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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices

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From: Brumar89	6/12/2009 9:03:30 PM
	3 Recommendations Read Replies (2) of 1576160

How a liberal became a conservative: I've been mulling this post over for several months. This is something of a departure for me because in over five years of writing online I've almost never hesitated - even for a moment - to take on a fight I believed in with all my heart and soul. But the truth is that I'm tired. I am finding that the longer I spend on the Internet, the more my faith in human decency and common sense are eroded. During most of a largely misspent youth I leaned to the Left politically. The reason for my youthful liberalism can be summed up in a single word: empathy. When I saw another human being in trouble, pain, or need it seemed only natural to offer my help and support. Since the world is full of struggling people - far more than one sympathetic young woman could ever hope to assist - it seemed reasonable to extend my own moral guidelines to government. In my youthful estimation the world would be a far better place if everyone could just agree to pitch in and help those in need. But as I grew older and began to put my principles into practice I noticed a troubling thing. Empathy based decision making rarely produced the results I expected. A year or two of helping friends who seemed to reel from one self-induced contretemps to another raised disturbing doubts in my mind. Empathy as an overarching guide for human behavior was often counterproductive. Not only did it not help; in some cases it seemed to be actively harmful. Over the years I noticed that rescuing friends from serial disasters of their own creation didn't encourage them to make smarter decisions. If anything, my interventions skewed the risk/reward calculation we use to select the best course from a range of alternatives. By stepping in and helping each time friends chose poorly, I made it harder for them to learn from their mistakes. They continued to do predictably self destructive things and then look for someone more responsible to bail them out. Over time I realized I couldn't keep substituting my judgment for theirs. The natural world punishes bad decisions. This natural feedback mechanism helps us distinguish what works from what doesn't. But I was subverting the learning process; unintentionally rewarding bad decisions and encouraging more of the same. With the best of intentions, I had produced the worst of results. And so I became a conservative. I embraced the idea that people make the most efficient and productive choices when they base their decisions on the way the world does work, not the way they wish it would work. I came to believe subjectivity, empathy, and tribalism make extremely poor foundations for building a society or governing one's personal conduct because they elevate subjective feelings over objective experience and morality. I learned to separate my personal feelings and loyalty from notions of right and wrong, responsible and irresponsible. I learned that even though I often chafed at them, rules are not always bad. Centuries of accumulated human experience have resulted in some pretty smart guidelines for getting along with each other and achieving our goals. I learned that sometimes, the best way to help someone you care for is to hold them accountable. ..... villainouscompany.com

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