Boomers say that because historically, with increasing age people usually also managed to have some things they might want to conserve, like a home and some financial assets to cover their retirement. I’m in my mid thirties and the only feasible way for me to ever own a home is inheriting one. My retirement plan is to die in the revolution. I have nothing to be conservative about
I’m in my 30s and fortunate to have a house, but as I age I become more liberal.
I grew up with conservative parents and mostly conservative extended family as well. It wasn’t until I was older and in college that I started to become liberal. Before that I considered myself a Libertarian because I hated the two-party system and didn’t identify closely with any other parties.
I can’t imagine anyone that isn’t in the the top 1% that considers themselves conservative unless it’s based purely on hate or ignorance.
Generally, what it used to be is that people got more liberal as they got older, but society became more liberal faster.
Nowadays, millennials are getting older and mostly keeping up with liberal trends because we have so little invested in the status quo to slow us down from changing with the times. Amongst other factors.
Basically, “people are selfish and will do what benefits them”
Except when they vote against their own interest
Which I’d say is a pretty right-wing sentiment
Finally bought my first home at 40 using all my life savings. Couldn’t afford to have kids. I got no one to leave any heritage to. Fuck everything.
I’m 31, I was most conservative in my teens when I was in a private Christian high school in the south. Then I went to college, worked at a jail, went to law school, and in the process learned about the world and the people in it.
I am still astonished at the people who have done similar things and still don’t have an ounce of compassion for the poor and struggling. Conservative values only make sense when your sense of self only encompasses you, your family, and your religion. Once you realize that you are a part of something bigger, and the gay Hindu man and the black Muslim woman has the same consciousness and feelings as you it’s a lot harder to think of them as enemies or pitiful souls who need to be saved.
When you realize that people are people, and we are all the same, but for our circumstances, then it’s impossible to be conservative.
I think some people have trouble conceptualizing those around them as human. From what I can tell it’s not intentional cruelty, at least at first, they just struggle to conceptualize and understand the idea that all of the people around them have just as dynamic and complex inner worlds as they do. When it’s a struggle to make that connection, it’s easy to go through life ignoring the plight of those around you, disregarding them with the same ease most people dismiss a warning on a computer.
As someone formerly in the same boat, I think belief in the Abrahamic religions makes it hard to identify with the plights of others, because if you believe in a just, loving god, then “those people” have the religion and hardships that they do for a reason (and the reason is usually either “it’s part of God’s plan” or “they made bad decisions”).
When you base your entire worldview on a faulty premise, you can use sound logic to get all the way to libertarianism without a problem. Once I reexamined and discarded my belief in the Christian god, it was like flipping a switch; I went from douchey religious Libertarian to bleeding-heart socialist almost literally overnight.
My favorite part of Libertarianism is that Saint Rand collected Social Security.
It exemplifies the shameless selfishness of the libertarian philosophy and really links well with the conservative mindset of “I got mine, fuck you”.
Indeed. That’s one of my biggest problems with religion and why it makes me uncomfortable even though I ostensibly believe that people have their right to spirituality. Ultimately, with spiritual premises, people can come to faulty or unpredictable conclusions even with sound logic, and that somewhat unnerves me.
I’m skeptical that many conservatives have dynamic and complex inner worlds … I don’t see much evidence that they think much about anything, but rather offload as much as possible onto others. My mother, as she gets older, appears to actively avoid thinking for herself and has begun the decline into right-wing thinking. She likes the Daily Mail to do her thinking for her.
I think that all people and many non-person animals have dynamic and complex inner worlds, but Conservatives definitely have a blind spot when it comes to political evaluation. Unfortunately, it’s our nature as our species to seek out shortcuts. One of the ways we do this is by finding trusted sources to do some level of evaluation for us, that way we don’t have to think about as much. With Conservatives, many of them learned to trust certain sources from their parents, religion, or their own misguided fear. These sources are conspiratorial and hate-mongering, and they usually don’t apply any critical analysis to them. This leads to a self-perpetuating cycle where their sources tell them to trust no one and to be hateful and from that they don’t pick up any new sources, causing them to enter an echo chamber they can’t escape. It’s honestly kinda sad and I somewhat pity them, but I still will do what it takes to defeat them politically.
I agree, and I honestly think its the push for individualism over community that causes people to unknowingly become solipsistic like this. I think a lot of people don’t even realize how much trouble they have conceptualizing those around them as human, let alone having empathy for them
That definitely doesn’t help. In an atomized society there are fewer incentives to work with other people which causes people to either not develop proper social skills or to develop malformed ones.
All it needs is a little self reflection on your actions in the current world. If you never question yourself and always assume your choices will lead you forward, you will never get even a hint of what’s realistic and what’s just egotistic bs.
“private christian high school” That sounds really bad…
Yeah, imagine church on Sunday morning, Sunday evening, Wednesday night in addition to once a week chapel, a mandatory Bible class, and most of the other curriculum incorporating biblical teachings (Christian books in literature, young earth creationism, etc) Oh and the church is Southern Baptist and the school is non-denominational (which means they can’t teach conflicting dogmas or the parents will pull their kids out.) So there is no church history other than the creation of protestantism, but we had Catholics so that couldn’t go into detail either.
On the positive side, we had small classes and I got educated enough to get into undergrad and go on to get my JD.
I really have to thank the science educators on YouTube and similar for filling in the gaps of grade school level biology and history that I missed out on. And undergrad for breaking my dogmatic ideologies.
I’m really glad to see the current wave of deconstruction, it seems a lot healthier than the militant atheism that was popular when I was deconverting.
Hey, I went to one of those, too. I eventually went to public school and it was so much better.
My mother was a hippy before I was born, marched in every march going when I was a kid. Anti war, greenpeace, Land Rights the works. The last thing she did on her drive to the hospital for what would turn out to be her last time, was post in her postal vote for gay marriage rights. She was 74 years old. You don’t get more conservative as you get older unless you choose to.
I think we radicalize when we get older. The issue is that the boomers have radicalized to the extreme, turning into the people their parents gave their life to fight against. So we are turning ourselves to the other direction. Also, the center in the us would already be considered right in Europe so having a mild leftist opinion is perceived as extremist.
Past generations saw some level of stability by their 40s and felt that something worked.
Ain’t nothing worked for any of us and those people who did turn conservative in their 40s are now 80 and voting to literally murder gay and trans folk.
Anyone who believes this is just as deranged as the Q people lmao. What an outright fabrication of anything resembling the truth. Nobody on either side of the spectrum, be it left or right, are voting to murder anyone. Maybe take a peak outside your Reddited echo chamber because the real world has much more nuance than it’s allowing you to see.
Reddited chamber?
We on Lemmy…
Is this a bot account? Do I have to start looking to see if bots are posting here as well?
Reddited echo chamber.
I’m aware of where we are and comments like that person’s are no less outlandish than that of Reddit’s delusional tankies.
I’m a human, beep boop.
The older I get the more I learn about the workers history that the rich have hidden from us, so of course I become more socialist.
This will never stop being weird to me, or at least unfamiliar.
Reason; I was raised by boomers, but they were legitimate 1967 Haight-Ashbury hippies (actually my dad derosed out of Vietnam in '67, so he wasn’t in SF until '68, but leave us not quibble) who even now, though both my parents are dead, are still far to the left of me, and I’m basically a Bernie-style democratic socialist.
To put in perspective, while my parents weren’t actually part of the SLA, they personally knew and were friendly with some of the most notorious of the lot, though they had parted ways by the time the SLA started to get seriously crazy.
All of which is just to say that growing up with Boomer parents in NorCal was a very different experience for a lot of gen Xers like myself.
I was born in 1970 and have steadily grown more and more toward the left. Mainly that’s because the right has gone completely insane.
I was born in 1991 and I’ve noticed a trend amongst people my age reaching their 30s which I call “the middle generation conundrum”
Basically, most of us grew on our parents belief that hard work meant a good life.
But as time passed we started to notice a couple of things:
- Our parent’s way became more and more out of reach, even with the same involvement in our work. No more traditional way of life on a single salary, even starting out in the middle class
- We tend to feel closer to the next generation’s way of life which is “work to live” and not “live to work”
- We are also feeding on the general nihilism towards our planet’s future which is making some of us less likely to aim for the traditional “family lifestyle”
The result is that whereas me and my friends would have tended to move right on the political spectrum, the majority of us are actually moving far left as we age.
Last (French) presidential elections, I actually couldn’t believe how many people around me voted left. It would have been unthinkable a couple of years before
I would give this more upvotes, because I’m feeling exactly this.
“Just wait till you’re my age…” is the dumbest bs I will ever hear from older people. As if everyone will inevitably turn into an old, bitter, narrow minded, conservative person some day.
I was always leaning liberal and now I’m even more leftist. Mainly because conservatives got even more dumb.
And I’m someone who grew up with parents that were staunch republicans and made me go to church every Sunday. Then I turned 18 and my parents are still christian, but they don’t do church anymore. hmm wonder why. Also one of them hates republicans now and switched registrations. I don’t even think older people even believe that whole “you get more conservative as you get older” garbage.
Was raised on Rush Limbaugh starting in the 5th grade, did the edgy Libertarian thing and now … now Bernie Sanders is like the only guy in the country that makes any sense. And now I get to argue with most of my family and many of my friends or just never talk politics or walk away completely. And I get to reckon with all the harm I’ve caused.
Know what’s fun? Constantly realizing what a piece of shit you’ve been. Feeling incredibly stupid for not realizing it sooner. Wondering how you can possibly atone.
Hey, as a minority I just wanted to tell you thank you. You may feel like shit when you think of the person you used to be, but I appreciate you for becoming the person you are now. Your only “atonement” is to just keep truckin, friend. Keep working on being the person you want to be
I think reflecting on your past and changing yourself is huge.
You might have been dick before but you aren’t anymore guy.
Everyone who’s a conservative right now, is either:
A: completely forgotton their live before turning 25-30
B: Is a massive asshole who actively wants others to suffer for their own gain
C: Is a completely brainwashed morons who legitimately can’t see the problems they’re causing.
On point, but just a slight clarification on point B. They enjoy watching others suffer even when they don’t gain, and often even if they will be hurt too. Conservatives are all about pyrrhic victorories. There’s an expression I’ve always remembered: a conservative will shit their own pants if their enemies have to smell it.
They see the suffering of others as it’s own victory out of a combination of zero sum mindset, that the pie cannot grow and that others have to lose for anyone to win, and schadenfreude, a German term that really should but doesn’t have an English version as it’s one of the darkest traits of the human condition and American culture gets drunk on it more than most.
I had what turned out to be Semi leftist ideals as a kid. As a teen I went through an Anti Conservative edgy Atheist ark. Intellectual dark web tried to turn me conservative, but while I was watching Sargon and other Alt Shite content I was always watching some leftists. My homepage was a nightmare. I believed in the marketplace of ideas, free speech, and socialism. But I didn’t know the word socialism. I was a no theory having motherfucker. So, I became an anti liberal mad at SJWs for thinking everything was more important than class and that Class wasn’t important at all. However, the right ended up being homophobic and shit with no principles and also didn’t care about poor people are class.
So I’m a communist cause I finally found the politics that actually cared about humans. The politics that were treated as “impossible” my whole life. As I age, I only drift further and further left. I challenge more of the grand narratives I was raised with. Even if I was to “get something to conserve” there is more out there than my crumbs.
We need to end capitalism so there is a future.
Question…what drove you to Communism specifically? As opposed to, say… democratic socialism? I’ve read the communist manifesto by Marx…and I have to say, while tend to agree with some of the points made throughout…there is definitely some parts of the manifesto I do not align with. Do you have any more modern recommendations for a good communist society outline? Im trying to bridge the ideological gap in my mind because I despise capitalism in it’s current form.
I was left leaning when I was younger and a lot of that was due to left leaning people on the internet.
As I got older my views haven’t changed that much but I definitely feel like the left have caused me to move further to the right. I still heavily believe in high government spending for essentials and free speech (which was a strong left view but is now a far right view). But I definitely see the left skewing the narrative. Things like if you are against open border policies you are a nazi and shit. Day to day conversations with the right are much more manageable and logical than conversations with the everyday left. But the big policies need to be left.
I wish there was some middle ground. Or more accurately a mixture of far left and left with a mixture of right and far right policies. But the left are shooting themselves in foot with a lot of little stuff and ignoring a lot of the big stuff that people care about.
What right wing policies are actually better than their left wing alternative? Enlighten me.
Not many. Borders, military, maybe some protectionist policies, freer trade, some cost saving but not many. That’s my point.
Sounds like the Democratic party is a perfect home for you. The Biden administration is center right on the border (in practical terms), the military, and trade. I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “cost saving,” other than balancing the budget and trying to be efficient with tax dollars, things the democrats are doing way better on than Republicans. The party is built for your sensibilities. If you’re an American, your view is the one in control of the politically relevant non fascist party.
The American democrats seem too right for my liking. The party definitely isn’t perfect for me.
Yeah like “free speech” being a “far right” thing, while simultaneously trying to stop people from talking about LGBTQ+ issues.
Meanwhile the left is doing what that’s against free speech? You can say bigoted things all you want still as far as I know. It’ll affect what people think of you as a person, but that’s not what free speech is about.
This person is a lost cause.
Please elaborate
Okay fine.
From a starting point I feel everyone should have an equal start in life (to a point). So for example everyone that is born should have free healthcare and be able to get whatever job they want as long as they have the ability. That’s my core left view.
Secondly. I have a degree in economics and that educates some of my views to be more monetarily and free market orientated. So I’m big on cash transfers where someone else might go for say free food stamps. But overriding that I believe governments should focus more on happiness and wellbeing than GDP or GDP per capita. That’s in contrast to my education, or typical takeaways from my education.
My policies would be high government spending, high taxes and cash transfers, subsidies and externalities to fix market issues and help push things into certain ideals.
That means I see myself and left or heavily left leaning. But I’m still proud of my country and think my country comes above others with my money and the money of my countrymen. Which is the right policies I wish more for in a left leaning party. I also feel like people are more responsible for themselves than some people make out.
The issue I find is when talking to the average right winger verse the average left winger.
I have had discussions with people saying they don’t think university education should be free or subsidised because if it’s valuable they people can take out loans themselves or if someone works hard they can gift it to their children. Someone shouldn’t have to give their money so someone else’s kid can go to university for free. Now I don’t agree but I understand the point and respect their arguments.
On a similar issue I have talked to left wingers who have said all jobs should pay the same, or that men and women should be paid the same irrelevant of what jobs they have. That it’s not fair that one degree gets you higher paying life than others. Something like this I do not agree with and do not understand.
It’s basically the logic of right wingers make sense but I disagree. The logic of left wingers doesn’t make sense but I still agree a lot with them for different reasons.
Even things like COVID. I was huge into vaccines and science and got it as soon as I could, did everything the government told me I was behind it 100%. But I still agreed with the right wingers than any anticovid views should be allowed. I just thought the government should have done better in educating people on the truth.
Ultimately it comes down to my personal experience in dealing with people. In my experience left wingers talk a lot more nonsense and get a lot more aggressive than right wingers.
My dude, I consider myself pretty liberal. For quick context: I think Joe Biden and the establishment stole the 2020 primary from Bernie Sanders, and I haven’t been gruntled since.
I agree with every point you made, explaining your political opinions.
The only things that I want to say are that being liberal and being proud of your country are not mutually exclusive. That’s a media propaganda talking point. “Liberals hate America!” - That’s just not true. Also, it sounds like you had a conversation about pay rates with an actual communist. Very few liberals are going to support actual communism. That’s another propaganda talking point.
Liberalism and democratic socialism is nowhere near communism. Democratic socialism supports the things you expressed support for: Social safety net programs, funding education, social medicine.
We all have more in common than we’re led to believe.
I met a lot of left people that just spew talking points and choose whatever is the nicest view to have. They wouldn’t say they are communist but they say stuff that is partially communist. Then make out everyone is heartless monsters. A lot of people recently were complaining about supermarkets making 1% profit margin. Saying it’s too much, like loads of left wingers had this view and said they should be government owned. It’s madness.
I’m not American. Also I’m not that liberal at all, one of our most right wing governments ever was famously liberal and sold every government asset and let the free market deal with everything. There is a reason ding dong the witch is dead hit 1 in the charts when Maggie died. Liberalism is not anything the left or most of the right ever want back.
Socialism is communism though. That’s the definition of the word.
Socialism “…advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole”
Practically speaking, all acceptable political ideologies in a liberal democracy could be considered liberal, or at the very least on the liberal spectrum. Liberalism is such a broad ideology, that both hyper religious neocon neoliberals and democratic socialists could qualify. Economic liberalism is typically what liberal has colloquially meant outside the US, while in the US, it has referred to social liberalism. Thatcher and Reagan had very similar ideologies, but Thatcher called herself a liberal, while to 1980s Republicans, liberal was a dirty word. It’s a fucky term, but if you’re a Brit who loves your country, you probably love liberalism in some way.
Democratic socialists are fiscally socialist, but still want to work within the system of liberal democracy to eventually achieve communism. “Communist” colloquially refers to people who want to achieve communism without working through liberal democracy. This includes everything from Marxist-Leninists(think the Soviets), to anarcho-communists, both of which wildly disagree with eachother. The landscape is full of people of don’t self identify accurately to what they ideologically believe because of the colloquial meaning of these terms.
Also, you are exceptionally lucky to have not run into fascists. If you actually exposed yourself to the double speak and misinformation they use to justify right wing beliefs, you too might lose faith in all right wing arguments like I have.