The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #158007   Message #3733681
Posted By: Stu
28-Aug-15 - 05:51 AM
Thread Name: BS: David Cameron is execrable
Subject: RE: BS: David Cameron is execrable
"Sorry, but left wing views are a minority"

Depends who your friends are. I'm lucky in having friends that are scientists, musicians of all types, visual artists and designers and writers (including poets) as good friends and they are overwhelmingly what you might call 'left wing', although I would suggest it's something different.

These people all have one thing in common: they are curious about the world, how and why it works and see the value in people; they also tend to be less short-termist and interest in acquiring wealth and status. Very few of these people (there are always exceptions of course) are what some might consider 'right-wing'. Many are doctors and folk who work with those less advantaged in life and understand human suffering can be avoided by working as a cohesive society.

These folk aren't saints by any stretch, but they seem to form their opinions less by hitching themselves to someone else's ideology and more by considering actual evidence and circumstance.

The difference between 'left' and 'right' appears to me to be something to do with how you view the world in terms of understanding that science and art can reveal fundamental truths that are essentially independent of any ideology (for instance, geologists don't give a shit if you don't believe in schist; it's there whether you do or not). This translates into a deeper questioning of the nature of life and how we can exist with both each other and everything else we share the planet with; compassion arises naturally as a result of understanding our uniqueness and interconnectedness.

The modern 'right' simply doesn't engage with these questions on any level. It's adherents actively avoid ANY deeper attempt to understand anything that counters their own ideology. This simplistic, nihilistic philosophy is now endemic in the political class, a self-centric worldview that has spread from the excesses of our unregulated corporate culture and now essentially runs the world. Tories, Labour, LibDems, they're all part of the problem. Bilderberg anyone?

This is why Corbyn strikes a chord with so many people and has frightened the politicos of Labour; his core arguments that people should come first, society matters and should be inclusive and equitable are an anathema to the corporate shills that run the country: to them, making a profit is all that matters regardless of the consequences. They have abandoned any pretence of upping the social responsibility that comes with employing lots of people and gathering resources in a sustainable way.

Unregulated, greed-is-good capitalism has failed as surely as communism did in Russia, and people are suffering and dying in numbers across the globe because of this failure. Time to rid the world of this absolutist left-right dichotomy and turn to evidence-based policy formation unencumbered by simplistic ideologies and unthinking, intellectually lazy corporate drones. Time for a change.