Hi!

I was trying to be as charitable and universal as I could be- in practice, conservatives (to my knowledge, in the US and UK) may trend towards favoring the individual liberty of those in power.

The theory of their (in as much as I can generalize about an entire part of the political spectrum) framing of the world, I believe, is one of hyperindividualized responsibility. I quite like this video on the subject. think of Margaret Thatcher’s quote about how there is no society.

I think it’s valuable to understand both your opinion of a thing, and how the adherents to that thing see themselves and that cause- for example, your comment makes an excellent point of highlighting the contradiction between individual liberty (expressed as absence of government involvement), and individual liberty (expressed as the ability to live one’s life with dignity).

To a conservative (of the vague, almost indefinable blob I have in mind), the failings of a non-cis, non-het, non-white are entirely due to their personal failings to take advantage of opportunity. If you, say, bring up the fact that this hypothetical person was specifically discriminated against when seeking education and employment, they might insist that their handicap was a product of individualized racism by admissions officers or hiring officers. If you highlight that these adcom officers were following procedure, they might try to pull the string of racist causality all the way back to one, individual person who made a decision to be racist.

No bad systems, just bad people. To a conservative (of my specific blob I have in mind), people are personally responsible for almost everything that happens to them, so systems shouldn’t be changed, we just need to get rid of all the bad people.

There’s an extremely interesting, in my opinion, parallel here between the philosophy of such thought, and who I think it comes from. History, as we were taught it for most of…well, history, was the stories of the nobility. Books were written by, and for, and published by, and for the benefit of, the nobility for most of human history. Taken in this lens, the world is one of individual Caesar’s (and not the legions who fought for him), gentleman scientists (and not their clerks), the unified, individual will of rulers (and not their bureaucratic apparatuses). Art from 13th-19th century Europe was just a rich person’s Instagram.

I think there’s something there- in who benefits the most from conservative policies (those already in power, and would lose power, even if slightly, if the system meaningfully changed), how they likely view themselves (as titans of agency), and what stories they’ve told society through their versions of history, their stories, and the stories meant to cater to them. (How many stories privilege, or focus on, the concerns of royalty and nobles? What do we think happened to books encouraging democracy before they became too numerous to suppress? What do we think happened to the tales of democratic leaders, like Spartacus, who were illiterate?)

I also think it’s worth understanding this mechanism, or philosophy, and how it gets translated to people who have nothing to gain from it, but support it nevertheless. What stories were we told about how the world works, growing up? What myths are expressed as common sense? What unexamined beliefs do we bear in our minds, that were handed to us by those with power and the means to crystallize it?

Fun thoughts!