It’s funny how dualistic western society is.
I wonder if other societies are this dualistic?
Some are more so: take the continentals, for example. They are more dualistic becaUse the are more anomalous.
Daktoria
Indeed, there are various subtypes of liberals and conservatives.
I’d say liberalism as typically defined, is more economically authoritarian than conservatism.
Liberalism is more socially libertarian.
On the whole, liberals tend to conform to the state where as conservatives tend to conform to everything else, be it culture, family or religion.
Why this is, is a mystery to me???
On the whole, conservatives may be a little more socially authoritarian. Conservative social authoritarianism is religious and traditional in nature, being rooted in Christianity and European traditions such as monogamy. Liberal authoritarianism is more secular and progressive in orientation. Again, why this is, is a mysterious to me, as I’m sure it is to many. Perhaps there’s an esoteric reason for it, or maybe it’s just coincidence.
I think it’s both, you can make it as simple or complex as you’d like, whilst being fairly objective the whole time.
Right, but I think I’m right in thinking utilitarianism is more compatible with authoritarianism and deontology with libertarianism. In utilitarianism the ends justify the means, where as in deontology, they don’t. For libertarians and deontologists, the ends, like happiness, pleasure or survival, never or rarely justify the means, like loss of autonomy and other kinds of violence done to the individual. That’s what it means to be a libertarian and deontologist, where as for authoritarians and utilitarians, the ends sometimes do.
If you’re right, then maybe the words liberal and conservative are meaningless and should be discarded or redefined. Here’s my theory.
Perhaps equality could mean democracy, or is the majority ruling over minorities too hierarchical? There’s sort of two left/right dichotomies, one is the Anglo-American left/right paradigm, which is more/less authoritarian egalitarianism (left), among other things (secular, progressive, globalist) versus libertarian elitism (right), among other things (religious, traditional, nationalist). They’re both collections of socio-political viewpoints. The dichotomy you’ve provided us with is more simplified, a single principle is offered for the left, equality, and a single principle for the right, inequality. Your dichotomy is more ahistorical, transcendental, perhaps it can be found nowhere, except in the mind of the thinker.
Somehow, the individual and what matters to him are lost in extreme egalitarianism and elitism. Why should I prefer either one? As far as I’m concerned, they’re both remote abstractions. Sometimes one may benefit me and what I care about, and sometimes the other. I’m interested in looking at this more from a more complicated, concrete and holistic standpoint, rather than absolute egalitarianism, or elitism.
You’ve contradicted yourself. First, you say both the left and right are for reciprocal altruism or an eye for an eye, reaping what you sow, tit for tat. Then you go on to say the left is for forced equality, what gives? Furthermore, inequality is more natural than equality, how so? Equality and inequality are abstractions, no one is absolutely equal or unequal, nothing is absolutely identical, nor wholly unique.
The state of things could always be infinitely more equal or unequal.
Perhaps you mean the left believes the elites have contributed or generally contribute less than the working class, in which case, a percentage of wealth needs to be redistributed downward in order to restore justice, fairness, where as the right, believes the opposite, and the center, let’s the economy be, or redistributes wealth downward or upward, as they see fit, or according to which class they believe is being swindled this year.
Then you’re essentially agreeing with Sauwelios, the order being relative hierarchy, where the king rules the serfs, the master rules the slave, the capitalist rules the laborers, men rule women and children, etcetera. The liberation being some form of anarcho-communism or anarcho-primitivism. The order then, would be something man attempts to impose on the supposed chaos of nature, where everything is in flux and vying for dominance and hierarchies aren’t fixed but fluid. However, you could say both extreme hierarchy and leveling, totalitarian dictatorship and anarcho-communism, are idealistic, unnatural impositions of abstractions on nature, which favors nothing - an endless cycling between competition and cooperation, between elitism and egalitarianism, between globalization and localization. Nature is none of these things and all of these things, neither orderly hierarchy or chaotic hierarchy, neither orderly equality or disorderly equality, but an endless dynamic between polarizations which exist only in the mind, as points of reference.
Feel free to ask me what my alternatives are in epistemology and metaphysics, ethics and politics. Dan asked me for an epistemological alternative to Science and Religion, and I gave him one. I don’t mind spending some time defining left and right, so long as we get around to transcending them. If we don’t do it here, we’ll do it in another, so no bother.
Obe
Continentals? Who’re they?
How about the issue I raised about the cart before horse regarding knowledge and solutions? For example, communist critics often had extremely acute analyses of the problems of fascism and the various versions of capitalism. Their solutions however were extremely problematic.
It’s ironic that you’d use the word “ahistorical”, considering that I’ve traced the terms “Left” and “Right” back to their historical beginnings: France around the time of the Revolution. By doing so, I’ve been able to distill their essential meaning. It’s also ironic that you’d insist on the totally simplistic heaping together of intrinsically unrelated concepts (e.g., authoritarianism, egalitarianism, secularism, progressivism, and globalism) and then accuse me of oversimplifying! The “Left/Right” axis is only one of the axes I recognise; you on the other hand reduce everything to the “axis” of Republican and Democratic…
The temptation to reduce is prevalent to it’s most common denominator, that’s only a habit of mind, perhaps, for communicative purposes. But the trouble with all reductions, that are brought up in the objection of most people involved in political processes, is, that if they try to invert the simplicity to gain more understanding, they can not climb back the ladder.
People speak of grass roots political activism, but again the meaning of which eludes most. Most people can not reduce their involvement below the level of the ground the epitath, the rallying cry., They can not get to the root of the problems. So they are stuck at limiting descriptions, what appear to be only propaganda reflecting media bias.
So trying to understand left, right, and center positions, they take a common sense approach to what is meant by those terms, and concepts such as the ones listed above, detracing from clarification rather than enhancing it. That's just the way the system functions, and most pundits would claim that if there was other ways, they would implement them.
Objections are met by applying utalitarian approaches to political awareness. Some find it sufficient, some don't, and some don't get involved, yet still others speak as if it doesen't matter anyway, because both left and right have hidden agendas, that can be skirted, and exempted, in essence the right and the left may even be reversed without anyone really paying attention. Nowedays the interest seems to incline toward the conservative left, and the liberal right, and this moving toward the center is seen as a trend toward a more coherent and workable system. Some view it as a dangerous trend, others just another workday.
“Few discoveries are more irritating than those which expose the pedigree of ideas. Sharp definitions and unsparing analysis would displace the veil beneath which society dissembles its divisions, would make political disputes too violent for compromise and political alliances too precarious for use, and would embitter politics with all the passions of social and religious strife.” (Lord Acton, as quoted in Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, Introduction.)
Yes, Sauwelios, as ever you defuse the trending topic by referring to its origin - you’ve castrated it.
The question that no one has the will to ask here on ILP is: What shall be the end of this rule? Liberalism/conservatism have both had and will both have their day in the sun, but to what end? To free up, to conserve what?
Back when men were still deemed men, there wasn’t any question: to conserve our wealth, to guarantee our power.
Now, men are deemed robots and have to lie. “For the good of all!”.
Both eyesinthedark and you suffer from the philosophers dilemma we discussed - “what is my investment in all this?” Both of you can not “rise above” or perhaps rather “descend from” the philosophical indifference. So you, and not Eyes, are correct - simply exposing the meaning of terms, simply showing what is going on where, killing the fun.
But no one will listen. What is really important, valuable here, is the confusion. Conservatives and Liberals are fighting different battles. Their enemies don’t really exist. All modern politics is a confusion of terms, and clever businessmen (people that may at one point in time have called themselves philosophers - “wisdom” took on a different meaning since then) take all the advantage.
Political dualities are cacaphonic instruments. They disturb the perception of the rational mind, they present an order that isn’t really there. The actual conflict is at once more complex and more simple. No principles are involved, only positions and perspectives. But the Revolution of the common man has provided the aristocrat with the perfect strategem - “value” is no longer to exist as a particular, real thing, it may only be considered an abstraction, a ‘common demominator’ - “what’s good enough for him is good enough for me”, and vice versa.
Of course only the poor, those with no perspective, no conscious self-value, are inclined to follow in this sort of justice - and to impose it on their children, and anyone in their sphere of influence.
Whenever one walks in a city, one is being ‘eroded’ - except when one takes hold of the pathos of the people and shapes them into some form of economy centered around ones own values. The will to power is inescapable.
What i am saying is that you need me, both of you, Eyes and Sauwelios, to make a point that reaches beyond the immaterial.
That is not to say that you need to make such a point.
“As ever” you make insinuations that are moreover irrelevant to the “trending” topic… Anyway, I think I’ve done the opposite of castrating it. My input steers it away from becoming yet [i]another /i discussion in which people thoughtlessly throw around terms like “left”, “right”, “conservative”, and “liberal”. By doing so, it, as Lord Acton suggests, makes it possible for the discussion to truly become explosive…
We’re truly fortunate to have someone around who has the will-power to ask such dangerous questions.
Oh, I’m having perfectly good fun irritating people.
That would be cool.
I don’t think it’s of any consequence at all, in this company.
Yes, that can be fun.
If inequality is natural then how is a “right” ideology in favor of forced stratification? If inequality is natural then the stratification is natural, not forced. Certainly some people are in favor of doing whatever it takes to make themselves more powerful, but I think that their ideology is neither right nor left, but simply whatever works to make them more powerful.
Yes, but in order to achieve the mythical Marxist utopia you must first pass through Marxist Socialism, there is no way around that and so total submission is part of Marxist Communism because the socialist stage is inseparable from the communist goal. There cannot be a state “in the service of procuring statelessness”, the concept is ridiculous and wholly fantasy.
That’s why I said “theoretically”.
Aren’t we talking about party lines? We certainly aren’t talking about reality, because neither left nor right actually operates based on principle or theory.
And some people are lazy or stupid. Some people are lucky, some people are smart, some people are idiots, some people create opportunities, some people don’t recognize them when they see them, some people are victims of terrible parents, some people are born into a great family, etc, etc. That’s the point, these things cannot be leveled. The theoretic ideologies seem somewhat like this to me:
right - life is unfair, learn how to overcome that.
left - life is unfair, let’s change that.
One is realistic, one isn’t. Again, this is ideological theory, not reality.
As per above, this is not realistic. The “playing field” cannot be leveled. But the players can be taught how to navigate an unlevel playing field. “Leveling the playing field” means taking advantages away from those who have them, how is that fair? Why is advantage unfair is achieved through no wrong doing?
I’m not sure I made that equation.
Equality meaning ability, advantage/disadvantage, etc. Not value as a human, in that sense, yes everyone is equal, everyone has value. But that’s not what this discussion is about. Not everyone is equal in ability to navigate an unlevel “playing field”. That’s just the way it is. The playing field cannot be leveled, it’s simply not possible without totally subjecting every single individual to the will of an all powerful state, and even then it won’t work. Inequality is more natural than equality (in ability, advantage, etc) because that’s the state of nature. Some lions are born into prides in an area where gazelle are abundant, and some of those lions just happen to be stronger or faster than the others, and so because of their advantage and ability produce more offspring and so on. Some gazelles are born in a place where there are not so many lions, and some of them are faster than the others and so are able to better outrun any lions they happen to come across, and they on to produce more offspring that the slower gazelles in high lion density areas. That’s totally unequal, and yet that’s the way it is. Is that unfair? Sure. Should humans shuffle around the lion and gazelle populations until the slow and fast gazelles are evenly distributed into median density lion populations?
You’re wrong to presume that overcoming unfairness is any more realistic than changing it.
When some people and not others are provided with unearned advantages by the structures and institutions of society, that is unfair. And it can be changed.
If you want to live in a state of nature, then this would be a good argument for that. Most people don’t want to live in a state of nature, though. It’s not true that nothing can be changed in the name of fairness. That’s an excuse made by the team lucky enough to be defending the smaller of the two goals.
What’s all this now Sauwelios, you have me beat eh? 