My parents are both conservative - white Protestant evangelical Christian conservatives. In my 20s, I first became liberal, then atheist, then leftist. I’ve given up talking to my dad because he won’t discuss in good faith, but my mom still… tries.
I genuinely think the problem with conservatives is that they pay attention to and trust the wrong sources. We all have to trust people at some point, we can’t experience or verify literally everything ourselves. And the people we listen to have to trust who they listen to, forming large and complicated trust networks.
Most people don’t spend any significant time or effort vetting their sources. And if you don’t weed out bad sources, or learn to be skeptical of people you might already trust, then your trust networks become corrupted. By that point, questioning someone you trust could be a slippery slope - if they were wrong (or worse, lying) then that means soooop much of the trust network might fall, too. And that is legitimately terrifying for folks. It certainly was for me. It was honestly hellish, realizing that I had to rebuild from the ground up my entire trust network, and now I have anxiety about needing to keep my mental guard up at all times lest I be fooled again.
No wonder people get invested in politics and culture wars as team sports, with clearly defined good guys and bad guys. It’s painful to stop.
I could go on and on about this, but I don’t have these thoughts formalized very well, so it’d just be rambling at this point.
My parents are both conservative - white Protestant evangelical Christian conservatives. In my 20s, I first became liberal, then atheist, then leftist. I’ve given up talking to my dad because he won’t discuss in good faith, but my mom still… tries.
I genuinely think the problem with conservatives is that they pay attention to and trust the wrong sources. We all have to trust people at some point, we can’t experience or verify literally everything ourselves. And the people we listen to have to trust who they listen to, forming large and complicated trust networks.
Most people don’t spend any significant time or effort vetting their sources. And if you don’t weed out bad sources, or learn to be skeptical of people you might already trust, then your trust networks become corrupted. By that point, questioning someone you trust could be a slippery slope - if they were wrong (or worse, lying) then that means soooop much of the trust network might fall, too. And that is legitimately terrifying for folks. It certainly was for me. It was honestly hellish, realizing that I had to rebuild from the ground up my entire trust network, and now I have anxiety about needing to keep my mental guard up at all times lest I be fooled again.
No wonder people get invested in politics and culture wars as team sports, with clearly defined good guys and bad guys. It’s painful to stop.
I could go on and on about this, but I don’t have these thoughts formalized very well, so it’d just be rambling at this point.
Stay safe out there, gang.