My mother was a hippy before I was born, marched in every march going when I was a kid. Anti war, greenpeace, Land Rights the works. The last thing she did on her drive to the hospital for what would turn out to be her last time, was post in her postal vote for gay marriage rights. She was 74 years old. You don’t get more conservative as you get older unless you choose to.
I’m 31, I was most conservative in my teens when I was in a private Christian high school in the south. Then I went to college, worked at a jail, went to law school, and in the process learned about the world and the people in it.
I am still astonished at the people who have done similar things and still don’t have an ounce of compassion for the poor and struggling. Conservative values only make sense when your sense of self only encompasses you, your family, and your religion. Once you realize that you are a part of something bigger, and the gay Hindu man and the black Muslim woman has the same consciousness and feelings as you it’s a lot harder to think of them as enemies or pitiful souls who need to be saved.
When you realize that people are people, and we are all the same, but for our circumstances, then it’s impossible to be conservative.
I think some people have trouble conceptualizing those around them as human. From what I can tell it’s not intentional cruelty, at least at first, they just struggle to conceptualize and understand the idea that all of the people around them have just as dynamic and complex inner worlds as they do. When it’s a struggle to make that connection, it’s easy to go through life ignoring the plight of those around you, disregarding them with the same ease most people dismiss a warning on a computer.
As someone formerly in the same boat, I think belief in the Abrahamic religions makes it hard to identify with the plights of others, because if you believe in a just, loving god, then “those people” have the religion and hardships that they do for a reason (and the reason is usually either “it’s part of God’s plan” or “they made bad decisions”).
When you base your entire worldview on a faulty premise, you can use sound logic to get all the way to libertarianism without a problem. Once I reexamined and discarded my belief in the Christian god, it was like flipping a switch; I went from douchey religious Libertarian to bleeding-heart socialist almost literally overnight.
My favorite part of Libertarianism is that Saint Rand collected Social Security.
It exemplifies the shameless selfishness of the libertarian philosophy and really links well with the conservative mindset of “I got mine, fuck you”.
Indeed. That’s one of my biggest problems with religion and why it makes me uncomfortable even though I ostensibly believe that people have their right to spirituality. Ultimately, with spiritual premises, people can come to faulty or unpredictable conclusions even with sound logic, and that somewhat unnerves me.
I’m skeptical that many conservatives have dynamic and complex inner worlds … I don’t see much evidence that they think much about anything, but rather offload as much as possible onto others. My mother, as she gets older, appears to actively avoid thinking for herself and has begun the decline into right-wing thinking. She likes the Daily Mail to do her thinking for her.
I think that all people and many non-person animals have dynamic and complex inner worlds, but Conservatives definitely have a blind spot when it comes to political evaluation. Unfortunately, it’s our nature as our species to seek out shortcuts. One of the ways we do this is by finding trusted sources to do some level of evaluation for us, that way we don’t have to think about as much. With Conservatives, many of them learned to trust certain sources from their parents, religion, or their own misguided fear. These sources are conspiratorial and hate-mongering, and they usually don’t apply any critical analysis to them. This leads to a self-perpetuating cycle where their sources tell them to trust no one and to be hateful and from that they don’t pick up any new sources, causing them to enter an echo chamber they can’t escape. It’s honestly kinda sad and I somewhat pity them, but I still will do what it takes to defeat them politically.
I agree, and I honestly think its the push for individualism over community that causes people to unknowingly become solipsistic like this. I think a lot of people don’t even realize how much trouble they have conceptualizing those around them as human, let alone having empathy for them
That definitely doesn’t help. In an atomized society there are fewer incentives to work with other people which causes people to either not develop proper social skills or to develop malformed ones.
All it needs is a little self reflection on your actions in the current world. If you never question yourself and always assume your choices will lead you forward, you will never get even a hint of what’s realistic and what’s just egotistic bs.
“private christian high school” That sounds really bad…
Yeah, imagine church on Sunday morning, Sunday evening, Wednesday night in addition to once a week chapel, a mandatory Bible class, and most of the other curriculum incorporating biblical teachings (Christian books in literature, young earth creationism, etc) Oh and the church is Southern Baptist and the school is non-denominational (which means they can’t teach conflicting dogmas or the parents will pull their kids out.) So there is no church history other than the creation of protestantism, but we had Catholics so that couldn’t go into detail either.
On the positive side, we had small classes and I got educated enough to get into undergrad and go on to get my JD.
I really have to thank the science educators on YouTube and similar for filling in the gaps of grade school level biology and history that I missed out on. And undergrad for breaking my dogmatic ideologies.
I’m really glad to see the current wave of deconstruction, it seems a lot healthier than the militant atheism that was popular when I was deconverting.
Hey, I went to one of those, too. I eventually went to public school and it was so much better.
Once you realize that … the gay Hindu man and the black Muslim woman has the same consciousness and feelings as you
Therein lies the disconnect. Religious zealots regard people like that as abominations to be destroyed in the name of their god, not people to be loved.
I think we radicalize when we get older. The issue is that the boomers have radicalized to the extreme, turning into the people their parents gave their life to fight against. So we are turning ourselves to the other direction. Also, the center in the us would already be considered right in Europe so having a mild leftist opinion is perceived as extremist.
The older I get the more I learn about the workers history that the rich have hidden from us, so of course I become more socialist.
Boomers say that because historically, with increasing age people usually also managed to have some things they might want to conserve, like a home and some financial assets to cover their retirement. I’m in my mid thirties and the only feasible way for me to ever own a home is inheriting one. My retirement plan is to die in the revolution. I have nothing to be conservative about
Basically, “people are selfish and will do what benefits them”
Which I’d say is a pretty right-wing sentiment
Except when they vote against their own interest
“Will do what they believe benefits them”
There’s nothing selfish about wanting a home and a viable retirement plan. Everyone should have those things.
The way I see it, being selfish isn’t inherently bad – there’s nothing wrong with looking out for number 1, provided it’s not at the expense of others. There’s a difference between being selfish and being greedy, of course. The latter is a pretty bad character trait, IMO.
I’m in my 30s and fortunate to have a house, but as I age I become more liberal.
I grew up with conservative parents and mostly conservative extended family as well. It wasn’t until I was older and in college that I started to become liberal. Before that I considered myself a Libertarian because I hated the two-party system and didn’t identify closely with any other parties.
I can’t imagine anyone that isn’t in the the top 1% that considers themselves conservative unless it’s based purely on hate or ignorance.
Generally, what it used to be is that people got more liberal as they got older, but society became more liberal faster.
Nowadays, millennials are getting older and mostly keeping up with liberal trends because we have so little invested in the status quo to slow us down from changing with the times. Amongst other factors.
Finally bought my first home at 40 using all my life savings. Couldn’t afford to have kids. I got no one to leave any heritage to. Fuck everything.
There have also just been shifts in how us younger generations view the world, likely thanks to the internet. I’m in my 30s and own a house, but every year that goes by I seem to get more and more liberal. Partially thanks to how insane American conservatives are in many aspects, but also realizing that the views of the left are the only logical way forward.
I was born in 1970 and have steadily grown more and more toward the left. Mainly that’s because the right has gone completely insane.
I was born in 1991 and I’ve noticed a trend amongst people my age reaching their 30s which I call “the middle generation conundrum”
Basically, most of us grew on our parents belief that hard work meant a good life.
But as time passed we started to notice a couple of things:
- Our parent’s way became more and more out of reach, even with the same involvement in our work. No more traditional way of life on a single salary, even starting out in the middle class
- We tend to feel closer to the next generation’s way of life which is “work to live” and not “live to work”
- We are also feeding on the general nihilism towards our planet’s future which is making some of us less likely to aim for the traditional “family lifestyle”
The result is that whereas me and my friends would have tended to move right on the political spectrum, the majority of us are actually moving far left as we age.
Last (French) presidential elections, I actually couldn’t believe how many people around me voted left. It would have been unthinkable a couple of years before
Past generations saw some level of stability by their 40s and felt that something worked.
Ain’t nothing worked for any of us and those people who did turn conservative in their 40s are now 80 and voting to literally murder gay and trans folk.
Anyone who believes this is just as deranged as the Q people lmao. What an outright fabrication of anything resembling the truth. Nobody on either side of the spectrum, be it left or right, are voting to murder anyone. Maybe take a peak outside your Reddited echo chamber because the real world has much more nuance than it’s allowing you to see.
I’m in a demographic that’s probably not common on this site. I work a physical, traditionally “blue collar” job. It’s the kind that attracts the “male with no college education, conservative politics” – you know the type.
The thing is, I am also a white guy that looks and sounds like them. I own guns, I’m an outdoorsman, I can crack off-color jokes with the best of them. They assume I’m “one of them” and openly share shit with me they’d never say out in the open.
I hear Qanon adjacent crap far more than I care too. A current favorite of theirs is the “Trans people and drag queens are grooming kids!” A disturbing number of them frequently speak in support of violence against or even the murder of LGBTQ/leftist/woke people. Hell, listening to them talk I’d expect a few of them would probably do it themselves if they thought they could get away with it. This is the sort that got excited when they heard there was a shooting at a Pride (unrelated to Pride it turned out) event near our town.
So you’re right: nobody is voting to murder anyone … yet. But the aforementioned exist and vote for those that absolutely would if they could. That happily support policies pushing society in that direction, and would be thrilled if murder of their political “enemies” were a reality.
I have the same problem in a heavily conservative city - I have a big beard so many of my social conversations go from “shitty job market eh?” to “Target funds antifa terrorists” in record time.
Literally under 30 seconds one time, gave me whiplash. 😂
Reddited chamber?
We on Lemmy…
Is this a bot account? Do I have to start looking to see if bots are posting here as well?
Reddited echo chamber.
I’m aware of where we are and comments like that person’s are no less outlandish than that of Reddit’s delusional tankies.
I’m a human, beep boop.
I was always leaning liberal and now I’m even more leftist. Mainly because conservatives got even more dumb.
And I’m someone who grew up with parents that were staunch republicans and made me go to church every Sunday. Then I turned 18 and my parents are still christian, but they don’t do church anymore. hmm wonder why. Also one of them hates republicans now and switched registrations. I don’t even think older people even believe that whole “you get more conservative as you get older” garbage.
This will never stop being weird to me, or at least unfamiliar.
Reason; I was raised by boomers, but they were legitimate 1967 Haight-Ashbury hippies (actually my dad derosed out of Vietnam in '67, so he wasn’t in SF until '68, but leave us not quibble) who even now, though both my parents are dead, are still far to the left of me, and I’m basically a Bernie-style democratic socialist.
To put in perspective, while my parents weren’t actually part of the SLA, they personally knew and were friendly with some of the most notorious of the lot, though they had parted ways by the time the SLA started to get seriously crazy.
All of which is just to say that growing up with Boomer parents in NorCal was a very different experience for a lot of gen Xers like myself.
Actually I went from moderate liberal to pinko-tree-hugging-anarchist-commie-radical thing.
Some folks did the math For me, it was watching shit go down in Ferguson 2014 and then realizing this what America looks like a bit too often. Next thing I knew, I was outraged and reading Das Kapital and singing glorious Bolshevik anthems.
Was raised on Rush Limbaugh starting in the 5th grade, did the edgy Libertarian thing and now … now Bernie Sanders is like the only guy in the country that makes any sense. And now I get to argue with most of my family and many of my friends or just never talk politics or walk away completely. And I get to reckon with all the harm I’ve caused.
Know what’s fun? Constantly realizing what a piece of shit you’ve been. Feeling incredibly stupid for not realizing it sooner. Wondering how you can possibly atone.
I think reflecting on your past and changing yourself is huge.
You might have been dick before but you aren’t anymore guy.
Hey, as a minority I just wanted to tell you thank you. You may feel like shit when you think of the person you used to be, but I appreciate you for becoming the person you are now. Your only “atonement” is to just keep truckin, friend. Keep working on being the person you want to be
I would give this more upvotes, because I’m feeling exactly this.
“Just wait till you’re my age…” is the dumbest bs I will ever hear from older people. As if everyone will inevitably turn into an old, bitter, narrow minded, conservative person some day.
Everyone who’s a conservative right now, is either:
A: completely forgotton their live before turning 25-30
B: Is a massive asshole who actively wants others to suffer for their own gain
C: Is a completely brainwashed morons who legitimately can’t see the problems they’re causing.
On point, but just a slight clarification on point B. They enjoy watching others suffer even when they don’t gain, and often even if they will be hurt too. Conservatives are all about pyrrhic victorories. There’s an expression I’ve always remembered: a conservative will shit their own pants if their enemies have to smell it.
They see the suffering of others as it’s own victory out of a combination of zero sum mindset, that the pie cannot grow and that others have to lose for anyone to win, and schadenfreude, a German term that really should but doesn’t have an English version as it’s one of the darkest traits of the human condition and American culture gets drunk on it more than most.
In my case it has been the exact opposite tbh. The more I have to deal with reality there more I wander to the left. I’m kinda ashamed for my edgy centrist years as a teenager. Fuck that guy.
Damn, I feel that in my soul. Edgy centrist 13 year-old me and edgy nihilist 15 year-old me would be aghast at the bleeding-heart liberal I became.
Satan. You were into politics at 13!
I was into politics at 11, but I was a libertarian then (mega-cringe).
I mean you were eleven. I breifly flirted with it in college and thought it might be a the way to go. This was the long ago libertarian though that would go with legalization of drugs and a citizens income. Even then the philosophy ultimately falls apart. This might be one reason its gotten to where it has as the liberal types realized it won’t work and left but the right side of it hung around.
