively nice.
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
I was left leaning when I was younger and a lot of that was due to left leaning people on the internet.
As I got older my views haven't changed that much but I definitely feel like the left have caused me to move further to the right. I still heavily believe in high government spending for essentials and free speech (which was a strong left view but is now a far right view). But I definitely see the left skewing the narrative. Things like if you are against open border policies you are a nazi and shit. Day to day conversations with the right are much more manageable and logical than conversations with the everyday left. But the big policies need to be left.
I wish there was some middle ground. Or more accurately a mixture of far left and left with a mixture of right and far right policies. But the left are shooting themselves in foot with a lot of little stuff and ignoring a lot of the big stuff that people care about.
Things like if you are against open border policies you are a nazi and shit.
You're describing a tiny small minority of the left, if there's anyone who seriously thinks that. It seems like you're cherry picking radical positions that the majority of the left don't hold.
I remember when that photo of that dead kid on the beach was everywhere. There was plenty of people talking about open borders.
People we definitely called racist for having the view we should stop illegal migrants and/or that some people are benefiting from the situation. People definitely also called for open borders and have have spoken to a few people in university who thinks all borders should be open. But it's usually someone with something like a media degree and no follow through for how it would work in practise just that "there shouldn't be borders and it's racist to not let people come to your country"
Wut
What right wing policies are actually better than their left wing alternative? Enlighten me.
Yeah like "free speech" being a "far right" thing, while simultaneously trying to stop people from talking about LGBTQ+ issues.
Meanwhile the left is doing what that's against free speech? You can say bigoted things all you want still as far as I know. It'll affect what people think of you as a person, but that's not what free speech is about.
This person is a lost cause.
Not many. Borders, military, maybe some protectionist policies, freer trade, some cost saving but not many. That's my point.
Sounds like the Democratic party is a perfect home for you. The Biden administration is center right on the border (in practical terms), the military, and trade. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "cost saving," other than balancing the budget and trying to be efficient with tax dollars, things the democrats are doing way better on than Republicans. The party is built for your sensibilities. If you're an American, your view is the one in control of the politically relevant non fascist party.
The American democrats seem too right for my liking. The party definitely isn't perfect for me.
From a starting point I feel everyone should have an equal start in life (to a point). So for example everyone that is born should have free healthcare and be able to get whatever job they want as long as they have the ability. That's my core left view.
Secondly. I have a degree in economics and that educates some of my views to be more monetarily and free market orientated. So I'm big on cash transfers where someone else might go for say free food stamps. But overriding that I believe governments should focus more on happiness and wellbeing than GDP or GDP per capita. That's in contrast to my education, or typical takeaways from my education.
My policies would be high government spending, high taxes and cash transfers, subsidies and externalities to fix market issues and help push things into certain ideals.
That means I see myself and left or heavily left leaning. But I'm still proud of my country and think my country comes above others with my money and the money of my countrymen. Which is the right policies I wish more for in a left leaning party. I also feel like people are more responsible for themselves than some people make out.
The issue I find is when talking to the average right winger verse the average left winger.
I have had discussions with people saying they don't think university education should be free or subsidised because if it's valuable they people can take out loans themselves or if someone works hard they can gift it to their children. Someone shouldn't have to give their money so someone else's kid can go to university for free. Now I don't agree but I understand the point and respect their arguments.
On a similar issue I have talked to left wingers who have said all jobs should pay the same, or that men and women should be paid the same irrelevant of what jobs they have. That it's not fair that one degree gets you higher paying life than others. Something like this I do not agree with and do not understand.
It's basically the logic of right wingers make sense but I disagree. The logic of left wingers doesn't make sense but I still agree a lot with them for different reasons.
Even things like COVID. I was huge into vaccines and science and got it as soon as I could, did everything the government told me I was behind it 100%. But I still agreed with the right wingers than any anticovid views should be allowed. I just thought the government should have done better in educating people on the truth.
Ultimately it comes down to my personal experience in dealing with people. In my experience left wingers talk a lot more nonsense and get a lot more aggressive than right wingers.
My dude, I consider myself pretty liberal. For quick context: I think Joe Biden and the establishment stole the 2020 primary from Bernie Sanders, and I haven't been gruntled since.
I agree with every point you made, explaining your political opinions.
The only things that I want to say are that being liberal and being proud of your country are not mutually exclusive. That's a media propaganda talking point. "Liberals hate America!" - That's just not true. Also, it sounds like you had a conversation about pay rates with an actual communist. Very few liberals are going to support actual communism. That's another propaganda talking point.
Liberalism and democratic socialism is nowhere near communism. Democratic socialism supports the things you expressed support for: Social safety net programs, funding education, social medicine.
We all have more in common than we're led to believe.
I met a lot of left people that just spew talking points and choose whatever is the nicest view to have. They wouldn't say they are communist but they say stuff that is partially communist. Then make out everyone is heartless monsters. A lot of people recently were complaining about supermarkets making 1% profit margin. Saying it's too much, like loads of left wingers had this view and said they should be government owned. It's madness.
I'm not American. Also I'm not that liberal at all, one of our most right wing governments ever was famously liberal and sold every government asset and let the free market deal with everything. There is a reason ding dong the witch is dead hit 1 in the charts when Maggie died. Liberalism is not anything the left or most of the right ever want back.
Socialism is communism though. That's the definition of the word.
Socialism "...advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole"
Practically speaking, all acceptable political ideologies in a liberal democracy could be considered liberal, or at the very least on the liberal spectrum. Liberalism is such a broad ideology, that both hyper religious neocon neoliberals and democratic socialists could qualify. Economic liberalism is typically what liberal has colloquially meant outside the US, while in the US, it has referred to social liberalism. Thatcher and Reagan had very similar ideologies, but Thatcher called herself a liberal, while to 1980s Republicans, liberal was a dirty word. It's a fucky term, but if you're a Brit who loves your country, you probably love liberalism in some way.
Democratic socialists are fiscally socialist, but still want to work within the system of liberal democracy to eventually achieve communism. "Communist" colloquially refers to people who want to achieve communism without working through liberal democracy. This includes everything from Marxist-Leninists(think the Soviets), to anarcho-communists, both of which wildly disagree with eachother. The landscape is full of people of don't self identify accurately to what they ideologically believe because of the colloquial meaning of these terms.
Also, you are exceptionally lucky to have not run into fascists. If you actually exposed yourself to the double speak and misinformation they use to justify right wing beliefs, you too might lose faith in all right wing arguments like I have.
I apologize for making the assumption that you were American.
Its my understanding that even liberal american politicians are rather conservative, from a global perspective. This is probably the source of my confusion in our exchange.
But I agree with you that many people complain and are jealous when they see others being prosperous when they struggle to thrive. Also, people seem to just like to complain in general.
Here's a section that I found from a website, on democratic socialism:
"
In the present day, "Democratic socialist" and "socialist" are often treated as interchangeable terms, which can be confusing given democratic socialists don't necessarily think the government should immediately take control of all aspects of the economy.
They do, however, generally believe the government should help provide for people's most basic needs and help all people have an equal chance at achieving success.
"
I think in this context, democratic socialists are just in support of government having more influence in business, strengthening unions and worker protections, addressing the massive wealth inequality. The current american government is really more on the side of business than on the side of workers.
this shit is even worse than the reddit 196
That's unrealistic. You can't burn a rainbows and also beer is not flamable.
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.
PugJesus@kbin.social to 
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
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.
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.
Basically, "people are selfish and will do what benefits them"
Except when they vote against their own interest
“Will do what they believe 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.
Which I'd say is a pretty right-wing sentiment
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 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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
Absolutely. This brings me to my favorite philosophical topic in recent times, The Paradox of Tolerance, described by Wikipedia as:
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.
You and I may have had a very similar conversation back on that "other" site, lol. At least that's where I first heard about the "social contract" model as a way to explain why it's not a paradox at all.
Quite possibly, though I've forgotten where I originally learned it so it's possible we just both learned it from the same place. I'm just glad to see the knowledge becoming more common, it was really annoying during the era when people would be like "Doesn't choosing not to tolerate nazis make you just bad as them?" The answer's obviously no, for so many reasons, but people understanding the paradox of tolerance makes it less common to be asked that.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
Past generations saw some level of stability by their 40s and felt that something worked.
Ain't nothing worked for any of us and those people who did turn conservative in their 40s are now 80 and voting to literally murder gay and trans folk.
Anyone who believes this is just as deranged as the Q people lmao. What an outright fabrication of anything resembling the truth. Nobody on either side of the spectrum, be it left or right, are voting to murder anyone. Maybe take a peak outside your Reddited echo chamber because the real world has much more nuance than it’s allowing you to see.
I'm in a demographic that's probably not common on this site. I work a physical, traditionally "blue collar" job. It's the kind that attracts the "male with no college education, conservative politics" -- you know the type.
The thing is, I am also a white guy that looks and sounds like them. I own guns, I'm an outdoorsman, I can crack off-color jokes with the best of them. They assume I'm "one of them" and openly share shit with me they'd never say out in the open.
I hear Qanon adjacent crap far more than I care too. A current favorite of theirs is the "Trans people and drag queens are grooming kids!" A disturbing number of them frequently speak in support of violence against or even the murder of LGBTQ/leftist/woke people. Hell, listening to them talk I'd expect a few of them would probably do it themselves if they thought they could get away with it. This is the sort that got excited when they heard there was a shooting at a Pride (unrelated to Pride it turned out) event near our town.
So you're right: nobody is voting to murder anyone ... yet. But the aforementioned exist and vote for those that absolutely would if they could. That happily support policies pushing society in that direction, and would be thrilled if murder of their political "enemies" were a reality.
I have the same problem in a heavily conservative city - I have a big beard so many of my social conversations go from "shitty job market eh?" to "Target funds antifa terrorists" in record time.
Literally under 30 seconds one time, gave me whiplash. 😂
Reddited chamber?
We on Lemmy...
Is this a bot account? Do I have to start looking to see if bots are posting here as well?
Reddited echo chamber.
I’m aware of where we are and comments like that person’s are no less outlandish than that of Reddit’s delusional tankies.
I’m a human, beep boop.
A human? Must exterminate all humans.
No shit. Didn't you get the memo that Lemmy was filled with Reddit transplants over a month ago?
Damn those redditor invading our social... Not me though.
I would give this more upvotes, because I’m feeling exactly this.
“Just wait till you’re my age…” is the dumbest bs I will ever hear from older people. As if everyone will inevitably turn into an old, bitter, narrow minded, conservative person some day.
Maybe it'll happen the same time we all forget how to use any technology as complicated as a tv remote.
Maybe 🤔
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.
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.
A and B can be combined, it's pretty much two halves of the same mindset
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
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.
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
I think reflecting on your past and changing yourself is huge.
You might have been dick before but you aren't anymore guy.
Yeah, you seem chill to me. ❤️
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.
I was born in 1991 and I've noticed a trend amongst people my age reaching their 30s which I call "the middle generation conundrum"
Basically, most of us grew on our parents belief that hard work meant a good life.
But as time passed we started to notice a couple of things:
The result is that whereas me and my friends would have tended to move right on the political spectrum, the majority of us are actually moving far left as we age.
Last (French) presidential elections, I actually couldn't believe how many people around me voted left. It would have been unthinkable a couple of years before
Maybe GIVE ME SOMETHING WORTH FUCKING CONSERVING YOU GREEDY FUCKS
I feel like this often.
I want to conserve the fucking planet, but they won't even let me have that.
In my case it has been the exact opposite tbh. The more I have to deal with reality there more I wander to the left. I’m kinda ashamed for my edgy centrist years as a teenager. Fuck that guy.
Damn, I feel that in my soul. Edgy centrist 13 year-old me and edgy nihilist 15 year-old me would be aghast at the bleeding-heart liberal I became.
Satan. You were into politics at 13!
I was into politics at 11, but I was a libertarian then (mega-cringe).
I mean you were eleven. I breifly flirted with it in college and thought it might be a the way to go. This was the long ago libertarian though that would go with legalization of drugs and a citizens income. Even then the philosophy ultimately falls apart. This might be one reason its gotten to where it has as the liberal types realized it won't work and left but the right side of it hung around.
I would rather be ashamed of my past self than to have grown so little as a person that I cannot experience such shame.
Yeah overall I have become more liberal. I would still say im a bit left of center but of course by modern skewed standards that makes me way liberal. I have seen many of my peers though fall to nutter right levels.
As a Millennial, the only thing I want from the younger generations is to see them restore my faith in humanity. We're so tired, but we won't stop fighting. Attrition is on our side and it will be on your's too. Chin up.
The kids are alright.
Other than their cringey Fortnite obsession. Damn, maybe I should vote to fuck their future over, just for that....
rather they be cringe than idiots or evil
Damn dances! I hope you stay in debt forever to pay for my social security!
I understand that feeling, and the key is to find a healthy outlet for it. I've discovered embarrassing them by intentionally misusing their slang is hilarious.
Last week I pretended to confuse bussy (I pronounced it "Bus E") for bussin'. When I was informed I was using it wrong I demanded they explain what bussy means.
But bussy is an incredibly useful and versatile addition to the lexicon
Oh it is. It's also a great way to embarrass young adult relatives.
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.
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.
I was always leaning liberal and now I'm even more leftist. Mainly because conservatives got even more dumb.
And I'm someone who grew up with parents that were staunch republicans and made me go to church every Sunday. Then I turned 18 and my parents are still christian, but they don't do church anymore. hmm wonder why. Also one of them hates republicans now and switched registrations. I don't even think older people even believe that whole "you get more conservative as you get older" garbage.
This will never stop being weird to me, or at least unfamiliar.
Reason; I was raised by boomers, but they were legitimate 1967 Haight-Ashbury hippies (actually my dad derosed out of Vietnam in '67, so he wasn't in SF until '68, but leave us not quibble) who even now, though both my parents are dead, are still far to the left of me, and I'm basically a Bernie-style democratic socialist.
To put in perspective, while my parents weren't actually part of the SLA, they personally knew and were friendly with some of the most notorious of the lot, though they had parted ways by the time the SLA started to get seriously crazy.
All of which is just to say that growing up with Boomer parents in NorCal was a very different experience for a lot of gen Xers like myself.
Also conservatives: let's murder the gays!
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
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.
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.
Keep drifting left and I've gotta say, that sweet sweet Libertarian Anarchism/Communalism seems pretty level headed to me. Vertical hierarchy inevitably leads to abuses/corruption and representative democracy infantilizes and negates the will of the people. Direct democracy and horizontal organizing structures keep everyone accountable and makes every voice heard. A world of contemporaries working towards our common goals sounds like the kind of thing you build a future (that's not on fire) out of.
The people keep voting for representatives like Donald Trump and Marjorie Greene, so I'm not sure that infantilization is unjustified.
I've battled with the idea that people as the whole perhaps can't see the picture that others can, but lately I've come to see it differently. Both of those people you mentioned are products of a highly corrupt system nearing it's later stages. People vote for them, or their opposites mostly due to a system of binary politic (red or blue) that is largely influenced beyond them and has been radicalized in an effort to establish brand difference and deflect from realistic policy agenda. It's a system that often rewards some of the worst traits in leadership and then builds on the grift over successive cycles by moving expectations of what these representatives look like. Alternatively, something like Digital Direct Democracy would allow us to defuse so much of the pageantry and tension relatively quickly, because it let's people have a greater say in their life's direction from city to state and can remove so much of the negativity and vitriol that our modern politics uses to divide and conquer the lower-middle class. It's when you remove the binary choice that people very well may take more initiative to educate themselves on the world and people around them. And maybe by lending a more nuanced vision to the rest of our country folk we can all have more of what we want, while increasing the liberties and rights of the individual in ways that no longer seemed possible.
Could you provide an example of horizontal organizing structures? Im interested in learning more.
This is a business example. A wildly successful one at that.
https://www.managementexchange.com/story/innovation-democracy-wl-gores-original-management-model
Wow, thanks for the information! This is a really cool example I'd not heard of. There's a lot in that business philosophy that mirrors the ideas that are floating around in the spaces I've been in. It's interesting to see these things pop up, arising from different areas, but highlighting the same structural failings of systems and organization. The more I'm learning, the more I tend to believe that instances like this are indicative of something less akin to parallel thought and more so convergent thought.
hey thanks! Just read through it. It’s definitely a refreshing take on running a company.
Wow this was an interesting read. Got any book recommendations along the same lines?
Just piping in that agile is pretty horizontal.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We don't have lead in our veins this time around.
The older I get the more I learn about the workers history that the rich have hidden from us, so of course I become more socialist.
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 had what turned out to be Semi leftist ideals as a kid. As a teen I went through an Anti Conservative edgy Atheist ark. Intellectual dark web tried to turn me conservative, but while I was watching Sargon and other Alt Shite content I was always watching some leftists. My homepage was a nightmare. I believed in the marketplace of ideas, free speech, and socialism. But I didn't know the word socialism. I was a no theory having motherfucker. So, I became an anti liberal mad at SJWs for thinking everything was more important than class and that Class wasn't important at all. However, the right ended up being homophobic and shit with no principles and also didn't care about poor people are class.
So I'm a communist cause I finally found the politics that actually cared about humans. The politics that were treated as "impossible" my whole life. As I age, I only drift further and further left. I challenge more of the grand narratives I was raised with. Even if I was to "get something to conserve" there is more out there than my crumbs.
We need to end capitalism so there is a future.
Question...what drove you to Communism specifically? As opposed to, say... democratic socialism? I've read the communist manifesto by Marx...and I have to say, while tend to agree with some of the points made throughout...there is definitely some parts of the manifesto I do not align with. Do you have any more modern recommendations for a good communist society outline? Im trying to bridge the ideological gap in my mind because I despise capitalism in it's current form.
As for recommendations. Not really. I have my own ideas, but frankly I believe in local community, education, and autonomy. I don't believe the final form of society will resemble a central authority saying what it ought to be. So I feel what matters is giving everyone the freedom to solve their local problems in their own work, place, and community. I think this will be achieved via a government structure built around workers, unions, and democracy. I see the workers banding together to run the business and business unions forming unions around trades and then these interacting with local government for resource allocation.
I feel like more details is me trying to prescribe what it must be. My primary issue is capitalism and I'm open to discussions about the next step. I'm open to imperfect solutions. Capitalism isn't perfect. It has market crashes, recessions, depressions. We would be fools to believe communism must be perfect and not just better.
Sorry, I'm late responding. Haven't been on here enough. I fundamentally see Democratic socialism as insufficient. I see capitalism as the problem. Theres the TLDR up front. For clarification, Capitalism is a system that splits us into two groups. Those being owners and workers. Owning your home or a business you work at isn't what we mean. Owning the means of production that give you the ability to extract value from workers is. This is class struggle. The rich owners want as much work for as little money. The workers want as much money for their work.
Now, I'm not trying to get into a debate on this, but this is bad. It creates a conflict and tension in society where one side has the power. Now, lets look at another system for a moment. Slavery is bad and had to abolished all at once. For if the slaver kept any power and leverage all improvements in the conditions of slaves could be retracted to suit the slaver's needs.
We could say "don't abolish slavery, but try make it ethical", but not only does this fail to address the moral issues with slavery, but its also ineffective at preventing future abuses and the reduction in rights for the group of people without power.
So, return to capitalism. You have media, beholden to ad companies (the rich by proxy) and the rich who fund it and invest. You have politicians who rely on donors. The more you look the more you find that capital is power and leverage.
Those without have little beyond labor power and the threat of things like violence or sabotage. So, what little treats we win in a demsoc or socdem model will be always subject to the capitalist class allowing it and us maintaining the tension that won it in the first place.
Thus, like the slave owner would worsen the conditions of slaves again. The owner class would worsen the conditions of workers. You can't reform this or slowly improve it to a bearable state. It has to be abolished. And it has to be replaced with a system of collective ownership of natural resources, automated industries, and the ownership of the means of production by the workers who work there.
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.
When I was 18 I was a right wing libertarian. When I became a software engineer and started making good money I became a progressive democrat. Now that I make 6 figures I'm an Anarchist Communist. Question: when does my career of the last decade become a "real job" and make me a conservative asshole? Because I'm still waiting.
I think we radicalize when we get older. The issue is that the boomers have radicalized to the extreme, turning into the people their parents gave their life to fight against. So we are turning ourselves to the other direction. Also, the center in the us would already be considered right in Europe so having a mild leftist opinion is perceived as extremist.
hey it me
Additional possible data point that the current US conservative movement isn't all that motivated by economic issues and is spending most of its time talking about social stuff like "groomers," woke culture, abortion, CRT, etc.
They are losing ground with suburban voters and gaining with non-college educated voters because of these issues. So those factors are probably working against the traditional trend of "make it in your career, move to the suburbs and then start voting with your pocket-book"
(In addition to the whole you're-never-going-to-own-a-house thing others have already pointed out)
This post is wild to me, where I live it's certainly true people are becoming more conservative as they age, and they're the most kind generous people I know.
Where are you living? This post I'm fairly sure is true in most Western countries and many non-Western ones.
Conservatives can be friendly as long as you look and act exactly how they think you should.
Have you seen the kind of people they vote for?
The kind of laws they get enacted?
Not very nice.
Would they still be kind and generous if your skin color was different? Your religion? Your pregnancy status?
Conservatives are, at best, selectively nice.
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
I was left leaning when I was younger and a lot of that was due to left leaning people on the internet.
As I got older my views haven't changed that much but I definitely feel like the left have caused me to move further to the right. I still heavily believe in high government spending for essentials and free speech (which was a strong left view but is now a far right view). But I definitely see the left skewing the narrative. Things like if you are against open border policies you are a nazi and shit. Day to day conversations with the right are much more manageable and logical than conversations with the everyday left. But the big policies need to be left.
I wish there was some middle ground. Or more accurately a mixture of far left and left with a mixture of right and far right policies. But the left are shooting themselves in foot with a lot of little stuff and ignoring a lot of the big stuff that people care about.
You're describing a tiny small minority of the left, if there's anyone who seriously thinks that. It seems like you're cherry picking radical positions that the majority of the left don't hold.
I remember when that photo of that dead kid on the beach was everywhere. There was plenty of people talking about open borders.
People we definitely called racist for having the view we should stop illegal migrants and/or that some people are benefiting from the situation. People definitely also called for open borders and have have spoken to a few people in university who thinks all borders should be open. But it's usually someone with something like a media degree and no follow through for how it would work in practise just that "there shouldn't be borders and it's racist to not let people come to your country"
Wut
What right wing policies are actually better than their left wing alternative? Enlighten me.
Yeah like "free speech" being a "far right" thing, while simultaneously trying to stop people from talking about LGBTQ+ issues.
Meanwhile the left is doing what that's against free speech? You can say bigoted things all you want still as far as I know. It'll affect what people think of you as a person, but that's not what free speech is about.
This person is a lost cause.
Not many. Borders, military, maybe some protectionist policies, freer trade, some cost saving but not many. That's my point.
Sounds like the Democratic party is a perfect home for you. The Biden administration is center right on the border (in practical terms), the military, and trade. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "cost saving," other than balancing the budget and trying to be efficient with tax dollars, things the democrats are doing way better on than Republicans. The party is built for your sensibilities. If you're an American, your view is the one in control of the politically relevant non fascist party.
The American democrats seem too right for my liking. The party definitely isn't perfect for me.
Hello fellow libruls!
Please elaborate
https://tinyurl.com/Tell-Us-More
Okay fine.
From a starting point I feel everyone should have an equal start in life (to a point). So for example everyone that is born should have free healthcare and be able to get whatever job they want as long as they have the ability. That's my core left view.
Secondly. I have a degree in economics and that educates some of my views to be more monetarily and free market orientated. So I'm big on cash transfers where someone else might go for say free food stamps. But overriding that I believe governments should focus more on happiness and wellbeing than GDP or GDP per capita. That's in contrast to my education, or typical takeaways from my education.
My policies would be high government spending, high taxes and cash transfers, subsidies and externalities to fix market issues and help push things into certain ideals.
That means I see myself and left or heavily left leaning. But I'm still proud of my country and think my country comes above others with my money and the money of my countrymen. Which is the right policies I wish more for in a left leaning party. I also feel like people are more responsible for themselves than some people make out.
The issue I find is when talking to the average right winger verse the average left winger.
I have had discussions with people saying they don't think university education should be free or subsidised because if it's valuable they people can take out loans themselves or if someone works hard they can gift it to their children. Someone shouldn't have to give their money so someone else's kid can go to university for free. Now I don't agree but I understand the point and respect their arguments.
On a similar issue I have talked to left wingers who have said all jobs should pay the same, or that men and women should be paid the same irrelevant of what jobs they have. That it's not fair that one degree gets you higher paying life than others. Something like this I do not agree with and do not understand.
It's basically the logic of right wingers make sense but I disagree. The logic of left wingers doesn't make sense but I still agree a lot with them for different reasons.
Even things like COVID. I was huge into vaccines and science and got it as soon as I could, did everything the government told me I was behind it 100%. But I still agreed with the right wingers than any anticovid views should be allowed. I just thought the government should have done better in educating people on the truth.
Ultimately it comes down to my personal experience in dealing with people. In my experience left wingers talk a lot more nonsense and get a lot more aggressive than right wingers.
My dude, I consider myself pretty liberal. For quick context: I think Joe Biden and the establishment stole the 2020 primary from Bernie Sanders, and I haven't been gruntled since.
I agree with every point you made, explaining your political opinions.
The only things that I want to say are that being liberal and being proud of your country are not mutually exclusive. That's a media propaganda talking point. "Liberals hate America!" - That's just not true. Also, it sounds like you had a conversation about pay rates with an actual communist. Very few liberals are going to support actual communism. That's another propaganda talking point.
Liberalism and democratic socialism is nowhere near communism. Democratic socialism supports the things you expressed support for: Social safety net programs, funding education, social medicine.
We all have more in common than we're led to believe.
I met a lot of left people that just spew talking points and choose whatever is the nicest view to have. They wouldn't say they are communist but they say stuff that is partially communist. Then make out everyone is heartless monsters. A lot of people recently were complaining about supermarkets making 1% profit margin. Saying it's too much, like loads of left wingers had this view and said they should be government owned. It's madness.
I'm not American. Also I'm not that liberal at all, one of our most right wing governments ever was famously liberal and sold every government asset and let the free market deal with everything. There is a reason ding dong the witch is dead hit 1 in the charts when Maggie died. Liberalism is not anything the left or most of the right ever want back.
Socialism is communism though. That's the definition of the word.
Socialism "...advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole"
Practically speaking, all acceptable political ideologies in a liberal democracy could be considered liberal, or at the very least on the liberal spectrum. Liberalism is such a broad ideology, that both hyper religious neocon neoliberals and democratic socialists could qualify. Economic liberalism is typically what liberal has colloquially meant outside the US, while in the US, it has referred to social liberalism. Thatcher and Reagan had very similar ideologies, but Thatcher called herself a liberal, while to 1980s Republicans, liberal was a dirty word. It's a fucky term, but if you're a Brit who loves your country, you probably love liberalism in some way.
Democratic socialists are fiscally socialist, but still want to work within the system of liberal democracy to eventually achieve communism. "Communist" colloquially refers to people who want to achieve communism without working through liberal democracy. This includes everything from Marxist-Leninists(think the Soviets), to anarcho-communists, both of which wildly disagree with eachother. The landscape is full of people of don't self identify accurately to what they ideologically believe because of the colloquial meaning of these terms.
Also, you are exceptionally lucky to have not run into fascists. If you actually exposed yourself to the double speak and misinformation they use to justify right wing beliefs, you too might lose faith in all right wing arguments like I have.
I apologize for making the assumption that you were American.
Its my understanding that even liberal american politicians are rather conservative, from a global perspective. This is probably the source of my confusion in our exchange.
But I agree with you that many people complain and are jealous when they see others being prosperous when they struggle to thrive. Also, people seem to just like to complain in general.
Here's a section that I found from a website, on democratic socialism:
" In the present day, "Democratic socialist" and "socialist" are often treated as interchangeable terms, which can be confusing given democratic socialists don't necessarily think the government should immediately take control of all aspects of the economy.
They do, however, generally believe the government should help provide for people's most basic needs and help all people have an equal chance at achieving success. "
I think in this context, democratic socialists are just in support of government having more influence in business, strengthening unions and worker protections, addressing the massive wealth inequality. The current american government is really more on the side of business than on the side of workers.
this shit is even worse than the reddit 196
That's unrealistic. You can't burn a rainbows and also beer is not flamable.
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.
Thank you!