In my lifetime, lots of things, from the banal - I used to think sports were totally stupid, but now I appreciate them for what they are and even enjoy watching games sometimes - to the existential (I used to think free will was a thing, now I think it’s just a useful illusion) to the social (I used to think white privilege was a ridiculous idea, now I think it’s self-evident to anyone who’s observant) to the political (I went from being pretty moderate when I was 18 - the only reason I would have voted for Gore instead of Bush was abortion - to very liberal - to a moderate liberal (throwing babies out with bathwater is unwise) with an authoritarian streak (would support Biden instituting price controls and using the military to put everyone that watches Fox News in death...er, happy camps...). I used to think Israel was good, now I think it’s very bad, but that has more to do with them changing than me. I used to be way more judgmental than I am today, seeing my own flaws.
Not going to repeat JVL's three, which are mind-changes I definitely had as well.
1. I changed my mind on abortion. I didn't flip full pro-choice; I just realized that the GOP wasn't really doing anything for the unborn, and that -- however much I think it was a dire mistake for them to do this -- feminism has basically irreversibly incorporated abortion into itself at this point, and it's going to take multiple centuries, even a few decades after the invention of the artificial womb, for them to reconsider. The best thing I can do at this point is vote for progress: social and economic and political transformation that leads us to a more humane world which will eventually view abortion the way we view leeching -- a practice that seems abhorrently unnecessary in the justice of hindsight.
2. Gay marriage was obviously a big one for me too. I grew up a youth groupie and exited college a stereotypical atheist who had "lost my religion". And yeah, it was like flipping a switch: all of a sudden all of the sexual politics I had grown up believing in just stopped making sense. It didn't matter how many of the Catholic Church's "natural law" arguments I'd learned, I just couldn't find them convincing anymore.
3. This one is more recent. If the Trump years have taught me anything, it's two things. One, that it's best for your mental health to just stay out of the daily fray. Don't look at the shit going on on Twitter or Facebook. Don't repost memes. In fact, don't repost ANYTHING. Don't let things get you mad, because that righteous fury lasts all of a day and then it's onto the next thing. I *lived* in all this anger and rage for years, and it didn't do me any good or solve any of the world's problems.
And that's because of the second thing. But first, some background. I came up in the early Obama years with a vicious kind of populist centrism. I wanted term limits! I wanted money out of politics! I wanted Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner executed on the Capitol steps to set an example of what happens to politicians who can't compromise! All of this was childish and dumb. I was frustrated that Obama couldn't bring the change he promised, and I thought it was the fault of "partisanship" and "divisiveness" and elite "betrayal".
Anyways, the second thing. The more frustrated I grew with our system, the more I looked at *the* "systems" that JVL describes, and the more I saw a few fundamental truths. It starts with the observation that the universe, all of existence, is ultimately zero-sum. The Pauli Exclusion principle, for instance, says that matter can't occupy the same space. And it just kind of filters on up from there - one paramecium eats another, one monkey bashes the other over the head for the same banana, because only one can have the banana. That's zero-sum-ness at its core.
And when we look at politics, we also see zero-sum decisions. Only one king can hold a throne at a time. A budget bill can have infinitely many different line items and dollar amounts on it, but at the end of the day, it either passes or it doesn't. Likewise SCOTUS decisions, elections, wars, etc. So much of the world we live in is zero-sum.
But the light at the end of the tunnel is that we can create pockets of positive-sum outcomes. Economic specialization is one: ~<5% of our population can be involved in farming, and feed the other >95%, if only we cooperate. Democracy is another: We can have liberalism, we can have pluralism, by diffusing power rather than concentrating it.
But at the same time, even when our political system tries to diffuse power, it still encodes zero-sum logic up and down. For those who are confused by what "zero-sum" means, just apply the rule of thumb "only one = zero sum". Thus, only one rep per district, only one Senator elected at a time, only one candidate can win ALL electors for a state. You can only vote for one candidate for almost every office on your ballot.
So, the thing I changed my mind on is that we need to rethink pretty much all of this with an eye towards positive-sum-ness. That means "more than one" vote per candidate on your ballot. More than one rep. More than one Senator at a time - or however we want to slice it.
Because the thing is, the relentless zero-sum logic of our system is what has given us an entrenched two-party system that can never get anything right. It's given us polarization, filibuster abuse, Fox News, and a million other plagues. It inherently divides us and sets us against each other, and it was only a matter of time until the Founders' otherwise well-considered scheme for the diffusion of power succumbed to its own structurally-zero-sum dynamics. In this respect, actually, their scheme has acquitted itself far better than most - many democracies fail a lot faster than ours has.
Politics may, like fashion, "never be done". But we can make it a lot healthier and escape some of the pitfalls by consciously designing it to present us with positive-sum choices instead of zero-sum battles.
In my lifetime, lots of things, from the banal - I used to think sports were totally stupid, but now I appreciate them for what they are and even enjoy watching games sometimes - to the existential (I used to think free will was a thing, now I think it’s just a useful illusion) to the social (I used to think white privilege was a ridiculous idea, now I think it’s self-evident to anyone who’s observant) to the political (I went from being pretty moderate when I was 18 - the only reason I would have voted for Gore instead of Bush was abortion - to very liberal - to a moderate liberal (throwing babies out with bathwater is unwise) with an authoritarian streak (would support Biden instituting price controls and using the military to put everyone that watches Fox News in death...er, happy camps...). I used to think Israel was good, now I think it’s very bad, but that has more to do with them changing than me. I used to be way more judgmental than I am today, seeing my own flaws.
I don’t see the comment. The link to the Bulwark goes to a paywall.
Not going to repeat JVL's three, which are mind-changes I definitely had as well.
1. I changed my mind on abortion. I didn't flip full pro-choice; I just realized that the GOP wasn't really doing anything for the unborn, and that -- however much I think it was a dire mistake for them to do this -- feminism has basically irreversibly incorporated abortion into itself at this point, and it's going to take multiple centuries, even a few decades after the invention of the artificial womb, for them to reconsider. The best thing I can do at this point is vote for progress: social and economic and political transformation that leads us to a more humane world which will eventually view abortion the way we view leeching -- a practice that seems abhorrently unnecessary in the justice of hindsight.
2. Gay marriage was obviously a big one for me too. I grew up a youth groupie and exited college a stereotypical atheist who had "lost my religion". And yeah, it was like flipping a switch: all of a sudden all of the sexual politics I had grown up believing in just stopped making sense. It didn't matter how many of the Catholic Church's "natural law" arguments I'd learned, I just couldn't find them convincing anymore.
3. This one is more recent. If the Trump years have taught me anything, it's two things. One, that it's best for your mental health to just stay out of the daily fray. Don't look at the shit going on on Twitter or Facebook. Don't repost memes. In fact, don't repost ANYTHING. Don't let things get you mad, because that righteous fury lasts all of a day and then it's onto the next thing. I *lived* in all this anger and rage for years, and it didn't do me any good or solve any of the world's problems.
And that's because of the second thing. But first, some background. I came up in the early Obama years with a vicious kind of populist centrism. I wanted term limits! I wanted money out of politics! I wanted Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner executed on the Capitol steps to set an example of what happens to politicians who can't compromise! All of this was childish and dumb. I was frustrated that Obama couldn't bring the change he promised, and I thought it was the fault of "partisanship" and "divisiveness" and elite "betrayal".
Anyways, the second thing. The more frustrated I grew with our system, the more I looked at *the* "systems" that JVL describes, and the more I saw a few fundamental truths. It starts with the observation that the universe, all of existence, is ultimately zero-sum. The Pauli Exclusion principle, for instance, says that matter can't occupy the same space. And it just kind of filters on up from there - one paramecium eats another, one monkey bashes the other over the head for the same banana, because only one can have the banana. That's zero-sum-ness at its core.
And when we look at politics, we also see zero-sum decisions. Only one king can hold a throne at a time. A budget bill can have infinitely many different line items and dollar amounts on it, but at the end of the day, it either passes or it doesn't. Likewise SCOTUS decisions, elections, wars, etc. So much of the world we live in is zero-sum.
But the light at the end of the tunnel is that we can create pockets of positive-sum outcomes. Economic specialization is one: ~<5% of our population can be involved in farming, and feed the other >95%, if only we cooperate. Democracy is another: We can have liberalism, we can have pluralism, by diffusing power rather than concentrating it.
But at the same time, even when our political system tries to diffuse power, it still encodes zero-sum logic up and down. For those who are confused by what "zero-sum" means, just apply the rule of thumb "only one = zero sum". Thus, only one rep per district, only one Senator elected at a time, only one candidate can win ALL electors for a state. You can only vote for one candidate for almost every office on your ballot.
So, the thing I changed my mind on is that we need to rethink pretty much all of this with an eye towards positive-sum-ness. That means "more than one" vote per candidate on your ballot. More than one rep. More than one Senator at a time - or however we want to slice it.
Because the thing is, the relentless zero-sum logic of our system is what has given us an entrenched two-party system that can never get anything right. It's given us polarization, filibuster abuse, Fox News, and a million other plagues. It inherently divides us and sets us against each other, and it was only a matter of time until the Founders' otherwise well-considered scheme for the diffusion of power succumbed to its own structurally-zero-sum dynamics. In this respect, actually, their scheme has acquitted itself far better than most - many democracies fail a lot faster than ours has.
Politics may, like fashion, "never be done". But we can make it a lot healthier and escape some of the pitfalls by consciously designing it to present us with positive-sum choices instead of zero-sum battles.
Ah dang. I’ll copy it over when I get home. Cheers!