Opposite_Personality t1_j0ut9ge wrote
Who is "our"? How is this not propaganda for the status quo?
I don't have conflicting political beliefs, AMA!
literally_a_brick t1_j0v262t wrote
I was thinking the exact same thing upon reading. The click bait-y title and tag line referring to seemingly all "political beliefs" later gives way to "political beliefs of mainstream political parties endorsed by the majority of Americans". I really hope the author's upcoming book about the subject doesn't just use this reductive duopolistic take on political belief.
DJ-Dowism t1_j0vn7l5 wrote
100%. If you take the time to examine your beliefs and construct your own view of the world and how you see political structures best helping us, there should be no hypocrisy or conflict in your ideology. If you instead pick an off-the-shelf ideology from an existing party built to lure people with hot button issues and rage at their "enemies" as cover for servicing their corporate sponsors, then yeah there's going to be a lot of problems.
Very interested though - how would you describe your political ideology/philosophy?
Opposite_Personality t1_j0w8bpz wrote
Thanks for the gentle reply. Of course I am aware of such mechanisms; I made the reply half way jokingly, but I really wanted a challenge. I don't believe in party politics nor left/right dynamics so we already eliminated historical imperatives, tribalism and virtue signaling :D
You made a very incisive question. It is difficult to describe my political leanings and this was very conflicting to me a couple of years back. The only hard beliefs that I have are local organization (comunal overseeing of basic needs and its solutions) and mutual aid (in-group and out-group). Nothing else.
Today I don't even believe in human rights. Just in basic decency and denying people their want to step on everybody else's life (unless actually asked to). And of course, I believe in violence as last resort in case the other two don't work. Maybe I am just over-saturated with systemic issues, but I truly believe people in our time became extremely backwards (prude, passive-aggressive and manipulable).
Am I a conservative? I truly believe conservative is but the first instinct of an ignorant mind; not a political or intellectual theory but a simple practice. I have been years searching for a true conservative intellectual to only find prudes, dum-dums and sold out pseudo-academics. Liberals and Leftists on the other hand seem more respectable to me, but don't seem able to give their life for others. So, more smoke.
ClosetLink t1_j0x0h3t wrote
> Liberals and Leftists on the other hand seem more respectable to me, but don't seem able to give their life for others. So, more smoke.
I'm not sure I follow your logic here. Are you talking about, like... joining the military? What does that have to do with having logical and/or correct beliefs? And what about the many who do?
Unless you don't mean literally "dying", but rather things that help the lives of others (like healthcare, etc.), in which case I'm even more surprised by your conclusion, but won't ask more.
Opposite_Personality t1_j14x2p6 wrote
I despise police and military institutions. This logic of killing and smacking around people for freedom, the future and the children is all mentally challenged to me.
I mean actually rolling up your sleeves and serving ex middle class people that's living below bridges right now. Mobilizing for them instead of against them and their disgraced middle class dreams.
Capitalism as a system is in bankruptcy right now (probably already taken out by Technofeudalism, two complete steps backwards) and most people is still trying to fake normal, whatever that means.
DJ-Dowism t1_j119xi2 wrote
I find it's much more helpful to look at the policies you would be in favour of and why, rather than trying to find a name to label your political philosophy with. After all, there very well may not be a name that actually encompasses your personal views yet.
Even the two main streams of thought in "liberal" and "conservative" just indicate a desire to move forward or backward, or stay the same, whatever those concepts mean to you - and as polar concepts in the US in particular, they completely reversed within living memory anyway. Time was Republicans abolished slavery, yet later opposed Civil Rights, etc.
There's also the apparent fact that young people seem to begin more "liberal" and end their lives more "conservative", potentially making a farce of any attempts to assign objectivity to either viewpoint outside our relative distance from death, or identifying with concepts we found appealing in our formative years. As the world itself consistently always moves to the "left" over time, unless we each also move to the left throughout our lives we will inevitably simply become more "conservative" in comparison to current culture.
So to me it does much more come down to how you would actually like to see political structures built and executed rather than how you label that: ie. in the most practicably comprehensive sense, what are your preferred policies, and why?
Opposite_Personality t1_j14w805 wrote
That's exactly the problem to me, the eternal reversal and the eternal farce. I wouldn't endorse a single policy right now because it all leads to capital extraction from the lower clases. The system is illustrious in the obvious, it is right there in its name. It isn't called middle-classism. Even paying student debt would end up benefiting debt vultures. "Helping" Ukraine actually produces more capital extraction and more human loss.
I feel people voluntarily wants to be deluded all of the time.
The only meaning of current policies to me is bread and circuses. And I never was able to stand performative arts, really.
I can't stand party politics anymore. It didn't lead to something useful for the last 50 years at least. It only stands in the way of progress and keeps reassuring those capital transfers and extractions to perfection.
iiioiia t1_j0y9tmz wrote
> If you take the time to examine your beliefs and construct your own view of the world and how you see political structures best helping us, there should be no hypocrisy or conflict in your ideology.
This is assuming a pretty extraordinarily high level of intelligence on behalf of the individual. A short visit to /r/politics might give you an idea of the quality of humans we're dealing with here.
DJ-Dowism t1_j117cxi wrote
I honestly don't think it takes an extraordinary degree of intelligence to systematically view the world through an objective lens. What it does take is the will to embark on that journey. Which isn't to say everyone will reach the same destination either, although I do personally believe there are several irrefutable conclusions that have been proven as best courses from my own explorations, usually we are denied the ability to even discuss on this basis as the idea of forging our own path simply does not have much traction in our current culture.
Your example of r/politics is unfortunately a demonstration of furthering political tribalism, in my experience at least. It's not so much a demonstration of the average person's ability to objectively examine how they view the world so much as an indictment of how little that is encouraged by our culture.
EDIT: a word
iiioiia t1_j11bo8x wrote
> I honestly don't think it takes an extraordinary degree of intelligence to systematically view the world through an objective lens.
Well I disagree passionately! lol
The world is highly subjective and illusory, as a consequence of it largely running on top of the human mind whose behavior is a function of millions years of evolution (in conditions highly dissimilar to the present), as well as distortion due to culture, propaganda, and various other issues. I mean just take this philosophy subreddit for example - getting anyone to seriously discuss the truth value of a proposition is very often like pulling teeth!
> Your example of r/politics is unfortunately a demonstration of furthering political tribalism, in my experience at least.
The mind is naturally attracted to the extremes of any situation - discussions in politically oriented subreddits are a train wreck, but I propose what's even more interesting than that is that political discussions in most any community, regardless of average intelligence level, will also be a trainwreck. The classic example I always use is https://news.ycombinator.com, a forum populated by mostly highly intelligent programmers, engineers, etc - in technical threads, people are smart - but pop into a political thread and observe how IQ's and logical capabilities have been cut in half, at least. I believe there is something about certain topics that the mind just cannot compute without constantly generating errors.
I very much agree with you on culture though - I wouldn't find ot hard to believe that culture could count for half or more of the problem.
DJ-Dowism t1_j11dqvv wrote
Studies have shown that having ideas challenged which you associate with your identity, and in turn your group identity, are responded to neurologically in the same manner as physical threats, short-circuiting logical thought processes and exacerbating tribalism. Our identity and status within groups is as essential to our survival as access to food and water. This response often forces doubling down on existing beliefs even in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence. I'd imagine that's a big part of the effect you're describing. It's the same fight or flight response we experience when we perceive a tiger on a path in the jungle, and the same evolutionary pressures apply in many ways.
I would say it comes down to intentionally constructing processes of interrogating our beliefs as a culture. What's much more important than your base level of intelligence entering into a conversation is your willingness to actually explore concepts within that conversation. To truly engage in a dialog. To not feel threatened by entertaining conflicting beliefs. If that itself can become part of our group identity, this process is no longer existentially threatening.
Again though, I'm not saying there is actually a "one true way" to view the world objectively. It's a process we can choose to attempt to engage in, which we will never perfect, but brings much better results over time. It doesn't mean we're all going to agree, but we're at least going to be able to exchange ideas and move towards a better understanding of the world, together.
iiioiia t1_j11nlxl wrote
> Studies have shown that having ideas challenged which you associate with your identity, and in turn your group identity, are responded to neurologically in the same manner as physical threats, short-circuiting logical thought processes and exacerbating tribalism.
Agree, psychology textbooks and papers are informative - however, I think it's much more interesting if you observe the overwhelming amount of available evidence first hand: internet arguments. What you describe here is not surprising if one is considering people's System 1 powered, realtime intuitive reaction. But more interesting is that people regularly (and on some topics, usually/always) are literally not able to release themselves from a belief, or often even question their belief - individually, or with assistance. And even more hilarious: very often this occurs in a scenario where the individual in question is mocking the intelligence of other people...and often the people they are mocking are literally artifacts of their imagination.
Were this not so common[1] and therefore taken for granted as an unavoidable part of reality like the weather, I think it would get massive amounts of attention. And that it doesn't get hardly any attention (other than people complaining about it incessantly) suggests to me that there is something very, very strange about "reality".
> I would say it comes down to intentionally constructing processes of interrogating our beliefs as a culture. What's much more important than your base level of intelligence entering into a conversation is your willingness to actually explore concepts within that conversation. To truly engage in a dialog. To not feel threatened by entertaining conflicting beliefs. If that itself can become part of our group identity, this process is no longer existentially threatening.
Ah....now this is something I rarely encounter. Isn't it weird that with all the "experts" in the world, many of them on payroll in relevant positions, and with all the calls for "more critical thinking" we hear in the media, *no one seems to have put two and two together? I mean, you and I are surely not dummies, but are we that much smarter than others? Or is there perhaps something else going on?
> Again though, I'm not saying there is actually a "one true way" to view the world objectively. It's a process we can choose to attempt to engage in, which we will never perfect, but brings much better results over time.
Maybe aiming for objectivity is not the correct goal? If the problem space is fundamentally subjective (I believe it is), aiming for objectivity will fail indefinitely. I think is is perfectly plausible that our success and obsession with science may now be causing net harm to us, and maybe has been for quite some time with no way for us to realize it (since that would at the very least require thinking, and that topic has become as taboo as questioning religion was a hundred years ago - it is literally enforced at several levels, including the government and mostly all media).
[1] There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water"?
noonemustknowmysecre t1_j0vu2ml wrote
> I don't have conflicting political beliefs, AMA!
Cracks knuckles
Would you prefer a mass die-off of humanity or would you rather we continue to kill the planet with massive CO2 pollution?
Do you want higher wages for workers? And how should we deal with illegal foreign workers?
What do you think of the military aid to Ukraine and how do you feel about military spending?
When did you stop beating your wife?
CovfefeForAll t1_j0x8p81 wrote
cracks neck, does a quick squat stretch and a couple of lunges
>Would you prefer a mass die-off of humanity or would you rather we continue to kill the planet with massive CO2 pollution?
Not a political belief.
>Do you want higher wages for workers? And how should we deal with illegal foreign workers?
Yes, and create a robust system where foreign workers can be allowed to work and pay taxes much easier than currently allowed. This removes the exploitability of underpaid undocumented workers that drive wages at the bottom way way down. Also, severely punish employers who take advantage of undocumented labor. To this end, increase IRS funding to look specifically at wage theft and wages paid under the table.
>What do you think of the military aid to Ukraine and how do you feel about military spending?
Military spending is necessary, and should be used when needed to defend allies. We can afford to cut down a good portion of our spending though, and take a good look at wasted funding and earmarks that serve no purpose except to give specific politicians more political clout.
>When did you stop beating your wife?
I plead the fifth.
noonemustknowmysecre t1_j0xfsut wrote
Although, off the record, arresting the hiring bosses and fining the corporations that illegally hire foreigners is really the right way to go about it. Neither Democrats nor Republicans actually want to fix the problem though. Offer green cards to anyone working there willing to flip on their boss and send them to prison. Between immigration, automation, and outsourcing, the gini-coefficient keeps on rising and the poor rural farmboys keep getting madder and madder.
Hot-damn though, average wage of an H-2A is $21.91 an hour. Like, legally, a place has to prove they can't find anyone local to work the job and there is no cap.
Like, none of your ideas are even bad. I do think environmentalism is a real thing. But you're a sane functioning member of society. Generally liberal. Whee. But any statement along the lines of "although", "while", "however", or anything with a "but" will be taken as a conflicting view. Irrationally wanting two opposite things simultaneously. Which is why any politician worth their salt avoids actually answering any questions.
CovfefeForAll t1_j0xvv6x wrote
> Although, off the record, arresting the hiring bosses and fining the corporations that illegally hire foreigners is really the right way to go about it.
It's really the only sustainable possible solution. We NEED to do it if we actually want to stabilize the lowest wages.
> I do think environmentalism is a real thing.
I really think you misunderstood what I was saying. I was distancing myself from the false dichotomy you put forward. We CAN try to put a very quick, very harsh damper on our pollution, and that would be neither of the 2 scenarios you put forward. The political issue is whether we have the political will to do the needful regarding environmental degradation and pollution. But yes, I do agree that environmentalism is not only real, but the only possibility if we want to ensure a future for humanity that goes beyond the 21st century.
> But any statement along the lines of "although", "while", "however", or anything with a "but" will be taken as a conflicting view.
Eh, I call it being realistic, not conflicting, but I can see how people might see that as backtracking or weakness. That's why I'm not a politician.
noonemustknowmysecre t1_j0y9zad wrote
> I was distancing myself from the false dichotomy you put forward.
Well you stepped right into the other two.
> We CAN try to put a very quick, very harsh damper on our pollution, and that would be neither of the 2 scenarios you put forward.
OH, if it's harsh enough, it's the first. If it's not harsh enough, it's the second. Currently, we're doing the 2nd, which is really the right choice.
noonemustknowmysecre t1_j0xet43 wrote
Slips on the knuckle duster
So environmentalism isn't a political issue to you? You are apathetic to pollution. Is this an endorsement of eco-terrorists such as the Sea Shepard and the Earth Liberation Front? Do you advocate for the dissolution of the EPA? Do you have any words for it's administrator Michael S. Regan?
You admit you want to import more foreign workers and undercut working class wages. These workers whom I quote "drive wages at the bottom way way down", you want more of them? Do the economic rules of supply and demand no longer apply low-end labor? Are you not aware of our current robust system where foreign workers can be allowed to work that is the work visa program? Are you looking to remove the restrictions on H-2A visas?
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a "Though". While you openly advocate we need to cut down our military spending, you acknowledge that it is "necessary and should be used". It is without doubt that we find your views "conflicting" and inconsistent.
Pleading the fifth? A likely story!
CovfefeForAll t1_j0xvhck wrote
stretches arms, starts bouncing on balls of the feet, takes a few practice air punches
> So environmentalism isn't a political issue to you?
Oof, way to miss what I said. You gave an and/or, and all I said was that the scenario you put forward is not a political issue, it was....something. Not sure what. Extinction or causing the oven-baked death of the world, as if those are the only 2 options.
> You admit you want to import more foreign workers and undercut working class wages
Nope nope. We already have foreign workers who undercut wages. The idea is to legitimize them and regulate the wages they need to be paid so that EVERYONE is paid more.
noonemustknowmysecre t1_j0xwfqo wrote
> as if those are the only 2 options.
They're ALL false dichotomies! Fight CO2 or bake the world. Combat immigration or screw the working class. Splurge on the military or abandon Ukraine and our defense agreement.
It's an antagonistic journalistic push poll trying to steer you into a conflicting statement. Hence the knuckles and such.
>The idea is to legitimize them and regulate the wages they need to be paid so that EVERYONE is paid more.
(We do that. That's literally what's happening right now. When everyone is paid more, they hire illegal workers for less.)
CovfefeForAll t1_j0y0trx wrote
>When everyone is paid more, they hire illegal workers for less
It was a three part solution. Crack down on the employers hiring undocumented workers, give a sort of minimum wage visa to anyone willing to work, and then hire them.
noonemustknowmysecre t1_j0y9me8 wrote
> give a sort of minimum wage visa to anyone willing to work, and then hire them.
RIGHT. And we DO 2 parts of your 3 part plan already. Read up on H-2A visas. H-1Bs essentially too. Are you not listening to me? When we do these two parts of your plan, what we get is what we have. Right here and right now. Meat-packers and hotels simply go get someone cheaper.
CovfefeForAll t1_j10ghes wrote
>Meat-packers and hotels simply go get someone cheaper.
And that won't happen if they start getting punished for hiring illegally. Which was part one.
noonemustknowmysecre t1_j10mtuj wrote
Agreed. Your 3 part plan was really just one thing. And "When everyone is paid more, they hire illegal workers for less" is still true. And "The idea is to legitimize them and regulate the wages they need to be paid so that EVERYONE is paid more." Is still kinda bullshitty and won't work. We're kinda going in circles at this point.
[deleted] t1_j0xjg5i wrote
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Opposite_Personality t1_j0w2bbw wrote
🤣
[deleted] t1_j0v0oxg wrote
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