My son (12) recently asked me about the difference between the “left” and “right” political parties and I discovered that it’s actually very difficult to explain. I’ll tell you what I told him, so you can decide for yourself.
Initially, the meaning was straightforward. Those politicians who supported the king assembled at his right, and those who opposed his policies (but were considered his loyal opposition) assembled at his left. Basically, the right was the government and the left was the opposition.
Later, the meaning shifted and the “right” was understood as conservative and “left” as reformist or revolutionary, and this is the core of the meaning we have today.
However, when the “left” political option wins the elections and forms the government, and the “right” is the opposition, the situation turns into a complete opposite of the initial meaning, which confuses things greatly, because we can no longer define “left” and “right” in relation to the government policies, but only in relation to the basic philosophy of politics, where the sides differ on the basic concepts of what they are trying to do with the state.
In order to come up with a generalized definition, we first need to see some specific examples and see whether we can come up with a rule that encompasses them. So for instance the leftists will say that there’s injustice in the society because some have more than the others, and those injustices need to be remedied by implementing a progressive social policy, like taxing the rich in order to give social benefits to the poor. Since the basic assumption is that people are equal, the difference in wealth is explained as a result of some sort of a crime – if you have ten equal people and some pool of resources, such as ten loaves of bread, and some end up with more bread than the others, the conclusion is that the inequality of distribution is the result of injustice, where some took more than their fair share while the others ended up empty handed. This is then extended to all spheres of life – if some are more educated than others, it’s because of social injustice. If women do different things than men, it’s because of social injustice. If dogs chase postmen, it’s because of social injustice. You get the picture.
The rightists, on the other hand, don’t think there’s any great social injustice taking place in the world, because they don’t think all men are equal. Some desire knowledge and study, while others prefer to watch football on TV. Some desire success and wealth and work diligently, while others are satisfied with moderate income and a peaceful job without stress. Some follow religion, others are atheists. Some want to raise a family, some care only about advancement of their technical field. Those differences add up and produce different outcomes, which explains the different social conditions without any need of introducing an additional factor such as injustice. The rightists simply don’t view equality as a desirable outcome, since it would erase the basic motivation for advancement – if people knew they’ll always have the same outcome, regardless of how hard they worked or what they invented, would they be motivated to invest so much extra effort? Of course not. Besides, one needs to trust the proven methods. If people did something for centuries with good results, don’t interfere with it. Instead, introduce a level playing field with the same laws applying to everyone, and trust that the outcome will be justice, because inequality of outcomes is just, if it reflects different choices. If women prefer to raise families, they will avoid professions which require complete dedication, and will naturally not be as represented in some fields as men. The outcome reflects the choices, without any need to resort to “oppression” or “injustice”.
In essence, the leftists start with some concept of an ideal society and they perceive the difference between the actual state and their theory as the reality’s problem, and they then want to impose their theory upon reality until they get them to match. Essentially, they are dogmatic idealists. The rightists, on the other hand, start with observing how things are, and then they attempt to understand why things work the way they work. Essentially, they are pragmatists and they think in a way that is quite scientific, because the main difference between dogma and science is that dogma starts with some ideal concept and tries to impose it upon reality, while science starts with the observation of reality and then attempts to form a theoretical model. The idealist sees a hawk eating a rabbit and interprets it as cruelty and violence, and desires a world in which hawks wouldn’t eat rabbits. A scientist sees hawk eating a rabbit and understand that this is simply what hawks do – they cull the rabbits, which both improves the rabbit gene pool, and lessens stress on the habitat. If the rabbits were allowed to reproduce exponentially without the presence of the predators, they would overgraze the habitat and die off, maybe to the point of extinction. So, the scientists would warn against imposing our emotional or ethical views upon nature, because it is much wiser to simply observe and learn, without making judgments, and maybe even revise your own personal ethics based upon observations, instead of sticking blindly to your initial viewpoints.
Essentially, the leftists start with the assumption that they know better, that they are smarter, that what they propose would mean progress, and that anyone who opposes them is primitive, stupid and needs to be either controlled, repressed or killed for the good of the world, because the leftists know better. It doesn’t matter that the leftist ideologies invariably fail and destroy the societies that attempt to implement them: the leftists never change their position, because it is dogmatic, not scientific. A rightist is basically a creature of the free market. If he attempts something and fails, he will conclude that he needs to do something better and different in order to succeed the next time. He observes those who succeeded and attempts to emulate them, and he observes those who failed and tries to learn from their mistakes. Essentially, he observes the reality and learns from it in order to improve his probability of success. The leftist starts with an ideology, and if that ideology fails, he rationalizes it in some way, usually as a conspiracy of the regressive forces of society, which need to be fought and destroyed in order for his theory to work.
So, basically, the leftists are conceited dogmatic idiots, and the result of implementation of their ideas is always some form of anti-evolution, where those with the correct ideological attitude are promoted and the others are repressed, where the successful ones are punished and the unsuccessful or mediocre ones are rewarded, and the result is a society with total lack of motivation, which is then corrected by introducing some persistent threat or danger which serves to mobilize people to work and sacrifice their well-being. That’s why the socialist states are always in a state of war with someone, they always embrace a siege mentality and they fail once the people stop believing in the reality of the threat; that’s why the Soviet Union collapsed almost immediately after the cold war ended and they realized there’s no longer a danger of Americans killing them all. There simply was no reason to tolerate their bad economy if there was no threat of war – why would they? This mechanism is usually poorly understood by people who didn’t live in socialist countries that embraced such siege mentality.
So, essentially, the leftists were repeatedly proven wrong by history, it was experimentally proven that their methods reliably fail, because they remove the primary incentive of progress, which is the difference in outcomes as a function of difference in choices. “There are many kids in your class”, I told my son, “who have different grades. This difference in outcomes is the result of their different choices. Some hang out with other kids all day and play soccer. Some are checking their Facebook account and chatting for ten hours every day. Some, such as yourself, read books, talk to their parents and are engaged in intellectual pursuits. For you, this has an outcome of being great at everything intellectual, but at the cost of being a social outcast and sucking at soccer. You obviously understand why this is the case, and consider the tradeoff worthwhile or you would have changed your behavior in order to adjust. It’s the same way with the adults. Sure, there are additional factors. Some kids have stupid and violent parents who are drunk and/or beat them up. Some are simply too stupid and unmotivated to care about anything. But for the majority, it’s a function of inputs influencing the outputs.”
So, when you see a hawk eating a rabbit, don’t act like a child, crying “poor little bunny rabbit”, but instead try to understand what is actually going on, and why there’s a rabbit in the first place – why the rabbit needs to have great hearing and big ears and why he needs to be fast. Imagine a world with no predators. Essentially, the life on Earth would still be somewhere before Cambrium, consisting of sponges and jellyfish, because there would be nothing to punish evolutionary failures, nothing to punish the bad choices, nothing to reward good choices and evolutionary successes. There would be no reward for having good eyesight and no punishment for being slow and blind. You have hearing, eyesight and all other senses exactly because you need to have them, because there’s a reward for having them and using them to the full extent, and punishment for failing to do so, and the punishment is not eating, not reproducing and in being eaten by a leopard. You have so much brain because you need it, you simply can’t afford not to have it and not to use it. You are weaker and slower than the other animals, and you need to think your way to success. Failing to think results in failing to eat and failing to understand where the leopard will ambush you. Bad choices have bad outcomes.
So, we have an interesting situation here. Initially it looks like the leftists are correct in their diagnosis and attempted treatment of societal ills. There are inequalities, since people are equal this is unjust, injustice needs to be remedied, those who oppose it must be fought.
However, after closer examination, it turns out that they are completely wrong. People are not equal, and they are not supposed to be. Evolution works by producing a certain amount of variety within any species, and this is why we reproduce sexually and not by cloning. The purpose of sexual reproduction is to provide greater variety, which will allow some specimens to survive where the others will fail, simply because some rabbits have bigger ears than others, and some have quicker reflexes than others. On the other hand, some hawks will have better eyesight and speed than others, and will eat when the others will starve. In humans, there will be variation in abilities, variation in motivations and variation in outcomes. Those who have better outcomes will be preferable in sexual selection, and those who have inferior outcomes will have their children die off due to lack of resources, thus closing inferior evolutionary paths forever. Attempting to correct that will have terrible outcomes. Treating all people as equals, as clones, is a terribly stupid and evil thing to do. For instance, if you have someone who is an evil, drunk fucktard who beats up his children regularly, his children are all half-retarded and he has no friends who are willing to help him, the state needs to let him and his children die off. To take resources away from successful people who made better choices, and use those resources to finance the reproduction of losers and incompetent evil fucktards, it’s simply evil, it’s like culling healthy and fast rabbits in order to lessen the competition for the lame, slow rabbits. Soon you will end up with a diseased and inferior rabbit population. Essentially, in order to have evolution and health, you need to have a difference in outcomes, you need to have a reward for good choices and punishment for bad choices, and both reward and punishment need to be quite radical and unambiguous.
So, basically, the difference between the leftists and the rightists is that the entire nature functions according to the rightist principles, and the failed communist states functioned according to the leftist principles. Pick your government accordingly.
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