So...I've been thinking lately. I know I've been one of the people who has been kind of floating the idea of, if the left isn't interested in my ideals, of trying to win over some culturally conservative but fiscally liberal types, but I really have to wonder if this is actually possible, based on some experiences in my life.
You see, there are ideas, and then the ideas behind the ideas. People have an epistemology, a worldview. They have a set of core beliefs which influence all other beliefs. And even if you can sometimes agree with a person for various reasons, if your core belief isn't the same as that other person's core belief, they can believe things for different reasons, and in a lot of cases be more fair weather toward those beliefs. Like, you can align for a time, temporarily, but eventually the infighting between the groups will become too much where the alliance becomes unsustainable.
The fact is...when I actually talk to people who I used to get along with, and get to the core of their beliefs vs my beliefs, if they're culturally conservative, I rarely find common ground with them. Most agreements happen to be coincidental, and there are massive differences in worldviews which lead to a lot of tension over time. And honestly, the personal differences get too much over time, and I end up having a falling out with them for whatever reasons. To give a few examples over time.
Person 1
Person 1 was someone I met on a basic income forum around 2015. They were fairly secular, and obviously into basic income at the time. We had a lot of discussions with each other on policy, with me being quite impressed by his brilliance. He had an awesome housing plan which I still think is one of the most forward thinking to housing I have seen. We discussed the details of UBI. And he had some quirky ideas I didn't quite agree with including replacing cars with velomobiles. But, since meeting, he quickly became unrecognizable to me. 2016 was what really did it in for me. Quite frankly, the dude hated neoliberalism and Hillary so much that he ended up becoming alt right. he started discussing racist stuff with me. I asked him to stop and he wouldn't. He would believe in crazy conspiracies about Hillary Clinton. He was a MGTOW/men's rights guy, and had extremely sexist views toward women. And he just got worse over time. Eventually I gave him an ultimatum telling him to stop trying to discuss racist stuff with me, and he wouldn't, so we stopped being friends. he tried reconnecting with me about a year ago, but he just got even more insufferable, and it didn't end well. While we didn't get a chance to discuss politics much, he stated he now supports genocide against certain people, and that was quite disturbing. Can i find common ground with this guy these days? Not really. The fact is his alt right ideology has overpowered any good I previously saw with his belief system, and while he seemed to have a lot of decent views back in the day, his core cultural convictions and right leaning views seemed to overpower his economic perspective over time.
Person 2
Person 2 is someone I started talking to more recently. I talked to him on a political sub, and he started liking me explicitly because I was pretty far left on economics but more culturally moderate. We both disliked how SJWism was taking over the democratic party, and supported a more conservative view on racial issues. Discussion went quite well at first. But then I compared SJWism to religion and that's where the problems started. This dude was a very strong christian, and very sensitive to his belief system being criticized, and keep in mind, many of my beliefs come out of the secular humanist tradition. While now spiritual, I still adopt that underlying worldview. I just happened to find acceptable evidence for "god" within it in the form of a personal anecdote that I cannot deny. But I still have deep respect for, and owe a lot of my current political roots to, the atheist community and secular humanism. The fact is, leaving religion changed me, and it fundamentally transformed my political ideology. And my views still hold up. So what are these views? Dislike of religion. An acceptance of empiricism and the need to demonstrate things through evidence. Free thought. Anti authoritarianism. Being anti "culture". Embracing a form of political and moral nihilism in which we have no inherent purpose in life imposed on us from above. Etc. All of these things kind of led to me constantly having issues with this guy. To describe his views. He was a liberal christian. He didn't have the same views as fundamentalists, but he seemed to accept the authority of the church based on the strength of its institutions. He was very sexually repressed, despite being LGBTQ+. He believes in the importance of culture and believed humans needed the kind of purpose that comes with work in their lives. He had a strong dislike for my left libertarian anti authoritarian, anti culture attitude. And we constantly butt heads on religious topics in particular. Even though we ultimately agreed on a lot of stuff, particularly on economic issues, cultural differences toward issues like abortion would regularly crop up. It really did seem whatever political alliances could be had with this guy were often undermined and sabotaged by these cultural differences, as if these cultural differences....guided his entire epistemology, and mine as well, and it just led to constant clashing.
Even on economics we could not be spared of this. After all I have a yang-esque human centered capitalist/anti work stance. And his stance is more traditionalist and FDR. one argument we got into was over the divide in ideology between a job guarantee and a UBI, and the inherent ideological differences between the two. And there are ideology deep differences between the two. For me, I support anti work because I'm this progressive left libertarian with a nihilistic streak who wants people to be free and left alone to do as they want. And he believes in the importance of culture and work to build a sense of solidarity and investment in the system. And even on left wing issues, these differences led to clashes.
The fact is, while we have serious interpersonal issues that make it hard to get along, him being culturally conservative and me being culturally progressive and the differences between them was a real eye opener. I mean I cant say i NEVER realized how interconnected one's religious and cultural views were with their economics, but it was clear as day here. And whatever agreement we had was fraught with underlying moral disagreements that stemmed back to our core worldviews. And these differences are, quite frankly, irreconcilable.
Person 3
I never talked to person 3 much or had a personal friendship with him, but person 3 was someone I used to follow on youtube and reddit. He was a forward thinker and a futurist who had a podcast that I liked around 2014. It didn't last long, and I was one of the only listeners, but honestly, I thought the dude was brilliant. He was an atheist, he believed in empiricism, and progress, and often talked about the singularity and how automation was coming and how we would live in a utopia after that. I never bought into a lot of that stuff, being far more realistic about our work needs and not believing the singularity is possible. But I do support automation bringing an end to work. And I always thought this guy was so based back in the day, as he was super pro union, anti conservatism, secular, and into futurism and even transhumanism.
But...over the years, the guy has changed. He grew facial hair, and as his beard and mustache became longer and more unkempt the more crazy he got. It started small. In 2016, he still seemed to have his marbles, but much like me, he started having issues with SJWs. However, much like with person 1, this anti SJW mentality became an obsession. I want to be clear. I pick on SJWs because they get in my way and obstruct me from accomplishing my goals. And I dont like their authoritarian attitudes and cult like attitudes and trying to impose their version of culture on people. I dont like cancel culture, I dont like how everything in the democratic party is about race and gender and privilege. I mean, again, I;m an anti authoritarian left libertarian who hates the concept of cancel culture, and I'm also someone who just wants UBI and universal healthcare. The reason I even floated the idea of working with conservatives was because THESE GUYS are such crappy allies to our cause because they blow out all discussions about anything productive with their culture wars nonsense. I mean, I've even expressed AGREEMENT with these guys nominally in the past, and dont even really WANT a war with these guys. I just find myself fighting one because their politics is often weaponized specifically to undermine my own.
But that's not what this guy, or guy #1 for that matter, ended up doing. The anti SJWism became an OBSESSION. It became the defining point of their entire perspective. To the point that they stopped caring about the economics and started caring more about petty culture war nonsense over that.
This guy was called out by several of his former fans, and I recently left comments on his channel too expressing my views. This guy changed for the worse, and went down dark rabbit holes. In response to comments left by others, he left a 40 minute video explaining his views. he stated his belief in left wing economics was based on the civic nationalism of the 1930s-1960s that was common during the new deal paradigm. The whole "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country". It seemed to be laced with a lot of inherent reciprocity stuff, which led to a weird discussion about the value of hard work and struggle and building character and nope nope nope. Then he discussed problems with the modern left, pointing out the problems with "postmodernism" and how nihilism and subjective morality are leading it astray and will eventually lead to *checks notes* a civil war, and yeah. The dude sounds kind of cray cray.
But, after he laid it out, i got it. The fact is, he was one of those white conservative types, with what appears to be deeply racist views (dude almost went "there" in his dissertation about how certain races might have lower IQs but we cant admit that because postmodernism is bad), and he seemed anti welfarism, which was weird because I always struck him as a UBI guy back in the day with all the singularity and automation stuff he was going into. I mean, the fact is, in the new deal era, a lot of southern culturally conservative whites ended up leaving the democratic party, and a lot of what they said sounds a lot like this guy. Going on about welfare being bad with a lot of obvious racial language being laced into the discussion, and concerns about subjective morality and the fall of america's moral fabric and how amoral the other side is, and it's just like...dude...even though the guy is an atheist, he still almost sounds like a christian in a way, simply because he has this weird deep south culture thing going on. Like....again, the culture trumps the economics. The dude was on board with a lot of forward thinking views back in 2014, but now the guy sounds....like a trumper, like a conservative. he claims it's because he grew up and got married and has a kid and worries about the future of the world she will live in, but let's be honest, that sounds like a cop out to me...or a complete abandonment of reason. I notice some people do this when they get older and have kids. It's like their IQ just goes down 50 points and they go into this defensive mode of needing to change the whole world in negative ways to make it safe for their kids. Like the authoritarian shift I see in some people as they have kids scares me. They go from being liberal, and open minded, to wanting conservative ideals to protect their kids...somehow. It doesnt make sense to me. Now, I dont see this in all, or even most parents. I know tons of people who have kids, and many of them are quite liberal, or even socialist. But then I see these people, and I'm just like...what the actual heck is going on here? And this guy is one of those guys.
But...ultimately, it seems to be the environment he grew up in, and as he got older a lot of those ideas just seemed to creep up on him. And he went from being like "woo the singularity is coming and we wont need to work any more and technology is so great isnt it guys?" to rants about SJWs and needing to protect his daughter from them and blah blah blah. it's really a sad downfall to see.
Conclusion
So what is the point of this? To talk crap about former friends? Absolutely not. I have tons of former friends due to me not being the most personable guy, and many differences seem to arise even among people with more liberal ideologies. I've actually lost far more liberal friends over politics than conservative leaning ones at this point. The point of this conversation is to point out his epistemology seems to trump surface level economic agreements about various issues. It's possible that there's just real interpersonal issues going on with all of these guys. Person 1 was a dude who just wouldnt shut up about racism, and ended up becoming isolated in an echo chamber and becoming extremely racist over time. Person 2 was far less racist, but his religious and culturally conservative views did cause major clashes in worldview. And person 3 was someone who started out as a seemingly forward thinking futurist only for him to devolve into the cultual conservatism of his environment as he got older. With persons 1 and 3, who I knew over a stretch of time, they changed in part due to the environment changing. In 2015-2016, the political environment really did change, because of the shift toward woke politics and SJWism causing a lot of reactionary tendencies in people to come out and define their personalities. And that seemed to make a lot of formerly progressive people turn conservative. With me, it didnt have quite that reaction, but I also have soured on SJWs over time, as they wore out whatever patience and good will I had toward them with their constant negative behavior over time. Still...I refuse to let those views define me, and I really only engage with the topic because I feel a need to defend my larger belief system, which i DO believe in, FROM THEM. And with #2....the fact that this dude was a christian with culturally conservative views....it just led to a lot of ideological clashes. And it kind of made me realize how much my progressive, secular, free thinking worldviews end up influencing my thought on various topics. So even if we are both economically left, we're economically left for different reasons and have fundamentally different ideas on the subject.
The fact is....behind every belief, there is another belief, and perhaps behind that, yet another. At some point, you reach a set of core convictions, a person's epistemology, and their worldview. These core beliefs radiate out and influence the rest of that person's belief systems. With me, my core beliefs were, at the time, atheism, moral nihilism, free thought, a form of left libertarianism, etc. I'm very culturally progressive. I'm very anti work and anti culture and anti authoritarian, etc. I'm actually a quite rebellious person from a political standpoint, and at the core of my ideology is a desire for freedom. But it's a much more mature version than you would see among right libertarians.
And ultimately, the more I interact with cultural conservatives, the more I realize that they are not me, and I am not them. Even if we come to the same conclusions on some topics, we often do so for radically different reasons, and those core convictions might actually be very different and not actually compatible. Cultural right wingers might be unstable allies who will turn on you and your entire belief system simply because they realize that they didn't quite believe in what you believe in after all. it might be why, despite a lot of trumpers supporting things like higher wages and universal healthcare, the second these things are put to paper they're suddenly evil liberal things. Because ultimately they realize that their core convictions differ from those of lefties and that they dont actually want the same things.
To be fair, the left has these issues with each other too. I mean this entire blog over the past year has been a testament of that, as I will go after just about everyone at this point. I bash the neolibs for being closet economic conservatives. I bash the progressives for being welfarists. I bash the SJWs for putting sectarian issues above my issues and being absolutely insufferable in forcing their viewd on others, and I bash leftists for being ideologically rigid and dogmatic, as well as because their views are sometimes insane. Left wing infighting is extremely common and many of us struggle to unite with each other vs the right, because all of us have these different, mutually incompatible worldviews that cause a lot of competition and hostilities between different factions. And sometimes I dish it out, and sometimes i receive it. And sometimes I dish it out because I receive it.
But....honestly, can you make more inroads with the right? While three people I used to know dont really necessarily prove much of anything definitively, I have to wonder if you actually can. I mean, for all the differences lefties have between human centered capitalism vs socialism, and socialism vs neoliberalism, and brocialism vs sjwism, etc., these groups often have a lot more in common with each other than we have with rightoids. I mean a lot of socially conservative people have weird racist views and those racist views do tarnish and taint whatever left wing views they have because they'll prioritize that nonsense over those views. And then SJWs will do the same thing, hence my spats with them. And then you have more innocuous cultural conservatives whose religious worldviews just...cause a lot of tension with my more secular, libertarian ethics.
So, idk. At the very least, these socially conservative but economically liberal people are as inconsistent as allies as any faction of the left I have disagreements with. If not worse in many cases.
Some of it is just priotizing the wrong views, but some of it just does come down to worldview. And how their core ideology is just not compatible with left wing ideas in practice. The second they have to actually work with left wingers, the obvious cultural differences become apparent and this might not be surmountable. This might be why a lot of trumpers just will never come over to the left. Even if you promote stuff they like, their cultural views might just take precedence there.
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