A gang of us over at Talk Polywell were discussing my recent post Emotional Decision Making.
One commenter left a link to Why Liberals Misunderstand Conservatives. Well that got me thinking, “Why do conservatives misunderstand libertarians?” Naturally I added a few words on the subject to the discussion.
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For example, one of the leading approaches to the study of political attitudes states that political conservatism is a form of motivated social cognition: people embrace conservatism in part “because it serves to reduce fear, anxiety, and uncertainty;…
From: http://sentimentsofrationality.blogspot.com/2006/04/why-liberals-misunderstand.html
If you have been following along some of the other threads that is exactly the point I have been making about some of our conservative friends.
They hate that.
Politics is in the main a fear driven activity. To get meta to it you have to be mostly free of fears. i.e. you can’t let your gut drive your thought. It leaves you without reason.
Carl Sagan looked at that in his “The Dragons of Eden
When we live in fear we are little better than animals.
Which is why conservatives hate libertarians. “What? You are not afraid of X? What is wrong with you?” In fact just telling them they should be free of fear (it was at one time referred to as “Trust In God”) drives them into a frenzy. Which gives a fine object lesson to the lurkers.
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Then I added a comment to the “Why Liberals Misunderstand Conservatives” site. Reprized at Talk Polywell with a few prefatory remarks:
My attitude is: what ever comes up I will deal with it. What is the point of being afraid?
Here is a comment I left there:
You don’t get libertarians. They are not morally impoverished. They are free of fear (mostly).
Which makes them a whole other animal compared to the left or the right.
In a different age it would have been said “They Trust in God”. So important it is even printed on our money.
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Which is to say we live in a godless age. An age full of fear. Which may be why the founders said that without God liberty can’t survive. Those who printed “In God We Trust” on our money were trying to send us a message. It was not about Talmudic like scholarship and the “shalls” and “shall nots” – which vary according to place and time. It was being confident that what ever came up you would deal with it to the best of your ability. No nanny state required to prevent some things from coming up.
So let me repeat here something from some of my favorite girls. The Bene Gesserit Sisters.
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.
Cross Posted at Power and Control
Comments
9 responses to “Free Of Fear Or Why Do Conservatives Misunderstand Libertarians”
I’m almost always skeptical of blanket descriptions by people of the X ideological persuasion, as they attempt to understand and communicate why people of the Y ideological persuasion are the way they are. It seems like most of those attempts boil down, in the end, to “well, those other people are just kinda stupid.”
(Human nature being what it is, there is ALWAYS a germ of truth in this explanation, of course.)
Haidt’s research is, as far as I can tell, the best around right now at really getting to an objective view of why different people adopt different ideologies.
Everybody fears things–it’s a natural, normal human emotion. (If you want to, call this “original sin.” If you squint just right, it’s a fairly decent fit for the Biblical definition–“the knowledge of good and evil.” Fear the evil, love the good. And off we go–for certain definitions of “good” and “evil” of course–weeeeee!!!)
I, for instance, am mostly afraid of other people trying to wield power over me. I mainly just want to be left alone, and to leave others alone, except to engage in mutually beneficial interactions including trade.
It is WHAT a person fears that tells you a lot about what their ideological bent is, because it tells you what that person will sacrifice in order to alleviate that fear.
What people generally focus on is the Devil’s exploitation of desire. But that is one of his least significant tools. If you want people to be evil to the bone exploit their fears.
The fewer fears you have the less exploitable you are.
Let me add that the left is run by their fears too. I just happened to be discussing it with a bunch of righties.
“What do you want?”
–Morden, for the Shadows, “Babylon 5”
Filbert,
What is the context? I’m kind of out of it on popular culture.
I do sorta get it.
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My post was kind of a riff on the meditation of the fear factor which is involved in any individual’s ideological makeup.
In the SF TV show Babylon 5, the character Morden went around to all the alien ambassadors serving on the (human-built) space station, asking them “What do you want” and asking again and again until they finally revealed what they really, really, really wanted.
One of them wanted to crush his adversaries and sow their ground with salt–but when asked again “What do you want?” basically said, well, as long as the homeworld is safe, it doesn’t matter. (A social conservative, basically.)
Wrong answer for Morden, who then went to his opposing alien ambassador, who said he wanted to regain the Glory Years where their starships filled the skies and struck terror into the hearts of the other races.
Right answer, for Morden. The Shadows, whom Morden was REALLY working for, were looking for “useful idiots” if you will, because their big thing was just to throw the entire galaxy into chaos. They believed in a Bill Ayers/Cloward-Piven-type of social Darwinism–“never let a crisis go to waste” sort of thing.
Where I was going with this is–what you fear depends a lot on what it is that you really, really, really want.
The most basic human fear is that you will not be able to–or will be prevented from–achieving that what you really, really want.
The problem arises because everyone has a different view of just exactly what it is that they want.
Yes, my mind walks down strange pathways.
filbert,
Excellent. Thanks!
BTW I have never felt that I couldn’t get what I want.
I’ll find a way or make one.