ari_ormstunga (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ari_ormstunga) wrote2022-02-22 11:45 am
ari_ormstunga) wrote2022-02-22 11:45 am
Values and Opinions
I began the morning bopping around a few MSM sites and browsing the comments sections of a few articles, followed by reading the blogs of a few left-wingers I check in on from time to time. Needless to say, I think a lot of what they have to say is bananas, and they think a lot of opinions I hold are wrong, backwards, evil, and whatnot as well.
It seems opinions and values are the primary drivers of political division and polarization in America today. Granted, at times different factions cannot even agree on basic facts, which is a problem I'm not sure how to bridge, if it even can be bridged. Still, most of our problems come down to different values and opinions.
Consider abortion, for example. The political right is of the opinion that life begins at conception, and holds the value that intrauterine life should be protected in the way society should theoretically protect any life. Of course, the old leftist observation that many right-wingers don't tend to care much about said life after the child is born seems to have some weight to me, but that's another kettle of fish entirely.
The political left, on the other hand, is of the opinion that life begins at some later point, and values the right of a mother to terminate her pregnancy should she so desire (in some cases, right up until the baby is born, apparently, but that's a pretty extreme view). The right's observation that it is fairly often impoverished mothers of color who end up aborting their children in clinics strategically placed disproportionately in their neighborhoods is worthy of some consideration in my view, but again, a different kettle of fish.
So, which view is the correct one? Neither. Values and opinions are ultimately personal, and to a lesser extent cultural, but one view isn't inherently right or wrong. Many right-wing Christian folks would say that the leftist view is wrong because God says so; I don't know if that's in the Bible or not but even they theoretically must acknowledge that not everyone accepts what the Bible or religious authorities have to say is factual, even if they themselves believe it is. The left seems to fall back on the authority of our institutions nowadays, but their cult of expert opinion is still mostly just people spouting off opinions (science is an open-ended method of inquiry, not a set of conclusions, and if you claim to have faith in "the Science", you have bought into a belief system just as surely as your fundamentalist foes on the other side of the culture wars).
Since so much of our division comes down to differences of opinion based on values, it may be worth examining what values it has been proven adaptive to emphasize, and which ones it may be useful to try to instill in our broader culture as we enter a new era of resource depletion and the disintegration of the West's imperial dominance. A useful tool for determining what values actually lead to healthy outcomes for humans can be found by examining the findings of our social sciences, an examination I hope to undertake as the rubble from our great step down the slope of the Long Descent settles (provided it does; what can I say, I'm an incurable optimist).
It seems opinions and values are the primary drivers of political division and polarization in America today. Granted, at times different factions cannot even agree on basic facts, which is a problem I'm not sure how to bridge, if it even can be bridged. Still, most of our problems come down to different values and opinions.
Consider abortion, for example. The political right is of the opinion that life begins at conception, and holds the value that intrauterine life should be protected in the way society should theoretically protect any life. Of course, the old leftist observation that many right-wingers don't tend to care much about said life after the child is born seems to have some weight to me, but that's another kettle of fish entirely.
The political left, on the other hand, is of the opinion that life begins at some later point, and values the right of a mother to terminate her pregnancy should she so desire (in some cases, right up until the baby is born, apparently, but that's a pretty extreme view). The right's observation that it is fairly often impoverished mothers of color who end up aborting their children in clinics strategically placed disproportionately in their neighborhoods is worthy of some consideration in my view, but again, a different kettle of fish.
So, which view is the correct one? Neither. Values and opinions are ultimately personal, and to a lesser extent cultural, but one view isn't inherently right or wrong. Many right-wing Christian folks would say that the leftist view is wrong because God says so; I don't know if that's in the Bible or not but even they theoretically must acknowledge that not everyone accepts what the Bible or religious authorities have to say is factual, even if they themselves believe it is. The left seems to fall back on the authority of our institutions nowadays, but their cult of expert opinion is still mostly just people spouting off opinions (science is an open-ended method of inquiry, not a set of conclusions, and if you claim to have faith in "the Science", you have bought into a belief system just as surely as your fundamentalist foes on the other side of the culture wars).
Since so much of our division comes down to differences of opinion based on values, it may be worth examining what values it has been proven adaptive to emphasize, and which ones it may be useful to try to instill in our broader culture as we enter a new era of resource depletion and the disintegration of the West's imperial dominance. A useful tool for determining what values actually lead to healthy outcomes for humans can be found by examining the findings of our social sciences, an examination I hope to undertake as the rubble from our great step down the slope of the Long Descent settles (provided it does; what can I say, I'm an incurable optimist).