There are those here who want to share, and those who want to win or be right. To enjoy the ISF you have to walk around the obstructions.
Question on Conservative Mindset
- Thread starter Magrat
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There are those here who want to share, and those who want to win or be right. To enjoy the ISF you have to walk around the obstructions.
Magrat
Mrs. Rincewind
Never been a patient person and I am especially impatient with fools. People who aren't foolish but are choosing to act foolish are by far the worst. They don't realize how much more they have to offer.
Yes. The loss of White Privilege is seen by White Nationalists as a loss of Liberty.
I'm a "boomer," born 1951, and so is the afore mentioned friend. One aspect of the "conservative mindset" I've noticed is that the novel, the exceptional, and the different attract me. But repel him. I'm thrilled that Human sexuality is fluid, but he's appalled every time Human Sexuality isn't the simple Male/Female. He complains that LGBTQ+ adds too many letters, and so confuses the young on what they are supposed to be, and the mature on how they are supposed to relate to strange others. I love a diverse, and fluid world, he loves set structures and easy categories. I want people to be unique. He wants people to conform.
I have no tolerance for the disingenuous, the trolls, and those who make a win/lose of the discussion. So I politely ignore engaging with them.
A few years back I wrote a parody of obstructionism at the JREF. A guy makes a simple commonsense, even tautological statement and the super skeptics tear into him with deliberate misunderstandings. It's way back in the archives now, and I don't wish to resurrect it. But pettiness in the name of skepticism was one of the first disappointing things I encountered here.
Magrat
Mrs. Rincewind
Replying to this and the previous post. I don't necessarily seek out novelty but I look at people as individuals, rather than categories. So whatever adjectives the person has, that's separate from themselves. I know, makes no sense. Im not good with words lol
The key point for me is my child is trans and queer. I love my child more than I love seeing the world as binary.
Second post: Im not sure the pettiness is in the name is skepticism. I think it serves other purposes.
eta according to most recent data, f to m trans youths like my son have a 58% suicide rate. Not attempts. Successes. For the most part that is because of lack of familial support. it will not be my son.
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This makes perfect sense to me. I look at people as individuals, and in their own uniqueness. It's why I sometimes tell my Conservative friend, "There are as many sexualities as there are people."
What I was trying to say that while my Conservative friend is happier with a solid, binary world, I love diversity. And deeper than that I love individuality.
I've never identified myself with a group. Groups come secondary for me, and I love the individuals more than the group. I never found my people just a feeling we all connect regardless of groupings.
Indisputably
Bless you!
luchog
Neo-Post-Retro-Revivalist
I've found the "ignore" feature to be helpful in that regard. Not as helpful as I'd like it to be, but it does remove some of the troll noise.
One thing I've noticed about the conservative mindset is just how fragile it is, and how prone to taking offense at anything that challenges its worldview in the slightest. There's also a profound element of the Golden Age Fallacy to it.
In fact, it seems to be particularly prone to lashing out at any perceived change to its delicate worldview. The conservative mindset is one that is locked into a picture of how the world should be, and that world is a very simplistic one, with clear black-and-white morality, easy to understand, and most importantly, easy to control. Anything that is too different, too out of their personal experience, or threatens to change or complicate their world, and thus make it harder to control, is inherently bad and should be resisted and/or dismissed. Further, anything that challenges that worldview is automatically taken as an attack on them personally, because they have invested so much of their personal self-worth and energy into that worldview. The comments in this thread are pretty solid evidence of that; but more, that's why religions as a rule, especially the major religions, are so heavily conservative and resist any attempt at change or reform.
They can seem to be perfectly agreeable people as long as they're not challenged, because anything that is not brought to their attention, does impinge on their consciousness, can be safely ignored and presumed not to really exist.
Robert Anton Wilson made a pretty good observation when he said that the world seems to be divided into neophiles and neophobes; those who love and embrace the new, and those who fear and resist the new. Evolutionarily, both viewpoints have their purpose.
Most people are neophobes, because in evolutionary history novelty was most often linked to danger, so sticking with the familiar was safer. In modern humans, this translates into conservatism, isolationism, xenophobia, and social conformity. They dislike non-conformists and diversity.
A smaller percentage are neophiles. Since a group that is never willing to try something new will stagnate and is in greater risk of dying out due to environmental changes or population pressures, some small number must be willing to seek out novelty and test it. They have a far higher acceptance of diversity and non-conformity, and tend themselves to be non-conformists. Neophiles often have a considerably lower individual survival rate than neophobes, but groups with a larger number of neophiles more readily expands and adapts to changing conditions.
Few humans are pure neophobe or neophile, but tend to lean very strongly in one direction of another. Humans are unique in that they tend to assign value judgements to neophobia and neophilia, with the greater mass of neophobes dismissing, deriding, demonizing, and even attempting to purge their cultures of neophiles. But throughout history, nearly all great advancements in science and technology, art, and culture have come from those who leaned more strongly toward the neophile side.
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Magrat
Mrs. Rincewind
Thank you for your posts,both of you! 
especially in regard to the conservative desire to package life as subject to control. I'm comfortable with manually ignoring trolls and reactionaries. I've occasionally replied to some of our best here, and. I like the option.
Disclaimer: I'm not talking about a political, fiscal conservatism here but reactionaries. Alas the reactionary fringe has taken over the Republican Party.
Another feature I see in the "conservative mindset" is the bubble. People may be suffering but like my conservative friend, the perspective from inside the bubble is basically, "Things are OK for me. Their difficulties aren't real or their fault." The suffering and injustice has to get into their bubble first before they can be empathetic about it.
Unless such a conservative has, for example, an LGBTQ+ person in their own circle, and especially as a loved one, they haven't a clue of injustice toward the other and in many cases hostility. It has to impact them under their own roof. Then that same energy of controlling and protecting what is mine speaks up for the oppressed.
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Magrat
Mrs. Rincewind
I'm comfortable with manually ignoring trolls and reactionaries. I've occasionally replied to some of our best here, and. I like the option.
Disclaimer: I'm not talking about a political, fiscal conservatism here but reactionaries. Alas the reactionary fringe has taken over the Republican Party.
Another feature I see in the "conservative mindset" is the bubble. People may be suffering but like my conservative friend, the perspective from inside the bubble is basically, "Things are OK for me. Their difficulties aren't real or their fault." The suffering and injustice has to get into their bubble first before they can be empathetic about it.
Unless such a conservative has, for example, an LGBTQ+ person in their own circle, and especially as a loved one, they haven't a clue of injustice toward the other and in many cases hostility. It has to impact them under their own roof. Then that same energy of controlling and protecting what is mine speaks up for the oppressed.
My mother's response to my son being lgbtq is "no she's not" and to say I am encouraging him too much. Like I got bored one day and thought, you know what would be cool? My kid has been saying stuff about being a boy trapped in a girl body as long as he could speak. But my mother apparently chose to ignore all that and now is suddenly shocked my child is trans. Her bubble has very thick walls!!!
It's a zone of safety from things one would be too disturbed to admit.
"Human Kind can not bear very much reality." T.S. Elliot
We all have our bubbles, but some are thicker and more opaque than others. But the good news is that for most of us our bubbles can expand.
I do think it's interesting that a lot of what you both are saying was recognised by the early 1950s - see my post below quoting from a book from then:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=12579325#post12579325
The highlighted is not what you asked. You asked (relevant portions highlighted):
That was answered with an explanation of where that viewpoint comes from. The idea that they lose the right to choose their actions in certain circumstances.
You asked for information and it was provided. Your response seems to indicate a desire to debate the validity of that viewpoint. Am I expected to argue against you and defend that viewpoint? I won't because It's not my viewpoint.
You see, although I understand that rights are infringed upon whenever choices are limited, I don't agree that bakers should get to deny service. When two people's perceived rights come into conflict, someone's rights are going to have to take precedence. In this case, I think the customer's right to be served trumps a baker's right to deny service.
But each case is a little different. Most of the people I know who describe themselves as conservative think the baker was being a jerk and side with the gay couple. But opinions on that do not necessarily predict opinions on the conflict between a trans person's right to the bathroom/locker room of their choice and a woman's right to the expectation of sex specific bathrooms. Again, I know people who call themselves conservative who agree with the trans person and people who call themselves liberal who take the opposite view.
People, like life, are complicated. People don't fit into neat little liberal or conservative boxes. It depends on the issue and the perspective they are looking at it from.
For reference, Dick Cheney on gay marriage (with a more conservative statement on the issue from Obama at the end): https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/freedom-means-freedom-everybody-jim-geraghty/
Magrat
Mrs. Rincewind
No, actually that is what I asked...what is lost. I understand what you said. That's just not what I was asking. I did post about nine billion follow up posts clarifying what I was trying to find out. I do not understand how the rights are being infringed upon. Im not interested in debating whether or not they are or who you agree with or debating the law. I am asking for theories on the mindset of the individual quoted in the op.
xjx388
Penultimate Amazing
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- Dec 1, 2010
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Yes it’s petty. But people have a right to be petty, no? If we, through the law, force a baker to bake a cake he doesn’t want to, we are certainly infringing his right to refuse service. You may think such infringement is just, but it’s still an infringement.
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luchog
Neo-Post-Retro-Revivalist
Very much so. There's a very strong belief that anything bad that happens to someone outside their circle, the "other" happened because they deserved it, for being too different. Especially religious conservatives. During the AIDS crisis, conservatives insisted that it only affected Gay people, and was therefore G-D's judgement on their "lifestyle". When it comes to charity for the poor, they're happy to help out someone in their circle, someone they know or who is otherwise close to them (friend of a friend) or a member in one of their groups (churches, fraternal organizations, etc.); but for the poor in the abstract, there's a feeling of "they're poor because they're lazy", especially when it comes to minorities.
That highlighted part has not been my experience. In some cases, yes, that does happen, people re-examine their beliefs; but more often than not, they entrench, double-down on those beliefs. That's why LGBTQ youths are many times more likely to be abused, or to become homeless, than heterosexual, cisgendered youths. Had I understood as a teen I was trans, and had come out to my parents, I have no doubt I would have been severely beaten, probably forced into some sort of religious "conversion therapy" program, and/or forcibly ejected from my home. That's a common experience for far too many LGBTQ teens.
Back when I was young, interracial marriage was still highly controversial in much of the US. I have several friends who were threatened by their parents for dating someone of the wrong ethnic heritage as teenagers, including one who was thrown out and disowned.
Conservatives are all too ready to turn that hostility onto their own children, if their children dare to violate social norms. There is something about the conservative mindset that also sets itself at odds with empathy, and often overrules it.
luchog
Neo-Post-Retro-Revivalist
One must be careful about quoting politicians as though their public statements were an accurate statement of their personal beliefs, or even fully representative of a particular worldview. Regardless of how they may feel about a particular issue, there will always be that element of playing to the crowd and/or toeing their party line, in order to maintain their position and power.
Of course.
But I used Cheney because he is a public figure who is definitely known to be conservative, and who was not, in that statement, toeing the party line. Not knowing the people involved, I have no idea what he actually believes.
However, his views line up with several otherwise conservative people I know. My sister-in-law who is very conservative (probably voted for Trump) and whose husband is an evangelical minister didn't have an issue with her daughter marrying her girlfriend. (Though there were some concerns about how it would affect her husband's position.) Meanwhile I know some otherwise very liberal people who are anti-abortion.
My point is that people are often a mix of liberal, conservative, or something in-between varying from issue to issue.