I was watching a video by Georgia Dow in which she talked about a study showing how fear drives people to be more conservative. What that reminded me of was the rationalization I keep stumbling upon almost every day lately: “the alternative is worse”.
We are mostly not revolutionaries willing to die for a cause. We just want to live our quiet lives, so we pay the thugs that offer us protection from themselves. The alternative is worse.
I can’t criticise people for trying to survive, but I think it’s important to be honest with ourselves. It’s all bad and the good option is really hard and a scary risk with too many sacrifices.
And let me get personal to drive the point home. Anxiety and depression are just my reality. I’m very isolated and avoid interactions as much as I can. I’m in a bad place and would totally tell you with great conviction that out there somewhere is worse. I also believe it could be amazing, but the chances of me suffering, actually, the certainty, makes me think it’s not worth it even trying.
Anyway. Be kind kind to yourselves, be kind to all the others, but be honest.
And that’s why I think conservatism is kind of ignorant, because life itself is about change and progress, not about stagnating in one place. I’m very progressive though, so I’m more about taking a risk and seeing what results. To me life is about moving forward and ahead and not going backward into the past.
Conservatives don’t want to regress, either, and that’s part of the aversion to change. To the conservative mind, most changes will be bad, and result in regression, not progression. So we advance carefully and cautiously, not in great leaps.