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Patterns in age, politics, and gender

  
 
Rage
21:20 / 21.11.03
Yesterday I went to the FTAA rally in Miami, and I noticed that- roughly- the majority of direct action anarchists were 14-17 year old females and 18-23 year old males.

It seems like most (chaos) anarchist females are 14-17 and that once they turn 20 they become passive/coffee house socialists or communists. As for males, they stay with the direct action a bit longer. Why? There are different types of anarchists, but let's just assume that we're talking about the "chaos kind" here. I personally believe that leftwing "utopian anarchy" is not anarchy in the first place. So ya, going with my choice of definition, why are female anarchists so much younger than male anarchists, and why are anarchists so damn young in the first place? Do anarchists "grow out" of anarchy when they reach a certain age, or do they just become intellectuals like Chomsky or radical fascists who sit alone in their basements making industrio-political music?

What is the correlation between age, politics, and gender? It seems that once you turn 28 you might start getting into democrat-republican games, but that from 20-27 you're either major liberal or major militant. What's up with that?

Here's another example. It seems like 18-21 is reserved for the green and libertarian party, though these parties are often revisted at 25 and 37. What's up with that?

I consider myself a 20 year old anarcho-fascist, (maybe just to be reactionary: what's the average age for a reactionary?) and I've noticed that very few 20 year old females are anarchists or fascists. What's up with that?

What's going on here? What do politics have to do with age and gender? Why do certain views seem to be more popular amongst certain age groups? Why are female fascists as rare as nearly extinct birds? Why is the phrase "young activists" used 20 times more than the phrase "old activists?" etc. etc. etc.

Yes, I realize that this post is hyper-labelist and generalization-station, thus the nature of politics.
 
 
SMS
22:03 / 21.11.03
I would expect that, for most people, age would bring about more moderation in your politics. It's likely that you start to see other points of view a little more clearly and think that maybe there is a point to what the opposition has to say. Maybe there's a Tory/Republican with integrity out there after all. Maybe government really is necessary for some purposes. Implicit in this reasoning is the idea that the avgerage 40 year old has had more opportunity to get some perspective on things than a 20 year old.

An alternate way of looking at it is that society is going to keep pounding Democrat/Repunblican into your head until you are brainwashed into believing it.

If one gender leans more toward one political philosophy, it's probably because the people promoting that philosophy have done a better job marketing to that gender.

anarcho-fascism is what? No government; just survival of the fittest, anything goes?
 
 
bjacques
11:59 / 22.11.03
Maybe it means everybody has to be anarchist whether they like it or not(?). (generalization) As for the age thing, maybe guys get into anarchy by reading, more or less solo, and are most likely to be exposed to anarchist texts in university or by seeing bands, while girls pick it up more socially, directly through friends? (/generalization). The former is pretty much how I got my leftist politics, after a years-long detour through Ayn Rand-ville, that is. But the anarchist friends came later, not sooner.

Either way, as you get older, time takes its toll in at least two ways. You're working fulltime in your 20s, if not earlier, so there's less time to hang out in your political milieu. That goes triple if you have kids. Secondly, as SMS implied, you start to meet more people and learn about their politics in depth.

Other times, circumstances and people can seriously disillusion you. If you take it badly, you could do a 180 and champion it as fiercely you did your former position. U.S. rightwing pundits David Brooks and David Horowitz have made careers of this, and perhaps Christopher Hitchens is going that way too. Some people think buying a house or having a kid means they have to vote conservative, but that's from a lack of imagination. You should vote according your interests, but not narrowly or exclusively so.

You should often reassess political stances and heroes (or heroines) anyway, as a reality check. Times change. The Socialist Workers Party and the Marxist-Leninism Communist Party have made comebacks after 1989 and the dot.bust, since capitalism has dropped its democratic mask, but their top-down command structure doesn't work in a time of networked intelligence and network speeds. Hats off to the SWP for organizing this week's anti-Bush demo, but Makhno has it over Trotsky for now. OTOH, that Maoists are bloodthirsty thugs has been true at least 50 years and counting. Now if only those anarchists could self-organize...

Republicans are of all ages (I went to school with a lot of Republican young farts in the early 1980s, when I was a right-libertarian young fart), but so are Democrats. I don't see as many Young Republicans, at least not famous ones, as in the 1980s, but maybe I'm not looking.

Unity Mitford was the only female fascist I know of.
 
 
Phex: Dorset Doom
13:46 / 22.11.03
The British BNP has a few female members up for election, though their 'fascist' credentials are debateable.
Glad someone bought this topic up, I've been giving it a lot of thought to it lately.
The anarchist age-gap thing pisses me off. It's something that's crippling anarchism and stopping any serious discussion of it from happening by lumping it in with dumb adolescent angst. To most people it's no better a political statement than getting a few piercings and acting like Kurt Cobain speaks for us all. Those that keep their beliefs going end up as academic surrogate parents for the next generation of anarchists. This game has remained unmolested for centuries. Why don't parents go to demonstrations? Surely they don't want their kids growing up in a world where they could be drafted into a war they have nothing to do with, or where they can work hard for their entire lives only to have their savings deleted by random fluctations of the stock markets.
Instead, the Anarchist 'scene' exists as a dating service for 18-23 year old guys to fingerbang 14-17 year old girls and, worse, as a handy reminder to people who would otherwise benefit from a change in the way the world works that there's nothing outside of the conservative/labour system.

(And I'd like a definition of 'anarcho-fascist' too, seems a little contradictory to me.)
 
 
Baz Auckland
15:52 / 22.11.03
I remember seeing an interview with a 'former-good-folk-group-turned-to-bad-pop-band' called Spirit of the West. Their earlier albums had a lot of left-politics in them, and the interviewer asked why that element was gone in their music now. They said that ever since they had kids and houses, they were conservative and have considered buying guns. They also said that there's a saying:

"If you're young and not a socialist, you have no heart,
If you're old and a socialist, you have no brain."

Bastards. Age should mean you're more open minded, able to change your political leaningss, and able to see both sides of an issue... not more set in your ways. Which seems to happen, alas.

Maybe anarchism's appeal to 'young folks' is the idealism of it all? When you're older you resort to party politics as it seems more realist as a "that the way the world works" kind of thing.

...as an aside, I hate people who use "that's the way the world is" as an excuse for nastiness, political or otherwise....
 
 
Tryphena Absent
16:18 / 22.11.03
As far as I can gather protests in the States are far more violent than they are in the UK. The poll tax riots in the 80s taught the police to try and stay as calm as possible because frankly once you get a crowd violent it costs a lot of money to replace what they destroy.

As for anarchy. I can't really comment as I've never believed in it. My politics have always been at the same kind of level, they certainly haven't changed much since I was 16. I don't like anarchy because I quite like the idea of society. I don't think society works atm but imo its absence wouldn't either. I like running water thus I place myself somewhere between socialism and communism with a sprinkling of consumer.

When I'm 61 I aim to be only as politically active as the lady who hung on to the gates of Buckingham Palace for two hours on Tuesday night.
 
 
SMS
16:18 / 22.11.03
Age should mean you're more open minded, able to change your political leaningss, and able to see both sides of an issue... not more set in your ways.

Age should mean you've heard most of the main arguments already, and, as such, are less susceptible to changing your opinion on the matter. This isn't closed-mindedness.
 
 
No star here laces
03:50 / 23.11.03
I think there are two reasons people get into anarchism as a philosophy.

1) Because they feel alienated and want to choose the most extreme anti-authoritarian stance they can find

2) Because they are essentially humanists who believe that people should be nice to each other

So as for "teenagers messing up discussion of anarchism", Phex, you have to face facts - that is a reason people get into it, and their understanding of the philosophical tradition of anarchism probably doesn't extend much further than 1977. There's nothing wrong with that, but it should be taken in the spirit its intended - its chaotic lashing out, not reasoned debate, so there's no reason to try to turn it into something that should be 'taken seriously'.

I think people that come into anarchism from a humanist perspective are always going to get disillusioned as they get older. One of the things about getting older is that you actually get to experience the process of change and see what it actually entails. People begin to realise that while anarchism may be the most beautiful and self-consistent political idea out there, the process of actually making it happen would be utterly horrific.
 
 
Phex: Dorset Doom
12:30 / 23.11.03
Agreed on point two Jefe, less sure on point one. Just speaking from personal experience here, I don't feel alienated from anything (okay, so I'm above the mentioned age brackets and I'm sure that 99% of the 15-21 year old anarchists are woe-is-me Cobainites lashing out at a society that doesn't recognise their right to have their heads firmly inserted into their rectums) Anarchism, to me, is just a tune-up operation, removing parts that don't work too well and replacing them with others. Admittedly it's a more radical and experimental mechanical operation than slipping a few millimeters right or left at four-year electoral intervals, but that's exactly why we need to get everybody talking about the damn thing. And if we reach the conclusion that it's impossible, then so be it. With the anarcho-age-gap that exists today this won't happen; the anarchists are in their little circle-jerk club and won't let the Man change their opinions even if said 'Man' turns out to be right, the statists won't accept anything told to them by teenagers.
 
 
illmatic
14:48 / 24.11.03
Interesting. I've just finished reading a book of interviews with British anarchist Colin Ward and he's in his late seventies/early eighties. He's stuck to his guns through his whole life, for which I have only admiration. I entirely agree with Jefe's point above about anarchism being something very different from wearing black and smashing McDonalds windows - Ward's main influence is Kropotkin - and writers like him, Bakuinin (sic) and others are all part of the venerable traditon of European leftism and dissent, rather than less venerable traditon of drinking Special Brew and throwing breeze blocks at Police vans.

It is interesting that these ideas don't exist anywhere outside of their little ghetto , and sad also - the reason for this isn't that they are inherently flawed, but rather that people asssume they know what it's all about, and therefore dismiss the ideas concerned rather than these ideas seriously. We can see a lot of these reactions in this thread for instance - Take Trypeha's pont about that anarchism equalls the absence of society. If anything, anarchism is the opposite - it highlights and puts faith (some would say too much faith) in our tendencies towards sociablilty and mutual aid. It was Thatcher who didn't believe in society, IIRC. And if that happens somewhere supposedly "subcultural", how much more so in mainstream discourse?

Ward's work is interesting because he doesn't believe a completely anarchist society is desirable or even possible. Rather, he looks at increasing the space for anarchist action within society - with an "anarchist action" being anything that moves us away from hiearchy and centralised power. What I like about his work is he provides very concrete and practical examples of this - workers control in the workplace (a number of examples of working collectives are given throughout his books), dweller control and squatting in regard to housing. Anyway, off-topic, but I was just trying to make the point that not all anarchism is 17 year olds with father/authority issues.
 
 
levity
12:28 / 25.11.03
As I see it, the problem with relying on "natural human instincts toward sociability and mutual aid" as a foundation of social stability is that those instincts are just as "naturally" limited. Each person only has so much time & attention with which to form bonds with the people around him. Look at 'pre-historic' tribalism--or for that matter, working-class families of several generations--you'll see intense familial bonds & reciprocity within the threshold of "my people", and (sometimes violent) xenophobia beyond it.

"Anarchist action within society" sounds like a good way to go: rather than attempting the ridiculous challenge of creating a complete replacement for our society, work within it to correct its flaws where you can.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
13:07 / 25.11.03
Take Trypeha's pont about that anarchism equalls the absence of society. If anything, anarchism is the opposite - it highlights and puts faith (some would say too much faith) in our tendencies towards sociablilty and mutual aid. It was Thatcher who didn't believe in society, IIRC

Well that rather depends on the definition of society. I mean a group of people distinguished from other groups by shared institutions/common culture. I don't believe that it's possible without governance, Thatcher certainly governed a society of people, many of whom were at odds with one another but they were all in the same society. Her words were simply soundbites. The problem with Anarchy is the disagreements between people who live in the same society... Thatcher got voted in after all. Anarchy is the absence of society insofar as it is the absence of a government to create that society.

- workers control in the workplace (a number of examples of working collectives are given throughout his books), dweller control and squatting in regard to housing

The thing about these example of Anarchist action is that they're the types of things that any left winger might lean towards. Workers control in the workplace can be placed as a communist ideal, destruction of hierachy certainly is. Squatting is pretty anarchisty. I don't know that I could believe in something without actually approving of its aim. I couldn't be an Anarchist without believing in an Anarchist state and I can't. I think the notion is dysfunctional.
 
 
illmatic
14:14 / 25.11.03
Anarchy is the absence of society insofar as it is the absence of a government to create that society.

Fair enough. I suppose a lof af anarchists would go from here to argue that such a society is possible, or that governance could be broken down into smaller units with mutual support and trade and so on(federalism). I don't know enough about the later concept to start arguing the toss one way or another, and I don't really want to go down that route as you start dreaming up all kinds of Anarcotopia's which isn't really that productive. I would question though, whether it is productive for the State to have the huge concentration of power that it has. Does this benefit it's citizens or work against them? Both, in practice, I suppose. Is it possible to conceive of a unifying structure, or structures, that doesn't weld that level of power and authority ... woops, there I go, sliding away to Anarcotopia, it's easily done...

With the examples I gave, while they might be the territory of the Leftist etc. but an anarchist take on them would be them too specifically reject any tendencies that led to centralistion of power and control. I don't think the opposition of hiearchy is a leftist trait, as it pretty much rests on strong State control. Do I sound like Leap? Worrying, this anarchism lark...

For me personally, the issue is whether a given action improves peoples lives and circumstances, whether it's coming form a Leftist, Rightist, whateverist type of agenda. The issue should be the effects said action has, not merely the advancment of my ideology. I do think though, that Anarchist ideas provide a very good critque of the way in which society operates.

I suppose a key issue is whether you feel that our activities are best organised through mutual co-operation or through hierachal power structures. Given the complexity of modern society, I might tend toward the latter myself, though I like anarcho writng as it emphasis parts of the former that we forget. I also feel that this kind of thinking as it offers interesting and different ways of organsing and acting within society, rather than the replacemnt of society, as I said above.
 
 
illmatic
14:31 / 25.11.03
ps. If anyone can provide me with a clearer picture of Federalist ideas, links or whatever, please fire away.
 
 
illmatic
14:39 / 25.11.03
Pretty solid anarchist library at the unfortunately-named-when-you-put-in-a-search-engine Spunk Library
 
 
mcd
19:40 / 25.11.03
Illmatic, I dig what you're saying. I think the word "anarchy" gets ill-defined (heh) all over the place, all the time. In fact, I think of anarchy and chaos as opposites. As far as I understand it, anarchy is a very calculated ethos. I love reading about anarchy, too, the way I love reading about world religions. It's an interesting worldview, although not a terribly effective one.

I think politics gets tempered with age due to a shift in priorities; I know it's happened with me for a variety of reasons. One, I fell in love and married a woman who has a lot of different opinions from me, we balance each other out. Two, I've come to the conclusion over time that there is not one correct path, so it has tempered my desire to 'fight.' (I used to be sure I was right! Now not only am I uncertain, I don't really care about being right as long as I'm a decent person). Three, I want to have kids and buy a house for my kids to live in, my goals reflect those two things, so my resources (time, energy, money) are best used elsewhere.
 
 
No star here laces
04:47 / 26.11.03
I don't know that I could believe in something without actually approving of its aim.

Really?

I know exactly where you're coming from there - I always used to get hugely pissed off with politics because there wasn't any "plan".

But I think now I'd take the opposite view. It's the "aim" that's the dangerous part in politics, because that's what starts people down the road to letting the ends justify the means.

I almost wish that more political philosophy was about principles rather than aims. To me its about some sort of 'honour' I guess. I'd like to see governments behaving honourably, rather than striving towards some sort of goal.

I mean, actually, who really gives two shits if the government are striving towards "economic growth" or "better education" this year. What we all actually want is for them to a) tell the truth b) not fuck with people and c) do their best to do what's best for everyone.

I like what you're saying about Ward, Illmatic, but I'm not sure you even need the "anarchist" bit in the "anarchist action in society". It's one of those labels that is counter-productive I think. It's really just about devolution/decentralisation, isn't it?
 
 
illmatic
09:44 / 26.11.03
Laces: I suppose so. On one level, it is worth rejecting the “A” word because every time it’s mentioned people assume you’re angling for the complete destruction of civilisation. (Which some anarchists are arguing for actually – anarchist opinion ranges from indviualism through collectivist-federalist ideas to completely barmy we-took-a-wrong-turn-when-we-came-out-the-trees stuff. Check out some of John Zerzan’s stuff if you get the chance, it’s completely mad, and not in a good way). On the other hand it might be worth keeping, as what seems specific to anarchist thinking is the questioning of imposed authority as a principle– I think if you can do this without being all stroppy adolescent get-out-of-my-room, it can generate some interesting perspectives. Though to what degree, this has any practical bearing on things, I don’t know. Might have a flick through a few books and get back to you. Be interested in hearing anyone else has to say on this topic.
 
 
Tryphena Absent
12:11 / 26.11.03
Well I don't mean specific aims like we must nationalise the trains in England. Really I mean I need a big idea behind my politics, like we aim to govern in this kind of way rather than that kind of way or we will try to listen to the population or we will try our very best not to commit human rights violations. I pretty much agree with you when you say I'd like to see governments behaving honourably, rather than striving towards some sort of goal but there's a problem there that I can't quite get a handle on. I'll think about it.
 
 
diz
20:13 / 26.11.03
(Not diz, actually his GF)

It upsets me that people see the primary reason to become more conservative with age as being either you learned more and realized you were wrong or gave up. It seems to me the primary reason is that you have more to loose. As you get older you generally have children, you own a home, you have a higher paying job, etc. The risks of radical socail change are just more costly.
 
 
Linus Dunce
22:51 / 26.11.03
diz's GF -- that may be true for some, but this old bastard didn't sell out and I think the same is true for a lot of other OBs.

For example, when I was younger, I would have agreed that the recent Gulf War was just about oil. In fact, I probably did think that about Gulf War Part I. (BTW, I remember going to bed with the radio on the first day of conflict, just in case the four-minute warning came. This was before the collapse of the Soviet Union you understand, which also had an interest in the Middle East and was armed to the teeth. Ah, the carefree days of my youth ...)

Now I'm an old bastard, I'd probably say the Gulf War was about enforcing stability in the Middle East ... to ensure the free flow of oil. I don't know, I woke up one morning and realised that, without oil, there would be no food in the shops, no way to get to work, no power for my computer, no machinery to build houses or make clothes, no light after the sun went down, no nothing. It'd be just me, a baseball bat, whatever food I'd happen to have in the cellar and crowds of hungry people wandering the streets outside. So, yeah, let's roll. It's them or me, whether the "them" is in the West or in the East. It's a small consolation to me and none to a lot of people, but at least the world is down one murderous bastard of a dictator even if we have others to deal with. War is bad. No shit.

I've been on marches and peace demos. They're empowering and spread a message. The last one was fun, until I got back home and realised I'd spent the whole day pretty much surrounded by middle class, white people. I think we might have made more of an impact had each one of us gone home and read a book on fuel technology, economics or world affairs and tried to figure a way out of the mess rather than standing in a crowd bitching about it and expecting someone else to do something.

So no, I've not sold out. Maybe I have learned something, maybe I haven't. I've certainly become less "idealistic." Maybe it's just that as one gets older and mentally more befuddled, it's harder to think of things in black and white terms. I can't really say. But I can say not all old bastards have very much to lose, so it's not that.
 
 
No star here laces
23:54 / 26.11.03
Yeah, dizfactor's gf I back up OB Ignatius on this one.

Apart from anything else we're basically talking about which political system people endorse not which one they are literally fighting for. I've met plenty of rich communists, smug in the knowledge that they will never actually have to give up life's little luxuries for the revolution.

I think it's got more to do with a little switch called either "context" or "complexity" which gets flicked after a few years of trying to make actual stuff happen in the real world. The switch is that you realise that things actually don't reduce to the core principle in every case.

As Ignatius says with his Gulf War example. The 17-year-old anarchist answer is: the war is about oil. Oil destroys the environment and shores up the corrupt imperialist US government. Therefore the war is wrong.

As he explains above, it's a bit more complex than that.

Once you admit the complexity of a situation, it's a bit harder to propound a simple answer to fix everything for ever.
 
 
Disco is My Class War
02:45 / 28.11.03
I am feeling very hungover and narky today, and would like to take IgJ up on this facile assumption about oil and GWII. Except it's off-topic.

There are some particular reasons for people to begin conservatising when they start 'growing up' that IMO have a lot to do with capital and wage labour. Students have lots of time on their hands. They have more time to think. Workers don't: the older you get, the more responsibilities you take one -- children, partners, looking after your parents, pets, houses etc. I am of the opinion that pretty much everyone thinks the world and capitalism (or what they experience of it, personally, in the case of some who don't know much about the world) is completely fucked. But people have to work to survive, they're told that they'll be rewarded for working. Part of the trade-off, when you sell your labour, is that you give up the possibility of using your own time to resist capitalism. Part of the trade-off is selling your 'thinking time', your brainpower. This is the meaning of 'alienated labour'.

I have about as much respect for anarchists as most of the folk on this thread, but the analysis so far has been woefully individualistic. Me, I'm completely against the state and think that it would be entirely possible to have 'society' (lots of them) without the kind of government we have. I do know that it's unlikely for this to ever be a historical universal -- so I put my energy behind creating moments in time/space that are stateless and sovereign-less. Maybe a squatted party, maybe a graffiti run, maybe helping people to escape from the camps, maybe a conversation with a friend, maybe fucking. Also, I don't think that a unitary form of 'society' exists anywhere now: democracy is not universal even in the UK -- likewise Australia. Capitalism is different in each place it becomes engaged. Everywhere, national 'unity' is a fantasy, a figment of the imagination, and if you don't know that then you're not looking hard enough.
 
 
No star here laces
03:01 / 28.11.03
Disco - I think there's a difference between acknowledging capitalism is fucked and thinking that there is a solution.

I don't think people stop thinking that the current system is fucked as they age, but they do stop thinking that there is a solution to the fucked-ness or that trying to change things on a grand scale is a worthwhile goal.

It's very different.

I think it's very dangerous to get into thinking that political conservatism is only ever about selfish desire to hang on to material possessions. I think that a lot of the time its motivated by the belief that drastic upheavals are bad.
 
 
Secularius
18:13 / 29.11.03
How can you consider yourself an "anarcho-fascist"? What the hell is an "anarcho-fascist"? Fascism is the exact opposite of anarchism. Fascism is a swear-word generally connected with misanthropy and violence, and Benito Mussolini, it's practically a synonym with nazism. The only relation I can see between anarchism and fascism, is that anarchism may be a reaction which has the function to oppose and eliminate fascism and all hints of fascism in state politics.
 
 
SMS
20:46 / 29.11.03
One of the main ideas in fascism is that war is good, because it let's the strongest people get to the top and exploit the weaker people. It's usually done on a national level, but I can see how someone might conceive of it on a personal level. War of each individual against every other. This would certainly be chaotic and so could be called the chaos kind of anarchy or the fascist kind of anarchy. I'm only specularting, though.
 
 
diz
08:57 / 03.01.04
Diz's girlfriend here--sorry for not checking back sooner.

Ignatius_J and Jefe de jefelaces, I think I probably didn't make myself terribly clear. When I said that older people generally have a house/a kid/etc. and it's because of these things that they tend to be more conservative I didn't at all mean to imply that these people had "sold out." What I was trying to say was that there are a lot of events that most people of a certain age group have experienced which change their perspective. I wasn’t necessarily talking about material things. I just mean in general the cost/benefit is different. Not because when you get older you’re less willing to sacrifice, but what you are choosing to sacrifice changes. Not to mention you’re views of the likely benefit will change too. Even if you don’t think you have “things” to loose just the act of existing in a culture for a number of years is something which makes certain types of change a different (greater) risk.

I'm a bit offended by your explanation that those who are older are more likely to be conservative because they better understand the complexity of a situation. I'm young (or at least I think I am, I'm 22) and sure, if you were to ask me what the Gulf War was about I'd say oil, but that doesn't for a second mean I don't think it's more complex than that. Just because someone's young doesn't mean they're stupid, they know (I know) that without the free flow of oil there would be dramatic changes to everyday life (not quite as dramatic as the food and light shortage you mention--but a huge impact.) It's not at all that younger people don't realize these possibilities, it's that they are more willing to take that risk for the perceived benefit. But the risk they take is different than the risk that someone older would take. Younger people take different risks because they really are just that, different risks, not because of some naive simplistic black and white view of the world. I mean, I was against the war, but not because war is wrong or oil is wrong or crap like that, but because I think it's a poor idea to act unilaterally when the world is becoming so increasingly economically interdependent. Just a different view, not one that’s more clear cut.

Oh, also, whether it’s true for either of you individually I do believe as a general rule people are less likely to take risks after they have children. And that is more often than not a consideration for people as they get older.

Also, Jefe de jefelaces, I was talking more about viewpoints that people actively fight for rather than abstractly endorse. Though I don’t really know where the line is there between the two, and the blurring of that line would certainly account for some degrees of perceived conservative views as people get older. (Which those who are older might just see as more pragmatic.)
 
 
Scrambled Password Bogus Email
15:04 / 03.01.04
I do believe as a general rule people are less likely to take risks after they have children

Based on what? A (childless, I presume) presumption? No offence, but until you have your own, you simply don't understand what it means, and how it impacts your life, particularly core values like your propensity to take risks or otherwise...I used to glibly speak for parents everywhere when I wasn't one, and I was soooooo ignorant of the reality of the situation. That's just the way it is.

Also I don't hink Jefe and Ignatius were suggesting that youth implies stupidity...more that it is far easier to be idealistic and unitarian in your outlook when the world hasn't had a chance to have a piece of you and your ideals yet. As crumbliness and grey hair ensue, the old 'some-but-not-all' lack of 'is-ness' that the world is full of registers more and more in your reality map, and you tend to encounter more and more data that doesn't fit your current model. Assimilate or die!

I also wouldn't suggest that this leads to more 'conservative' views at all, at all....More pluralistic, certainly, and probably more 'pragmatic' (ugh) than 'idealistic', but personally I now work harder on improving my self and becoming a more cohesive individual than on improving society or 'the world', which pretty much carries on regardless. Lead by example, and all that. (see : Anti Globalization protesters smoking Marlboro Lights and Golden Virginia rollies in news archives).
 
 
bjacques
12:54 / 04.01.04
As you get older and/or have kids, you don't necessarily have to become more conservative, but you should certainly have taken time to apply some intellectual rigor, taken a few reality checks and chosen your battles more wisely. Leftists aren't the only victims of woolly thinking. If you have kids, a house and a decent salary, are more cops, cameras and rules really protecting them better than a liberal plan would have? Did privatization make trains (UK) and taxis (NL) any cheaper or better? Some areas of the world are overpoliced, socially and economically, while others are underpoliced. There's plenty worth changing without threatening your kids, house and career, unless you're a D.A.R.E. speaker or fossil-fuel industry lobbyist.

As you get older and more settled, you don't have to lose your core beliefs, and whatever you can possibly do, you should, even if it's just 20 bucks to your favorite activist groups. This advice applies to leftists. Conservatives are welcome to sit around and piss and moan about the decline of society and culture, as they've done for at least 2500 years, and should just stay home on election day. >;-D

The second Iraq war was about power. Oil is just a means to it. It's still overreaching. If Bush gets back in, the other countries will act like the Internet--treat the US as a malfunction and route around it.
 
 
bjacques
12:59 / 04.01.04
What I meant in the first paragraph is that you may indeed become conservative about things as you grow older, for instance throwing over magick for something more mainstream to hedge your bets as death approaches. But you don't have to be conservative about *everything else*.
 
  
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