The Push-Pull Between Liberals & Conservatives ｜ A Critical Compass Clip
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
148.72069
Summary
In this episode, I talk about what it means to be a liberal and a conservative, and how to balance the two, and why it s important to foster a healthy push-pull between the two. I also talk about the role of creativity, and the importance of fostering a healthy sense of innovation.
Transcript
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the fundamental difference between progressives and conservatives and like i you know growing up
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as a young liberal in the city i always thought of you know the the liberals as the you know the
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the hopeful the the ones who were changing the you know wanted to mold a better future and and
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conservatives as like stodgy old men in business suits who you know wanted to you know preserve
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their wealth and not have it you know which you know is a stereotype of maybe like like early
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2000s mid-2000s neocons but um what this person was saying was that actually if you think about it
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a progressive is actually never like by their very own definition of their politics they're never
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actually truly happy with the state of the world they're always wanting to change it and form it
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into something else because it's not sufficient it's not good the way it is it needs to be something
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else whereas a conservative actually likes the current state of you know whatever particular
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area of the world they're in and they want to conserve it because they see value in it so
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that kind of changed my opinion of what what it means to be on either end of the political spectrum
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and i kind of get you know you know if you want to call it conservative that you want to
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preserve certain traditions and institutions that are in fact valuable and effective well if that's
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conservative then that's there isn't necessarily anything stodgy or you know dusty and miserable
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about that that's actually quite positive well i believe uh jordan peterson's written about this a
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little bit and he's talked about it as well but um there's two ways that you can think about it
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is um you can think of it on the political like the social dynamic of there's a constant conversation
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between like conservatism of wanting to preserve the structures that have built everything that we
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have now and this kind of creative reforming energy that wants to think about well how can we change
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this how can we make a different or better world but he also talks about that every liberal should
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strive to build a world worth conserving because if you're always changing and you're always reforming
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and you have no stability like that that's where things kind of fall apart if if there's if you're
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in a constant state of um like change what's the difference between just reform and progress and
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destabilization because that that line gets very tricky at some points and i think even that's on the
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societal level but i think within our minds um you could draw a parallel to we've got established ways
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of thinking you have established ideas you have habits you have things that your brain wants to
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conserve or a way of thinking that you want to conserve and then you have these new ideas this creative
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element of thinking about well what can be done differently and i think there's a push-pull in every
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individual as well as on the societal level and i don't know if we give enough credit to like
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fostering how do you foster a healthy push-pull between these two between these two dynamics