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.
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.
There have also just been shifts in how us younger generations view the world, likely thanks to the internet. I’m in my 30s and own a house, but every year that goes by I seem to get more and more liberal. Partially thanks to how insane American conservatives are in many aspects, but also realizing that the views of the left are the only logical way forward.
Basically, “people are selfish and will do what benefits them”
Which I’d say is a pretty right-wing sentiment
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
Idk, I was a conservative up until I was 19 and moved to Philadelphia. I still don’t really know if I’m liberal but I’m registered as a democrat. After Roe vs. Wade I found that I just don’t really care that much anymore about pretending I was a conservative because I care about having “more money in our economy.” Because let’s face it I don’t know jack shit about our economy
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.
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.
That always pissed me off. They were basically telling me “You’re going to become a selfish fuckwad by the time you’re my age. You’ll stop caring about civil rights. You’ll stop caring about the environment.” Etc.
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
even if you do inherit one you will lose it quickly if you get some medical thing that keeps you from working while concurrently giving you large bills.
This post is wild to me, where I live it’s certainly true people are becoming more conservative as they age, and they’re the most kind generous people I know.
Would they still be kind and generous if your skin color was different? Your religion? Your pregnancy status?
Conservatives are, at best, selectively nice.
Have you seen the kind of people they vote for?
The kind of laws they get enacted?Not very nice.
When I was 18 I was a right wing libertarian. When I became a software engineer and started making good money I became a progressive democrat. Now that I make 6 figures I’m an Anarchist Communist. Question: when does my career of the last decade become a “real job” and make me a conservative asshole? Because I’m still waiting.
Older I get the more the communists make sense. Always been left but I always leaned towards the anarchist stuff when I was younger. It’d be weird if your politics didn’t change at least a little over time, regardless of your leanings, it’s a process of trial and error
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
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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?
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.
As for recommendations. Not really. I have my own ideas, but frankly I believe in local community, education, and autonomy. I don’t believe the final form of society will resemble a central authority saying what it ought to be. So I feel what matters is giving everyone the freedom to solve their local problems in their own work, place, and community. I think this will be achieved via a government structure built around workers, unions, and democracy. I see the workers banding together to run the business and business unions forming unions around trades and then these interacting with local government for resource allocation.
I feel like more details is me trying to prescribe what it must be. My primary issue is capitalism and I’m open to discussions about the next step. I’m open to imperfect solutions. Capitalism isn’t perfect. It has market crashes, recessions, depressions. We would be fools to believe communism must be perfect and not just better.
Sorry, I’m late responding. Haven’t been on here enough. I fundamentally see Democratic socialism as insufficient. I see capitalism as the problem. Theres the TLDR up front. For clarification, Capitalism is a system that splits us into two groups. Those being owners and workers. Owning your home or a business you work at isn’t what we mean. Owning the means of production that give you the ability to extract value from workers is. This is class struggle. The rich owners want as much work for as little money. The workers want as much money for their work.
Now, I’m not trying to get into a debate on this, but this is bad. It creates a conflict and tension in society where one side has the power. Now, lets look at another system for a moment. Slavery is bad and had to abolished all at once. For if the slaver kept any power and leverage all improvements in the conditions of slaves could be retracted to suit the slaver’s needs.
We could say “don’t abolish slavery, but try make it ethical”, but not only does this fail to address the moral issues with slavery, but its also ineffective at preventing future abuses and the reduction in rights for the group of people without power.
So, return to capitalism. You have media, beholden to ad companies (the rich by proxy) and the rich who fund it and invest. You have politicians who rely on donors. The more you look the more you find that capital is power and leverage.
Those without have little beyond labor power and the threat of things like violence or sabotage. So, what little treats we win in a demsoc or socdem model will be always subject to the capitalist class allowing it and us maintaining the tension that won it in the first place.
Thus, like the slave owner would worsen the conditions of slaves again. The owner class would worsen the conditions of workers. You can’t reform this or slowly improve it to a bearable state. It has to be abolished. And it has to be replaced with a system of collective ownership of natural resources, automated industries, and the ownership of the means of production by the workers who work there.
