It appears that your striving to be objective (or as objective as our mind let's us despite our biases) won out over your ideology. Something to be applauded, I think. (It's the subject of my blog, Thinking Objectively.) I like Michael Shellenberger's summary of his politics: "I'm a liberal in my compassion for the vulnerable, a libertarian in my passion for freedom, and a conservative in my belief that you need a civilization to support them both."
I have seen too many people turn from leftism, myself being one of them, but I am yet to meet an adult who went from being on the right to being a leftist. Unless my vision is blurred by confirmation bias, it suggests that leftism is an ideology of children (or idiots).
Judging from my internal reaction to this essay, I now think there's a good chance that I'm autistic. This is deja vu. I hate the smell of a lie regardless of who is telling it and when I can't shut up about it, Facebook algorithms scold me and threaten to suspend my account (the attack from the woke), family members and life-long friends distance themselves because I won't say what their script insists I must say to remain valued to them (the attack from the conservative based), followers and group members mute or block me (the attack from my own gay community). Leftist push me right, and rightest push me left, and I feel like I don't have an ideology, unless being on this island in the middle, this no-man's land, is somehow a community like me. Sometimes, I just want off of this planet, and then I find people like Gurwinder, Andrew Sullivan, Kathlene Stock, Jonathan Rauch. I read what they say and I feel I can finally exhale. They are dot-connectors, explainers, and not chained to a pre-approved ideology. Grateful to have all of them and many more.
It's truly amazing how hard leftists come at members of their own tribe who don't quite toe the line, isn't it? I noticed that as far back as the early aughts, when I moved from Seattle to Denver to attend gunsmithing school and would debate with my extremely conservative classmates about all of their sacred cows, after which we'd tease each other and go out for beers, something that never could have happened among Seattle liberals of the time, let alone now.
Compelling essay. It sounds like you are rational and actually listen to people's rhetoric rather than just nodding along. You may find that there are many people who publicly agree with rhetoric that they privately disagree with. For example, there are farmers living in conservative parts of the USA who know, from watching the effects of droughts on their fields over the years, that climate change is real, but they refer to their recent farming problems as "unpredictable weather" to avoid offending their conservative neighbours.
My only issue is with your uncertain diagnosis of autism; I am against medicalisation of the normal range of possible thinking. There are adults with autism, many who are high functioning, but before you join their ranks, you probably need to check yourself carefully against a symptom list, and if you are highly motivated, you can speak to your doctor about it.
The longstanding rhetorical dictum of "interpret everything in the worst possible light" doesn't just harm society and decency, it also dulls the skills of the people who practice it.
The unspoken game back when I was on the left-blogs was to play a sort of Magic Eye with the enemy's words. For example, I once got praised for 'correctly' 'identifying' that Scott Walker's reference to Madison as a 'dark blue city' was veiled racism (even though Madison is 10% black or so.) My cohort probably thought Walker was racist in a generic sense, like all Republicans were, but did they really think that specific choice of words was to deliver that specific message? I'm going to be generous and say no. But it could be. And once someone 'figured that out', it was a perfectly acceptable, if not the only acceptable, spin.
The point of the game is esotericism. The more bizarre and obscure your logical leaps, the better you are at playing. Parallels to the liberal-arts educations of those who practice this abound: you spend four years honing the skill of "Describe the philosophy of this 19th century French author through the lens of 21st century American social justice politics", you get good at it, you get praised for it, you learn it at the expense of other, more generally applicable skills. "The Game" comes to be be seen not just as a diversion, or one lens among many, but a starting point, a truth-seeking device.
It should go without saying that most people don't think of things this way. Hence the disconnect between the media and the rest of us. Hence, to most of us, mainstream media does fall flat.
The point about ideology is very interesting too, and I've seen it raised multiple times in discussions with my former professors over the COVID era when I had my first philosophical reckoning. Like they say, there is no free lunch. There is simply no viable method to rally a large crowd in the absence of such, the truth is too "nihilistic" for mass consumption and appeal. I'd like to think that the elites are aware of the truth, but since it holds no social value as a final product, they will torture data and facts till they comply with their bipolar narrative. Every opinion has to be either black or white and nothing in between. As if life has come to a spot where everything turns into a confused cockfight of bull-headed proportions. Sharing a moment in silent reflection is instead replaced with a litmus test measuring every insecurity against every imperfection. Yet, a successful ideology seems to require a few grains of truth rather than just manufactured delusions. That's why trans ideology is far less successful than BLM, since the lines between truth and propaganda are comparatively obscure in the latter.
So the truth does serve a purpose, but as a tool rather than a final product, to mold and perfect a successful ideology.
You fail to mention feminism, which is the main source of the mind virus. People dislike criticism of feminism because we are biologically wired to treat women with more empathy.
Great essay. It's these "inconvenient truths" I have also found that people don't want to acknowledge or deal with if affects their agenda. And that has put me on a raft floating on my own. But it seems like others may be floating around now as well.
Some very familiar stuff here for me, the 'am I autistic?' thing and the reasons behind it ring familiar, but also the realisation that so many people who share the 'leftist political identity' became very irrational during the aftermath of 9/11. For me it was the Charlie Hebdo massacre - people on the left still explaining somehow that Hebdo was responsible for provoking their 'peaceful' attackers. The Burqa debates across Europe came next, to this day I'm baffled by 'leftist' feminists passionately arguing the case for women to be hidden away from public life...
Still - I'm philosophically left wing. I don't think 'the left' is defined by the idiocy of people who also 'identify' as being 'left wing'.
A great book by Yoram Hazony, Conservatism, explains the differences in reasoning styles between conservatives and liberals. I'll offer a ridiculously-condensed explanation here: Constructive reasoning, employed by conservatives, tends to move toward stabilization because it determines what works and preserves that, subject to revisiting. Critical reasoning, employed by liberals, assumes that everything is flawed and strives to document it, supposedly in order to correct it. The problem with this reasoning is that anything can be endlessly critiqued and more and more flaws will be found. This leads to splintering, as we are now witnessing, as the leftist factions squabble over which defects are most important.
Glad you have escaped. Never let people put you in a box. We are not leftists, rightists, centrists...We are humans and we are ALL on this little rock together. =)
"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."
- Henry David Thoreau
In the modern context, maybe the pursuit of truth necessitates the courage to pursue the unsexy...
--
"It just depends what you want to consider. If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience even a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.
Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it.
This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship.
...
On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.
Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.
They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing.
And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving…. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, UNSEXY ways every day.
That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing."
I am so glad that I came across this. I have had this confusion about find my ideology aligning with the left. I applaud your courage to speak up different from what the mainstream offers. I am not autistic but I surely don't wanted to be blinded any kind of bias or ideology. This helped me to realise that it's time to dig deep and understand what I understand of today's world and politics
That is probably one of the best pieces of journalism I have read in many a year. Most interesting characters have a great character arc. Thanks for sharing yours.
It appears that your striving to be objective (or as objective as our mind let's us despite our biases) won out over your ideology. Something to be applauded, I think. (It's the subject of my blog, Thinking Objectively.) I like Michael Shellenberger's summary of his politics: "I'm a liberal in my compassion for the vulnerable, a libertarian in my passion for freedom, and a conservative in my belief that you need a civilization to support them both."
I have seen too many people turn from leftism, myself being one of them, but I am yet to meet an adult who went from being on the right to being a leftist. Unless my vision is blurred by confirmation bias, it suggests that leftism is an ideology of children (or idiots).
Judging from my internal reaction to this essay, I now think there's a good chance that I'm autistic. This is deja vu. I hate the smell of a lie regardless of who is telling it and when I can't shut up about it, Facebook algorithms scold me and threaten to suspend my account (the attack from the woke), family members and life-long friends distance themselves because I won't say what their script insists I must say to remain valued to them (the attack from the conservative based), followers and group members mute or block me (the attack from my own gay community). Leftist push me right, and rightest push me left, and I feel like I don't have an ideology, unless being on this island in the middle, this no-man's land, is somehow a community like me. Sometimes, I just want off of this planet, and then I find people like Gurwinder, Andrew Sullivan, Kathlene Stock, Jonathan Rauch. I read what they say and I feel I can finally exhale. They are dot-connectors, explainers, and not chained to a pre-approved ideology. Grateful to have all of them and many more.
It's truly amazing how hard leftists come at members of their own tribe who don't quite toe the line, isn't it? I noticed that as far back as the early aughts, when I moved from Seattle to Denver to attend gunsmithing school and would debate with my extremely conservative classmates about all of their sacred cows, after which we'd tease each other and go out for beers, something that never could have happened among Seattle liberals of the time, let alone now.
You’re such a great writer. Open, honest, reasonably vulnerable as we all should feel about ideology. Keep up the great work.
Compelling essay. It sounds like you are rational and actually listen to people's rhetoric rather than just nodding along. You may find that there are many people who publicly agree with rhetoric that they privately disagree with. For example, there are farmers living in conservative parts of the USA who know, from watching the effects of droughts on their fields over the years, that climate change is real, but they refer to their recent farming problems as "unpredictable weather" to avoid offending their conservative neighbours.
My only issue is with your uncertain diagnosis of autism; I am against medicalisation of the normal range of possible thinking. There are adults with autism, many who are high functioning, but before you join their ranks, you probably need to check yourself carefully against a symptom list, and if you are highly motivated, you can speak to your doctor about it.
The longstanding rhetorical dictum of "interpret everything in the worst possible light" doesn't just harm society and decency, it also dulls the skills of the people who practice it.
The unspoken game back when I was on the left-blogs was to play a sort of Magic Eye with the enemy's words. For example, I once got praised for 'correctly' 'identifying' that Scott Walker's reference to Madison as a 'dark blue city' was veiled racism (even though Madison is 10% black or so.) My cohort probably thought Walker was racist in a generic sense, like all Republicans were, but did they really think that specific choice of words was to deliver that specific message? I'm going to be generous and say no. But it could be. And once someone 'figured that out', it was a perfectly acceptable, if not the only acceptable, spin.
The point of the game is esotericism. The more bizarre and obscure your logical leaps, the better you are at playing. Parallels to the liberal-arts educations of those who practice this abound: you spend four years honing the skill of "Describe the philosophy of this 19th century French author through the lens of 21st century American social justice politics", you get good at it, you get praised for it, you learn it at the expense of other, more generally applicable skills. "The Game" comes to be be seen not just as a diversion, or one lens among many, but a starting point, a truth-seeking device.
It should go without saying that most people don't think of things this way. Hence the disconnect between the media and the rest of us. Hence, to most of us, mainstream media does fall flat.
The point about ideology is very interesting too, and I've seen it raised multiple times in discussions with my former professors over the COVID era when I had my first philosophical reckoning. Like they say, there is no free lunch. There is simply no viable method to rally a large crowd in the absence of such, the truth is too "nihilistic" for mass consumption and appeal. I'd like to think that the elites are aware of the truth, but since it holds no social value as a final product, they will torture data and facts till they comply with their bipolar narrative. Every opinion has to be either black or white and nothing in between. As if life has come to a spot where everything turns into a confused cockfight of bull-headed proportions. Sharing a moment in silent reflection is instead replaced with a litmus test measuring every insecurity against every imperfection. Yet, a successful ideology seems to require a few grains of truth rather than just manufactured delusions. That's why trans ideology is far less successful than BLM, since the lines between truth and propaganda are comparatively obscure in the latter.
So the truth does serve a purpose, but as a tool rather than a final product, to mold and perfect a successful ideology.
You fail to mention feminism, which is the main source of the mind virus. People dislike criticism of feminism because we are biologically wired to treat women with more empathy.
Great essay. It's these "inconvenient truths" I have also found that people don't want to acknowledge or deal with if affects their agenda. And that has put me on a raft floating on my own. But it seems like others may be floating around now as well.
Some very familiar stuff here for me, the 'am I autistic?' thing and the reasons behind it ring familiar, but also the realisation that so many people who share the 'leftist political identity' became very irrational during the aftermath of 9/11. For me it was the Charlie Hebdo massacre - people on the left still explaining somehow that Hebdo was responsible for provoking their 'peaceful' attackers. The Burqa debates across Europe came next, to this day I'm baffled by 'leftist' feminists passionately arguing the case for women to be hidden away from public life...
Still - I'm philosophically left wing. I don't think 'the left' is defined by the idiocy of people who also 'identify' as being 'left wing'.
Good article.
I went through a similar transition, only it took 20 years. A spoof of the journey can be found here. https://jcbourque.substack.com/p/how-i-got-here-?s=w
A great book by Yoram Hazony, Conservatism, explains the differences in reasoning styles between conservatives and liberals. I'll offer a ridiculously-condensed explanation here: Constructive reasoning, employed by conservatives, tends to move toward stabilization because it determines what works and preserves that, subject to revisiting. Critical reasoning, employed by liberals, assumes that everything is flawed and strives to document it, supposedly in order to correct it. The problem with this reasoning is that anything can be endlessly critiqued and more and more flaws will be found. This leads to splintering, as we are now witnessing, as the leftist factions squabble over which defects are most important.
Glad you have escaped. Never let people put you in a box. We are not leftists, rightists, centrists...We are humans and we are ALL on this little rock together. =)
"Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth."
- Henry David Thoreau
In the modern context, maybe the pursuit of truth necessitates the courage to pursue the unsexy...
--
"It just depends what you want to consider. If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience even a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.
Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it.
This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn’t. You get to decide what to worship.
...
On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.
Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings.
They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing.
And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving…. The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, UNSEXY ways every day.
That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing."
- David Foster Wallace
I have also been described as being, ahem, "on the spectrum," and I am also a "liberal mugged by reality." Nice to meet you!
I am so glad that I came across this. I have had this confusion about find my ideology aligning with the left. I applaud your courage to speak up different from what the mainstream offers. I am not autistic but I surely don't wanted to be blinded any kind of bias or ideology. This helped me to realise that it's time to dig deep and understand what I understand of today's world and politics
That is probably one of the best pieces of journalism I have read in many a year. Most interesting characters have a great character arc. Thanks for sharing yours.