RE: Who am I? The politics version...
dwinblood,
I think there are a lot of us that fit into the mold you are describing. We have no party that fits our needs. Most of us are socially liberal but economically conservative (which really means that we defend and believe in freedom in both the economic as well as the social sphere.)
I believe that, if life is lived properly, which means studied, the conclusion is that the experience of existence teaches us things. And that's where the construct we call society breaks down. Because, if you have already learned something about reality, it is painful to be forced by the rest of the crowd that haven't learned this thing yet, to go through the painful process of learning it en masse. We are stuck going through economic and societal collapses that otherwise we ourselves would be able to avoid.
The peaceful way to deal with this is withdrawal, the peaceful severing of interactions with other humans once those interactions cease to be mutually beneficial. In this way the system is encouraged to change towards a more healthy balance, and those that cling to an unhealthy practice or perspective eventually are forced by the iron rules of reality to either submit to the rules of reality or cease to exist.
The problem with society is when it becomes rigid, too rigid to allow individuals to change within it, because this process is also the process of blaming those who are attempting to withdraw for the ills of society.
I don't know what the solution is for this intractable problem outside of serial war. When there is room to expand the Libertarian viewpoint has room to exist and thrives. That used to be the West in the US. But once the West became "settled" then it was like putting a lid on the kettle, and the pressure began to build again.
In many ways, society is like a seedpod on a flower. It fills up to bursting, then explodes, and new societies are born from that explosion. Once (if?) we have the technological sophistication to be able to colonize regions of space, I think we will see another burst of freedom. But it will be somewhat painful to get to that point.
You speak a lot of truths in that reply. I believe space could be what you are picturing too. We simply need to survive long enough for that to actually happen. Often our society and goals seem rather suicidal to me.
"We simply need to survive long enough for that to actually happen."
Agreed. I think that the process of being forced to exist by the efforts of our own hands makes us simultaneously brave and humble. Humans that are deprived of this experience tend to remain emotionally juvenile. And I think emotionally juvenile humans tend to fall for magical thinking, whether that involves religion or politics, as I think both tap into the same part of our juvenile brain that is willing to believe in magic.
In many ways humans may be like yeast in beer. We create bureaucracy and convention and urban legends as a side effect of our problem solving brains just like yeast makes alcohol as a byproduct of their metabolism, but as society gets more packed, this side effects start to become toxic to us just like alcohol starts to become toxic to yeast. And, just like yeast eventually become quiescent as the alcohol level reaches a certain level in beer, our offspring are no longer able to develop the way we could before our society became too packed to allow new generations the space and autonomy to mature.
Far too much of this type of thinking... (referring to this image)
That image, in a nutshell, is what politicians offer. But the button is not connected to anything. It's a placebo, whose calming effect stems solely from us watching it get pushed. But meanwhile the real problem gets either ignored or exacerbated.
Unfortunately many of our public institutions have become this way as well. They have all devolved to the equivalent of a scientistic rain dance (no offense intended to native americans by this analogy.) We see them doing something, whether that something is politicians legislating, or central banks adjusting, or doctors prescribing, or attorneys suing, and think that all is well with the world. But meanwhile, the real source of problems fester and expand because their sources, their causes, are never addressed.