Something about the way “conservatives” think tends to make problems insoluable and issues irresolvable. It has to do with staying boxed in simple assumptions. Asian habits of thought could help such folks. One boxed assumption is, everything is one way or the other; never both. No matter that a coin has three (or more) sides, no coin ever has more than the one side immediately visible to me, or that I want to admit to and let you be able to see. As a conservative, the world is my idea and perception of it. In fact, the world is nothing but what I see and say of it, that’s why I can lie all I want, because if I lie often and loud enough, and have enough help lying, it will turn out to be true. It will even turn out to have been in the scriptures, all along. Heck with science, have faith.
Take the global warming controversy. One side says, mankind’s use of carbon fuels has warmed the biosphere and continues to do so. Another says, the world has really been cooling for ten years. It just couldn’t be that both sides are right, relative to their bases of information, could it? You’d have to be a Taoist, able to think two ways at once! It just wouldn’t make sense to a good con-servative who likes things simple and clear.
Let’s say that solar-system mechanics determines a cycle of warming and cooling quite independent of human activity. Hence, it would seem we may still be in the cooling half of such a cycle. However, that cycle would be occuring within a non-cyclic warming effect from human activity starting over two centuries ago. This requires us to step out of our simple-minded box, form more complex hypotheses and look for the various kinds of evidence that can test them, without jumping to a conclusion we want.
Now, for my part, I’m not much concerned with the complex nigglings of negative argument against human impact on our world in the long run, because as a long-time student of anthropology and human prehistory, I know that the earth is not a machine designed to pamper humanity. So far, we have not chewed hard enough on Mother Nature’s nipples to make her slap us out of her lap, but we are getting toothier by the year. It seems clear to me, simple tact demands we shape up. As for short cycles that repeat without exponential lurching into permanent disbalance, let the conservatives wail to Mama about evidentiary purity. I say, let’s grow up and behave ourselves.
Perhaps you noticed my quotation marks around the word “conservative.” They’re put there to indicate the uncertainty of what “conservative” really means, any more. For that matter, if you listen to “conservatives” much, you won’t be sure what the word “liberal” means any more, either. That’s part of their con-game serving strategy to confuse the country about as much as possible. There’s no better tool for confusing people about anything than false clarity. Look here, “God created the world in seven days” whether it makes any sense for Him to have done it or not. Listen up, “Cut taxes and you gain new jobs and increase government revenue.” Can you hear me now? “Give the richest few everything they want and poverty will disappear like magic?” Or take note of this: “Give me liberty or give me death, but how about both with sudden finality.” And, by all means, “Let me pursue happiness through all my poor, miserable, rotten life.” Didn’t I deserve it for not wanting something really good for everyone else?
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