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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 i

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.)
jjoonathan 4y ago
Yeah, it starts condescending and gets worse once you understand the argument: "as an elite, you will learn in your 20s how the policies and goals of conservatism are self-serving, and you will therefore adopt them." In my 20s I bought a house, started filling a brokerage account, started managing people -- so I certainly started to feel those incentives, but I am both principled enough to not act entirely out of self interest and wise enough to realize that I would have to be considerably wealthier before the capital-side incentives actually overtook the labor-side incentives in their importance to my bottom line. Unfortunately, even these meager principles and this sliver of wisdom are rare enough that "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" abound.
- eyelidlessness 4y ago
  Solidarity forever, rare as it may be!
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dgb23 4y ago
I personally find it more and more difficult to subscribe to any ideology. I think societies, states and economies are emergent properties of people living together. But the more I know people, the less I believe overarching systems, models and grand narratives. They are all wrong. Not only in respect of what should be. We can’t even agree on what is or has been.
- weatherlight 4y ago
  Some are less wrong than others.
lelanthran 4y ago
> 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. That sword cuts both ways. The more you see of the world, the more you treasure what the current ideology has brought.
naasking 4y ago
You have to admit that the State causes many of those problems. Police brutality would not be a problem if there were no police, for instance. One response is to say we need to empower the State with more authority to regulate those problems, with the hope that it doesn't just cause even more problems. Another response is to say we need less State authority, and find other ways of dealing with certain problems typically given to the State. Not every problem is a nail to hammer with the State. Neither response is correct in all circumstances.

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.)

jjoonathan 4y ago

Yeah, it starts condescending and gets worse once you understand the argument: "as an elite, you will learn in your 20s how the policies and goals of conservatism are self-serving, and you will therefore adopt them." In my 20s I bought a house, started filling a brokerage account, started managing people -- so I certainly started to feel those incentives, but I am both principled enough to not act entirely out of self interest and wise enough to realize that I would have to be considerably wealthier before the capital-side incentives actually overtook the labor-side incentives in their importance to my bottom line. Unfortunately, even these meager principles and this sliver of wisdom are rare enough that "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" abound.

eyelidlessness 4y ago
Solidarity forever, rare as it may be!

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

dgb23 4y ago

I personally find it more and more difficult to subscribe to any ideology. I think societies, states and economies are emergent properties of people living together. But the more I know people, the less I believe overarching systems, models and grand narratives. They are all wrong. Not only in respect of what should be. We can’t even agree on what is or has been.

weatherlight 4y ago
Some are less wrong than others.

lelanthran 4y ago

> 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. That sword cuts both ways. The more you see of the world, the more you treasure what the current ideology has brought.

naasking 4y ago

You have to admit that the State causes many of those problems. Police brutality would not be a problem if there were no police, for instance. One response is to say we need to empower the State with more authority to regulate those problems, with the hope that it doesn't just cause even more problems. Another response is to say we need less State authority, and find other ways of dealing with certain problems typically given to the State. Not every problem is a nail to hammer with the State. Neither response is correct in all circumstances.