Tory governments on convergent pillages
This mostly-drawn piece called What is Harper Afraid Of? is making the rounds – note the extra details in the tooltips. By chance I also read this George Monbiot piece today about the UK government’s parallel abandonment of environmental conscience.
Are conservative governments working from the same playbook? Does the Pope shit in the woods?
And once again, I ask: What are they thinking? Do they expect human ingenuity to pull our asses out of the fire magically? Do they expect Jesus Christ to come back and render human effort null and void? These governments are acting EXACTLY like a human being on a manic episode maxing out their credit cards with no realistic idea how the debt will be paid off. And yet most of them are parents with kids – what are they thinking??
AJ 22:42 on 2012/05/28 Permalink
It’s Chicago / Austrian school economics, aka disaster capitalism. If you delve into which think tank advised whom, the lines become clear; they literally are the same people sometimes. http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/sep/12/march-of-the-neoliberals
http://saltspringnews.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=22175
Brad 05:38 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
From a review by William Saletan of Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Righteous Mind: “To the question many people ask about politics — Why doesn’t the other side listen to reason? — Haidt replies: We were never designed to listen to reason. When you ask people moral questions, time their responses and scan their brains, their answers and brain activation patterns indicate that they reach conclusions quickly and produce reasons later only to justify what they’ve decided.” …”The problem isn’t that people don’t reason. They do reason. But their arguments aim to support their conclusions, not yours. Reason doesn’t work like a judge or teacher, impartially weighing evidence or guiding us to wisdom. It works more like a lawyer or press secretary, justifying our acts and judgments to others.”
Brad 05:46 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
Following up on the quotes above, people shape their beliefs according to their identity: if they identify themselves as conservatives, their behaviours and actions will conform to the conservative playbook, and as Haidt shows they reach their conclusions before thinking through the arguments that support them. This applies to liberals as well as conservatives; everyone’s guilty of this process, except possibly a relatively small group of logicians, philosophers, and scientists.
Raoul 05:49 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
That last paragraph makes it hard to take you seriously. You support the students even though Quebec’s in the red, but then you go and attack the conservatives for their deficit spending? You wanna talk about credit cards, what about the libs’ gold credit card: the sponsorship scandal (it came with free air miles on gov’t jets).
I dont like the cons either, but for me it’s just a distaste, not the kind of blind hatred that lets me forget the same trespasses by the other team.
Kate 06:31 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
Raoul, I attack the conservatives for their gutting of environmental laws and wanton pillaging of the planet. A sponsorship scandal is a fart in the wind by comparison.
Brad 07:18 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
We are pretty much the only species on Earth capable of preventing its own demise, but we can do so only by transcending our animal instincts that favour short-term self-interest over long-term public interest. If you accept that the evolution of society is about reaching our potential as humans, social conservatism generally acts as a brake on that process, keeping us mired in our animal past. I think there’s a powerful biological basis for social conservatism (I’m drawing a distinction between social and fiscal conservatism, since people can be both social liberals and fiscal conservatives), and that there may be a genetic component that determines the degree to which someone will be more open to conservative or liberal views. People may have no more “choice” about their political leanings than they have choice over their sexual preferences; much of it may be hard-wired. Attacking someone for being conservative or liberal is not that different from attacking someone for being gay. They can’t actually help what they believe; it’s not a matter of logic or reason.
There are elements of conservatism that are good for society and elements of conservatism that are highly destructive. My hope is that as society continues to evolve there will be a force akin to natural selection that preserves the useful attributes and suppresses the destructive ones. I’m just not very hopeful that this process will happen quickly enough.
paul 08:30 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
Well said Brad…
I consider myself from the social liberal/fiscal conservative mode and this situation makes me feel like I am freaking Stephen Harper!!
qatzelok 10:07 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
@ Brad: “We are pretty much the only species on Earth capable of preventing its own demise, but we can do so only by transcending our animal instincts that favour short-term self-interest over long-term public interest.”
Amazing how many people still think humans need to suppress their own natures in order to survive. Hasn’t this strategy clearly failed? We are the only animal poised to snuff out all the other ones, including ourselves. And this has a lot to do with our many vainglorious attempts to “conquer” nature – human and otherwise.
Brad, we can’t improve on nature. When we try, we die.
Brad 10:23 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
@qatzelok: the process of ecological succession essentially involves species polluting their own environments to the extent that they can no longer survive in it or they create conditions favourable to competing species that then take over. Lichens to moss, moss to herbaceous ground plants, to shrubs, to pines, to hardwoods — it all happens because these species alter their environments until they are no longer suitable for them. We’re doing the same thing, but there’s a big difference between us and plants: we can see it happening and we can project the consequences. We absolutely have to transcend our natural instincts in order to avoid those consequences.
Adam 14:05 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
“Brad, we can’t improve on nature. When we try, we die.”
Which, of course, is why qatzelok lives in a cave and runs around naked, eating only berries that he picks and any small animals he can get his hands on.
Kate 14:15 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
Adam, this was a good discussion till you brought the ad hominem.
Brad, I never thought about conservatism as something people couldn’t help. Has nobody ever changed flags? I am aware myself of having had certain of my opinions changed for me by compelling arguments so I know this can and does happen.
walkerp 14:25 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
Also, the fallacy of the excluded middle, Adam. Please look it up and stop using it.
Adam 14:53 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
Kate: that’s not what ad hominem means. Ad hominem means attacking the person. What I was doing was reduction ad absurdum, which isn’t a logical fallacy, it’s a way of pointing out the absurdity of someone’s position.
Walkerp: qatzelok is the one who was speaking in absolutes. I was trying to point out that we sure as hell can improve on nature, in ways that we enjoy every day.
Brad 14:59 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
Kate: yes, people have certainly changed flags (there’s the famous Winston Churchill “head/heart” quote that essentially presumes we should all start out as liberals during our younger years and end up as conservatives later in life), but I think there’s a difference between having your opinions changed and changing your fundamental ideology.
Brad 15:10 on 2012/05/29 Permalink
Sorry, I hit “reply” before I was finished typing. There have been some studies claiming to find biological differences between conservatives and liberals…I’m skeptical but haven’t looked at them very closely. But I do think there are likely to be psychological/temperament differences that could boil down (as most behavioural differences do) to a combination of nature and nurture. People’s ideology can clearly be shaped by those around them, which is most likely why there are large pockets of conservatism in some regions (such as the American South), but I suspect that genetic differences may also play a role. We are not blank slates at birth; we have innate temperaments that may cause us to be more sympathetic to one ideological point of view over another.