About a year ago I gave up trying to define “left,” “right,” “liberal,” and “conservative.”
The concepts are too nebulous, and people have strong incentives to distort their meanings. There’s no stable “there” there.
This has been wonderfully liberating.
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Not a real option. It may feel liberating to give up but doesn’t mean there isn’t a there there or that it doesn’t apply to you if don’t define it for yourself. Even patterns of giving up have left/right/lib/con tells.
They’ve gotten convoluted rather than nebulous.
the last time we ran through this
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There’s basically no easy answers here, but I’m glad to see I’ve been consistent for a few years in my own posture
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You’re not interested in politics but politics is interested in you, “culture wars sub you” etc.
A better way to understand what you’re doing is: you’re fine being misclassified and misunderstood for a long time, and have the resources to endure the consequences. Like Amazon.
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I haven’t yet been drafted into the culture wars... will figure out what to do if/when that happens.
In the meantime, I just want to understand things. And the semantic debates have only muddied the waters for me. Waste of mind.
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btw, I’m not saying I’m opting out of choosing a side (although, kinda). Rather, I’m opting out of trying to essentialize the labels. I recognize their validity as flags/banners for the current moment, but not as enduring/stable concepts.
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The conclusion I’ve reached is that they *were* stable and enduring concepts that evolved coherently for 150-250 years each, and have all “died” in the last 2 decades. So I half agree with you. They’re not stable and enduring into the future. They’re decaying corpses.
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