|
Distinguish friend from foe. For more information, contact: Gary Schouborg, PhD (925) 932-1982 |
Schouborg, Gary
(2006). " Liberal
v. Conservative, in a Nutshell". Liberal v. Conservative, in
a Nutshell Gary Schouborg Below are some
email exchanges giving brief characterizations of the differences between
liberals and conservatives. ----------- email exchange
9/2/06 When I look at
conservative websites, they are questioning and lampooning. When I check out liberal websites, they
seem ugly. Am I imagining? S I see at least
five factors at play. 1) When one’s ox
is gored, it looks uglier than when another’s is. 2) Conservatives’ ugliness
is usually in the name of self-interest, which makes a certain amount of
sense, since self-preservation is our first instinct as well as necessary to
pursue altruistic goals. Liberals’ ugliness is in the name of utopian ideals,
which is particularly perverse — corruptio optimi pessima est: corruption of the idealistic is the worst evil. 3) Conservatives
are more immediately practical, liberals focus more on possibilities
(progress). Since possibilities are virtually unlimited and only a few of them
are feasible, there is much more potential for confusion and self-deception
in the more complex liberal perspective. 4) Add to # 3 the
temptation to think of practicality as mean-spirited and idealism as
magnanimous and creative, and you have a bias against checking your utopian
vision against mere reality. 5) Liberals assume
they’re much smarter, whereas conservatives merely assume their own feet are
more firmly planted on the ground. I'm unaware of any study that actually
goes into that issue. However, if liberals are actually no smarter
than conservatives, then having the more complex perspective means that many
liberals are in way over their heads. Gary ----------- email exchange
11/2/06 "What is it
about Communism and Socialism – with all of its ugly destruction - that continues to seduce 'the creative
classes'?" S Very briefly, it's
adolescent acting out against the establishment (in this case capitalism), an
acting out also fueled by two positive but limited adolescent fantasies:
romantic notions of nature and of equality. At their best, the
creative classes are right-brained people aware of the limits of
left-brained, orderly thinking. Creativity is inherently anti-establishment,
since it's creating new, rather than established or widely accepted, forms.
By the same token, creativity is linked to spirituality in responding to
resources within us that cannot be clearly identified and articulated. In
contrast, the technological explosion that began with the industrial
revolution is fueled by precise concepts. Furthermore, those concepts make
distinctions among us and enable the development of processes that separate
us from nature and from one another. In contrast, spirituality opens us to
feelings of communion rather than separation. At their worst,
the creative classes are superficial people who are unable or unwilling to
integrate their right-brain processes with their left-brain. They can
therefore only react to the limitations of a left-brain, orderly world much
the same way adolescents react to parental constraints while unable to see
their useful purpose. They understand their creative impulses superficially,
as NOT established ideas. They understand nature superficially, as pretty somethings out there rather than their innermost
processes, to which they must listen with humility and give useful form by
using left-brain processes. Consequently, they see capitalism as the enemy of
their romanticized notion of a pre-industrial state of nature. And they see
the inevitable inequalities of capitalism as the enemy of their romanticized
notion of equality, to be found in vaguely conceived and untested notions of
communism/socialism. The best and the
worst of the creative classes form the two groups that Cato identifies.
Obviously, there's a continuum, not two hermetically sealed groups. But
speaking broadly, the best nourish us spiritually and constructively
contribute to true progress, whereas the worst are airheads who conceitedly
arrogate to themselves the attribute of creativity that's owed only to the
best. A similar
classification could be made of conservatives, contrasting the best as those
open to new, constructive forms and the worst as those who confuse the true
and valuable with the merely familiar. Gary ----------- email exchange 9/3/06 I think the
Jihadists of 9/11 were not only sane, but quite rational within the framework
of their beliefs about what they did.
And the implications of that reality are just too frightening for the
typical western mind to accept. Cato I agree jihadists
aren’t insane, but people’s tendency to label them that doesn’t come
primarily from fear. It comes from the common human inability to model a
thought different from one’s own, to understand a different point of view.
It’s a rare talent to understand a different point of view, because it
involves modeling both your own thinking and that of another and comparing
the two. Although the political right and left don’t usually label each other
insane, they do ascribe evil or conspiratorial or narrow political motives to
each other because that’s something they understand, having all those motives
themselves to one degree or another. Gary ----------- email exchange
8/11/06 TS Eliot —
Humankind cannot bear very much reality. Western liberals
are sufficiently cushioned from harsh reality that denial comes especially
easy to them. My neighborhood leftists darkly commented that Bush knew for at
least four weeks about this upcoming plot of downing commercial planes from
London to the US, the implication being that he held back till now for
dramatic effect. I won’t bore you
with all the holes in this theory except to point out two things: denial
isn’t just a matter of not paying attention, but often feeds on aggressively
constructed paranoia; and an overlooked problem with paranoiacs is that
they're distracted from focusing on their real enemies. Gary John Derbyshire
quote: "Reality",
said Philip K. Dick, "is that which, when you stop believing in it,
doesn't go away". Some years earlier T.S. Eliot had noted that
"humankind cannot stand very much reality." The older I get, the
more I think that the main driving force in human affairs is not greed or
lust, still less anything positive like charity or piety: It is wishful
thinking. I want it to be so; therefore it must surely be so! A survey of
history suggests that all great civilizations were strongly averse to some
aspect of reality; and that the aversion was, in each case, a contributing
factor in civilizational downfall. Not sure paranoia
is the right description, or that denial leads to or transposes into
paranoia. Your first sentence
referencing denial is correct. The
Left seems to me more inclined to deny the existence of enemies than to
create them out of whole cloth. I
would describe the pathology of The Left as a deep existential despair at
that point where dreams of the perfectibility of man collide with the reality
of human action and motivation. They
either cling to their dreams or they disintegrate ideologically; the former
is irrational but the latter is unthinkable, so they evidence the
former. And since recognizing
Islamists as irredeemable enemies would destroy them ideologically, but
seeing conservatives as enemies would sustain them ideologically...no matter
how irrational that is...that is what The Left must do. Ergo they seek to embrace Islamists (called
appeasement and multicultural weakness by the right) in order to redeem them
and attack conservatives for their confrontational attitudes. That make any sense? Cato Paranoia is not
necessarily about enemies, though that is what’s popularly associated with
it. Clinically, it’s also associated with grandiosity. And Freud highlighted
another aspect when he characterized religion as a form of paranoia in
developing theories that are not subject to refutation. In that sense,
wishful thinking is the most common and mildest form of paranoia. The comment —
"I would describe the pathology of The Left as a deep existential
despair at that point where dreams of the perfectibility of man collide with
the reality of human action and motivation" — cuts right to the heart of
the left. However, I see the implications differently — in the light of Tip
O’Neill’s profound observation that all politics (he could as well have said
psychology and morality) is local. In principle, it’s theoretically possible
for either Islamofascists or conservatives
eventually to come around to reason. However, since conservatives are
geographically (and therefore emotionally) closer than Islamofascists
to the left, the left feels the conflict with them more intensely.
Consequently, it’s harder for the left to acknowledge good (in this case, the
ability to listen to reason) in conservatives than in Islamofascists. In any case, I
like Derbyshire’s point that everyone has biases. One variation of this
obvious point is the psychological saying that only the paranoiac is 100%
attentive. The rest of us have enough trouble carving out just a small
portion of reality to focus on. The left can’t accept that sometimes we’re in
a kill or be killed situation. The right, on the other hand, doesn’t dwell on
the fact that those disadvantaged by its policies are usually the powerless
and unloved. Gary |
