I think we’re overlapping here, so that’s good that we agree on common ground despite nuanced complexity that is not as incompatible as the conflict-stirrers make it out to be.
I feel like I basically agree with what you’ve said, just I have more that I want to add to it.
Sounds good.
The first responses are mostly sufficient, “left is opposite of right”.
Left and Right are lateral directions: right-handed or left-handed, which side is Dominant?
For most of Civilized human history, phalanx army style tactics dictate that you use your Left-hand for your shield, Right-hand for your spear or sword. Thus ‘Right’ ideology is structured, rigid, traditional, representing Order. Left ideology is individualistic, anti-traditional, more chaotic, Reactionary. If the Phalanx is representative of institutionalization of lateral direction, then ‘Left’ handers must adhere to a structure which favors their weaker side.
Ambidexterity is rare, but ideal, Symmetry of Left and Right—no side is Dominant, yet both are.
I personally associate “the Right” with the (Catholic, Centralized) Church, “the Left” with the State, politically speaking.
This is why “the Left” believe that the State must intervene in Moral affairs (drug abuse, abortion, gay marriage), contrary from the Right which believes these are Church / Community / Family matters, and they want Statists out of the affairs of the biological family unit.
Just to be clear, I never implied any opposites.
I think it is good to have opposing views and I don’t expect everyone to agree. I like to focus on the things we have in common, I like to call them both good when they pivot around self=other, and I don’t like to pigeonhole people. Not all religious folk are either right or left because religion is just another word for worldview and everyone has one.
There may be people (self included, though … there is a season) that are bent towards divisiveness. I consider that brokenness if incorrectly wielded. That is neither right nor left… it’s a privation of both.
Question, is there a higher biological and/or metaphysical reason(s) why mankind, or at least the west since the French revolution, tend to divide society, government and economics into left/right, or is it merely a social construct?
Or in other words, is it ahistorical, or historical?
So left and right sociopolitics stems from right brain/left handedness and left brain/right handedness, interesting, that’s one way of thinking about it.
Some also associate the left with femininity and the right with masculinity.
If so, this separation between left and right is deep, hardwired, rooted in our biology, and perhaps metaphysics, like yin/left and yang/right.
The way I see it, anarchism, liberalism (keep in mind whenever I say liberalism I mean either libertarianism, or something approaching it, fiscally, and/or socially, I never use the word liberalism to mean leftism), and populism were once associated with the left, but increasingly liberalism, and populism are associated with the right.
I believe this is because the left is no longer the underdog, it’s becoming the dominant ethos in the west, and so its severing its ties with the working class and the rebel, while just the reverse is happening on the right, the right is the new underdog.
This is happening because the upper classes in America, still the dominant superpower, at least for now, and in the west as a whole, still the dominant region of the world, are becoming leftists, and so they’re changing what it means to be left and right to some degree.
So we now have several candidates for what the left, and by extension the right, are.
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A social construct (contribution by Icthus), just a bunch of ideas and policies some people came up with and, mostly arbitrarily, stuck together, and perhaps used by the ruling classes to divide the masses into at least two big camps and rule them.
There’s no good reason why socialism came to be associated with say, atheism, or feminism, socialism could just as easily come to be associated with theism, and patriarchy. -
Leftwing Social Justice/Rightwing fear of State Overreach (contribution by Ichthus).
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Leftwing Right Brain/Rightwing Left Brain (contribution by UrWrong.
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Leftwing State/Rightwing Church (Contribution by UrWrong)
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Leftwing Counterculture/Rightwing Culture (contribution by Gloominary, altho I’m by no means the first person to come up with it, I’m sure thousands before me came to the same and similar conclusions).
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Leftwing Scientism and Technocracy/Rightwing Religion and Theocracy (contribution by Gloominary).
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Leftwing Femininity/Rightwing Masculinity (contribution by Satyr).
So, which of these is most satisfying and for what reason(s)?
I don’t think any of these contributions are out of the question, they’re all good candidates for what left/right are, and I’m sure you can find plenty of philosophers and social theories backing any of them throughout history.
Perhaps it’s some combination of all, or some of them.
Any more contributions?
Oh, and by extension leftwing Counter-Demography/Rightwing Demography.
So in this, the rightwing represents what a people, its culture and civilization are, what took a people centuries of collective experience, intuiting and reasoning to build up, as well as the people themselves, WASPs in the Anglosphere, white French Catholics in France and Quebec, and so on, and the leftwing potentially represents all that is foreign and new to a people and its culture.
This doesn’t mean the left embraces everything that is foreign and new, altho it could mean that if the left has gone batshit, which I believe it has, but that ideally it selects foreign and new ideas it has good reason to suspect may be useful to its culture, as well as foreigners it has good reason to suspect may be compatible with and complementary to its own people.
Re #2 above, I summarized that^ as “It’s about social justice on the left and people-over-impulses on the right.”
Government overreach is a symptom.
Please stay with this.
I was referring to the first few posts in the thread. Pay attention, Itch This.
I don’t think Left/Right-ism applies well to Economics. The exception maybe how Left and Right justify 1) amount of taxation, and 2) where to spend that taxation in society. Left and Right will share many of the same opinions, high taxes or low taxes, social programs or not, but they WILL NOT agree on their justifications for their reasons. In this, Left tends to appeal to ‘Humanitarianism’ as an idealistic, utopian project (redistribution of wealth). The Right tends to settle for Realism and Pragmatic factors—what matters is how money is made, who makes it, who trades it, who regulates it, etc. The Right believes “those who make it, earn it”. The Left believes, “all earn it, especially those who don’t make it”.
If you need more complexity … just add ‘Progressivism/Regressivism’ as “Forward/Backward” propulsory physical movement. Top/Bottom or Up/Down is vertical physical movement. I think there are some physical-metaphysical connections to larger philosophical topics, but it does get muddy quickly. In the case of ‘Progress’ it makes intuitive sense that a society is hypothetically “moving forward” or “evolving” versus “moving backward, regressing, devolving” etc.
For example, in most cases I hear ‘Progress’ young people automatically assume that “forward is better” or “newer is better”. This is falsified by those with age, wisdom, expertise, life experience, who contend otherwise that “sometimes you have to step back before going forward” or “sometimes older is better”.
Since these statements are grounded in physical reality, people intuit them within the inherent terminology. People then presume “Progress is better” when it requires much more specific context to justify.
And by people over impulses, you mean personal autonomy right?
Well the status quo doesn’t exist for no reason.
It took our people centuries of experience, intuiting and reasoning to build up.
It’s common sense, our collective wisdom.
The right’s biased in favor of the status quo.
The left’s biased against at least some of it for whatever reasons, there are segments of our population who’ve bad experiences with the status quo, perhaps for generations.
But this doesn’t mean the right is completely closed off from change or that the left completely embraces it, only if they’re mentally imbalanced, it just means the right leans strongly in favor of keeping most things the same and the left changing some things.
It’s a strong tendency, not necessarily an absolute unless mentally ill.
Just as people have personality characteristics, introverts tend to like down time, and alone time, but unless they’re mentally ill, they can get busy, socialize and enjoy it sometimes.
Same with extroverts, unless they’re mentally ill, they can take time out from socializing and being busy to reflect, and enjoy activities by themselves when needed.
The right acts as a people and their culture’s gatekeepers.
It’s the gatekeeper’s job to ensure only the best ideas and people spread.
The left acts as a culture’s explorers, they like to try new people, places, things and ideas on, and bring back some to society they think we could use and appreciate.
We need both aspects to work in harmony.
The problem today I think is the left has gone mad.
They have gone from being progressives, from thinking of our civilization as fundamentally good, but in need of some adjustments, to thinking of all cultures as equally good, multiculturalism, to hating their own people and our culture, to anti-whiteism, anti-conservatism and anti-Christianity, that’s where they are now, whites and their society are bad, and everything else is good, or better.
They have exchanged progressivism, which is thoughtful, meaningful and measured change, to change merely for its own sake, destruction of our civilization, to nihilism.
If we let the left continue down this path they will destroy western civilization.
The left does this every 100-150 years it seems.
We saw them do it during the French revolution in 1789.
Conservative Edmund Burke wasn’t completely in favor of the status quo or he wouldn’t have supported the American revolution, but he was against the French revolution because he saw it as nihilistic change rather than progressive.
We also saw it during the Russian revolution in 1917, 128 years later.
This led to strong rightwing reactions with Mussolini’s black shirts coming to power in 1922 and Hitler’s brown shirts in 1933, which were also problematic.
I believe if we don’t reign the left in, it will do something like this again within the next two or three decades.
They need to get back to progressivism, to honoring many aspects of themselves and their culture, but wanting to thoughtfully change some of them, and away from multiculturalism, as well as anti-whiteism, anti-conservative nihilism, radical change merely for change’s sake, just being the opposite of conservative in every way like that’s some sort of virtue.
By “people over impulses” I don’t merely mean autonomy from government, or (rather) I don’t merely mean self-government (autonomy) as opposed to governmental overreach, I mean self-regulation of impulses, wants, etc, so that they orbit (prioritize) the self=other. That is the only way to “reign in” — and both hypocrisies (from right & left) need this.
If we did this (governed ourselves according to the innate capacity to order thoughts, feelings, and behaviors around self=other), we would not need the imposition of an externally imposed law like a bunch of dirty toddlers running into the street.