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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"
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.
Which I'd say is a pretty right-wing sentiment
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’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.
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.
It took me years around that sort to realize the common denominators: it's a fundamental lack of curiosity about the world combined with a legitimate inability to see the world through any perspective but their own.
Throw in some ill-defined fear, insecurity, and anger at their situation in life.
Indeed, I guess as any of us gets truly elderly it's harder to keep curiosity going - our brains aren't as flexible, so we try and go with that we know. I think that a lot of right-wing media purposefully courts nostalgia so they can get their hooks in.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
Maybe it'll happen the same time we all forget how to use any technology as complicated as a tv remote.
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.
Man I have like the exact same back story
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.
That always pissed me off. They were basically telling me "You're going to become a selfish fuckwad by the time you're my age. You'll stop caring about civil rights. You'll stop caring about the environment." Etc.
When I was 18 I was a right wing libertarian. When I became a software engineer and started making good money I became a progressive democrat. Now that I make 6 figures I'm an Anarchist Communist. Question: when does my career of the last decade become a "real job" and make me a conservative asshole? Because I'm still waiting.
Keep drifting left and I've gotta say, that sweet sweet Libertarian Anarchism/Communalism seems pretty level headed to me. Vertical hierarchy inevitably leads to abuses/corruption and representative democracy infantilizes and negates the will of the people. Direct democracy and horizontal organizing structures keep everyone accountable and makes every voice heard. A world of contemporaries working towards our common goals sounds like the kind of thing you build a future (that's not on fire) out of.
representative democracy infantilizes … the will of the people.
The people keep voting for representatives like Donald Trump and Marjorie Greene, so I'm not sure that infantilization is unjustified.
I've battled with the idea that people as the whole perhaps can't see the picture that others can, but lately I've come to see it differently. Both of those people you mentioned are products of a highly corrupt system nearing it's later stages. People vote for them, or their opposites mostly due to a system of binary politic (red or blue) that is largely influenced beyond them and has been radicalized in an effort to establish brand difference and deflect from realistic policy agenda. It's a system that often rewards some of the worst traits in leadership and then builds on the grift over successive cycles by moving expectations of what these representatives look like. Alternatively, something like Digital Direct Democracy would allow us to defuse so much of the pageantry and tension relatively quickly, because it let's people have a greater say in their life's direction from city to state and can remove so much of the negativity and vitriol that our modern politics uses to divide and conquer the lower-middle class. It's when you remove the binary choice that people very well may take more initiative to educate themselves on the world and people around them. And maybe by lending a more nuanced vision to the rest of our country folk we can all have more of what we want, while increasing the liberties and rights of the individual in ways that no longer seemed possible.
What they meant was: you'll become more conservative when you own a home, have kids, and start thinking about retirement.
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
even if you do inherit one you will lose it quickly if you get some medical thing that keeps you from working while concurrently giving you large bills.
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.
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.
Older I get the more the communists make sense. Always been left but I always leaned towards the anarchist stuff when I was younger. It'd be weird if your politics didn't change at least a little over time, regardless of your leanings, it's a process of trial and error
This post is wild to me, where I live it's certainly true people are becoming more conservative as they age, and they're the most kind generous people I know.
Would they still be kind and generous if your skin color was different? Your religion? Your pregnancy status?
Conservatives are, at best, selectively nice.
Where are you living? This post I'm fairly sure is true in most Western countries and many non-Western ones.
Have you seen the kind of people they vote for?
The kind of laws they get enacted?
Not very nice.
Only true when you force your views on society and drug those that get more conservative when they get older. Like when your get older you appreciate the professionalism and authoritarian rules. No being more conservative doesn't mean you hate gays and want death upon them, you libs sure do like to assume and generalise.
this shit is even worse than the reddit 196