Every system is perfectly designed to produce its observed results.
I don’t know if you strung that set of words together yourself or read it somewhere, but I had never quite heard it put that way before. Very succinct. Sorry, I’m very into language, sentences are like flowers to me and that’s a particularly nice blossom.
Re “conservatives,” it’s an extremely frustrating word because of how it’s been misused. I took Intro PoliSci once, my teacher was an open Marxist like me, and he taught us a non-loaded, non-controversial, non-toxic definition of political Conservatism - it was along the lines of, “Conservatives believe that societal change should be done slowly, with careful consideration, with as little disruption to the existing society as possible.” - and in all honesty, I once knew a few people who fit that description pretty good. They are long dead now, and I considered them devils at the time we knew each other, but I wish they were around right now, because I know we would all pretty much agree about all this bullshit - we spent a lot of time debating in places like this, and we got into a lot of what ifs. I don’t believe any of them would pinch their nose for the current leader of our (Canadian) Tories.
I’m not saying, if we were to apply your maxim about “observed results” to the matter, that that is what Conservatism is “perfectly designed” to do, but that’s more or less what the word actually means, and what the traditional branding of Conservatism has been; neither a desire to anachronistically cosplay the worst parts of the past, nor a desire to pointlessly harm life (another word they have barbarized to the point of uselessness), is actually an ideological feature of the traditional Conservative political body. In the 1950s the SBC approved of abortion. Look it up if you don’t believe me - there was once a time when they really did believe that life was precious. Jimmy Carter was one of em.
It’s the most fundamental aspect of how the modern Right uses routine gaslighting to sell their baldfaced neo-aristrocrat sceheme, because whatever individual opinions modern Conservatism might share with the GOP Nixon admin that started the EPA - an institution with a foundational intent so thoroughly conservative that they should be running CPAC - they are the ones attempting to radically change society in as short a time as possible.
If we go back to my Marxist professor’s definition, my Marxist ass is generally the most conservative one in most of the rooms I occupy.
LegionEris@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Fun fact: if you’re raised in a chaotic environment of abuse, distrust, and neglect, you can go blissfully free of the need for leadership for the low, low price of CPTSD! I assume that this leaderless way of thinking can be imparted to children without truama, but I only know how I got there. For better or worse, I’ve never trusted or craved authority because my formative authorities were infinitely untrustworthy and unsafe.
entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
It is possible. My childhood wasn’t without trauma, but I’ve never had PTSD. My parents taught me to question rules and edicts from on-high. When I would do so with my parents, they were almost always able to articulate reasons why we did things one way and not another. When I did so with friends’ parents, some teachers, and most other adults, I got abusive bullshit spewed at me till I submitted to their defacto authority.
My parents were safe, but authority figures in general could not and should not be trusted.