[Paleopsych] Meme 034: The Coming Reorientation of the Principle Left-Right Political Axis

Mon Oct 18 19:49:10 UTC 2004

I keep wanting to talk about the 21st century issue of pluralism and you 
keep wanting to talk about the 20th century issue of equality.

On 2004-10-18, Steve Hovland opined [message unchanged below]:

> A lot of people would say that opportunity
> is badly distributed as well.  Many good
> jobs are going overseas and the "new"
> jobs are often poor-paying service jobs.
>
> Steve Hovland
> www.stevehovland.net
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Premise Checker [SMTP:checker at panix.com]
> Sent:	Monday, October 18, 2004 12:24 PM
> To:	The new improved paleopsych list
> Cc:	Richard McClintock; Robert Morrison
> Subject:	RE: [Paleopsych] Meme 034: The Coming Reorientation of the
> Principle	Left-Right Political Axis
>
> You're missing my whole point, Steve, and that is that equality-inequality
> is no longer the major left-right political axis. Besides, the
> concentration of income is not as important as the concentration of
> opportunity. But that demands greatly on innate intelligence, in fact more
> and more so. It gets worse as businessmen and (20th) century leftists bawl
> for more low IQ immigrants.
>
> But that's NOT the big issue. Much bigger is pluralism and its largest
> flashpoint: will the state leave the Evangelicals alone? If you are a
> typical secularist or liberal Christian who believes in a Bible full of
> holes rather than the whole Bible, you probably think the issue is whether
> the Evangelicals will leave YOU alone. You probably never think that the
> public schools propagandize secular humanism and will not leave the
> Evangelicals alone. This is because you do not question the merits of
> public education. Libertarians do, since they do not believe in taxes, but
> even they think that, if there are to be schools, they should indoctrinate
> kids in secular humanism.
>
> P.S. I am a devout atheist. I perform the Rite of Insubstantiation five
> times a day and give thanks to no-god when god fails to be conjured.
>
> On 2004-10-18, Steve Hovland opined [message unchanged below]:
>
>> With half of the personal income in the US going to
>> the top 20%, one supposes that distribution of income
>> will be an important cause of polarization.
>>
>> Steve Hovland
>> www.stevehovland.net
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From:	Premise Checker [SMTP:checker at panix.com]
>> Sent:	Monday, October 18, 2004 10:04 AM
>> To:	paleopsych at paleopsych.org; WTA-Politics
>> Subject:	[Paleopsych] Meme 034: The Coming Reorientation of the Principle
> Left-Right Political Axis
>>
>> Meme 034: The Coming Reorientation of the Principle Left-Right Political
>> Axis
>> sent 4.10.18
>>
>> The principal left-right political axis is going to change from central
>> planning vs. free market in the earlier part of the twentieth century and
>> equality vs. inequality in the later part to pluralism vs. universalism
> in
>> the current century. There are several minor axes, to wit, secular vs.
>> sacred, self-expression vs. self-restraint, change vs. tradition,
>> cooperation vs. competition, tender-minded vs. tough-minded, relativism
>> vs. absolutism, and many more, some perhaps subsumed by others. (The left
>> tends to be less interested in virtue and moral education generally than
>> the right, and we should reconceptualize how children should be brought
> up
>> in a world of mass unemployment, how moral education will instill other
>> habits besides those of being a productive member of society. Here's
>> hoping that his next book will address the matter.)
>>
>> There is a general clustering, not at the level of any high theory that
>> reduces political preferences to a single dimension, but a clustering in
>> fact. Left-wingers tend, albeit often quite incompletely, to be on the
>> left side of each axis, not always because they have thought out each
>> opinion, but because their co-left-wing friends also have them.
>> Right-wingers do likewise. For myself, I am a left-wing secularist,
>> moderately to the right as far as self-restraint goes, much to the left
> in
>> favoring change, mixed on cooperation, tough-minded more in rhetoric than
>> in practice, and fairly much an absolutist (evolution limits the feasible
>> *pace of change* quite a bit). For the major axes, I am a
>> twentieth-century rightist for both the free market and inequality.
> What's
>> more important is that I am decidedly a *twenty-first* century leftist in
>> favor of pluralism. Indeed let us hope that there has been so much
>> culture-gene coevolution, even along racial lines, that there will be
>> major *internal* resistance to a universal culture, thus keeping the
> world
>> safe for pluralism.
>>
>> To recapitulate, and I leave it to each one of you to say where you lie
>> on the left-right continuum. Again, we badly need a factor analysis study
>> to group these dimensions and, better still, a grounding in evolutionary
>> psychology, such as Steve Reiss has done with his 16 Basic Desires.
>>
>> Major Axes
>>
>> pluralism vs. universalism (emerging)
>> equality vs. inequality (dying)
>> central planning vs. free market (dead)
>>
>> Minor Axes (several others added)
>>
>> secular vs. sacred
>> international vs. national (left was nationalistic during the first
>> half of the 19th century, though)
>> self-expression vs. self-restraint
>> relativists vs. absolutists in morals
>> tender-minded vs. tough-minded
>>
>> great vs. small concern over the physical environment (each with its own
>> studies to support his view)
>> state vs. individual
>> change vs. tradition
>> centralized state vs. decentralized state
>> dependence vs. self-reliance
>>
>> small vs. great concern over character and virtue
>> small vs. great concern over chastity, divorce, family
>> outs vs. ins
>> cooperation vs. competition
>> regulation vs. freedom
>>
>> labor vs. capital
>> populist vs. elitist
>> rural vs. urban
>> essentialism vs. nominalism
>>
>> [I am sending forth these memes, not because I agree wholeheartedly with
>> all of them, but to impregnate females of both sexes. Ponder them and
>> spread them.]
> _______________________________________________
> paleopsych mailing list
> paleopsych at paleopsych.org
> http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych
> _______________________________________________
> paleopsych mailing list
> paleopsych at paleopsych.org
> http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych
>