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Post by theropod on Aug 30, 2019 22:25:44 GMT 5
So, since this obviously seeps through in other discussions, and since we have some people with an interest in political discussions here, if you want a place to clarify your political ideology and the reasons for it, you can do so here. Because I want this to remain inoffensive, I feel like we need some rules for this thread: - No hate speech (obvious, forum rule)
- Remain civil and abstain from defamatory remarks and slurs against people, groups or other ideologies
- Try to stick to explaining or justifying your own adherence to your personal views, not what you think is wrong with every other ideology or those adhering to them
In short, this is not the "bash your political opponents"-thread, I think we already have topics where that would fit better (e.g. "things you hate"), it is the "explain your own political views"–thread. I might post mine at some point in the future when I have the time to figure out how best to describe it. |
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Post by creature386 on Aug 30, 2019 22:37:04 GMT 5
From another forum:I could add that I don't believe in free will or retribution and justice should hence center around rehabilitation.
Moreover, I support discourse instead of revolutions so long as the revolution is not targeted towards an authoritarian regime.
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Post by dinosauria101 on Aug 30, 2019 22:38:54 GMT 5
^That's from TSP, isn't it?
As for this thread, I'm undecided on mine.
HOWEVER, I believe different ideologies have their uses at different times
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Post by creature386 on Aug 30, 2019 22:41:30 GMT 5
Yes, it is from TSP.
An ideology generally describes your core values and your outlook on the world, pragmatism comes later (however, pragmatism could be part of your ideology).
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Post by dinosauria101 on Aug 30, 2019 22:45:15 GMT 5
Oxford says:
an approach that assesses the truth of meaning of theories or beliefs in terms of the success of their practical application.
So yes, I guess that applies to me a bit
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Post by creature386 on Aug 30, 2019 22:50:30 GMT 5
If you don't know what pragmatism means (I didn't do so either until I was 17), it is often used as a contrast against an ideology in the political sphere.
Whereas the ideologue always looks at a bigger picture, the pragmatist focuses at the situation at hand. Moreover, the former usually has a more specific set of desires than the latter.
Both have their pros and cons. In the worst case, the pragmatist doesn't know what they want while the ideologue is too inflexible and not willing to adapt to circumstances they did not predict.
Ideally, you should have a mixture between ideology and pragmatism.
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Post by dinosauria101 on Aug 30, 2019 23:02:53 GMT 5
Hmm...yeah that makes more sense.
I guess that applies to me a BIT. Like I said though, not entirely sure on it.
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Post by Infinity Blade on Aug 31, 2019 2:43:40 GMT 5
Logically I'm all for rehabilitation, as creature386 mentioned earlier. But a part of me is unsure of where we draw the line and say "nope, you're beyond help", which may or may not leave us to decide on a criminal's fate (depending on whether or not you advocate capital punishment).
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Post by creature386 on Aug 31, 2019 3:39:28 GMT 5
This might be good subject for another thread (i.e. our death penalty thread), but I do think there are people (read: psychopaths) who just can't be rehabilitated (then again, deterrence doesn't work on them either). For pragmatic reasons, I'm against killing them, but that's more something for the death penalty thread.
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Post by dinosauria101 on Aug 31, 2019 9:13:07 GMT 5
On topic, I wonder what ideologies a psychopath would choose?
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Post by creature386 on Aug 31, 2019 14:17:07 GMT 5
Ironically, either libertarianism (due to how much it glorifies selfishness) or authoritarianism (if the psychopath can realistically attain a position where it would benefit them).
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Post by Grey on Aug 31, 2019 23:52:00 GMT 5
As much as I don't want to go in heated debates here (to be true, I think about writing my ideas), I appreciate this initiative to present ourselves in honesty.
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Post by creature386 on Sept 1, 2019 3:30:12 GMT 5
Well, I don't want to force you into anything, but the thread's rules were writing explicitly to prevent these sort of heated debates here. Think of this thread as the opening speech to a formal debate where you read out your pre-written script while the cross-examination or rebuttal phases take place in other threads.
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Post by theropod on Sept 1, 2019 3:59:43 GMT 5
Yes, I made this so people could share their own ideology in a way that hopefully will be inoffensive enough to not necessitate any debates. But for that to work, I request people respect the rules, then we can also all agree not to have debates in here. Example: I would not be willing to keep silent if someone were to call the entire left wing a bunch of hysterical liars and hypocrites who want to legalize incest and child abuse and destroy our society. And I also strongly presume Grey would not stay silent if someone were to compare Donald Trump to Hitler. Simply, none of this belongs on this thread–hence the rules. Also as a general rule of thumb; if we can only explain our own ideology in terms of insulting other ideologies, then we are probably not doing a very good job at explaining the actual ideology. So this also serves the interest of clarity. Members can of course also view this as an opening statement for a debate if they are willing to discuss it further elsewhere, or perhaps to help people elsewhere understand better where they are coming from (there are many valid motivations why one might want to make a post here). I simply ask that members avoid knowingly provoking a discussion by making statements that offend some people (especially derogatory ad hominem statements). |
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Post by theropod on Sept 1, 2019 5:16:02 GMT 5
Ok, here we go. I’ve rewritten this a few times and it is hard to spell out everything consistently, so I might have to do some corrections later on.
Unsurprising considering my profession, I primarily come from a background of scientifically informed environmentalism, but more generally I am what is generally referred to as a democratic socialist.
I think humans have certain inalienable rights that even (and especially) the state can never be allowed to deprive them of, and in this regard we must hold states to especially high standards because they have the most power that can potentially be abused, and because abuses of this power are the hardest to escape or combat.
I don’t believe in retributive justice. For criminals, I make only the exception that those who do harm should be obliged to do what they can to repair or repay it, and people who pose a danger to society need to be separated from it for everyone’s safety. I am more concerned about state-sanctioned injustice than about individuals committing crimes, because the former tends to have much wider-reaching implications (if you asked me if I would rather live in North Korea or in Mexico...that is an obvious choice to me, and if you don’t know which one it is, then you haven’t been paying attention).
I think there need to be checks on the power of the state when it comes to excessive use of force from police or military, surveillance or arbitrary restrictions on personal freedoms and civil rights. And I think we need to start being at least as tough on representatives of state power who break the law as on any other criminal, arguably more so because of the responsibility and power they are given (which justify being held to a higher standard than regular people without those powers and responsibilities).
The climate, environmental and biodiversity crisis is the most critical issue of our time in my view, and I do not believe "conservative", incremental changes can solve it, nor that these can somehow be justified as the more "cautious" or safe option, given the incalculable but existential risks a collapse of the natural environments we depend on entails, as opposed to the (very much calculable) economic costs of addressing the issue.
The 1.5°C goal is seeming more and more unrealistic by the day, which means we will likely see catastrophic consequences affecting hundreds of millions around the world within the century, and possibly even more catastrophic cascade reactions beyond our control.
If standing a chance at still making this goal means we have to stop driving cars, stop flying, reduce consumption of non-vital goods, services and energy drastically, change what we eat and the ways we produce it, and transform large sectors of the economy that still rely on fossil fuels, then that has to be done – it is not really debatable if there is even a minor risk of civilizational collapse without these measures. And it is hard to see any realistic way around them, it’s just a question of them becoming harder the longer we wait to implement them. In the interest of fairness and practicality, I think that the most drastic changes have to be made by those who have done the most damage and profited from it the most, which means: mainly the rich, both on a global scale (industrial and post-industrial states) and on a subnational scale (the richest few individuals are responsible for an overwhelmingly large part of the environmental impacts that is almost entirely unnecessary).
My economic views revolve around maximizing the overall well-being within the society and minimizing the number of people that lack access to the basic necessities of sustenance, housing, education and healthcare. The total sum of wealth generated in the world is quite sufficient for everybody to have access to all of these things in sufficient amounts to live a comfortable and dignified existence. The challenge is to fairly distribute it and maintain it. If the global average per capita GDP is considerably higher than what I live on (reasonably comfortably I must say), then there is no excuse for many people to still have no access to food, water of proper housing and medical attention. I am not fundamentally opposed to free-market mechanisms if are effective at improving overall societal well-being, but I have more confidence in an overall economy controlled, or at least tightly regulated, by a democratically elected administration than by large companies controlled by an arbitrary selection of people only beholdant to their personal profit motive. If a business cannot work while also furthering the good of society as a whole, then I do not see a need for that business to exist, even if market forces mean it does.
Where people have disproportionate amounts of wealth, then a large part of that wealth should be redistributed back to those who need it. I think this if fair, firstly because one person’s work cannot be fairly valued at tens, hundreds or even millions of times more than another persons, and secondly because the only way such wealth can even be achieved is by exploiting others in some form, whether by intention or not (e.g. by not valuing their work fairly while overvaluing one’s own).
I think equal access to education regardless of national, cultural, ideological and economic background is a basic prerequisite for a functioning democracy, and lack of it is a main reason for flaws in our current implementations. People need proper education from a young age in order to make informed decisions about their own life and those of others, so if they have that right, they also need to have the right, and the duty, to be sufficiently informed on the world around them and the decisions they are taking.
Generally I think both education and political decisions should be informed by rational thought and the scientific method. There should be no accommodations for fringe-groups’ personal beliefs where those are inconsistent with these principles, especially if they are actively harmful. That means I don’t think public educational institutions should teach religious ideologies (which are almost always irrational), especially if they conflict with values of personal freedom and equality. Nor do I think that public healthcare should finance treatments with no scientific support, like homeopathy or the like. There is no such thing as an "alternatives" to facts, and feelings, beliefs or wishes are no argument in a discussion about them
Socially, I believe in individual freedom, which means people should allowed to do what they want in their personal lifes as long as others aren’t harmed by it. Therefore I think religious and social norms, values and taboos that conflict with such freedoms without a rational (i.e. demonstrably needed for the good of society as a whole) reason deserve no presence in politics, and should generally be discouraged in public life. People absolutely should be allowed to smoke whatever they want, live as whatever gender they want, do whatever they want despite that gender, including to marry and have sex with whichever consenting adult they want, believe in whatever supernatural beings they want and express their opinions and identity in whichever way they want, as long as these don’t interfere with the freedoms of anyone else to do the same. In fact philosophically I have some anarchist leanings, but I cannot realistically reconcile full-blown anarchism with real world issues that I think require a higher degree of societal centralization. As much as I think it is wrong to force individuals to live under inescapable rules they didn't make, it is blatantly obvious that society needs them to function and address or prevent catastrophic consequences. However I would want everyone to be allowed to build their own society as freely as possible if they want to, which is why I believe territorial nation states and their borders are fundamentally inconsistent with human freedom.
People should be free to embrace and protect their own cultures and identities, but not cling to national or cultural identity as an excuse to reject or demean others. People should also be allowed to freely choose where they want to live. It is nobody’s fault or personal achievement to be born in a specific place or to specific parents, and it should therefore not be used as justification to confer greater rights on some people than on others (especially where basic human rights are at stake, such as when fleeing from famine or persecution). From a purely practical perspective, unrestricted movement of people also offers a solution to economic and political issues like inequality, international conflict or problematic age dynamics in the developed world. If resources in some places are not sufficient to support the people living there, which we see (and will see a lot more of as climate change progresses), it is only fair and natural for people there to be allowed to leave for a place where they are.
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