Is there any link between conservative political and social views and living a stale, passionless life?
I don't have any firm conclusions, but I have some very strong suspicions. Today's conservatism isn't like the conservatism I grew up with and once espoused. It is far heavier, far more oppressive, far more fearful, far angrier than anything I've ever seen before on the conservative side of the aisle. There seems to be very little positive and upbeat about it.
I've been wondering if internalizing such views and opinions can lead people to live fearful, angry, oppressed lives? Lives that seem to them stale, dull, boring, and passionless?
I don't see a whole lot of upbeat, happy conservatives these days. Just angry, fearful ones who seem to be kept alive only by their hatred of liberals. Of course, I could be wrong about that. I'm been married. I know what it is to be wrong about everything.
What do you think?
I think modern "conservatism" is an expression of abuse. I have a few friends who are aligned with this modern conservatism and they share a strikingly similar childhood of violence and abuse. They also share a similar, very Darwinist philosophy on life: that might (money, power, propensity for violence, willingness to deceive, etc.,) does as it pleases, and nothing and no one will intervene. They live in a human sea defined by 'pecking order', where you are either the one doing the pecking, or the one getting pecked. Equality, justice, forgiveness, sharing: these are delusions that we humans like to distract and comfort ourselves with, but that, in the end, are just 'pipe-dreams'.
And the reason they despise "liberals" so much is because they see liberals as being either liars and con-men trying to peddle those pipe-dreams to others, so as to exploit and abuse them, or as hopeless idiots, forever lost in some fantasy of ideological rainbows and unicorns.
The 'neo-conservatives' I have known are very angry about the way they were/are treated by life, and they want to see their suffering spread around for everyone else to experience as they have. That's why they really LIKE the idea of there being big winners and big losers. Of the powerful
crushing the weak. Of the 'quick and the dead', so to speak. They love philosophical/economic Darwinism because it is the truth of life as they have experienced it. The strong have done to them as they pleased, and they had to take it. And now they dream of being in that position of power, so they can inflict that abuse on those 'beneath' them. It's a visceral desire. Few of them see this in themselves. But I see it in them. And although I understand it, I feel very sad for them. Because the abuse they suffered growing up has become them. It's heart-braking, because these folks are my friends. This was not their innate nature. It was a poison inflicted upon them, that they could not expel.
