The Myth Of Left & Right

By Leo Gura - June 13, 2024

I like that this challenges conventional notions of left vs right:

It’s crucial to understand that left and right within politics is a highly socially-constructed thing and only loosely grounded in anything real. Both left and right ideologies morph and shift over time because essentially they are kinds of group-think. And group-think sways with the wind and moves in arbitrary cycles. Left and right are very relative notions.

But even so, there is a deeper core to politics which this analysis misses, which is that liberal vs conservative are tendencies of the human mind/brain and constitute kinds of personality types. Liberal minds are more open and conservative minds are more closed. This is a structural feature of the mind, independent of content. It doesn’t matter what you’re closedminded about, the issue is that you’re closedminded and that you could be openminded instead. And vice versa.

Be careful not to confuse the content of any political ideology with being what constitutes liberal vs conservative. For example, your position on abortion or gun control is not what makes you liberal or conservative. These kind of content positions are surface-level and change every generation. What endures is your overall attitude towards new things, new ways of life. You are either eager for new ways of life or you are put off by them in favor of traditional ways. That’s the part which isn’t a myth, and you can see this divide across all societies, all cultures, all eras.

What makes slavery a conservative position is that the people who defended it were fundamentally opposed to changing their way of doing business and life. That’s what conservative means. It’s not about the slavery, it’s about not wanting to change. You can replace slavery with guns, Jesus, hotdogs, rice, burkas, yamakas, oil, capitalism, voodoo, ayahuasca, human sacrifice, or whatever. A pizza is still a pizza regardless of your favorite toppings. The pizza is not defined by the pineapple or pepperoni.

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