h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I continue to be dismayed when reading political 'debates' on the 'net. There was something I read about people rejecting political labels such as conservative and liberal and then someone criticised that and said but conservative and liberal are useful labels, telling us much about where people stand. The implication also was that the people who said they rejected the labels were in fact liberal.

This really disappoints me. In America we have right now the two main groups ... but there are so, so, so many different political and cultural positions to take ... how could anyone possibly think that these two labels are sufficient to categorize anyone?

In themselves the terms don't even make sense - and it becomes worse when we try to apply them to the people who espouse them.

I am both conservative and liberal. I am conservative because I believe that over the more than 100 000 years that Homo sapiens existed on this planet it has tried an incredible array of living and thinking strategies, keeping the ones that worked while rejecting the ones that didn't. So when we come to modern times we would have in *every* culture and society a number of cultural things that did work well for keeping those people going. Evolution goes on though so still we are trying new things and what worked in the past doesn't necessarily work for the present and the future.

So I am conservative because I say we should acknowledge our past and recognize the wisdom of our ancestors. We should keep what is good. But that goes for ALL human cultures, not just one! We should preserve language, music, stories and knowledge from the past in all cultures.

But I am also liberal because like I say change is ongoing. We must let go of what doesn't work any more. We still must remember what we tried and what *didn't* work, so that we don't repeat the mistakes but ALSO something that worked in the past might not work any more now, but when the situation changes in the future it might again work - or might work with a slight modification.

Conservatives like to speak of values. But 'love' is a conservative value, isn't it? Humans certainly loved right from the start. 'Justice' is a conservative value ... it goes right back to the foundational philosophies and religious systems of our present-day western culture. Taking care of the poor and needy is a conservative principle ... just about every flourishing human culture did it traditionally ... only now with the current economical belief system is it falling out of favour and we must remember the current 'world economy' is itself a very new evolutionary experiment and may very soon prove to be a quite failed experiment. Honesty is a conservative value, again without it it's hard to see how human civilisation could have emerged. So conservatives who tell lies to discredit their 'enemies' are betraying their own supposed values.

What about liberals? The idea of liberality is generosity - generosity of spirit, acceptance, openness. But I see so many supposed liberals who are as closed-minded and unnaccepting of other people's views as any self-proclaimed conservative. I rarely see 'love' as being a driving principle in 'liberal' talk. Love is by FAR not discredited! Cynicism is not going to save or improve the world! To be liberal is not to be bitter, not to be envious, not to be hateful towards 'conservatives', not to be narrow-minded, not to toe the party line, even if it is a supposedly liberal party line. Want to be liberal? Then ALWAYS look outward, always try and see a bigger picture, always ask, 'but could there be more than this?', be open and receive in your heart as many people, as many ideas as you can - and be loving first and most of all. This, also, is the root of freedom - freedom of the soul.

Well said.