alt Hacker NewsMy thought is that if someone aligns exactly with X political ideology, they aren’t really thinking for themselves and are just adopting whatever their tribal group believes about X subject. I see this all the time - collections of beliefs that otherwise have nothing to do with each other, but are adopted by the same people because “that’s what X group thinks about it.” This is very rarely a conscious thing.
This becomes even more obvious when you look at how these collections of beliefs have changed over time, which to me just shows how they aren’t based on any fundamental intrinsic personality traits but are trendy and groupthink-based. Ditto for geographic differences.
So I don’t think being a centrist implies one is not tribal, rather that the degree to which your beliefs on a variety of issues align with the “default” of a group implies how tribal you are.
In other words, a politically thoughtful and independent person probably has a basket of opinions that don’t fit into neat left or right, liberal or conservative, etc. categories.
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>In other words, a politically thoughtful and independent person probably has a basket of opinions that don’t fit into neat left or right, liberal or conservative, etc. categories.
That doesn't stop them from voting a straight red or blue ticket every time if that's what they've been indoctrinated to do.
We've all encountered some old man who by all accounts should be a republican. They own a small business, have conservative social views, like their guns, minimize taxes, etc, etc. But they vote a straight blue ticket because that's what they learned to do back in the 1960s. And on the other side is the stereotypical southern white woman who believes in every social thing the democratic party has but still votes red because she was raised in a religious household and came of age during the peak of the right's lean toward peddling to christians.
At the risk of sounding very arrogant, I've found this incredibly obvious even when I was just 18 years old. Decades have passed, plenty of my beliefs have changed, but this one hasn't.
The chance that one "ideology", whether it's liberalism, conservatism, anarchism , fascism or any-ism is always the right answer to every single societal question, is 0. It's comparable to the idea of exactly 1 of the (tens of) thousands of religions being the true one, correct in everything, with all of the others being wrong.
And this extends to politics. Where I'm from, the political landscape is very different from the US, with at least 5+ different parties that support different policies in various ways. At the same time, it's similar - there isn't a single one that approaches things on a case-by-case basis, each of them being ideology-based.
> So I don’t think being a centrist implies one is not tribal, rather that the degree to which your beliefs on a variety of issues align with the “default” of a group implies how tribal you are.
Absolutely, "centrism" is an ideology in itself. This is also why the usage of the word "moderate" in the article and by PG is very unfortunate. That word too comes with a whole lot of baggage, and saying that independent thought leads to one being "moderate" in the way that most people think of that word, is straight up wrong. We need a different word, but I'm not great at coining those. "pragmatic" is the best one I can come up with. I can feel a "pragmatism is an ideology!" coming, but "the ideology of not looking at things from an ideological perspective" is entirely different from anything else. I'm sure the bright minds here can give better words.
> In other words, a politically thoughtful and independent person probably has a basket of opinions that don’t fit into neat left or right, liberal or conservative, etc. categories.
Very much so. And as the article points out, this is unfortunately a very lonely experience, so it's completely logical that most don't opt for this, instead choosing the warmth of a dogmatic community.
You’ve hit the nail on the head. The platforms of political parties are amalgamations of specific interests and agendas, and not necessarily a cohesive world view born of an aligned set of principles. Most (all) political parties have positions that conflict logically, spiritually, or practically. Yes, that includes your preferred party on the right or left.
So anyone who’s views align perfectly with a party are probably just parroting what they’ve heard because no sensible individual would arrive at that set of values naturally on their own; it would - and does - take some serious mental gymnastics to hold these contradictory values in your head.
You don't have to consider yourself part of a tribe. Others will consider you anyway.
You are a man or a woman, young or old, Asian, White, Black, Latino, straight, gay, rich, poor slim, fat, etc.
To be fair, I've rarely seen a group fighting itself more than the progressive left. If tribalism truly exists, it exists mostly on the right.
Maybe one counter indication of tribalism is how often you disagree with your "tribe". I'm fairly left leaning too, but I also find myself disagreeing with a lot of left leaning policies or talking points. Maybe that's a good sign.