thinkness just had a weird thought while washing the dishes: one can easily analyze life a little too closely, and there's some arbitrary line -- different for different people at different times -- past which we don't want to go. This is so vague; I'll get into the example that brought me into this.
Say you look at a child and are overwhelmed with the cuteness of this creature. This is a beautiful moment, a connection with not just a human but with humanity, a type of bond that keeps us [and children] from being alone. Wearing a different hat, you could say that this is obviously just some evolutionary response -- humans have evolved so that children are cute, and that adults are vulnerable to their cuteness. And then you say, Shut up, brain, I was having a nice moment. The world works better for me when I don't think about that. Which is what gave me at least a little deeper understanding of conservative political thinking.
Conservatives -- in discussing crime or terrorism or poverty or homelessness -- often don't want to hear about 'root causes.' They think that you can overanalyze all of this stuff and try to explain anything away as an inevitable consequence of the big bang. But conservatives say the world makes more sense if you don't do that, and that people have their own cosmic free will that supercedes much of what has come before.
I think everybody has their own lines where they say Yeah, I could probably be more correct if I thought about this harder, but I don't want to.
The unexamined life is not worth living, but ignorance is bliss.
You can ping this entry by using http://www.mindtangle.net/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/970 .
I agree that everyone gets to draw their own line with methodological reductionism. The price of not delving off into thought about the evolutionary basis for cuteness and how humans' larger skulls and upright posture (narrow pelvis) necessitates less-mature birth and thus requires parents to care for nearly-helpless young, all so that we can have big brains to think about this stuff is... very low. You enjoy your moment with the baby, and that's that. But if people aren't willing to think of any and all the potential causes of our complex social (and economic) problems, then we're in trouble.
I don't believe that conservatives are unwilling to find root causes, any more than I believe that liberals are blaming homelessness on the big bang. Both points of view claim to know the root cause -- and it tends to both explain and support each position. (For example, the conservative worldview says the root cause of terrorism is hatred of freedom, and the root cause of crime is immorality.) I think perhaps you drew your own line a little too soon when extending this concept over to politics.
Also:
"Kids are cute, babies are cute, puppies are cute. The little things are cute. See, nature did this on purpose so that we would want to take care of our young. Made them cute. Tricked us. Then gradually they get older and older, until one day your mother sits you down and says, 'You know, I think you're ugly enough to get your own apartment.'"
-- Cathy Ladman
yes, conservatives say that the "root cause" of terrorism is hatred of freedom. but liberals would go so far beyond that -- why do terrorists hate freedom? [if that's true, of course...] -- that it makes this explanation not really feel like a root cause. this is a proximal cause, but not the distal cause, not the root cause. conservatives are much more likely to say OBL's crew hates freedom, they're bad guys, and they must be eliminated. let's roll. they don't want to look at why terrorists act this way, whereas liberals will look to policies that engendered this response. the difference here is in how far they are willing to root back to find the roots.
yes, liberals don't attribute everything to the big bang -- but they're closer to doing that than are the conservatives.
let me offer a more nuanced conservative view. the reason for going to war for iraq is to remake the political map in the middle east, and establish a more powerful sphere of influence, there. if that means more democratic regimes, then fine. if not, hey. whatever works.
the conservative view believes that we as a nation are under dire threat at all times, and if one takes the long view, one will see the need for whatever machiavellian survivalism one can muster.
compare that to liberal ecological fatalism. the two totally different world views spring from some common need to face the Big Challenge.
i feel like we need to understand conservative thinking better if we're going to argue against it. there are simple, knee-jerk worldviews on all sides of the political equation, as there are well-researched, thoroughly analyzed ones.
Excellent point, nagu, if that is your real name.
i am simplifying conservatism just in this context of looking at how liberal and conservative political philosophies look at [or don't look at] root causes. and for the sake of this analysis, i don't think that simplification loses much accuracy.
i agree with you that there are more much more nuanced views coming from both sides of the aisle. but just to be clear, you have shifted to talking about something different from what i was originally on. in the case of looking specifically at iraq [as opposed to iraq as merely an example of the root cause distinction], i would certainly look a little deeper at what is circulating in the mind of a conservative.
actually, i think it pretty important to look at the different camps of conservatives. i see three major groups that make up modern conservativism and currently support bush. [of course, this is also a simplification, but substantially more accurate than the first-degree approximation.] they all have different perspectives on iraq; some, i would submit, really do care that the countries in the middle east end up democratic. natan sharansky -- who drew a lot of attention when bush recommended his book to journalists -- represents this view. check his recent wsj op-ed.
i talk about this three-group model of conservatism in the latest post, btw.
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