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 31, I was most conservative in my teens when I was in a private Christian high school in the south. Then I went to college, worked at a jail, went to law school, and in the process learned about the world and the people in it.
I am still astonished at the people who have done similar things and still don’t have an ounce of compassion for the poor and struggling. Conservative values only make sense when your sense of self only encompasses you, your family, and your religion. Once you realize that you are a part of something bigger, and the gay Hindu man and the black Muslim woman has the same consciousness and feelings as you it’s a lot harder to think of them as enemies or pitiful souls who need to be saved.
When you realize that people are people, and we are all the same, but for our circumstances, then it’s impossible to be conservative.
I think some people have trouble conceptualizing those around them as human. From what I can tell it's not intentional cruelty, at least at first, they just struggle to conceptualize and understand the idea that all of the people around them have just as dynamic and complex inner worlds as they do. When it's a struggle to make that connection, it's easy to go through life ignoring the plight of those around you, disregarding them with the same ease most people dismiss a warning on a computer.
I 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.
As someone formerly in the same boat, I think belief in the Abrahamic religions makes it hard to identify with the plights of others, because if you believe in a just, loving god, then "those people" have the religion and hardships that they do for a reason (and the reason is usually either "it's part of God's plan" or "they made bad decisions").
When you base your entire worldview on a faulty premise, you can use sound logic to get all the way to libertarianism without a problem. Once I reexamined and discarded my belief in the Christian god, it was like flipping a switch; I went from douchey religious Libertarian to bleeding-heart socialist almost literally overnight.
Indeed. That's one of my biggest problems with religion and why it makes me uncomfortable even though I ostensibly believe that people have their right to spirituality. Ultimately, with spiritual premises, people can come to faulty or unpredictable conclusions even with sound logic, and that somewhat unnerves me.
I'm skeptical that many conservatives have dynamic and complex inner worlds ... I don't see much evidence that they think much about anything, but rather offload as much as possible onto others. My mother, as she gets older, appears to actively avoid thinking for herself and has begun the decline into right-wing thinking. She likes the Daily Mail to do her thinking for her.
I think that all people and many non-person animals have dynamic and complex inner worlds, but Conservatives definitely have a blind spot when it comes to political evaluation. Unfortunately, it's our nature as our species to seek out shortcuts. One of the ways we do this is by finding trusted sources to do some level of evaluation for us, that way we don't have to think about as much. With Conservatives, many of them learned to trust certain sources from their parents, religion, or their own misguided fear. These sources are conspiratorial and hate-mongering, and they usually don't apply any critical analysis to them. This leads to a self-perpetuating cycle where their sources tell them to trust no one and to be hateful and from that they don't pick up any new sources, causing them to enter an echo chamber they can't escape. It's honestly kinda sad and I somewhat pity them, but I still will do what it takes to defeat them politically.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
