Conservative
1. Natural law
2. Established institutions
3. Liberty over equality
4. Suspicion of power
5. Exceptionalism
6. Individualism
Liberal
1. Positive law
2. Progress
3. Equality over liberty
4. Benevolent government
5. Human Perfectibility
6. Community
As far as I can tell, I don't fit into any of the subcategories implicitly defined in the explanatory notes to these two sets of principles available at the cited Website. (See http://www.conservative-resources.com/definition-of-conservative.html.) It seems to me unnatural to take either position for the ones that seem, on the surface at least, to represent polar dichotomies, such as liberty/equality, individualism/equality, individualism/community, liberty/virtue, etc.
I believe that individualism should not be versus community, but rather in the service of community. We each have our own way of contributing to society. We could also each have our own way of causing society to deteriorate, or of even incrementally destroying it. However, this kind of "freedom" is not ultimately freedom for anyone. It is certainly not virtuous. Freedom is a collective trait by definition, since a single individual on an otherwise unpopulated island is perfectly free to do anything s/he desires without infringing on anyone else's freedom. So in this context freedom becomes an essentially useless and therefore meaningless concept.
This clearly implies that freedom intrinsically entails respect for others and a kind of responsibility we can only define as contained in the meaning of virtue. So freedom and virtue, far from being polar opposites, become symbiotic companions. It is only in a very short-sighted perspective that their relationship becomes adversarial. Morality is just practicality with a wide-ranging and long-term perspective. No other viewpoint will provide any incentive toward moral behavior. Immorality is the exclusive consequence of short-sighted, pinheaded thinking. The more immoral, the more immediately obvious this simple truth becomes.
I also have no quarrel with exceptionalism, but we should have equal RIGHTS to earn whatever exceptional positions we may occupy in life. How wisely we use those rights should determine the level to which we rise as exceptional or not. I believe in competition and free markets, but financial power can distort free markets as efficiently as political power, whether Marxist or whatever forms of political dictatorship. Financial power can grow to extremes that effectively function as economic dictatorship, providing incentives for anti-trust legislation and the outlawing of price fixing and insider trading.
Our individual rise to exceptional status, for those of us so personally fortunate, should not be a license to abuse the power granted by our position to prevent the rise of others who merit the same opportunities we have had. Exceptionalism should never serve as a philosophical excuse for exploiting others, which is to take unfair advantage and thereby violate others' rights as equals under the law, excusing ourselves by pretending that those whom we exploit are somehow less deserving of BASIC RIGHTS, that is, less human than we.
For comparison, the cited Website's principles proposed as underlying conservative and liberal perspectives (http://www.conservative-resources.com/definition-of-conservative.html)) are listed here below with my own synthesis following:
Conservative vs. Liberal
1. Natural law vs. Positive law (i.e., cultural relativism, culturally arbitrary law)
2. Established institutions vs. Progress, reform
3. Liberty over equality vs. Equality over liberty
4. Suspicion of power vs. Assumption of benevolent government
5. Exceptionalism vs. Human Perfectibility
6. Individualism vs. Community
Robert:
1. Natural law (no assumption of morality as arbitrary social convention or mere culturally based legal edict, but rather that there exist moral absolutes upon which social laws can find their basis)
2. Progress within the Bounds of Natural Law, Virtue, and their representations in the U.S. Constitution
3. Balance of Equality and Liberty (virtuous, compassionate liberty)
4. Suspicion of Power
(no assumption of individual or collective beneficence, no mindless loyalty to human leadership)
5. Exceptionalism and Merit by virtue of desiring/inviting/earning/accepting material and spiritual help in the interest of growth toward Human Perfection
(no assumption of individual or collective beneficence)
6. Individualism in compassionate service to community
Taken together, it seems difficult to categorize these last points as either conservative or liberal. Some come from one, others from the other, and some represent a balance of both mediated by virtue as defined by the Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"). It seems that in practice, many of the positions outlined by the assessment of conservative or liberal perspectives posted at the Website cited are untenable if they are left to stand alone. They become distorted in just the ways cautioned against in the preceding paragraphs.
Too many who now subscribe to some of these conservative principles take them both out of context and out of balance. They are only interested in conserving by whatever means necessary, virtuous or not, the positions to which they have attained, whether through their own efforts or through inheritance. Many liberals, especially those considered most radically leftist, support moral liberality to the detriment of a healthy fundamental unit of society, our families. Neither perspective is responsible to society as a whole, or ultimately to the individuals within it.
Too many who now subscribe to some of these conservative principles take them both out of context and out of balance. They are only interested in conserving by whatever means necessary, virtuous or not, the positions to which they have attained, whether through their own efforts or through inheritance. Many liberals, especially those considered most radically leftist, support moral liberality to the detriment of a healthy fundamental unit of society, our families. Neither perspective is responsible to society as a whole, or ultimately to the individuals within it.
However, the modern, popular usage of "conservative" and "liberal" or "right" and "left" in the media do not imply either or any of these perspectives, including my synthesis. "Conservative" has in practice now come to mean those with cold-hearted policies that exploit the "have-nots" to effectively provide continuing welfare for the "haves", using means that run against the grain of the cited Website's principles and my synthesis as well.
Further, it usually connotes war hawks and even those who advocate preemptive war that takes old women, children and other inoocents as "collateral damage" not only in clear violation of international law, but of any international application of the Golden Rule. Neither does the current use of the term connote conserving the environment, clean air and water, natural life and habitats for our children. I have never understood why anyone should consider the common sense to care for our environment, which is after all ultimately an essential component of our collective wealth, to be leftist.
"Liberals" are identified more with those who care about others, as in "bleeding-heart liberals", as if there were something wrong with compassion for others. But why should moral conservatism exclude compassion for others? Why should the religious right call it liberal to implement some form of social compassion for victims of disabilities or other adverse circumstances who may not have the good fortune of recourse to family and friends who happen to care enough and have the means, the freedom, and the time to help them?
Can true morality fail to include survival and essential needs as rights when disabilities and adversities happen to provide no alternatives, rather than indulging the irony of slapping a liberal label on a desire for such social safety nets? Further, this popular definition ironically defines as liberals those who trust government the least rather than assuming its benevolence, even if they only feel that way about the current SYSTEM of government. (We seem to observe, however, that many far left thinkers assume that fixing the system will somehow make government automatically benevolent.)
In modern usage, "conservatives" on the other hand, who supposedly do NOT assume the intrinsic benevolence of ANY system of government in accord with the checks and balances our forefathers created for precisely that reason, currently make much ado over their consequently very ironic blind allegiance to whatever government does (as long as the president isn't black), calling it patriotism and anyone who espouses truly conservative values as unpatriotic if not downright treasonous or at the very least a nutcase. These Tories would have apparently crucified the very founding fathers they claim to practically worship. This irony seems to persist no matter how extremely an administration violates traditional conservative values or subverts our very constitution in the name of "protecting" us from the dangers they themselves project and too often unfortunately create for us.
Equality of rights and opportunity naturally constrains freedom and is closely related to the idea propounded in the Golden Rule, which is in turn either synonymous with or at the very least closely related to the essence of virtue. Life itself, even on a strictly biological level, is based on balance. Skill in almost any worthy endeavor centrally involves a finely honed sense of, and appreciation for balance. Virtue, as defined in terms of respect for equality of rights as clearly implied in the Golden Rule, constrains freedom in ways that optimize it collectively and in the long haul. It seeks balance socially in terms of rights while respecting differences. This is turn allows for the clearly practical idea of inequality in those respects unrelated to rights and opportunity, such as intelligence or other aspects of personal potential, and actual achievement, as in the achievement of scholarly or scientific status or of wealth, political power, etc.
Consequently, if we are wise enough to view the Golden Rule as capturing the essence of virtue and acting therefore as a well-placed fulcrum that provides balance for the rest, we have a philosophical basis for seeking valid criteria in judging how the other concepts should constrain each other to achieve balance. It comprehends the idea of optimized, long-term social freedom balanced for both the individual and collective level. It views equality in terms of rights rather than of practical inequalities in other respects and their unarguable existence, while maintaining virtue as the center of these issues as well as the highest practical incarnation of moral conservatism.
To summarize this on a practical level, political positions such as Marxist socialism destroy the spontaneity of free markets to adapt, but to an equal degree, total laissez-faire capitalism allows the over-concentration of financial power to tyrannically distort free markets in subtler and even more insidious ways. Marxism fails to constrain its concept of equality by not limiting it to that of rights and opportunity, but extending it to equality of wealth, ownership, etc. This mandates forms of central control that again move power into the tyrannical hands of the few as efficiently as laissez-faire capitalism. The extreme of purely laissez-faire capitalism, on the other hand, fails to balance the freedom to exercise financial power with the virtue implicit in the Golden Rule. It ignores equality of rights and opportunity and chokes off virtue, and with it the freedom of the rest of the unfortunate society that falls under its tyranny.
So if virtue is so relatively self-evident as to be summarized simply in the Golden Rule, why has the world become so unbalanced? I believe there is an aspect of human cognitive function that is fundamentally different from and ignored by IQ tests, academic talent, and any other factors closely correlated with these. It is therefore necessary to presage my answer to this question with some preliminary foundational concepts.
This function comprehends a scale from mental illness and criminality to the greatest sages of all time. We know that mental illness and criminality have no significant correlation with intelligence. Nevertheless, as a society we simultaneously ignore that social outliers on the other, positive extreme of that same spectrum likely possess cognitive abilities traditionally associated with wisdom, practical intuition, and profound spiritual insight that also are not necessarily implied by mere intelligence or academic talent and may be no more, or most likely much less commonly experienced than extremely dark criminal impulses. The arrogance of many in the scientific community who are otherwise highly intelligent and talented in their disciplines tends to assume their brand of cognitive ability is the whole story, and so these tend to scoff at those who may not match their specific abilities, but who nevertheless may be extreme positive outliers on this wisdom scale.
Maybe we should view society as a whole as representing a widening polarity of humans on this spectrum of cognitive function, a spectrum essentially and very unfortunately ignored in our culture. Perhaps we're witnessing a social phase transition in which there exist both some of the most enlightened social values the world has witnessed for a very long time if ever, and a manifestation of extreme criminality that is socially and religiously condoned in some segments of world society.
Lest we assume this occurs only in the religious world of Muslims, perhaps we should ask ourselves why some Christians, Jews, and others see it as perfectly alright to destroy old women, children, and other innocent bystanders as "collateral damage" in a fight for dominance in lands that feed our addiction to fossil fuels. This kind of extreme polarity, relative instability, and potential chaos is typical of any kind of phase transition, whether physical or social.
This leads to a possible answer to the question under consideration. Where an individual lies on this wisdom scale likely determines what is obviously and what is not at all self-evidently virtuous to that person. The Golden Rule is not rocket science and takes little intellectual reflection to reach obvious conclusions concerning its long-term viability and social desirability. However, the cognitive function we call wisdom has little if anything to do with intellectual reflection, since intellectually brilliant people can be manifestly ill mentally or extremely cruel and plagued with the worst imaginable criminal impulses. Some of the most celebrated rulers, power brokers, and most technically advanced cultures in all of history, such as the Romans or Mayans, have also constituted some of the worst examples of cruelty and utter inhumanity.
These tyrants and "civilizations" have all manifested the same tendency toward a "them-versus-us" mentality that sees "collateral damage" anywhere except in their own territory as perfectly justifiable if the means favor their domestic sense of comfort and safety. But imagine what the reaction would be if some country, without even invading our territory in any conventional sense, sponsored clandestine operations that blew up some of our relatives, friends, and neighbors to eliminate those whom they consider dangerous to their interests, but happened to be hiding among us. How would we feel even if OUR OWN TROOPS did that in our neighborhood to "protect" us from whomever they perceived as terrorists?
Would we even continue to say, "Support our troops?" Why do we make this very provincial and inhuman distinction? Why do so many among us have a blind spot so intense that it fails to see "them" in anything like the way it sees "us". Why do we even question that this kind of perspective and the resulting foolish behavior create more enemies than they eliminate? Again, this is not rocket science, and it certainly does violate the Golden Rule on an international scale (which seems to make it perfectly alright in some very provincial little minds).
Some spiritual traditions characterize the aforementioned spectrum of cognitive function as a continuum defining a range in states of consciousness. Further, they define spirituality as growth in a positive direction along this continuum. Why not ask ourselves whether the practical ability to behave as the Golden Rule and its simple, intellectually self-evident virtue would indicate is really and truly a simple matter of intellectual acumen or rationality? Might it not be more a matter of one's state of consciousness as defined by its position along this cognitive continuum from abject criminality to exceptional wisdom?
Is this not a more convincing alternative to the superficiality of mere belief systems we cling to dogmatically and more often than not use to differentiate ourselves and justify all kinds of conflict, including war? This aspect of cognitive function has been essentially ignored in our culture except in the very tangential ways in which it has been served up in traditional religious environments with their rites, mythology, and other culture-specific trappings. Have we not simply remembered superficial details rather than the spiritual principles they illustrate, thereby ignoring the essential spiritual insights toward which they were originally intended to lead us?
This dogmatic clinging to superficial cultural trappings, no matter which brand of fundamentalism, religious or secular, emphasizes differences to the detriment of a common appreciation for the deeper spiritual insight intrinsic to advancing positively along this cognitive continuum and providing effective means to do so. Such means especially, are sadly missing, although there is evidence of its increasing emergence in our culture in the form of practices inherited from eastern modes of spiritual practice such as meditation. Meditation was not at all alien to Judaism or Christianity in their earliest forms, but has only become so in more recent times.
Orthodox Christianity, for example, the lineage of which reaches all the way back to the Greek churches directly established by St. Paul, has a clearly more meditative tradition than most of western Christianity, with the exception of a few Roman Catholic saints and mystics. Even these were often initially criticized or even alienated. The Coptic church has also had a strong meditative tradition. Modern Judaism, in its attempts to differentiate itself at all costs from the Christianity that sprang from its roots, has eliminated its own traditional gestures of hands folded in prayer and kneeling, and is much drier and more legalistic in its outlook than some of its older meditative traditions as exemplified in God's exhortation according to King David to "be still and know that I am God".
There is good reason to speculate that Jesus may have been a gnostic Jew. We know for certain that he was a pre-Christian Jew, and that Christianity is currently recognized by most churches as having begun with the Pentecost well after the crucifixion. We also know for certain there were some very meditative traditions in isolated Jewish communities coexisting with the Sanhedrin and the official Judaism of the temple in Jerusalem.
These communities, in contrast with the official Jewish religious establishment, were not obligated to become Roman collaborators. Further, Jewish guerilla warfare against the Roman occupation manifested uniquely in that culture in terms of a crop of Messianic militants, some of whom were very popular and represented a challenge to the Jewish religious establishment as well as to the Romans. Might some or all of these not be remnants of much more vital and spiritually profound beginnings?
We have, as a society, lost our way spiritually, but there are signs that some elements of society are moving in a more positive direction. Do we not see a strong polarity between spiritual extremes along this cognitive spectrum or wisdom scale? Do we not see unmistakable trends toward relatively enlightened social values beyond anything we have previously witnessed while we also see children shooting each other in school and terrorists blowing themselves up to kill others in the name of God and righteousness?
Finally, should we not consider that we may now be witnessing a transition from one phase of existence to another? Boiling water represents a phase transition from a liquid to a gas. Both phases are homogeneous states, but the process of their transition from one to the other is rough and roiling. Perhaps in a few years, we will begin to see a smooth, new, bright future that awaits us if we play it out right.
We don't have to believe in utopia. All we have to believe in is a little common sense embedded in a greater quantum of simple wisdom and the conscious and collective intention to cultivate it with effective means. Would that not be preferable to picking at superficial differences in our cultures and the dogma that comes with fanatical adherence to belief systems, as if such intellectual hair splitting concerning alleged material realities and past physical events truly made any difference in our practical spiritual growth as measured in terms of how wisely we actually behave?
You can find another blog from Robert Wendell (http://rwendell.blogspot.com) titled Religious Fundamentalism that develops some of the ideas presented here regarding religious orientation in more detail.
