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>He proposes that "leftists" have this belief in their own freedom, but that this freedom is a delusion. Interesting, because my pet theory is that what determ

>He proposes that "leftists" have this belief in their own freedom, but that this freedom is a delusion. Interesting, because my pet theory is that what determines if people lean left or right is their belief in their own free will. Those that truly believe they are completely free and autonomus from society and their environment will naturally favor right wing policies, but those that believe they are largely a product of their environment will favor left wing policies. This belief is perhaps (probably) not always explicit but rather somehow implicit or 'felt'.

raxxorrax 6y ago
I don't think so. What would it matter if one or the other would be correct? I think this question is philosophical masturbation in most instances. I think you will find both on either side of the political isle and also that there isn't one fundamental position on anything that determines your camp.
nicolas_t 6y ago
The problem is that right and left is a bit of a strange spectrum, there are a lot of people on the right that vote for right wing policies not because of economic freedom but because they instead are deeply religious and want to enforce their religions on others... So, I certainly wouldn't call the religious right as believing they are free and autonomous from society and their environment...
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > The problem is that right and left is a bit of a strange spectrum, there are a lot of people on the right that vote for right wing policies not because of economic freedom but because they instead are deeply religious and want to enforce their religions on others... That's most of the actual right; “economic freedom” is a libertarian viewpoint more than a right-wing one, though in the US system the more-right-wing of the major parties also frequently uses libertarian rhetoric, which can confuse the issue. From the outset of the left/right or liberal/conservative divide, the right/conservative side has been centrally about protecting the position of established elites against forces that would transfer (principally, in the case of the left, more widely distribute) power, largely justified by appeals to traditional, especially religious and nationalist, values.
andrepd 6y ago
Doesn't really matter what you "believe" if it's demonstrably true that you're shaped by your environment.
- luckylion 6y ago
  "Shaped" is somewhat different from fatalism though. Do you have a choice in the matter, or is there no choice at all and you're just going through the motions that your genes ("what you started with") + the environment ("what happened to you") determined for you?
- wisty 6y ago
  Any reasonable definition of "you" would suggest a mind with free will (at least to a certain level of approximation). Also, aside from any philosophical mind / matter or free will / predestination arguments, it's not just a question of what is, but what is a more adaptive belief.
dangerface 6y ago
> what determines if people lean left or right What if people don't lean left or right but instead that there is only enough signal to noise in a group of 300 million people trying to make a decision to have a multiple choice answer of yes or no, more or less, yellow or green? Under a system like that peoples natural tendency toward tribalism would cause them to group people under the two camps yellow or green, me and other. They might naturally assume that the other group just always vote other because they are the voters that vote other. The idea that it's actually a large group of people with diverse and changing opinions who vote of their own freewill rather than a loyalty to a colour is lost in the noise. Thats my pet theory.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Interesting. That would let you look at the same set of problems in society, and decide either that you need to fix the individuals (rightist) or fix the environment, that is, the structure of society (leftist). And their answer would feel so right to them (on both sides) that they would think that anyone who saw it the other way had to be maliciously advocating for a bad agenda. And, in truth, neither view will do. We are more the product of our environment than the rightists think, but we are less the prisoner of our circumstances than the leftists think.
archagon 6y ago
What? How can you possibly say this when the entire modus operandi of the conservative right (in the US) is unwavering deference to authority? (On reflection, I guess "we have rules and you should have known better" could be construed as a belief in free will, in the sense of justifying the myriad ways in which systems pressure individuals. But it's ironic that the purported side of free will is the side of "president/cops/military/corporation/party knows best", while the other side is the one actually trying to enact change in these systems. Actual free will implies a feedback loop of observation, action, and reaction.)

raxxorrax 6y ago

I don't think so. What would it matter if one or the other would be correct? I think this question is philosophical masturbation in most instances. I think you will find both on either side of the political isle and also that there isn't one fundamental position on anything that determines your camp.

nicolas_t 6y ago

The problem is that right and left is a bit of a strange spectrum, there are a lot of people on the right that vote for right wing policies not because of economic freedom but because they instead are deeply religious and want to enforce their religions on others... So, I certainly wouldn't call the religious right as believing they are free and autonomous from society and their environment...

dragonwriter 6y ago
> The problem is that right and left is a bit of a strange spectrum, there are a lot of people on the right that vote for right wing policies not because of economic freedom but because they instead are deeply religious and want to enforce their religions on others... That's most of the actual right; “economic freedom” is a libertarian viewpoint more than a right-wing one, though in the US system the more-right-wing of the major parties also frequently uses libertarian rhetoric, which can confuse the issue. From the outset of the left/right or liberal/conservative divide, the right/conservative side has been centrally about protecting the position of established elites against forces that would transfer (principally, in the case of the left, more widely distribute) power, largely justified by appeals to traditional, especially religious and nationalist, values.

andrepd 6y ago

Doesn't really matter what you "believe" if it's demonstrably true that you're shaped by your environment.

luckylion 6y ago
"Shaped" is somewhat different from fatalism though. Do you have a choice in the matter, or is there no choice at all and you're just going through the motions that your genes ("what you started with") + the environment ("what happened to you") determined for you?
wisty 6y ago
Any reasonable definition of "you" would suggest a mind with free will (at least to a certain level of approximation). Also, aside from any philosophical mind / matter or free will / predestination arguments, it's not just a question of what is, but what is a more adaptive belief.

dangerface 6y ago

> what determines if people lean left or right What if people don't lean left or right but instead that there is only enough signal to noise in a group of 300 million people trying to make a decision to have a multiple choice answer of yes or no, more or less, yellow or green? Under a system like that peoples natural tendency toward tribalism would cause them to group people under the two camps yellow or green, me and other. They might naturally assume that the other group just always vote other because they are the voters that vote other. The idea that it's actually a large group of people with diverse and changing opinions who vote of their own freewill rather than a loyalty to a colour is lost in the noise. Thats my pet theory.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

Interesting. That would let you look at the same set of problems in society, and decide either that you need to fix the individuals (rightist) or fix the environment, that is, the structure of society (leftist). And their answer would feel so right to them (on both sides) that they would think that anyone who saw it the other way had to be maliciously advocating for a bad agenda. And, in truth, neither view will do. We are more the product of our environment than the rightists think, but we are less the prisoner of our circumstances than the leftists think.

archagon 6y ago

What? How can you possibly say this when the entire modus operandi of the conservative right (in the US) is unwavering deference to authority? (On reflection, I guess "we have rules and you should have known better" could be construed as a belief in free will, in the sense of justifying the myriad ways in which systems pressure individuals. But it's ironic that the purported side of free will is the side of "president/cops/military/corporation/party knows best", while the other side is the one actually trying to enact change in these systems. Actual free will implies a feedback loop of observation, action, and reaction.)