The Conservative Mindset

[Cognisant]

The conservative mindset is in a word "legacy", being replaced through demographic change shouldn't really bother the individual, it doesn't really affect them personally, the nation will go on, the human race will go on, so why does the idea of one's homeland being predominantly populated by a different ethnicity/culture/religion in generation or two in the future invoke such a primal feeling of terror?

The conservative sees themselves as the inheritor of a legacy, the latest in a long line of fathers and mothers stretching back into antiquity, indeed it need not even be a familial legacy, you could be the inheritor of a culture, religion or even an institution. Whatever it is the point is that you're a part of something greater than yourself, something enduring, something that will ideally outlast you and continue on for many generations to come, something you can be a part of, contribute to and make your mark on. It is a burden, a responsibility, but also a source of meaning and purpose.

The fear of being replaced is the fear of being erased, that what gave your life meaning could ultimately become meaningless and futile. Even if it's not your name that is remembered at least you can take solace in knowing you contributed to something larger than yourself, even if your descendants forget what you have done for them at least they'll be there to carry on.

Conservatism is in essence the defiance of entropy, to rage against the dying of the light.

Spoiler

The conservative is not inherently against migration or other cultures, indeed a conservative can be quite considerate of other legacies, keeping artifacts carefully preserved in museums is a very conservative thing to do as is keeping records of other cultures, their histories and practices, preserving their legacy. For the conservative none of this is competitive, remember a conservative finds meaning in the preservation/continuation of legacy, so the more legacy the better. For example there's a very strong desire by conservative non-aboriginal Australians to preserve the aboriginal culture, the fear of losing their legacy is something conservatives can sympathize with. But it's not just their culture, I'm not aboriginal but I am Australian, it's not my direct legacy but it can become part of a shared legacy as a unified Australian identity, to combine legacies is an enriching thing, it gives our existence deeper meaning.

So again, why the fear of migration leading to demographic change?

Because there's a perception that the migrants do not respect the host nation's legacy, that they are poor custodians of our legacy, how would you feel if you were on your deathbed and having to pass on a sentimentally priceless family heirloom to an ungrateful grandchild that's more likely to pawn it than keep it? It's like that.

I would hate to have a glimpse of the future a 100yrs from now and see Australia has been taken over by a Islamic theocracy, to see that women's rights have been greatly reduced under Sharia law, to see the dogs we hold dear have been outlawed, and that the preservation of other cultures has been discarded because Islam has no respect for anything other than Islam.

Conservatives have never really been opposed to progress, just "progress" into barbarism.

 

[Chibi]

Thank God the cracker barrel logo has been reversed /s

 

[Cognisant]

Do you want everything you enjoy to get the soulless corporate treatment?

 

[Chibi]

Not at all. I'm just saying, bullying a company into reversing an idea of being "slightly" more 'woke', is indicative of the conservative mindset as a whole. Many companies have pulled back on inclusive and diverse branding and content solely because trump took office and they're afraid to lose profit.

I don't care about corporations. I just think it's incredibly stupid how bleached the conservative mind has become that it is pressing this idea into people's heads of anti-diversivity. I feel like there are bigger problems

 

[Cognisant]

In what way was the new cracker barrel logo more diverse and/or inclusive?

 

[Hadoblado]

I appreciate that you're able to focus on elaborating on your own belief system and clarifying it for others. I think the forum benefits from posts like this.

What you said about legacy resonated with me as a difference between us. I don't care about aboriginal legacy etc. (and I part from my fellow progressives in this regard, I'm somewhat heartless I guess). I see legacy as deterministic. The universe "knows" you existed by the way you change the world. It doesn't matter if it's acknowledged or not, and trying to preserve and codify it feels like putting your hand on the scale. Aboriginals have a long and deep history, but it was destroyed or maimed (savagely and regrettably) and there's no undoing that. In today's environment cultures either adapt or go extinct, I don't see a way forward in trying to recreate the past.

I don't celebrate my own ancestry and I'm reluctant to celebrate anyone else's. I see its place in the history classroom (and am happy to teach it there), but struggle with it being a cross-curriculum priority and starting every meeting, reading, or lecture with an acknowledgement, which feels similar to participating in mass to me.

 

[Hadoblado]

@Chibi
I think you're too keen to regress to culture war talking points. You didn't engage with anything he said. You don't have to agree with him, but it'd be nice if conversations could exist without turning into culture war in the very first response.

 

[Cognisant]

What you said about legacy resonated with me as a difference between us. I don't care about aboriginal legacy etc. (and I part from my fellow progressives in this regard, I'm somewhat heartless I guess). I see legacy as deterministic.

Actually I think you represent the norm, progressives have never been shy about engaging in historical revisionism and will happily use conservative guilt over the damage to the aboriginal legacy (and others) as a weapon to push their own agenda.

They'll say they value the aboriginal legacy but it's disingenuous, I recently attended a smoking ceremony at my workplace and one of the speakers tried to claim that aboriginal dream-time stories of great magical beasts is somehow a reference to dinosaurs, which is completely absurd.

He was basically just saying that this culture is like super old, older than yours, so you should have lots of respect for it and go along with whatever we say, and of course the crowd was full of middle age women who practically chanted along with him, literally echoing what he just said like someone in a cult.

The whole thing felt incredibly fake and performative and a little bit racist.

Anyway what I want to know is what is the progressive endgame, what do they actually want?

Like I said conservatives find meaning in legacy, we want to build a civilization and progressives seem intend on destroying any such legacy at every opportunity, but to what end? If the concept of legacy itself is antithetical to them, why?

The whole Cracker Barrel thing is actually very relevant, it's a blatant example of the erasure of legacy on the alter of diversity/inclusivity but how does removing the old man from the logo actually do that? Imo this isn't really about diversity/inclusivity at all, that's just the progressive beatstick being used to justify the erasure of legacy, but why do progressives want this?

Do we need to remove the picture of Uncle Ben from Uncle Ben's rice so white people are able to eat it? Of course not, that's stupid, if anything people of a conservative mindset would much rather buy the product with his face on it because it gives the brand a wholesome human identity.

 

[Hadoblado]

Actually I think you represent the norm, progressives have never been shy about engaging in historical revisionism and will happily use conservative guilt over the damage to the aboriginal legacy (and others) as a weapon to push their own agenda.

Sorry, I don't get your meaning. I'm reeling.

How am I representative of other progressives if I say I don't care about these issues? How am I engaging in historical revisionism by saying I don't care? How am I weaponising conservative guilt over the aboriginal legacy? What agenda?

I find this frustrating, to go from such a reasonable place to lumping me in with stuff I just explicitly disagreed with. Do you not see how forced this is?

 

[Cognisant]

Sorry I went from one thought to the other without making clear distinctions.

You don't value legacy, you think this makes you different to other progressives but I think they don't value legacy either, they just say they do when they can use it as a beat-stick to force conservatives to comply with their historical revisionism and cultural vandalism.

I'm not accusing you of doing these things personally, at worst you're an unwitting accomplice.

As to what the agenda is, that's what I want to know, there clearly seems to be an agenda but beyond destroying all forms of legacy it's unclear what the actual goal is, maybe the destruction of all legacy is the point? I dunno.

I can see why our corporate overlords want to reduce people to interchangeable economic units, but it seems so much more pervasive than that, the progressive individual (yourself included) seems to find the very concept of a legacy antithetical.

The universe "knows" you existed by the way you change the world. It doesn't matter if it's acknowledged or not, and trying to preserve and codify it feels like putting your hand on the scale.

Does your family name mean anything to you? Suppose I told you there's a new government initiative to strike everyone's surnames from the records and to erase all records of lineage beyond living relatives, how does that make you feel?

How do you feel when someone tells you that your ancestors were bad people because collective harm reasons, like sure they probably weren't innocent, every group of people has surely caused some harm somewhere, but they're also the people who built the civilization we now live in.

If we don't live in mud huts it's because we stand on the works of those who came before us.

It just feels so nihilistic to me and not in a good create-my-own-meaning way, rather like those people who begrudge their parents for them being born.

 

[fluffy]

The younger you are the less conservative.

The older you get then you start to think about the way you want society to be when your gone.

At a young age you want to change things, to be creative, make a difference, have fun. But as an old person you think in a different way which is to say you realize institutions are what drives society not your teen group dress styles or activities. These don't really have effects on infrastructure which leads to foundational civilization stability.

The garbage truck is important.
The roads are important.
Electricity is important.

Jobs so people can have a life purpose.

It is just that social issues are not well seen that people have more than basic needs. A traumatized kids won't be good for society. A poor education or bad relationships.

But in society people treat each other poorly and if you want to fix that you need better institutions. You need research on creating them. And everything about how to make people better from the beginning.

Many people thought you'd have a better society if you did simple things like ban alcohol but this led to crime in the 1920's and 30's - the draft was eliminated after Vietnam war because the people thought the war was stupid and the government didn't understand the social charges happening that led to this. Mostly drunk parents of the second world war and depression era youth repression of hard times.

It's a balance to find what works but social needs and physical needs must come together.

 

[Hadoblado]

The core of my political perspective is that things are fucked and I want them to be better. It's not change for the sake of change. There are a lot of things worth keeping and I think a lot of progressives fail to think about how unpredictable instability can be - just because things change doesn't mean they change for the better.

I think that while progressivism and conservatism as labels do represent real correlations to the reasoning used, they're far from the whole picture and actually people on both sides are selective about what they see as needing to progress, and what they see as needing to conserve. Conservation is arguably a progressive value after all, and Trump is a maverick not a preserver.

With regard to family name, my parents were never even together. I have a mix of both well-to-do ancestors and not so great. My first generation Australian family were convicts on both sides. If I were to marry I would strongly consider taking my wife's last name, or perhaps better, create an entirely new one. I don't think ancestors matter. As a rule everyone has "bad" ancestors, rapists and the like. The chain is too long not to have weak links. I'm not really big on the sins of the father. It's not that legacy is antithetical to my values, it's just not one of my values and it seems kind of arbitrary, like identifying with a football team or something?

I would be against striking all names from the books though. It's erasing history. That'd be an immense overreach and indicative of tyranical control, despite not really affecting me personally.

 

[fluffy]

Because of the schooling system and social mobility in general, people cluster together based on having the same cognitive profile.

That's to say if you don't have a degree you don't hang out with people that do, most of the time.

People at college who got high scores on the tests have a certain cognition where they see how problems exist and can be made better. But not always in a practical way. After graduation they get into the corporate world where things are hard to change unless you get to the top and even then you need to be a startup and not a well established corporate structure.

Then those without degrees do other tasks which are more physical than mental. They see that you need practical things to work like water and sewers and food supplies. They don't understand corporate abstract hierarchy as business logic, the people without degrees are the boots on the ground. So of course if you know physical things exist you will want to preserve them as you know what they do how they behave and operate.

My grandma was a business person when business required understanding physical labor. She had 5 kids and a goat dairy and a motel my mom would clean. Without her my mom would not have a house today.

The school system separated people that could do concrete things vs abstract work. This is generally why there's a division between these groups as conservatives and not. Before everyone was together and did thing as a society where all people were the same group. More unity existed before testing was implemented.

 

[Cognisant]

Sorry if this seems to come out of nowhere, I did a lot of thinking.

Would you agree that the fundamental differences in values is between inherent identities and assumed identities?

In a sense all identity is a social construct, it's all arbitrary, like your nationality may not be arbitrary in the sense that you didn't choose where you were born (thus it is part of your inherent identity) but it doesn't actually define you, that you may be born an Australian but choosing to identify as an Australian is a choice.

For some people that isn't enough freedom, they want to be able to choose their nationality and if they cannot they disregard it in favor of things they can decide, like as a transhumanist I get that, being dissatisfied with my own human frailty.

Indeed I think my younger self was a lot more progressive than conservative and found notions like nationalism repellent precisely because I felt it was an identity that was imposed upon me. Whereas being a transhumanist is an assumed identity, it's something I chose to identify with and as such felt more authentic to me, it's not what I am it's who I am.

But I've also kinda grown out of that, like I still find transhumanism appealing but I no longer have that dissatisfaction with myself and consequently I'm more drawn to my inherent identity, because it is inherent, so it feels more authentic than an arbitrary/superficial assumed identity.

I don't think anyone is completely one way or the other, I think everyone is a mix of the two and it's just the ratio that differs

 

[Hadoblado]

Personally I see it in terms of power structures which are framed in relation to identity both assumed and inherent. Conservatives are the haves, progressives the have nots. The moral grandstanding is mostly just self-interest for both. "Progressing" means to become more equal, to conserve is to maintain current dynamics or move back towards more favourable ones. I won't go into the equality thing, we've already done that.

Inherent identity is less malleable, more rigid and a deeper well of political momentum. Assumed identities more dynamic but also more shallow. They are both political fuel and I think they're both crucial to both progressive and conservative movements.

So I guess I disagree that it's the fundamental difference in values? But I agree it's relevant and interesting to think about.

 

[Cognisant]

Conservatives are the haves, progressives the have nots.

That's certainly the party line but let me describe to you two people in the most general of terms, one lives/works in the city in a high paying office job, the other lives on a rural area and works outside. Which of these two people sounds like a conservative/progressive and who do you think is earning more?

There is an undeniable political divide between cities and rural areas and I don't need to tell you what that is because I know you already know. Likewise there's an undeniable divide in earning potential, this comes up every time we talk about housing, Australia has absolutely no shortage of land but all the work that pays well is concentrated in the cities.

Those people showed who up to the anti-immigration rally on the 31st of August and waving Australian flags, did they look affluent to you? Do you think they're more affluent than the political class of neo-aristocrat landlords and publicly funded con artists running our country? The ones calling them Nazis.

Do you think the people rorting millions off the NDIS are conservatives? They certainly have the money and don't want things to change, actually I suppose you're right, those are the conservatives and the people sick of government overreach, censorship, wasteful spending, a manufactured housing crisis and excessive immigration are the progressives.

The core of my political perspective is that things are fucked and I want them to be better.

On this we absolutely agree, I could not possibly agree more that Australia has an inequality problem, and the handling of the taxing of the multinational corporations raping and pillaging our country has been downright criminal, likewise the exploitation of young workers through the property ponzi is obscene.

And what are the "progressives" in power doing about it?
More often than not, making it worse.

 

[fluffy]

Because of brain structure it much more likely that progressives and conservative both have a large amount of resources they just acquired them in different ways. You have both poor progressives and poor conservatives. So class doesn't define either. Rather they both learn in different ways thus segment into different systems.

If you learn differently then the environment determines if you have or don't have. Based on if you can adapt. The poor don't just consist of people who conform to progressive values, there are also poor conservatives that cannot make it because what they can learn has a lot less skill they can acquire where that skill is needed well at the same time poor progressives cannot get jobs because those jobs don't exist at the level you'd expect for the areas they live in.

The have nots then don't value progressive ideas half the time. Making it hard to say poverty = progressive and rich = conservative.

What conservatives do is aquire physical resources and trades that progressive just make money by office work or management. They put resources into banks funds or renting out. Conservatives think different knowing that if you cannot physically own it you don't have it as a tangible resource when you need it. Thus the labor market is not the same in the minds of conservative and progressive. They invest in different assets.

 

[Hadoblado]

You're right, that was an oversimplification. It's not rich vs. poor. But the fundamental drive as I see it is security vs. redistribution.

 

[fluffy]

You're right, that was an oversimplification. It's not rich vs. poor. But the fundamental drive as I see it is security vs. redistribution.

Resource management is a tricky thing.

Where you spend the money you must know the benefits or it's wasted on unnecessary projects or programs.

It's kind of like, what is it that society's truly need at what time scales and future projections of impact.

The public has a hard time understanding and business interests can exploit government decisions.

 

[Cognisant]

But the fundamental drive as I see it is security vs. redistribution.

Almost.

Imagine you know someone who is already in debt, is going deeper into debt month by month, has obvious upcoming expenses, and they're giving money to charity even as they're borrowing more money to stay afloat.

Clearly this person is an idiot, I'm not even being mean that's just an objectively stupid thing to do, and it's what the Australian government is doing.

Our cost of living crisis is an inflation crisis, our housing crisis is essentially an inflation crisis. Inflation is a tax that only hurts the lower classes because they don't have assets, they're not the landlords they're the renters. They're the people who work for a living and year by year the money they earn is worth less and taxed more.

I call the political landlord class aristocrats because none of this is new, this has all happened before.

 

[Hadoblado]

That seems very specific to Australia, and I don't see such as charity I see it as (presumably) international politic. I say presumably because I'm not aware of the specifics or even what exactly you're talking about.

You say this is all inflation, but isn't inflation 2.1%? Isn't that on the low end of the target inflation of 2-3%? I'm not saying things are going swimmingly, it's just I'm not sure whether inflation is responsible or how that's tied to our foreign policy?

 

[dr froyd]

i've lived in certain european countries where you could see with the naked eye the absolute disintegration of cultural cohesion on account of hyper-liberal immigration- and integration policies. If you stepped aboard public transport, you would witness a peculiar lack of agreement on how to behave; some people loudly shouting into their phone in foreign language, some people playing loud music, others being quiet and polite (which used to be the norm). This lack of social contract and agreement on norms creates an eerie environment where you feel a constant sense that something bad is about to happen - this is a quote i heard from a native of that country (who was himself an immigrant).

but this is where a conservative might start to arrive at simplistic conclusions - that this means we've lost respect for our cultural "legacy", maybe with some racial undertones injected into the narrative. But at the end of the day, it's not really about conserving the past. If the founding fathers of USA were real conservatives, they would be preoccupied with retaining the absolutist monarchy structure of Great Britain. But that was exactly what they *didn't* want to retain, and rather used their former home country as an example of what not to do. In that regard they were radical progressives.

conservatives kept losing, quite badly, the debate on immigration for many years up until quite recently. Probably because they didn't quite understand what they were in opposition to and couldn't find better arguments than pointing to some vague notion of preserving cultural legacy. It was very easy to attack this as "racism", perhaps sometimes justifiably so. The reason the debate on immigration is now shifting is that we got to see the consequences in practical terms.

my point is this: what "conservatives" really want (or at least should) conserve is the principles of liberal democracy that came out of the west's past of the last 2-3 centuries. One has to understand that the "progressives" of modern day are not flag bearers of liberal democracy but of some very niche ideas that came out of the new-left ideology of the 1960s and re-emerged as the bastard child we know now as the woke-left.

 

[Cognisant]

Thank you.

I don't want it to be a racial thing, but then stuff happens.

New details surface in deadly light rail stabbing as suspect appears in court

Iryna Zarutska, 23, was killed while riding the LYNX Blue Line in South End. Decarlos Brown, Jr., 34, is charged with murder.

www.wcnc.com

Brown is accused of killing Iryna Zarutska, 23, on Friday, Aug. 22, around 10 p.m. near the station along Camden Road where West Boulevard and East Boulevard meet in South End.

Security video of the incident shows that Zarutska got on the train and sat directly in front of Brown, according to a police affidavit. After about four minutes, Brown stood up and stabbed Zarutska three times in the throat with a pocket knife. There appeared to be no interaction between the two before the stabbing, according to police.

Zarutska was pronounced dead at the scene. Loved ones say Zarutska, who recently fled Ukraine to escape the dangers of war, came to Charlotte seeking peace and new beginnings, but her story ended in tragedy.

“She was always very helpful, very supportive, and just had a heart of gold," family friend Lonnie said. "She was a sweetheart. And it makes me sick to think that she's gone."

I don't think he's a migrant, but still, we didn't used to have Africans in Australia and now I'm seeing them around, and after seeing news articles like this...

Completely random, in public, on public transport, on fucking camera, at least with a serial killer or terrorist you get the impression there's some kind of twisted logic to it, some understanding that what they're doing is wrong and they could be punished for it.

This guy is either too stupid to understand (unlikely) or just doesn't care.

 

[Cognisant]

Sigh I couldn't help myself and now I'm going to be perma-banned for "spreading hate", because yeah I totally made this up, it's not like it's actual news that's become a scandal because a lot of stations aren't covering it.

Will there be riots for this girl like there was for George Floyd? Probably not.

 

[Hadoblado]

Yeah look...

I set a boundary and I gave ample warning. You knew exactly where the boundary was and decided that either the boundary would move (implicitly by me not banning you) or you would be banned.

I suspect for you this forum isn't worth it to you if you can't push culture war. Sad but it makes your ban inevitable.

I hope you figure yourself out. You've caused me a lot of frustration this last decade (wow) or so but I still remember the old you and bare you no malice. I just can't have everything pushed towards racism or whatever all the time. I genuinely hope things work out for you. Good luck.

 

[threeStepfourStep]

There's a lot of comments I could be replying here, but I'll start with this: the conservativsm on an ideological level, the one that someone like Roger Scruton would espouse, is much in retreat. I don't think it would even be appropirate to use the label for the people on the right these days.

Speaking for the US, I think the party that housed conservatives have pretty much morphed into a kind of populism for marginalized people, which is great for them, since they are able to pursue economic gains for themselves which they hadn't been able to under other administrations. BUT, this is not the mindset that conservative liberals would have, in that the pursuing of this kind of liberty should not harm others (Locke's harm principle). There's a lot of damage this administration is doing in the name of their agenda, (which in itself is kind of amorphus). So in effect, I think conservatism on the right died the moment MAGA took over the party since they're forgoing a key tenent in conservatism.

The Democrats in the US actually believe in liberalism and actually believe in neoliberal ideals of trying to export liberalism around the world, but as of now I think they're using a 'keep a lowkey stance' strategy until the midterms so that they can optimize the impact that their political assault will have for the midterms. This is wishful thinking from me, but I hope that's what they're doing.

As for the culture war, I honestly think that's just entertainment. Sometimes there's enough political movement that it affects policy, but these policies usually are torn down once the inertia of the movement dies down and a different adminstration is sworn in. Policies that actually matter and are effective have staying power. Look at Obamacare for example.

But, I do worry about the level of 'entertainment' that some political actors engage in. This whole 'inclusive' vs exclusive debate is just so much removed from the philosophical contention equity and justice (the classic John Rawls and Robert Nozick debate) that it actually favors strongmen like Trump, since people are generally fed up with how amaturish people are in trying to engage the issues, and people aren't generally equipped to talk about societal tension and progress in an academic manner. The whole Latino demographic siding with Trump the last election is an example of that.

 

[threeStepfourStep]

@cog Here's Roger Scruton back in 2019 (He past away in 2020). Just the first 10 minutes should help understand what his definition of 'conservatism' is.