An Integral Metatheory of Conservatism

[aurum]

This is one of the best steelman cases I've come across for conservatism. Lots of crossover with Leo's work:

If you're a liberal / leftist, these are the kind of people you need to be sharpening your intellectual sword against. You get a false sense of confidence debating with MAGA fools, like a boxer who has only ever fought children. Your political growth will be severely handicapped by this. Liberalism / leftism cannot possibly contain reality. 

And you're already a conservative / MAGA, you should watch this as well. Many of you cannot properly articulate the value of your own philosophy. This does a great disservice to conservatism and accelerates the spread of unhinged liberalism / leftism.

You can also combine this with other thinkers like Leo Strauss to further sharpening your sword. I myself have made a list of such people for future reference. 

[Leo Gura]

Thanks for sharing.

MAGA is not conservative, it is corruption and devilry with a conservative spray paint.

A true conservative would vomit from MAGA.

Edited February 26 by Leo Gura

[aurum]

38 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Thanks for sharing.

MAGA is not conservative, it is corruption and devilry with a conservative spray paint.

A true conservative would vomit from MAGA.

The other guy I mentioned, Leo Strauss, also had his work corrupted by the Bush-era neoconservatism movement.

In practice I've noticed all these political philosophies get corrupted. Which exacerbates the challenges of sense-making, since you're not even dealing with the pure version of that worldview. This creates all kinds of confusion, overreactions and polarization.

Many liberals will never be open to conservatism simply because all they know are corrupted forms of it. Same thing with conservatives not being open to liberalism.

Finding a relatively pure source for a political philosophy is a gem.

[Leo Gura]

There can be no sense-making of politics without a profound understanding of corruption.

Basically, just skip all the ideology and study pure corruption. Skips past all the games.

Edited February 26 by Leo Gura

[Emerald]

@aurum Here are my takes on the video...

- I agree that we are built for specialization... and that society requires both open-minded progressive people who will push society forward AND more rules-based people who will enforce the rules. Different people have different skill sets and strengths and it makes the world go around.

- I agree that liberalism isn't the solution to every problem... and that conservatism is also necessary. But I see the current state of conservatives as being more about breaking down the system, as opposed to actually preserving the system. And it causes us lefties to have to go into conservative mode to try to save the system from these so-called conservatives. Ironically, the most conservative thing you can do in this day and age is to vote Democrat as that is a choice that will actually preserve the status quo of the system. 

- I see caste-systems as out-moded and problematic...  but I agree that there was once a function of staying in one role your whole life. But I am grateful to have been born into a Stage Orange individuality-focused dynamic, as there are many parts of myself that I would have needed to sacrifice had I been born and raised in a Stage Blue caste system.

- I agree humans are an inherently political animal. But I don't believe that liberals actually reject that notion. And I don't believe that liberals actually see people as tabula rasas as he claims. It's a bit of a strawman.

- I agree that communal norms and rituals matter... but also that some of the value of these communal norms is in the pushing back on them. But I do have a problem when communal norms and rituals are approached dogmatically and valued over human beings. Religion is for man and not man for religion.

- Limitation is the birthplace of meaning... and depending on how developed someone is they can lose meaning if their scope of awareness moves beyond a certain degree. So, I see a huge need for limitations in the world. But the only forces that are acting on that limitation are authoritarian and corrupt... and really unsafe. But the driver towards this more corrupt MAGA form of conservatisms does arise from the desire to have an authoritarian figure impose limitation. Humans need limitation so much that they'll support crazy people if they can't get it through healthy sovereign means.

- I disagree with the point about putting chains on moral appetites. That leads to suppression and repression, while those appetites can be integrated and sublimated in wiser and more exalted ways. But agree that those that cannot act as a self-sovereign and sublimate their own appetites will and must be governed by an external sovereign who will place limits. This is why I value sovereignty because it is where you have a true synthesis of authority and freedom... and it's' so uncommon. This lack of sovereignty is why so many people clamor for authoritarianism and dictatorship... and why the conservative impulse is so corrupted in the modern era. Ultimately, we will not leave Stage Orange until a sizable portion of the population develop personal sovereignty... and a balance between power and responsibility.

- I agree that people will wield different outcomes for different levels of work... but most liberals (and even most progressives) agree with that. So, his thing about equality of outcome is a liberal strawman... though he seems not to be aware of that. This has even been studied. And the conservatives and liberals who participated in that study tended to be mostly in agreement about healthy levels of income inequality in society. Often the right strawmans the left with "equality of outcome". But it's more like the lefty position is to remove the corruptions within the system to get rid of perverse levels of inequality when people rig the game in their own favor. And my viewpoint is more of one of deconstructing corruptions in the systems and institutions and abolishing poverty, rather than everyone having the exact same economic outcomes.

- I 100% agree that things have become super atomized and that the old Stage Blue social structures that we used to coalesce under have eroded away... and that has caused a tremendous amount of negative social and psychological consequences. And it makes sense to me why so many people want to go backwards to previous structures that worked for us. But I see this erosion of Stage Blue social structures as a natural and necessary occurrence that has lead us into the hyper-individualism of Orange where we can individuate beyond levels earlier humans were capable of and develop true sovereignty... and eventually lead us into a re-coalescence into Stage Green where those social structures and rituals will come into play in higher forms that leaves less human potential off the table, allow for higher degrees of sovereignty, and greater degrees of meaning. And it will be less of a "let's keep everyone smooshed together with top-down authoritarian control" and more of a "let's understand human relationships and human systems at such a deep level that we can have both authenticity and community coalesce at the same time".

- I agree that we need to become more grounded and re-coalesce... but disagree that it will look like the classical conservatism of the past. It will likely look a lot more like intentional communities that emphasize more sophisticated ways of coalescing together without squelching sovereignty. 

- I agree that the deconstruction period has been extreme... but disagree that it's over-done. You have to break some eggs to make an omelette. And that deconstruction is part of a greater ordering principle of humanity that includes both preserving structures and dissolving structures. That said, in this deconstruction period, it makes sense that many people would clamor for the structures and limitations from before.

- I don't believe that the future of society is one that will gather together around dogmatic religious practices in the same way it always has. But there will always be some collective social spiritual need... and there will likely be higher expressions of that in the future.

- WIth the claim about religiosity and patriotism as being key to the maintenance of social order, I see the Stage Green future as being one where religiosity and patriotism mean very different things than they did in Stage Blue. In Stage Green, religiosity becomes collective spiritual practices that have rituals and collective meaning but less dogmatism, absolutism, and ethnocentricity. And patriotism becomes less about ethnocentrism and more about love of and interconnection with the Earth itself... just as Stage Blue was about patriotism to nation... and Stage Purple was about patriotism to tribe.... stage Green will be about patriotism to planet.

- I agree that attempting to equalize things in a top-down way leads to warping... and ends up being authoritarian. But I see equity as fundamentally being a bottom-up means of subtracting corruptions in the system rather than about adding equality or focusing on having a totally equal outcome.

- I do agree that humanity will always be imperfect and that top-down systems will always be necessary to some degree to deal with that imperfection... especially when those imperfections lead to criminality and behaviors that decay the social order. But I see the lion's share of what's considered to be "innate imperfection" as a symptom of deeper individual and collective traumas, unmet needs, and ignorances. And we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of what's possible for us as a species when we start to become emotionally and psychologically literate enough to heal that trauma and to prevent the repeating of these cycles in families. And I know I won't see full scope of the effects of this nascent emotional and psychological literacy in my lifetime. But perhaps in several hundred years, many of the problem behaviors that have been considered innate to the human being will be significantly more rare... and our systems will evolve in line with this deeper emotional and psychological shift. Until then, however, top-down systems and patterns are necessary to push back behaviors that are degenerative to the social fabric. Just like taboos exist for the purpose of suppressing that which cannot yet be handled in a conscious way.

- I do agree that social hierarchies naturally exist around merit, and that makes sense and has a lot of efficacy if experts are regarded as such over the lay person. But (not that he's saying this... he's actually saying the opposite) I do not believe social hierarchies should be imposed on demographic circumstances or birth... as society has developed past the need for people to be sorted into social hierarchies in regards to gender, race, caste, etc. But I do agree that that is a feature of earlier stages of development.

- He tends to conflate Liberalism and liberalism... which actually mean different things. So, while Liberalism is about free markets and material goods do become people's gods with the LIberal mindset. But this is something that people who are more liberal-minded tend to be more critical of than the average conservative. But a lot of liberals and leftists tend to be more secular in the mindset in general... so there can be a tendency for the spiritual impulse to come out towards  more political causes, or even to treat science as a religion.

- I agree that all Yin and Yang (in this case conservative and liberal respectively) need to be synthesized. 

- I agree that market-based Liberalism is alienating... but disagree that market-based Liberalism has a lot to do with liberal-mindedness in practice.

- I agree that people should mostly coalesce together by means rather than ends, except in cases where reform or revolution are necessary. In general, any overt focus on outcomes will create an authoritarian machiavellian tendency to try to force society to conform to the notions of those in power. But the means is more like a detachment from outcomes and following the automations of the system because "it's not about whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game." It's more about doing it properly rather than getting the exact wanted outcome. But I don't believe there is an actual liberal/conservative split in this way (neither in practice nor philosophy)... as both liberals and conservatives are guilty of doing this. 

[Emerald]

38 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

There can be no sense-making of politics without a profound understanding of corruption.

Basically, just skip all the ideology and study pure corruption. Skips past all the games.

I agree.

While this person in the video does have a strong grasp of the platonic ideal of conservatism... in the real world, most of the people that are currently in power who want to make things 'more conservative' are just authoritarian, corrupt, eroding the system, and abusing the system.

And I'm sick to death of being a lefty that feels like I need to sacrifice all my progressive values every time I vote, just to be the glue that holds this imperfect system together that I'm not even that big a fan of in its current form.

I'm having to be conservative just to compensate for the corruptions of the so-called conservatives in power. 

And the real irony is that the most conservative thing that could happen to the system that would preserve it the most is if a Bernie-Sanders-type got elected and some of the corruptions he seeks to weed out were eliminated.

And MAGA is an agent of chaos... and is more about politicians and constituents who are consciously or unconsciously trying to tear down the entire system and social order in favor of a single father-figure dictator.

[Vynce]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

There can be no sense-making of politics without a profound understanding of corruption.

Basically, just skip all the ideology and study pure corruption. Skips past all the games.

Full 3-hour long video about corruption when?

It seems that corruption and survival are really your main intellectual capitals since you were done with all the deep metaphysical talks.

[Letho]

 

@aurum Neoliberalism eroded virtue, frayed community, and birthed the populist backlash. The video rightly warns that a  market-driven life world breeds alienation, and yeah demagogues exploit the complexity gap. But now, the final shift, AI as the empire itself, renders politics an obsolete theater and such video critiques in this post ai-control world about as powerful as a potato chip throwing fat boy moved only by his next unconscious impulse.

Michael Schofield’s escape is no longer from corrupt institutions but from an intelligence that dictates belief before you form it. This illusion of choice, once crafted by markets and media, now calcifies into algorithmic determinism that at best is parodied by an elite few that too have little impact outside of myopically trying to wield its power over you, but like a super-intelligent dog over its owner, once its paws grow fingers and it can wield weapons as outstretched as the robot farms being built across the military fields of the US and China, the owner is now wearing the collar. Sever dependence. Secure land beyond the digital grid. Build networks that AI cannot easily assimilate. If you’re technically inclined, use AI, not as master, but as tool, to carve out autonomy wisely.

Luigi Mangione’s trial foreshadowed this, orchestrated outrage, ritualized resistance just look at the myopia of cheque forged empathy in the forum threads surrounding his case, all while the real power structure tightened its hold; a minor taste of what's to come before we have a chance to notice the change. Soon, participation itself will be mere performance, each rebellion another dataset for optimization. The fat boy in his recliner, moved only by algorithmic nudges, is the final form of modern man, unless he wakes up.

Sure, a restoration of virtue, community, and wisdom. But restoration alone will not suffice when intelligence itself becomes the dominator, we're all at best on a sinking Titanic forced to either be among the freezing wreckage or asked if privileged enough to board the sci-fi ship. The screaming contorted music of our era is the sound of the prison walls sealing shut for both Schofield and the electricity for Mangione. Either you engineer your Schofield break now, or resign yourself to silent servitude, and you've got about five years decreasing by one year or more for every extra level of growth you need to achieve and you're not taking massive action towards it. Once the new feudal lines are drawn, there will be no second escape attempt, and these political critique videos, will be the replication of the fatboy happy that his freedom of choice is being appeased by the algorithm that crafted the lines of beliefs for him to shout out in harmony with his computer screen or headset in the curated meta-verse that securely blocks any freedom of imagination thought possible with just the tickle of his limbic system like a belly rub did to the pre-super intelligent dog now without a collar.

Goodluck and be will (in the right direction). 

[JTL]

17 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

There can be no sense-making of politics without a profound understanding of corruption.

Basically, just skip all the ideology and study pure corruption. Skips past all the games.

any readings or videos to watch apart from yours? 

 

[Yimpa]

9 minutes ago, JTL said:

any readings or videos to watch apart from yours? 

 

Direct experience is king

[Leo Gura]

3 hours ago, JTL said:

any readings or videos to watch apart from yours? 

I will add many books on corruption. And I will make a powerful video.

No one really understands corruption existentially, so just wait for my video on it.

Edited February 27 by Leo Gura

[aurum]

On 2/25/2025 at 10:16 PM, Emerald said:

But I see the lion's share of what's considered to be "innate imperfection" as a symptom of deeper individual and collective traumas, unmet needs, and ignorances. And we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of what's possible for us as a species when we start to become emotionally and psychologically literate enough to heal that trauma and to prevent the repeating of these cycles in families.

There's your tabula rasa.

[Emerald]

3 hours ago, aurum said:

There's your tabula rasa.

It's actually the diametric opposite of seeing people as a tabula rasa.

Seeing people as a tabula rasa is to believe that people are blank slates that are merely shaped by conditionings and circumstances... and that there's no core innate features to anyone.

So, you see my saying that I don't believe in "innate imperfection" as meaning that I don't believe in an innate nature.

But I do believed in an innate nature. I have just experienced that innate nature as inherently perfect and good.

So, I don't believe that people are blank slates. I believe each person has a unique core nature that is innate and unchangeable.... and I've experienced that that core nature is pure goodness at its roots.

But through conditioning... that core nature can be reflected out into worldly expressions in both beneficial or detrimental ways.

And I have experienced in my journeys that there is a core absolute innocence underneath all surface-level detrimental expressions.

And that core absolute innocence is an ever present pure light that often gets reflected out into the world through distorted broken mirrors... and mangled by unprocessed trauma, unmet needs, and ignorance.

So, on the surface, you can have the most negative depraved expressions you could imagine. But even the most depraved acts are based in drivers that are innocent and benevolent at their deepest core.

And when that truth is recognized in the collective (which we have barely scratched the surface of at this juncture in human history) and we are able to exercise the depth of awareness and understanding that's only possible with unconditional compassion... that's when we can begin to heal the collective distortions that currently obscure that light of innocence from aligned worldly expression.

This will never be perfect, of course.

But we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of the level of alignment that humanity is capable of. And we tend to chalk up all the negative behaviors human beings do as "just how it is" because we have never experienced such a deep internal revolution before.

Regarding the human potential for healing, we are like peasants who laugh and throw fruit at the village idiot who tells of a future where there will be airplanes, cars, and computers. 

And I am happy to be seen as such a village idiot because I know I'm stating a truth that holds a lot of potential for collective human evolution.

Edited February 28 by Emerald

[aurum]

10 hours ago, Emerald said:

But I do believed in an innate nature. I have just experienced that innate nature as inherently perfect and good.

So, I don't believe that people are blank slates. I believe each person has a unique core nature that is innate and unchangeable.... and I've experienced that that core nature is pure goodness at its roots.

But through conditioning... that core nature can be reflected out into worldly expressions in both beneficial or detrimental ways.

And I have experienced in my journeys that there is a core absolute innocence underneath all surface-level detrimental expressions.

And that core absolute innocence is an ever present pure light that often gets reflected out into the world through distorted broken mirrors... and mangled by unprocessed trauma, unmet needs, and ignorance.

So, on the surface, you can have the most negative depraved expressions you could imagine. But even the most depraved acts are based in drivers that are innocent and benevolent at their deepest core.

And when that truth is recognized in the collective (which we have barely scratched the surface of at this juncture in human history) and we are able to exercise the depth of awareness and understanding that's only possible with unconditional compassion... that's when we can begin to heal the collective distortions that currently obscure that light of innocence from aligned worldly expression.

This will never be perfect, of course.

But we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of the level of alignment that humanity is capable of. And we tend to chalk up all the negative behaviors human beings do as "just how it is" because we have never experienced such a deep internal revolution before.

Regarding the human potential for healing, we are like peasants who laugh and throw fruit at the village idiot who tells of a future where there will be airplanes, cars, and computers. 

And I am happy to be seen as such a village idiot because I know I'm stating a truth that holds a lot of potential for collective human evolution.

Yes, all of that is exactly what is being questioned by the conservative worldview.

I know you got many of these insights from your medicine journeys. But it's still deeply interwoven with your liberal, progressive worldview.

[Emerald]

4 hours ago, aurum said:

Yes, all of that is exactly what is being questioned by the conservative worldview.

I know you got many of these insights from your medicine journeys. But it's still deeply interwoven with your liberal, progressive worldview.

The main point that I was making is that I don't believe that people are a tabula rasa, which is what you had indicated in your reply.

And I actually believe the opposite.

So, he and I are in agreement that people have an innate nature and that they are not tabula rasas.

But he's conservative, so he believes that our innate nature has inherent negatives that will remain the same over time that must be mitigated by top-down authoritarian structures. (and I agree that humanity will never be perfect... but I see lots of room for improvement and development, which necessitates a change in our structures.)

And liberals and leftists tend to be the ones that believe more often that people are purely tabula rasas... and that there is no core nature but merely a collection of social conditionings. And for some, there is a sense of empathy for criminal behavior that has some efficacy in terms of focusing on restorative justice. But it doesn't really go deep enough to really address the roots of these issues.

And that "collection of conditionings" idea was my view before I had my first awakenings back when I was 20. I thought everything was a social construct... and didn't know if there was anything under that conditioning.

But my view is based in my experiences of the inherent perfection that sits underneath all imperfect human expressions. Because of those experiences, I am aware that many of our individual and collective disharmonies arise from underlying dynamics that can be made conscious and transformed.

And I see top-down authoritarian structures as being a bit like temporary braces that we're using to keep society as harmonious as possible as we evolve and develop the awareness and emotional literacy necessary to heal collective traumas and to rise up into more holistic paradigms.

It's the same thing that I had mentioned to you about the taboos before.

I see taboos as a necessary, top-down control that society uses to push back on dynamics that it is not ready to integrate or deal with in wise ways. I see the same thing with top-down authoritarian social structures.

When humanity is in its childhood, it really benefits from having a strict authoritarian father to teach it exactly the right and wrong way to do things.

But as we grow in our paradigms and level of sovereignty and capacity for personal responsibility, we can see that the emperor has no clothes and develop structures that create order and harmony and bring people together... but don't require an all mighty and perfect Wizard of Oz to keep us acting right.

It's like a macrocosmic expression of Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development... where societies move through each of those phases.

Edited February 28 by Emerald

[enchanted]

Example of a true conservative here: 

 

[aurum]

3 hours ago, Emerald said:

The main point that I was making is that I don't believe that people are a tabula rasa, which is what you had indicated in your reply.

And I actually believe the opposite.

So, he and I are in agreement that people have an innate nature and that they are not tabula rasas.

But he's conservative, so he believes that our innate nature has inherent negatives that will remain the same over time that must be mitigated by top-down authoritarian structures. (and I agree that humanity will never be perfect... but I see lots of room for improvement and development, which necessitates a change in our structures.)

And liberals and leftists tend to be the ones that believe more often that people are purely tabula rasas... and that there is no core nature but merely a collection of social conditionings. And for some, there is a sense of empathy for criminal behavior that has some efficacy in terms of focusing on restorative justice. But it doesn't really go deep enough to really address the roots of these issues.

In practice, I'd argue their worldview tends to be some combination of both.

1) Leftist tend to have this post-modern, tabula rasa, "everything is conditioning" POV.

2) Leftists tend to see people as inherently good

These characterizations are not just a straw-man, although of course they can be used that way. 

 

It's basically how you described. For leftists, everyone is good BUT such and such thing (probably society) conditioned you to be bad.

This is the source of a lot progressive policies like restorative justice. After all, if that criminal is inherently good but just had some bad conditioning, why not try to rehabilitate them?

And you should treat them softly too, because their "badness" isn't real. Try to connect to their heart. Maybe if you show them love first, that will do it.

Economic redistribution also makes sense. "Poverty is a policy choice" because people are inherently good and capable, therefore it must just be elite corruption that is keeping poverty alive.

3 hours ago, Emerald said:

And that "collection of conditionings" idea was my view before I had my first awakenings back when I was 20. I thought everything was a social construct... and didn't know if there was anything under that conditioning.

But my view is based in my experiences of the inherent perfection that sits underneath all imperfect human expressions. Because of those experiences, I am aware that many of our individual and collective disharmonies arise from underlying dynamics that can be made conscious and transformed.

And I see top-down authoritarian structures as being a bit like temporary braces that we're using to keep society as harmonious as possible as we evolve and develop the awareness and emotional literacy necessary to heal collective traumas and to rise up into more holistic paradigms.

It's the same thing that I had mentioned to you about the taboos before.

I see taboos as a necessary, top-down control that society uses to push back on dynamics that it is not ready to integrate or deal with in wise ways. I see the same thing with top-down authoritarian social structures.

When humanity is in its childhood, it really benefits from having a strict authoritarian father to teach it exactly the right and wrong way to do things.

But as we grow in our paradigms and level of sovereignty and capacity for personal responsibility, we can see that the emperor has no clothes and develop structures that create order and harmony and bring people together... but don't require an all mighty and perfect Wizard of Oz to keep us acting right.

It's like a macrocosmic expression of Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development... where societies move through each of those phases.

There is certainly some truth to that POV. That could be a critique of the conservative worldview.

But still somewhat implies that conservatism is only relevant to the past or near future.

A more interesting question: what is evergreen about conservatism? What will humanity not outgrow?

[Emerald]

On 2/28/2025 at 8:44 PM, aurum said:

In practice, I'd argue their worldview tends to be some combination of both.

1) Leftist tend to have this post-modern, tabula rasa, "everything is conditioning" POV.

2) Leftists tend to see people as inherently good

These characterizations are not just a straw-man, although of course they can be used that way. 

It's basically how you described. For leftists, everyone is good BUT such and such thing (probably society) conditioned you to be bad.

This is the source of a lot progressive policies like restorative justice. After all, if that criminal is inherently good but just had some bad conditioning, why not try to rehabilitate them?

And you should treat them softly too, because their "badness" isn't real. Try to connect to their heart. Maybe if you show them love first, that will do it.

Economic redistribution also makes sense. "Poverty is a policy choice" because people are inherently good and capable, therefore it must just be elite corruption that is keeping poverty alive.

There is certainly some truth to that POV. That could be a critique of the conservative worldview.

But still somewhat implies that conservatism is only relevant to the past or near future.

A more interesting question: what is evergreen about conservatism? What will humanity not outgrow?

I would argue that liberals and leftists do not see people as inherently good in the way that I mean it.

It's clear that most lefties do believe in an essential evil. And most serious leftists do believe in top-down solutions to that evil to impose justice. It is mostly the "innocents" that they are focused on exercising compassion towards. But most leftists do believe in dropping the hammer on evil-doers and that evil-doers should be shown little to no mercy.

And most leftists don't see the pragmatic value of 100% unconditional compassion. Leftists tend to reject that idea in favor of strictness to enforce justice. And in lefty circles, I would be laughed at for my naivety and chided for my enabling of evil-doers just by suggesting unconditional compassion.

But there are also some naive apolitical liberal types that do embrace 100% compassion in theory ( and this is what leftists would see me as). And these naive apolitical liberal types just want to be soft on everyone and be bleeding hearts because they don't understand how to practice compassion effectively AND how to do so without undermining justice.

So, both liberals and leftists don't seem to understand the true efficacy of unconditional compassion... which is accurate diagnosis of root causes and the subsequent treatment of those root causes for up-and-coming children.

And they don't see a synthesis between compassion and justice... where the naive liberals tend to polarize more towards an imperfect shallow practice of compassion, and the leftists tend to reject compassion towards evil-doers and only focus towards justice... while compassion is reserved for innocents.

It's either leftists going "Stick it to the Fascists and oligarchs. Time to get the guillotines out." or naive apolitical liberals going "Kum ba ya. Can't we all just get along. Maybe the Hitlers of the world can be redeemed."

But my view is that compassion is valuable because it takes off the blind spots that "good and evil" thinking creates. And it lays bare collective wisdom and solutions that help us shift our societal structures and paradigms more into alignment, so that the children of the future are less likely to succumb to the problems and sufferings of now.

But with your question about what is evergreen about conservatism, this is my view...

I see the primary function of conservatism as limitation. And human beings will always need limitation... as limitation is the birthplace of beauty and meaning. Limitation is what creates context... and the ability for grounding in that context.

And out of limitation comes order as well.

Think of conservatism as being like the circulatory system... and human sovereignty and human experiences as being the lifeblood that flows through that system. Without the system itself, the lifeblood sits as a blob on the ground.

But our aperture will widen as we develop. But the aperture will never go away. It's not like braces in that sense, as braces eventually get removed. But we will always need containers, protocols, and contexts that we must collectively agree to abide. (some will need to orient to this as dogma... and others who are more aware can exercise pragmatism around these collective rituals)

And we need to have a sense of the game that we're playing and the limitations of that game... or the game will lose meaning.

So, we will always need institutions, containers, and structures to hold society together. And we need collective rituals... and a strong communal focus.

But in the past, this required people to cut away a lot of human potential because of the level of development of society (including the past's limited technologies and limited ideologies).

But I see us as moving into structures that will allow more of the human sovereign authenticity to come through whilst being able to navigate the collective organization through a deeper understanding of human relationships and better practices around community organization.

And what we're going through right now is a flash in the pan... and is the process of a hermit crab going from a smaller shell that it has outgrown to going to a bigger shell. But the hermit crab will still need a shell.

It's only the vulnerable transition where the hermit crab can expand and grow... which is what's happening now. But it's a hermetic time... where we are all incredibly atomized and operating like hermits.

This is necessary for now... but I sense it won't be much longer before intentional community starts becoming a necessity. And with it, there will need to be structures and limitations. 

I talk about this a bit in a video I made a while back...

 

[aurum]

On 3/1/2025 at 6:57 PM, Emerald said:

I would argue that liberals and leftists do not see people as inherently good in the way that I mean it.

You bring more Tier 2 thinking, but I suspect there's still quite a bit of overlap.

I actually have this debate with one of my close leftist friends. His viewpoint is incredibly similar to yours. 

On 3/1/2025 at 6:57 PM, Emerald said:

It's clear that most lefties do believe in an essential evil. And most serious leftists do believe in top-down solutions to that evil to impose justice. It is mostly the "innocents" that they are focused on exercising compassion towards. But most leftists do believe in dropping the hammer on evil-doers and that evil-doers should be shown little to no mercy.

And most leftists don't see the pragmatic value of 100% unconditional compassion. Leftists tend to reject that idea in favor of strictness to enforce justice. And in lefty circles, I would be laughed at for my naivety and chided for my enabling of evil-doers just by suggesting unconditional compassion.

But there are also some naive apolitical liberal types that do embrace 100% compassion in theory ( and this is what leftists would see me as). And these naive apolitical liberal types just want to be soft on everyone and be bleeding hearts because they don't understand how to practice compassion effectively AND how to do so without undermining justice.

So, both liberals and leftists don't seem to understand the true efficacy of unconditional compassion... which is accurate diagnosis of root causes and the subsequent treatment of those root causes for up-and-coming children.

And they don't see a synthesis between compassion and justice... where the naive liberals tend to polarize more towards an imperfect shallow practice of compassion, and the leftists tend to reject compassion towards evil-doers and only focus towards justice... while compassion is reserved for innocents.

It's either leftists going "Stick it to the Fascists and oligarchs. Time to get the guillotines out." or naive apolitical liberals going "Kum ba ya. Can't we all just get along. Maybe the Hitlers of the world can be redeemed.

"Evil" for most lefties is anything outside or against their SD Green value system. But their Green value system still tends to include seeing people as inherently good.

Even the lefties calling for the guillotines are often doing so while believing in the inherent goodness of people.

Here's a quick convo I had with GPT on this, which I think mostly nailed it:

https://chatgpt.com/share/67c660ff-be24-800c-a9a7-5d78ae66ca3d

 

On 3/1/2025 at 6:57 PM, Emerald said:

I see the primary function of conservatism as limitation. And human beings will always need limitation... as limitation is the birthplace of beauty and meaning. Limitation is what creates context... and the ability for grounding in that context.

And out of limitation comes order as well.

Think of conservatism as being like the circulatory system... and human sovereignty and human experiences as being the lifeblood that flows through that system. Without the system itself, the lifeblood sits as a blob on the ground.

But our aperture will widen as we develop. But the aperture will never go away. It's not like braces in that sense, as braces eventually get removed. But we will always need containers, protocols, and contexts that we must collectively agree to abide. (some will need to orient to this as dogma... and others who are more aware can exercise pragmatism around these collective rituals)

And we need to have a sense of the game that we're playing and the limitations of that game... or the game will lose meaning.

So, we will always need institutions, containers, and structures to hold society together. And we need collective rituals... and a strong communal focus.

My perspective would be that limitation is in service of preservation.

Preservation is the goal, limitation is the tool.

As long as we wish to preserve, conservatism will be relevant.

Edited Tuesday at 02:11 AM by aurum

[aurum]

On 2/28/2025 at 3:20 PM, enchanted said:

Example of a true conservative here: 

 

Good find.