Does it make a difference if instead of talking about “left” and “right” we focus on specific agendas?
For example, if “left” includes both “gay rights” and “killing the kulaks”, then it may sound scary for a left-leaning person to say “we had 50 years of the left progress, but now we will have 50 years of the right progress”, but less scary if you translate it to e.g. “we have 50 years of gay rights, but kulaks are not going to be killed at least during the next 50 years”.
Yeah, this is too optimistic; I am just saying that perhaps focusing on the details may change the perspective. Maybe the historically most important outcome of the “50 years of right progress” will be e.g. banning the child genital mutilation, honor killings, and similar issues which the current left is not going to touch with a ten-foot pole (because they would involve criticizing cultural habits of other cultures, which is a taboo for the left, but the right would enjoy doing this).
I guess my point is that imagining the “right” only clicking the Undo button during the following 50 years is unnecessarily narrowing their scope of possible action. (Just like the “left” also had other things to do, besides killing the kulaks.)
I think people cluster into left and right because those are the tribes. However, it can be oversimplistic and I agree that there are many potential directions left and right progress can take—indeed, if a few more Islamic terrorists shoot up gay bars there could be a lot of LBGTs defecting to right-nationalism.
I think people cluster into left and right because those are the tribes.
Some people join the tribes because they are connected with the causes they support, but I think most people are there simply because of the other people who are there. When all your friends are X, there is a strong pressure on you to become X, too. And when people who enjoy hurting you are X, you are likely to become Y, if Y seems like the only force able to oppose X. It’s like having a monkey tribe split into two subgroups; of course it makes sense to join the subgroup with your friends rather than the subgroup with your enemies. And the next step is making up the story why all good people are in your team, and all bad people are in the other team—this signals that you have no significant conflicts in your team, and no significant friends in the other team, so you are a loyal member.
But then also words have consequences, so if your team’s banner says e.g. that you should burn the witches, then sooner or later some witches are likely to get burned. Even if most people in the team are actually not happy about burning the witches, and joined merely because their friends are there. Sometimes people agree that those words about “burning witches” were meant metaphorically, not literally; but there is a certain fragility about that, because someone is likely to decide that literally burning a witch will make even stronger signal of their loyalty to the tribe.
if a few more Islamic terrorists shoot up gay bars there could be a lot of LBGTs defecting to right-nationalism
It makes me sad that the popular political positions seem to be either nationalism or cultural relativism. Is there these days even a significant pro-”Western civilization” side? I mean a side that would say that as long as you follow the rules of civilized life, your language and color of skin don’t matter, but if you as much as publicly talk positively about genital mutilation or “honor” killing, no one is going to give a fuck about your cultural or religious sensitivity, you are going to be called evil.
Does it make a difference if instead of talking about “left” and “right” we focus on specific agendas?
For example, if “left” includes both “gay rights” and “killing the kulaks”, then it may sound scary for a left-leaning person to say “we had 50 years of the left progress, but now we will have 50 years of the right progress”, but less scary if you translate it to e.g. “we have 50 years of gay rights, but kulaks are not going to be killed at least during the next 50 years”.
Yeah, this is too optimistic; I am just saying that perhaps focusing on the details may change the perspective. Maybe the historically most important outcome of the “50 years of right progress” will be e.g. banning the child genital mutilation, honor killings, and similar issues which the current left is not going to touch with a ten-foot pole (because they would involve criticizing cultural habits of other cultures, which is a taboo for the left, but the right would enjoy doing this).
I guess my point is that imagining the “right” only clicking the Undo button during the following 50 years is unnecessarily narrowing their scope of possible action. (Just like the “left” also had other things to do, besides killing the kulaks.)
I think people cluster into left and right because those are the tribes. However, it can be oversimplistic and I agree that there are many potential directions left and right progress can take—indeed, if a few more Islamic terrorists shoot up gay bars there could be a lot of LBGTs defecting to right-nationalism.
Some people join the tribes because they are connected with the causes they support, but I think most people are there simply because of the other people who are there. When all your friends are X, there is a strong pressure on you to become X, too. And when people who enjoy hurting you are X, you are likely to become Y, if Y seems like the only force able to oppose X. It’s like having a monkey tribe split into two subgroups; of course it makes sense to join the subgroup with your friends rather than the subgroup with your enemies. And the next step is making up the story why all good people are in your team, and all bad people are in the other team—this signals that you have no significant conflicts in your team, and no significant friends in the other team, so you are a loyal member.
But then also words have consequences, so if your team’s banner says e.g. that you should burn the witches, then sooner or later some witches are likely to get burned. Even if most people in the team are actually not happy about burning the witches, and joined merely because their friends are there. Sometimes people agree that those words about “burning witches” were meant metaphorically, not literally; but there is a certain fragility about that, because someone is likely to decide that literally burning a witch will make even stronger signal of their loyalty to the tribe.
It makes me sad that the popular political positions seem to be either nationalism or cultural relativism. Is there these days even a significant pro-”Western civilization” side? I mean a side that would say that as long as you follow the rules of civilized life, your language and color of skin don’t matter, but if you as much as publicly talk positively about genital mutilation or “honor” killing, no one is going to give a fuck about your cultural or religious sensitivity, you are going to be called evil.