In a different thread
@Martin54 said that human nature is conservative. I disagree. Humans are group creatures. Most people want what is best for the group. There are those who are not like that. I could be wrong in my interpretation of Martin’s words. What do we think?
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But I don't think it has to be like that, humanity shows great capacity to expand intellectually and morally given the opportunity.
I agree. But I suspect that we might disagree about what that actually means, and especially where the boundaries of “the group” are drawn.
For one thing, I think that to a large degree “what’s best for the group” is for it to be dominant over any other groups that it may interact with. This can be seen again and again throughout history when different clans, nations, religions, cultures, etc meet. There are two major conflicts going on right now where both sides are very violently trying to do what they believe is best for their group, regardless of (or even by means of) its impact on the other group concerned.
A word like "conservative" only has a use of it means conservative enough to be noteworthy and if some trait is human nature then by that fact it's not noteworthy.
Besides, is the implication that non-conservatives aren't human?
If we are talking about political Conservatism, it clearly does. At the last regional election here the Conservative candidates had their extended families out canvassing in force. Mothers, grannies, aunts, uncles, cousins ...
It seemed almost cult-like.
I used to enjoy stopping them in the street and pointing out the errors and misinformation in their election literature and asking them whether their son/grandson/nephew was aware of that or deliberately telling porkies.
But all that aside, there is something very 'clubby' and group-thinky about the Conservative Party here in the UK combined with a claim to represent wide swathes of the population. So it's not the case that there isn't a perceived 'social' element there.
Equally, there are forms of 'in-crowd-ness' and group-think in all political parties and ideologies too of course. The Labour left has it in spades. The Greens have it in a different kind of way, the Lib Dems in another.
I can see what @Hugal is getting at and agree that people are essentially social and collaborative. We had to be to hunt down mammoths or develop agriculture or build Stonehenge.
The issue isn't whether we are collaborative or collective as a species but how we feel our societies and systems are best organised. That's where conservatism, liberalism, socialism and any other -ism will diverge and differ.
Genghiz Khan was pretty 'social'. Which is why a large proportion of the population of Central Asia is apparently descended from him. He put it about. And also massacred entire populations.
He couldn't have done all that on his own.
But joking aside, I think therebisca social aspect to conservatism. It's just that it's expressed very differently to how it would be in a more collectivist ideology.
Why do you assume that being conservative means being individualistic?
I think most people are naturally conservative, in the sense of wanting tried-and-trusted things rather than some new experiment, and in the sense of being cautious and risk-averse.
Humans are like a swinging pendulum. Sometimes we move forward, other times we fall back.
Take WWII. It started out as a time of fear. Vast devastation in Europe and parts of Asia. But once we gained confidence, we developed new technologies that carried the day. This propelled us into the 50s and 60s. But, then things kind of got beyond themselves, especially when old morals started falling by the wayside (think civil rights, equality of the sexes, gay rights). All of the sudden, there has been an opposite but equal reaction to all the changes. Consevative governments were voted in. A retrenchment happened.
Now, it seems we are at the precipice of change once again, especially here in the US. Will Trump carry the day, or will Biden be reelected? If Biden is reelected, the pendulum will start to swing more to the left. If Trump wins, we will continue to move to the right.
I like what Martin Luther King once said. The Arc of history always moves towards justice,
But it is not on a continuum. There will be ups and downs.
I am optimistic.
Original sermon by Theodore Parker, famously used by MLK Jr
It wasn't new technologies that 'carried the day' in Europe but Hitler's misconceived invasion of Russia and his ending up fighting on two fronts. An Allied invasion from the west and a simultaneous push by Soviet allies from the east.
In the Pacific and South East Asia Japan was gradually worn down until the use of atomic weapons eventually forced their surrender.
As far as post-war governments went, yes there was a swing towards more left-leaning or liberal/progressive administrations but they tended to alternate with more conservative ones.
You seem to be channelling the 'Whig view of history' in a somewhat simplistic way it appears to me.
(Not sure why this came out in such a way but I’ll let it stand.)
Even this is helplessly vague. Surely not everyone is all for change in all areas of life. There may be a few hardcore progressives or reactionaries that carry out their ideals in all they do, but it seems like most people will vary depending on what aspect of life is under consideration and what the boundaries are defined as encompassing.
Where it gets contentious of course, is when the issue that people want to conserve - the status quo, their own group retaining power etc etc - isn't seen as attractive or worthy of conservation by everyone else.
The desire to 'conserve' things isn't in and of itself necessarily incompatible with a collective or collegial or conciliar motivation (you can see where I'm coming from can't you?
So-called 'One Nation Conservatism' back in the day, however patronising, patriarchal or heirarchal it might have been, at least recognised that there ought to be a duty of care that extended beyond sectional interests.
For all my qualms about aspects of the Labour left, 'For the many, not the few' strikes me as a highly worthwhile aspiration. No question.
How we work that out in practice is a moot point. Unregulated capitalism red in tooth and claw clearly is neither just nor even efficient in utilitarian terms - although in relative terms people's well-being has generally improved since the grim days of the Industrial Revolution. It's all relative of course and the need for Food Banks in this day and age is a scandalous indictment on our society.
Anyhow, like other Shipmates I'm not sure the bald assertion, 'People are naturally conservative' makes much sense. It all depends on circumstances.
I think the more important question is how we manage or regulate things to ensure we achieve justice, fairness and equity so far as is humanly possible. It's hard to envisage any other system than the one we've had for generations now. But we have to start somewhere.
Ok. Point taken.
But the post-war years were also years of anxiety - the Cold War, social upheavals and change.
Another of my annoying both/and observations.
The Cold War eventually broke in our favor. I remember the night the Berlin Wall went up, when East German guards began stringing razor wire across the divide in Berlin, the subsequent building of the wall, the time when USSR tanks faced off against American tanks. The many times people were killed trying to cross that no man's land. But I also remember the night when the Germans started breaking down that wall. My kids could not understand why I was crying that night.
Yes, there was social upheaval and that was about the time pendulum started to slow down and began to move the other way. I think in the US, the staw that broke the camel's back as it were, was when the liberal SCOTUS ruled in favor of Equal Marriage regardless of sexual preference.
I would think for Great Britian it probably centered around the European Union---I could be wrong.
Just to take it in a global North context for a moment, one starting point might be to consider 'human nature' as ethically bound: human beings are dependent, rational and animal. Like gorillas and dolphins, we depend on one another, pursue survival and meaningful existence in co-operation with one another. Going right back to Aristotle, human beings move between two self-understandings: this is the human being in itself, as is; or, this is the human being as they should be, this is the potential for being human and evolving, becoming good. The evolving of humanity has to do with co-operating with the common good, what matters for the majority, for other human beings, future generations, the vulnerable, the strangers or outsiders. A goal of maintaining self-sufficient superiority (power over others) is never enough.
So while human beings in this Western context might talk about enlightened self-interest, this goal has ethical limitations. Sometimes groups or movements act against conserving what benefits them, what is historically sanctioned, what works in their favour. An example might be the Society of Friends (Quakers) who break with tradition and popular conservative thinking to become the first religious movement of the 18th century to condemn slavery and refuse to allow their members to own slaves. Quakers were also among the first white (often middle-class) citizens of Britain and the United States to denounce slavery in the American colonies and Europe, and mount campaigns to end the slave trade across the Atlantic. The minority who support social change that is not in their own material interests are the group that may alter notions of human agency and ethical decency.
Privilege, wealth, land ownership, power. Or the NHS?
@MaryLouise. One of the most astounding books I will ever have read is Eric Williams' Capitalism and Slavery, nearly 80 years after publication. I devoured it staying next door to the Goose and Cuckoo, from whence I also went down The Big Pit and wondered why the miners didn't eat the owners. The far more effective minority, acting in pure self interest, are capitalists. Except the majority on the ground in Haiti and Jamaica who rid themselves of their owners and have been paying for it ever since.
In my opinion, from the early days of the Chartists, a choice was made. And that choice was that workers would consent to the existence of capitalists providing there was continuous improvement in worker rights and conditions. The idea of tearing down machines and destroying industrial progress was briefly entertained by workers in the Rebecca Riots but ultimately was never really a mass movement of workers.
Miners, of course, we considered the aristocracy of the British working classes for much of the 19th century. Strikes were frequent, but the aims were almost always to ensure conditions and wages and not to destroy owners.
On a different issue, I was thinking today that one aspect of British human nature which is depressingly frequent is racism and/or anti-Semitism. There's a storm-in-a-teacup Royal conspiracy theory blowing around at the moment, and at root of that is some guff about The Jews. Also see how the things said about Diane Abbot are being swept away.
I wouldn't say Conservatism is racist but. Oh wait I would.
This isn't to dismiss the work of Williams because his revisionist history inspired Frantz Fanon, perhaps the most widely read thinker in the developing world. But this is the problem when we take specific Western historical examples, as I did, to try to illustrate broader principles because the official 'history' itself is disputed by more and more emerging micro-histories, and as more Caribbean thinkers come forward to produce 'own voice' participatory knowledge from the global South (I'm thinking here of Edouard Glissant), those old overarching patriarchal monolithic theories on human nature, dominant groups or empire fall apart or fragment. Decoloniality changes everything.
Where to start ...
@Telford - you may very well believe that but not everyone might share the same views as you do on what should be preserved and conserved. That's why not everyone is conservative.
You might have noticed ...
@Kof - you are thinking of The Luddites in the North of England. They went round smashing looms in the new mills and factories. The Rebecca Riots occurred in Wales and were a protest against toll-booths.
@MaryLouise - neither The Goose and Cuckoo nor Big Pit are in The Brecon Beacons, but you can see the Beacons and Black Mountains very easily from up by there ... just above Blaenafon.
Also, yes, most of us here are citing Western and Northern Hemisphere examples. Why? Because that's wherever are and what we are familiar with. We rely on posters like your good self to bring alternative perspectives.
@Gramps49 - very briefly ... I'd suggest that the UK and Western Europe more generally experienced similar or parallel movements/social changes to the USA. The main differences would be:
- Post-War austerity lasted longer over here and only really lifted in the mid-1950s.
- The creation of the Welfare State here in the UK. Think NHS.
- The end of colonialism as former colonies gained independence, often violently. Think Kenya, Malaysia, Algeria ...
- Increasing US dominance and the decline of Britain and France as superpowers.
All the other social changes you mention, contraception, decriminalisation of homosexuality, the 'sexual revolution' etc etc happened on both sides of the Atlantic.
I believe we are able to investigate other perspectives for ourselves. There is no inherent reason for restricting ourselves to what we are familiar with, other than our inherently conservative nature.
If I had my way the whole of the Usk Valley would be included.
I oughroo knoar, see. I dah knoar for all these playerces. I dah knoar where to they all are. I grew up in the Eastern Valley, like.
Meanwhile, would it be too twee of me to say that whether we are socialist it behoves us to aim for the 'socialism of the heart' that Billy Bragg sang about, rather than the rather brittle, puritanical and doctrinaire tendencies that can bedevil some of those on the Left?
Or if we are more conservative by nature and politics we should aim for the kind of 'compassionate Conservatism' that is often spoken of but rarely practised?
Or, if we are more liberally inclined we should try to steer clear of the smug self-righteousness of those who tell themselves that everyone would be ok if only everyone else were as moderate and balanced as they consider themselves to be?
That's a tall-order for all of us, I submit. Who can discern his errors?
I am most emphatically not Conservative.
Coming back to the topic of this thread, it's no longer really possible to confine debates or concepts to the cultural history of Western Europe because so much has shifted in terms of how imperialism or colonialism have been reframed, and along what that, the older liberal or individualistic definitions of what 'conservative' or 'radical' or 'revolutionary' might mean today and for whom.
This doesn't give us the right to define how any other culture must work, but it cuts both ways. Post colonialism can get very imperial in its ambition to decide everything.
Yes, of course, but many traditional stances or historical narratives or claimed identities are challenged by gender activists, disadvantaged minorities, new migrant communities, and pluralism. No accepted consensus on most issues, older hegemonies displaced and any 'culture' is really the site of interpretive struggle. It's not all bad though it is a divided and fragmented terrain.
I don't know whether these are "challenged by gender activists, disadvantaged minorities, new migrant communities, and pluralism" but I doubt they are to the extent that norms are challenged in Western Europe.
Group think serves the group. Conservatively.
I have only traced my anscestors back as far as the 19th century. None of them were capitalists but they were employed by capitalists. None of them would have had the vote untill after WW1
Your point being?
My Grandad always voted Conservative despite being one of 12, living in a two-up, two-down slum with an earth-privy shared with neighbours 'out the back' and wearing older sisters' cast-offs until he started school when he and his closest sister were given standard-issue clothing 'on the parish' which marked them out as 'paupers'.
Working class Conservatism is a thing.
As is Hampstead Socialism of course.
Rent should be raised by the people on land use, including all private treasure hoarded via it.
It also provides a link to a study in which two hypothetical candidates would appeal to liberals or conservatives. You can access that through a institutional account.
From the conservative POV, that's not a contradiction. I would define conservatism (as a political ideology) thus (trying to be as neutral as possible):
People are not equal--some are innately superior (different brands of conservatism have different accounts of what this superiority consists in and how it arises) and are fit to rule, while others are only fit to be ruled.
The superior people (superior classes of people, in practice if not explicitly in theory) tend to accrue greater power, wealth, status, and privilege. This is natural, reasonable, and just, because they are more deserving and because their superiority enables them to use those advantages more effectively for the benefit of society as a whole.
To maintain a stable, secure, and prosperous society, it is best if all people accept their place in the social hierarchy and dutifully fulfill the roles and responsibilities it entails. This is ultimately for the good of all.
The proper task of government is to protect traditionally established social hierarchies and to enable the superior classes to assert their power for the benefit of the commonwealth. It is particularly important that the government defend traditional hierarchies against uprisings by the envious mob of inferiors who may try to use their greater numbers to seize the power, wealth, status, and privilege of their betters and so overturn the secure and stable social order.
Conservatives genuinely believe (allowing for the virtually unlimited human capacity for self-deception) that preserving traditional power relations is for the good of all. Some of us are skeptical.
This is a valuable point because there's no doubt that splinter factions do prevent effective collective action against a shared threat. One reason (and I'm speaking here about the situation in South Africa) for the lack of success of 'green' or eco-resistance movements is that while progressive and conservative groups agree that environmental catastrophes/climate warming present a major threat and that mining consortiums exploiting the coastline should be stopped, because they have no experience of working together on single-issue activism, nothing happens. While I wouldn't call those not working together for change 'stupid', I do think the inability to form pragmatic alliances is self-defeating and points to the divisive nature in some ways of intersectional groupings.
The volatile role of social media is another problematic factor: while mass protests can be mobilised (and we've seen that in Europe as well as across Africa), the constructive follow-up in terms of legislative change or voting or strike actions doesn't happen because consumers of online social media feel it is enough to get out in the street as a crowd, but that is all that is required. Both conservatives, moderates and progressive groups across South Africa post on countering gender-based violence, they ally across interfaith communities and political parties to attend rallies. And then nothing happens because they won't work together to draft written protests or lobby.
@HarryCH the title of this thread could have been about human nature welcoming innovation and change and it would have been as easy to generalise about why historical groups do fight for social transformation or migrate away from traditional homelands at times.
I keep coming back to the reality that we are all of us, in the West and in the 'developing world,' living through a major global diaspora of shifting populations, involving not just refugees but expatriates. If there is nothing left worth conserving after war, floods or drought, why would communities stay in one place rather than move elsewhere in search of a better life? The reasons behind mass emigration from Europe to the US during the 19th century are self-evident. But then you also have the migrations triggered by the Gold Rush, the dream of making one's fortune on distant gold or diamond fields in the Yukon or the Witwatersrand. Under colonialism, administrators spent their working lives in Asia or West Africa and then retired back in Britain. Later generations of settlers in Africa only returned to Europe (Portugal, France) at independence under duress.
Once established in a new country or continent, these arrivals may choose to ally with conservative or progressive political movements; or they may retain ties to the 'old country' and send money back or return within a generation or two, what we call 'semi-grating' when deracinated or displaced communities keep moving back and forth, or on to new places (Canada, Scandinavia, the Antipodes) offering better employment, subsidised housing or healthcare, less xenophobia. Much of human history has been about travel and embracing the new, taking on new national identities or lifestyles.
“If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals — if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.”
― Ronald Reagan
Not 'Private sufficiency, public luxury: land is the key to the transformation of society' George Monbiot
or, to put it another way,
Public luxury for all or private luxury for some: this is the choice we face
George Monbiot
Jubilate!