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RE: Intolerance is fear of the unknown.
You are absolutely right, and there's plenty of peer-reviewed research to back this up.
Yale University recently did an experiment where they were able to turn conservatives into liberals (temporarily), by making them feel safe and secure.
I don't think it's purely fear of the unknown - it's more so the fear of what harm that the unknown may do to you.
South Park sums it up perfectly:
Be careful with how you interpret that. Sometimes a feeling of safety is a false sense of safety. From a liberal perspective conservatives might be paranoid, but from a conservative standpoint, liberals might be complacent and/or weak. It is incredibly important to have a balance in society, which is probably why we evolved genetic tendencies that lead us to an overall balance of conservative and liberal ideologies.
I agree with everything you say here, however it only serves to reinforce my interpretation of the study, especially since there have been countless studies demonstrating the opposite: if you scare a liberal, you can make them more conservative.
Conservative paranoia and liberal complacency are fairly extreme applications of the two opposing ideologies. The only more extreme application is the belief that the other side is stupid, which is just plain incorrect. Sadly, in the last 15-20 years, these extreme applications have become far more commonplace, among voters and politicians alike.
At the end of the day, liberalism and conservatism are both trying to achieve the same goal: improving our quality of life. Neither are inherently good or evil, right or wrong, intelligent or stupid. The only thing that truly differs between is the point of reference. The essence of liberalism is progress and change, which liberals believe will make the world a better place. The essence of conservatism is exercising caution and protecting what we already have, which conservatives believe will make the world a better place. And so, when either side sees the other side directly counteracting everything that they are trying to achieve, the easiest way to deal with this from an emotional standpoint is to paint them as either stupid or evil.
Since 1900, human population has exploded. It took over a thousand years for the world's human population to grow from 0.5 billion to 1.5 billion. It has taken a hundred years for it to increase another 5-fold, to 7.5 billion. This means that humans are slowly becoming masters of their environment. It's easy now to think of humans as the master race, because that's the world we were born into, but it was only 150 years ago that our quality of life, and general survivability, were quite poor.
Nowadays, with our increased standing in the world, we have far fewer things to be genuinely cautious about, which has seen the rise and rise of liberalism. Liberals are slowly winning. 20 years ago, it was still illegal to be gay in one state of Australia. Now we have legalised gay marriage in every state. In an even more extreme example, Germany has gone from exterminating everyone that didn't fit their idea of a superior Nordic race, to becoming the world's leading light in international aid and goodwill.
Maybe in the future, there will be some kind of apocalypse or something else that drastically affects human quality of life, and conservatism will, by necessity, come to the fore once again. I think the key point is that, on the pyramid of human needs, safety is the second most important level. Once that safety is assured (more or less), then we have the freedom to pursue more fulfilling needs, and that's where liberalism steps in.
Much like @shawndove, I began life with quite conservative values, partly because I had a very fucked up childhood. Over time, as I have had more life experiences, I have become much, much more liberal. But that doesn't mean I don't still have fears. Of course I do. But they generally aren't fears about other people being evil people or trying to harm me or whatever. They generally aren't (although occasionally are) strong enough to limit the choices I make in life. My brother, on the other hand, is conservative as hell. That doesn't mean he's a bad person. He's just had a much narrower range of life experiences than me, despite being 5 years my senior, so his perspective of the world is much more limited and therefore fear-driven.
This ended up being a lot longer than I had originally intended. Hahahaha. I hope you enjoy it!
Fascinating study, thank you! And yes, I agree. It's not the unknown itself that is scary, but what possible negative effects it could have. Just like fear of the dark. We aren't afraid of the darkness itself, but what dangerous things might be hiding there that we can't see.