10 ms·

Out of curiosity, why former?

bcherny 4y ago
“He who is not a républicain at twenty compels one to doubt the generosity of his heart; but he who, after thirty, persists, compels one to doubt the soundness of his mind.”
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- sjm 4y ago
  I really dislike this quote. It always comes across like it's designed to ease greedy people of their guilt for moving to the right as they earn more money. To me, being sound of mind is wanting everyone to have what you have, or at least an equal shot of getting there from wherever they had the roll of the dice of being born.
  - bcherny 4y ago
    Not to agree or disagree with the quote itself, I’m simply giving a possible explanation for why the commenter may have changed their mind.
  - kortilla 4y ago
    Well sure, it’s “sound of mind” to you because that’s your political view. To people on the right it’s just completely naive. The first half is mathematically impossible and the second half is so wishy washy that it leaves room for everyone to claim they were born further back in one aspect or another on the proverbial board.
    - philosopher1234 4y ago
      > it leaves room for everyone to claim they were born further back in one aspect or another on the proverbial board. Because generosity is exploitable, it's better to exploit.
      - yowlingcat 4y ago
        Because generosity is exploitable, it deserves examination for integrity. That's a different way to phrase it that avoids your strawman.
  - MarkMarine 4y ago
    Reminds me of a great 30 rock joke, being fiscally liberal and socially conservative. Politics is really just dividing up the shared resources, which is the root of that joke. Who cares about politics and doesn’t care about the resources part? I guess after 30 people forget how to share per that quote. Never happened to me though. Personally I don’t even think it’s accurate, in my life I’ve never seen people swing from generous to… let’s just say “not” The people who were always like that a little got more so.
    - dalmo3 4y ago
      > fiscally liberal and socially conservative That's top left on the political compass... Is that not a thing in the US?
      - wpietri 4y ago
        Not in conception, no. One could argue it exists in practice, though, in the "deficit-funded tax cuts for the rich" crowd.
      - MarkMarine 4y ago
        Is it a thing anywhere? Who chooses not to care about the resources, the things you're there to divvy up. Not caring at all is certainly a choice I can see individuals making, but someone who is politically engaged and doesn't care about the resources, I can't even fathom it.
    - astrange 4y ago
      > Reminds me of a great 30 rock joke, being fiscally liberal and socially conservative. You can tell online people isn't representative because they think it's a joke when this is actually pretty common among average people. (Who aren't on a single position on the political compass but are instead "cross-pressured".)
  - xupybd 4y ago
    The quote is not nice and I don't blame anyone for taking issue with it. However I don't see people feeling any guilt as they move right. Nor do I see a need for greed to corelate with the right leaning politics. The same teachings that lead me to lean right also lead me to donate more than 10% of my income. I think all people that can should donate to charity but I don't think anyone should be forced to. I take issue with the idea that forcing others to give money is generosity.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - dgb23 4y ago
      I think that’s possibly a fundamental misunderstanding of left ideas. The point is not to force generosity on others. The point is to fight back against unjustified value extraction by the powerful and to democratize the workplace. Socialists see charity as trying to patch over symptoms of an inherently deeper problem. It’s not a philanthropic movement. It’s a worker movement.
  - JenrHywy 4y ago
    To interpret the quote charitably, I think it's more that age can come with an appreciation with the fragility of society, the recognition that it's a miracle it works at all, and a humility about how much and how rapidly a system can be changed without being destroyed.
    - smt88 4y ago
      > humility about how much and how rapidly a system can be changed without being destroyed I guess everyone familiar with US history should find the quote to be utter bullshit, then. The American Revolution, Civil War, Emancipation Proclamation, 19th Amendment, Great Depression, WWII, and Civil Rights Act were all major upheavals in society that brought on rapid change. A lot of people died prematurely, but a lot of lives were later extended or saved to balance that out somewhat, and the system surely didn't collapse.
      - naasking 4y ago
        The system did collapse, that's why so many people died prematurely and why the system that came after was radically different than what came before. Keeping the same name just creates an illusion of continuity.
      - JenrHywy 4y ago
        Well, there are plenty of examples outside of the US's fairly young history where revolution has not always gone so well. Plus, I think one could argue that the US is still to prove that it can survive the aftermath of the Civil War. Sometimes collapse takes a while.
  - astrange 4y ago
    Well, since the quote comes from a Frenchman in 1875 I don't think we should read present day US politics into it. But I'm not sure what a républicain does believe.
- xmonkee 4y ago
  God, this is such condescending nonsense. The older I get, the more left I lean, because the more of the world you see the more you see what chaos our current ideology has wreaked upon it. The only people I see going the way this quote does are unthinking idiots who were fashionably "liberal" in their youth without understanding any political theory, and are now fashionably "conservative" with even lesser understanding.
  - wpietri 4y ago
    Hard same. In some sense I don't think my values have changed much. I've always been dispositionally moderate and compassionate. Indeed, in a lot of ways I'm dispositionally conservative; for example, I'm a proud member of the Boring Technology Club. [1] (As the Christians say, "Test everything; hold fast to what is good.") But the older I get, the more my compassion and my curiosity drive me to see through the bullshit and to question the people who talk about being conservative but act to conserve the worst of our history, not the best of it. So although I remain a dedicated incrementalist, many would see me as increasingly radical. [1] https://boringtechnology.club/ https://boringtechnology.club/
  - schoen 4y ago
    I'm not sure if I can escape from your accusations of idiocy or of fashion-following, but I am someone who's moved further right as I've gotten older. When I was younger I was more confident that the world and institutions could easily be remade or replaced just by reasoning about them intelligently, and I was also more confident that everyone's interests and morality roughly converged, so not very much had to be done to allow us to get along and live together in harmony. (Nonetheless, I think it's likely that you'd have considered my adolescent beliefs to already be right-wing and to be lacking a consciousness of political theory.) Now I'm more apt to think there are things that we can't redesign, things we depend on that evolved with no one designing them, and lots of immutable constraints from human nature. Also that a great deal of the harmony we experience is fragile, and we might be much worse off without it. (For what it's worth, I would also try to avoid making generalizations about people that imply what they're supposed to believe based on their age -- or making fun of people on the basis that their beliefs are supposedly out of step with their age.)
eyelidlessness 4y ago
Basically… I accepted the premise that the state probably has a necessary role in any process that could lead towards a stateless and classless society, or even in any process which could intervene in regressions from that goal. I don’t want to get more into that here because there be many dragons. But I’m easy to contact if you want :)

“He who is not a républicain at twenty compels one to doubt the generosity of his heart; but he who, after thirty, persists, compels one to doubt the soundness of his mind.”

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
sjm 4y ago
I really dislike this quote. It always comes across like it's designed to ease greedy people of their guilt for moving to the right as they earn more money. To me, being sound of mind is wanting everyone to have what you have, or at least an equal shot of getting there from wherever they had the roll of the dice of being born.
- bcherny 4y ago
  Not to agree or disagree with the quote itself, I’m simply giving a possible explanation for why the commenter may have changed their mind.
- kortilla 4y ago
  Well sure, it’s “sound of mind” to you because that’s your political view. To people on the right it’s just completely naive. The first half is mathematically impossible and the second half is so wishy washy that it leaves room for everyone to claim they were born further back in one aspect or another on the proverbial board.
  - philosopher1234 4y ago
    > it leaves room for everyone to claim they were born further back in one aspect or another on the proverbial board. Because generosity is exploitable, it's better to exploit.
    - yowlingcat 4y ago
      Because generosity is exploitable, it deserves examination for integrity. That's a different way to phrase it that avoids your strawman.
- MarkMarine 4y ago
  Reminds me of a great 30 rock joke, being fiscally liberal and socially conservative. Politics is really just dividing up the shared resources, which is the root of that joke. Who cares about politics and doesn’t care about the resources part? I guess after 30 people forget how to share per that quote. Never happened to me though. Personally I don’t even think it’s accurate, in my life I’ve never seen people swing from generous to… let’s just say “not” The people who were always like that a little got more so.
  - dalmo3 4y ago
    > fiscally liberal and socially conservative That's top left on the political compass... Is that not a thing in the US?
    - wpietri 4y ago
      Not in conception, no. One could argue it exists in practice, though, in the "deficit-funded tax cuts for the rich" crowd.
    - MarkMarine 4y ago
      Is it a thing anywhere? Who chooses not to care about the resources, the things you're there to divvy up. Not caring at all is certainly a choice I can see individuals making, but someone who is politically engaged and doesn't care about the resources, I can't even fathom it.
  - astrange 4y ago
    > Reminds me of a great 30 rock joke, being fiscally liberal and socially conservative. You can tell online people isn't representative because they think it's a joke when this is actually pretty common among average people. (Who aren't on a single position on the political compass but are instead "cross-pressured".)
- xupybd 4y ago
  The quote is not nice and I don't blame anyone for taking issue with it. However I don't see people feeling any guilt as they move right. Nor do I see a need for greed to corelate with the right leaning politics. The same teachings that lead me to lean right also lead me to donate more than 10% of my income. I think all people that can should donate to charity but I don't think anyone should be forced to. I take issue with the idea that forcing others to give money is generosity.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - dgb23 4y ago
    I think that’s possibly a fundamental misunderstanding of left ideas. The point is not to force generosity on others. The point is to fight back against unjustified value extraction by the powerful and to democratize the workplace. Socialists see charity as trying to patch over symptoms of an inherently deeper problem. It’s not a philanthropic movement. It’s a worker movement.
- JenrHywy 4y ago
  To interpret the quote charitably, I think it's more that age can come with an appreciation with the fragility of society, the recognition that it's a miracle it works at all, and a humility about how much and how rapidly a system can be changed without being destroyed.
  - smt88 4y ago
    > humility about how much and how rapidly a system can be changed without being destroyed I guess everyone familiar with US history should find the quote to be utter bullshit, then. The American Revolution, Civil War, Emancipation Proclamation, 19th Amendment, Great Depression, WWII, and Civil Rights Act were all major upheavals in society that brought on rapid change. A lot of people died prematurely, but a lot of lives were later extended or saved to balance that out somewhat, and the system surely didn't collapse.
    - naasking 4y ago
      The system did collapse, that's why so many people died prematurely and why the system that came after was radically different than what came before. Keeping the same name just creates an illusion of continuity.
    - JenrHywy 4y ago
      Well, there are plenty of examples outside of the US's fairly young history where revolution has not always gone so well. Plus, I think one could argue that the US is still to prove that it can survive the aftermath of the Civil War. Sometimes collapse takes a while.
- astrange 4y ago
  Well, since the quote comes from a Frenchman in 1875 I don't think we should read present day US politics into it. But I'm not sure what a républicain does believe.
xmonkee 4y ago
God, this is such condescending nonsense. The older I get, the more left I lean, because the more of the world you see the more you see what chaos our current ideology has wreaked upon it. The only people I see going the way this quote does are unthinking idiots who were fashionably "liberal" in their youth without understanding any political theory, and are now fashionably "conservative" with even lesser understanding.
- wpietri 4y ago
  Hard same. In some sense I don't think my values have changed much. I've always been dispositionally moderate and compassionate. Indeed, in a lot of ways I'm dispositionally conservative; for example, I'm a proud member of the Boring Technology Club. [1] (As the Christians say, "Test everything; hold fast to what is good.") But the older I get, the more my compassion and my curiosity drive me to see through the bullshit and to question the people who talk about being conservative but act to conserve the worst of our history, not the best of it. So although I remain a dedicated incrementalist, many would see me as increasingly radical. [1] https://boringtechnology.club/ https://boringtechnology.club/
- schoen 4y ago
  I'm not sure if I can escape from your accusations of idiocy or of fashion-following, but I am someone who's moved further right as I've gotten older. When I was younger I was more confident that the world and institutions could easily be remade or replaced just by reasoning about them intelligently, and I was also more confident that everyone's interests and morality roughly converged, so not very much had to be done to allow us to get along and live together in harmony. (Nonetheless, I think it's likely that you'd have considered my adolescent beliefs to already be right-wing and to be lacking a consciousness of political theory.) Now I'm more apt to think there are things that we can't redesign, things we depend on that evolved with no one designing them, and lots of immutable constraints from human nature. Also that a great deal of the harmony we experience is fragile, and we might be much worse off without it. (For what it's worth, I would also try to avoid making generalizations about people that imply what they're supposed to believe based on their age -- or making fun of people on the basis that their beliefs are supposedly out of step with their age.)

eyelidlessness 4y ago

Basically… I accepted the premise that the state probably has a necessary role in any process that could lead towards a stateless and classless society, or even in any process which could intervene in regressions from that goal. I don’t want to get more into that here because there be many dragons. But I’m easy to contact if you want :)