Amerika

We built the philosophy behind this site around the idea that the eternal human failing is solipsism, or an inability to perceive the world outside of ourselves or what is convenient for ourselves, and in groups this becomes what the libertarians call “collectivism,” or subsidized me-firsting.

The old-fashioned term for this idea is “individualism,” which means the self before all else, including reality, logic, faith, culture, heritage, nature, and aspirations toward anything but “last man” style individual comfort, convenience, and ease of emotional regulation.

Liberals are defined by individualism. They want to be supreme over nature and other humans, and they are willing to insist on a subsidy-state in order to achieve this. Conservatives want order, which means structures outside of the individual and shared between individuals. These two views are incompatible.

Conservatives understand liberals: liberals want “fairness” that means everyone gets the same thing so that no one gets ahead of anyone else. In other words, pure individualism. Liberals however do not understand conservatives much at all:

Conservatives were most accurate about the individual-focused moral concerns of either side, and liberals were least accurate. Compared to actual group means of either data set, moral stereotypes about the typical conservative showed substantial underestimation of conservatives’ Harm and Fairness concerns. Liberals tended to underestimate the most (average d = −.98, −1.50≤ds≤−.41), followed by moderates (average d = −.48, −.79≤ds≤−.08); conservatives underestimated the individualizing concerns of the typical conservative the least (average d = −.34, −.55≤ds≤−.11), but they too underestimated their own group’s Harm and Fairness concerns in every comparison with actual conservative scores.

Stereotypes about the Harm and Fairness concerns of the typical liberal tended to be more accurate as compared to actual liberal scores in the two datasets. Here again conservatives were the most accurate, only slightly underestimating liberal individualizing concerns (average d = −.08, −.66≤ds≤.26), followed by moderates, who underestimated slightly more (average d = −.12, −.61≤ds≤.30). Liberals were the least accurate about their own group’s individualizing concerns, overestimating them on average (average d = .40, −.11≤ds≤.80).

An individualist is a human being missing some vital parts. They do not find joy in the experience of life as a whole, only in the parts that are convenient, easy, simple, pleasant, and comfortable to them. They do not want to change their thinking by letting in knowledge of the world, and prefer theories about it and judgments of it instead.

This means that they are easy to predict: whatever increases “equality,” and therefore their own entitlement and lack of accountability, they favor, especially when it is implemented through others who are so pitiable that they cannot be criticized, like the poor, lower classes, other ethnic groups, and the insane.

Conservatism on the other hand requires that one study the union between the inner self of the human being and the wider world of nature. This like most paths, or ways of learning that gradually reveal themselves, requires effort, time, and devotion of the inner self to understand.

Not surprisingly, it is a foreign land to Leftists.

Tags: conservatism, individualism, liberalism, solipsism