Well, this is great. This is totally a post I've been meaning to make since the day I came back here a few months ago. I wanted to explore a topic like "where do your politics come from", and this is exactly what I was getting at. Too bad I'm a procrastinating bastard with no time on his hands.
As far as I go - and I have a couple of minutes to explain this - my stances on things come from my personal decisions and intuitions. I have not yet been well-informed enough about many, many things in this world to understand them well, so I figure until I do have a specific thing figured out, I'll base my arguments for or against it on how I think and feel and live, day to day.
The most important thing in my life is something like respect. Respect for myself, respect for the people around me and the fact that they're thinking sense-bags just like me. I'm not saying people are created equal, because I'm not saying people are created. But I am saying that people should be treated equal, to the best of the treater's ability. I don't see anything as categorical, black and white. It always exists on a continuum for me. So there's some give to anything I get behind... we can never fully reach an ideal, but we can get close enough that our lives can be pretty good. I'm a sucker for people, so I'll always favour people-oriented solutions. And I sympathize with Socrates, so I'll always be skeptical of the Sophists that run our systems until someone proves to be a Philosopher-King. My thoughts are logical, but they stem from a connection I feel with things that goes beyond rational.
That's me. As for everyone else... I think it's something equally as constant, a pervading set of paradigms over how their lives are lived. Often those paradigms aren't fully recognized explicitly, but they come out through arguments. At the core, of how those paradigms form, those influences are as multiple as are experiences in life. People argue consistently with themselves because they have that setup of overarching paradigms... at least, that's what I think. It's hard to convince a lot of people of other opinions, because they take those things as gospel, and because they don't fully understand them (well, you never FULLY can, I guess, but again, close enough) they don't really know why it is that they're arguing for what they're arguing for, in the first place. Most don't care enough to explore it when challenged... or something like that. Others, including you and I, I think, are sympathetic to the structures that we've built our thoughts on, but we're willing to be convinced of something we don't necessarily agree with, if it makes sense. For me, at least, the sliding scale by which I judge things makes it no problem for me to agree with something that I wouldn't normally without going against my "beliefs". And, I would think, such dissonnance would make me consider my beliefs carefully.
Anyways, I thought today would be the day I wrote back on our week-or-so-dead conversation, but this is all I have time for, and it's much more fresh. I will get back to that one for closure's sake, though. The key is to attack it first, when I come to the site...
And my question would be, why do so many people not like each other just because they have different (somewhat arbitrary) views? Some of my favorite posts to read here are by you, mookie, aero, nekro, and other people who make me grit my teeth when I read some political things. Whatever. I respect you guys tons, and you have a lot to offer other than opinions on events we usually can't influence anyways. So yeah. I'm confused why people take it personal-like so often. Well, actually, I'm not. I'm just playing the fool. But whatever.
Cory
