Maybe this is old news to the rest of the world

[catsittingstill]

But I've been thinking about what I perceive as the two basic responses to new ideas.  Some people tend to embrace them.  Some people tend to resist them.  And this, it seems to me, is the basic liberal/conservative divide.

It's my perception that over the past couple of centuries the general consensus has been becoming less and less tolerant of violence.  It's my further perception that at any given time, people who tend to embrace new ideas seem to be less tolerant of violence than people who tend to resist new ideas. 

Hence liberals are more likely to be pacifists, less likely to trust violence employed by the military or the police, less likely to accept corporal punishment of children as good and normal (and likely to have a lower tolerance for higher-violence punishments).   Earlier liberals were more likely to fight slavery in part, I think, because they had less tolerance for the violence necessary to enslavement.  And liberals are more likely to oppose the use of torture.

The New York Times has a piece today, written by a retired gynecologist who began practicing while abortion was still a crime.  He saw the deadly aftermath of botched illegal abortions that desperate women risked their lives to get. 

The familiar symbol of illegal abortion is the infamous “coat hanger” — which may be the symbol, but is in no way a myth. In my years in New York, several women arrived with a hanger still in place. Whoever put it in — perhaps the patient herself — found it trapped in the cervix and could not remove it.
                                                                                                    Waldo M. Fielding, M.D. New York Times 3 June 2008

And the self-violence these women suffered in a life-and-death attempt to terminate their unwanted pregnancies make me wonder--is part of my desire to avoid returning to those times rooted in my discomfort with violence?  And is part of the social conservative's general desire to return to those times not just a desire to roll back the massive social changes in the status of women, but also rooted in their greater comfort with violence?

Comments

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

If you're right, then we're all doomed. Our advanced, peaceful civilization is no match for their primitive weapons.

Put another way, it's heartbreakingly easier to destroy something violently than it is to create.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

Aigh. I need to go and bury myself in stuffed animals for a wile. Argh aigh aigggh.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry. My mimmoths are all crowded around the screen trying to make you feel better.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

Well, unpleasant truths do need to be told. This kind of thing can't just get forgotten.

Ai-gyah.

*pets mimmoths and feeds them virtual candy*

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

dont feel bad vixy. if you use a credit card by axident you can always cansel a transakshun.

oh thag wants to say something

shemciwnto ddddd

well what he sed was 'thag[bang] thag thag thag.' but he sed it very emfaticly.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

oooh canndy? thanx[bang]

move over ramp; its for everybuddy.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Well, but my hope is they will, however slowly and reluctantly, be dragged after those of us who embrace new ideas.

Even most conservatives are uncomfortable with slavery now.

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

*nods* unpleasant truths need to not only be told, but *dealt with*. There will be less-than-pleasant people in the world for a long time, and we will need people to do the less-than-pleasant tasks necessary to deal with them.

This ain't a job for everybody (although I do think that as many folks as can deal with the idea should learn to deal with individual unpleasants themselves, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms)... but we do have to have people to do it... and I think those as do should be Very Well Taken Care Of Indeed.

And then the rest of us can sing songs about'em (Dawson's Christian, anyone?).

[billroper]

I don't think it's a violence thing, to be honest. I think that for most abortion opponents, the question revolves around "When does human life begin?"

If you believe Roman Catholic teachings, human life begins at the moment of conception (earlier even than implantation). I'm not Catholic myself, but I'm uncomfortable with the idea that human life does not begin until the baby is out of the birth canal (which I understand is only a position that would be held by only some of the pro-choice folks). This is why I have a problem with intact dilation and extraction, a.k.a. partial-birth abortion -- it's simply a procedure which appears to me to be too darned close to infanticide for my taste. (And pretty violent, all things considered.)

And while I understand that there are people who say that I'm not qualified to have an opinion on the subject, because I'm male, I disagree. I'm allowed to have an opinion, because I'm human.

Someone once told Gretchen that she was not allowed to have an opinion on abortion because she wanted kids. Excuse me?

I'm in the muddy middle on abortion. I'd prefer that it wasn't a problem, but it is. And given that, I'd like the number of abortions to be small -- implying effective birth control -- and the timing to be early, because the earlier the abortion is during the pregnancy, the less likely that it is that we've terminated a human life, based on my understanding of what it means to be human.

(Note that I have no problem with abortion in horrible cases such as anencephaly, because I can't define the poor thing as being human since it lacks a functioning human brain.)

Does this make any sense? I'm not trying to change your mind; simply trying to help you understand what motivates your opponents.

[smallship1.livejournal.com]

That certainly has seemed--broadly--to be the way it stacks up from where I sit. Those who post from a standpoint that excuses or condones violence of any kind tend to be those who identify as conservative, and the converse is also true, for the most part.

But there's an interesting point or two here, so if I may I'll ramble for a bit. Feel free to stop reading when it stops making sense. Or before, if you like.

There is nothing intrinsically "new" about the ideas that make up liberalism--they may be new to us, right here and now, because to the best of my knowledge there has never been a time or a place where all the beliefs that are called "liberal" were honoured in the observance, but many of them have been around for some time, and they won't stay new for ever. If liberal ideals were to become old, then those who embraced new ideas would be (from our point of view) conservatives, if you see what I mean.

"There are two kinds of fool. One says, this is old and therefore good. The other says, this is new and therefore better."

It is a mind that thinks around ideas, that sees logical conclusions, empathises with others, and can predict conclusion D from premise A, a mind possessed of a full and active imagination, that is more likely to consider new ideas, judge them good or bad, and embrace or reject them accordingly. A mind that resists new ideas out of hand is not, I think, a mind that does that.

But there's an arrogance trap here that it's necessary to avoid. It would be incorrect to assume that conservatives as a class do not have the equipment or the will to consider new ideas in general. There will be people who do, and people who don't, but I don't think we can claim that most or all of the people who do are in our camp and most or all of the people who don't are in the other. I'd like to, but honesty forbids.

Possibly the key may lie in the newness or oldness of the idea to the particular person at the time it is presented. If you are a person who embraces new ideas, who has been brought up by parents of a profoundly liberal persuasion, you might find the ruthless clarity and simplicity of conservative ideas, when you encounter them, quite refreshing, not to mention easier to live by.

But...the same kind of mind I described above, the imaginative mind, is in my opinion the kind of mind most likely to reject violence. To be able to condone slavery, waterboarding or abortion by coat hanger, one must, I think, be unaware of how it will feel, one must be able not to put oneself into the other person's shoes and imagine their pain, and one must be able to be blind to what the consequences will be. So how do the minds of this kind that find themselves on the other side of the liberal/conservative divide manage it?

Perhaps because a reasoning and imaginative mind that can reject a new or a dubious idea without even considering it has to be a mind under superb control.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this, so I'll leave it there: I hope some of it was at least coherent.

[phillip2637.livejournal.com]

Except for some edge cases, I would expect that violence is not a goal and therefore not a root of the behavior. The greater comfort with violence does give access to a tool for control, which I see as the real goal.

In general, new ideas (and their implementation) tend to take control away from those who previously had it, causing them to fall back on their older tools. (The new idea adopters don't need to; they get their control fix by manipulating "the new thing" or using it to manipulate others.)

Whether this fits a liberal/conservative structure, I don't know. Are labour unions liberal? Ignoring for the moment where they might have learned it, they've often made violence one of their tools for gaining or keeping control.

[mdlbear]

I just realized how terribly young you are.

I didn't notice any hill...

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

I'm 36 and easily squicked.

(37 in July.)

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

Hence liberals are more likely to be pacifists ...

Pacifism is "tolerance of violence," since it offers no path to preventing it on the part of others.

[judifilksign.livejournal.com]

One of my doctor friends told me that due to public controversy, many medical universities are choosing not to even offer the courses that train in abortion procedures unless a class's worth of med students specifically requests them. (That way it never shows up on paper to be criticized by anyone looking.)

Down the road, this will mean fewer qualified practioners for women who may need help like the emergencies cited in the article. It imposes a de facto ban if no one has the knowledge to do it.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I think there's a language thing involved here that, while some people might dismiss as splitting semantic hairs, I think is fundamental to really understanding the question. I argue that the question is not "when does human life begin", it's "when does personhood" begin". I can't disagree that a fertilized human egg is human -- it's certainly not of any other species. I can't disagree that it is alive. But I do not believe that it is a person.

I think that a large fraction of the population has an unquestioned assumption that "human" and "person" are one and the same, and I really wish that we could collectively question the assumption. I'm not demanding that the rest of the world accept my definition of personhood, but I wish they'd think about whether it's the same as 'biologically human'.

[billroper]

For the purpose of the discussion above, you may assume that when I said "human life", I meant what you're calling a "person", modulo possible differences over when to grant that status.

[mdlbear]

61, meaning I may well be older than your parents.
I've been married since you were four years old.

[mdlbear]

Actually, what I meant by that was that I'm old enough to remember those days, and you clearly are not. I remember back-alley abortions. I remember when a couple had to drive across the state line to New York because abortion wasn't legal in Connecticut. I remember when birth-control pills were invented, and how far backward things have come since the sexually-liberated 1960s. I went to high school before sex education. I went to college before co-ed dorms.

There's very little that can shock me anymore, except perhaps realizing just how old I am.

[gfish.livejournal.com]

The problem is, life starting at conception is stupid. Do identical twins share a soul? Do chimeras contain two souls? Not to mention the, what, 50% of conceived eggs that fail to implant properly and just wash away? Obviously all of medical science needs to be focused on ending THAT ongoing holocaust if life starts at conception, forget worrying about abortion. :P

[lola-mccrary.livejournal.com]

How ironic. When I was a sophomore at a Catholic high school in a conservative area they decided that the best way to discourage abortion was to show every student in the school a training film of a clinical abortion IN THEIR RELIGION CLASSES. Even at age 15 in 1972 as a good little Roman Catholic I KNEW that the students would have had the same reactions if they had shown a training film of a tonsillectomy. I felt totally manipulated and very angry. My attitudes about abortion have changed significantly since then (and I'm a good Independent Catholic instead of Roman Catholic now), but the irony is that many of our med students who should see the film I was forced to see aren't allowed to.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I figured that's where you were going with that.

It's not that I hadn't *heard* of back-alley abortions and coat hangers, though I admit I had not heard of women going to the doctor with them still in. It's just ...well, actually that part was it. The reason I don't read horror books or watch horror movies is that I find it REALLY hard to clear images of horrible things happening to bodies from my mind. They just stay in my head on repeat for a really long time, and I have a hard time keeping them *quite* entirely separate from thoughts of my *own* body.

And, well... some images are more horrible than others.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

Hee.

You're not *quite* older than my parents, but you're close. :)

(Mom's 64; Dad's 69.)

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

I remember when birth-control pills were invented, and how far backward things have come since the sexually-liberated 1960s.

This, of course, is the part that scares me most. And is why the more horrible images should still be talked about. If we're moving backwards, then that's where we're headed...

[mdlbear]

I sympathize: I avoid horror, too. Also most comedy, since so much of it is based on putting people in embarrassing situations. The only movie I ever walked out of wasn't horror.