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Perhaps a “conservative” merely wants stability, and the “progressive” merely wants change.
The complication is when the backward-looking move forward to recreate and the forward-obsessed stall out into regressive stability.
This flipping of values for achievement combats the motivating soul of the movement, forming a contradictory spirit versus action paradox seemingly impossible to rectify.
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The basic premise of rationality is listening to other people’s arguments (or reality’s realness) to develop your reasons. In listening, you must make space for arguments from which to consider alternative realities or models.
Once someone is assured of their rationality to the extent they are intolerant or blind, it is no longer rationality, but belief, which is irrational.
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To believe in rationality (the empirical process of science) is to establish the virtue of logic. This tends to defend against mythical narratives, such as God/Heaven and cult promises of the super-sensory variety.
However, to dedicate yourself to a purpose (a grand common task) from which we can achieve more often requires irrational motivations: to go to the moon is silly. Still, the scientific byproduct has been eminently practical.
Leaving room for inane thick desires is often irrationality, but that does not mean it does not serve a rational purpose retroactively.
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There are moments when you are ill-prepared, relying on who you are to carry you through.
At these moments, you are ill-prepared for attacks: off-balance and responding poorly
A seeming loss in these moments is still a win: to remain whole without harming yourself or others is more inspiring than reactionary flailing.
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The prevailing sentiment has shifted from “faith in man” to “belief and Evil.”
Once our salvation, progress is now just an inevitable disaster. As well, our once-lauded freedoms are toxins we must mitigate with discipline.
As we withdraw into the negative, finding ways to hunker down and control ourselves, sniping at others to do the same, we move backward, or to the side, in a kind of cowardly crab walk into hiding.
The ramifications of our guarded retreat away from “communal trust” or “faith in man” is to vacate an advantageous position, which is quickly claimed by the very things we abhor.
It may seem a slight distinction, but to center disaster as inevitable has dire psychological effects that distort our actions toward self-centered competition and consumption rather than the open collaboration necessary to overcome.
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By stating science as a matter of belief or faith one shifts the empirical to the subjective, opening the indisputable to the option for disagreement.
In wanting to profess commitment people unwittingly democratize (shift into the realm of popularity) and politicize science’s process into its opposite: a platform for affirmative declaration instead of contingent falsification.
Science does not need your belief. Instead, it is actively harmed by the adherent’s myopic misunderstanding, like most religions.
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When recruiting for a cause, organic mutation leads to impossible promises and tainted origins.
Only a few members will align with your long-term familial agenda: finding the appropriate dysfunctions to thrive is a numbers game.
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On a T-shirt, I saw Bart Simpson writing over and over on a school blackboard: “I will not trust what the government tells me.”
In this illustration, the educational institution does not trust the system that enables and supports it, opting to programmatically promote cynicism and rebellion.
Bart has merely traded one authority for the coercive discipline of a tyrant: the pursuit of truth through rationality begins with doubt, which (in this instance) is enforced through shame.
