I’ve come to view the Left-Right division as something akin to an international maritime boundary between nations: artificially-imposed and yet still real in a practical sense… sort of. It’s not like you can put up a fence in the ocean — and the ocean doesn’t care, but we do. So, for all intents and purpose, a fence does exist. In the wake of covid, however, I’ve come to find the distinction between Left and Right increasingly inadequate to diagnose the way power operates.
Leftist figures like Adbusters publisher Kalle Lasn, The Shock Doctrine author Naomi Klein and, of course, Manufacturing Consent progenitor Noam Chomsky were correct, in my view, in identifying elements that operate at a kind of super-structural level beyond the reach of governments. All three were highly influential in the forming of my worldview. So it’s been fascinating — and hugely dismaying — to watch them fail to apply their foundational tenets to the post-2020 landscape.
That’s an essay for another time, but suffice to say: as far as I’m concerned, the modern convergence of governmental overreach, rampant free-market hyper-acceleration, big tech, and the systemization of medicine embodies the most nightmarish excesses of both right-wing and left-wing outlooks vis-a-vis policy that affects our day-to-day existence. And, while I completely understand why people who’ve lived under despotic Communist regimes would argue otherwise, I’ve arrived at the conclusion that both left-wing and right-wing governments get us to the same destination, only at different speeds.
In America, for example, we’ve lived under a kind of temporary illusion of prosperity and sovereignty that was sustained over a few generations — roughly 80 years or so, depending on how you count. Anyone who’s had to stand in breadlines would no doubt recoil at my contention that this has been an illusion. After all, I’m afforded the ability to sit on my ass and type these thoughts out on a laptop precisely because of the conditions that both American-style free-market enterprise and the American social safety net have provided not just me, but my parents and grandmother.
That’s good and fine — and, I understand, not an academic distinction. My point is that we’re past that. And that American-style turbo-charged capitalism was sooner or later bound to eat away at the very consumer base on whom it depends. And so, if it’s taken us 80 years to get to the doorstep of a dystopian hellscape of slavery that shackles us at multiple levels — physically, externally, psychologically, and even at the microbial level — it’s just a matter of whether we took the express train or the local train to get here.
Nevertheless, I still maintain that the values underpinning so-called progressive and conservative viewpoints are distinct from one another and also complementary — and, thus, both worth our appreciation. In the wake of how power has revealed itself to be enmeshed in so many dimensions of our existence, I see Left and Right as having more shared interests than opposing interests. I also see both value systems as being inter-dependent.
The good news is that, from where I’m sitting, it looks like there’s enormous potential for these two viewpoints to both maintain their distinct essence and work together from a higher-altitude perspective that removes the sense of threat that each appears to pose to the other. Once again, that’s an essay for another day, where I can more carefully unpack what I mean. But let me just start here: the seemingly conflicting drives to preserve the social order and to advance it are both required for a society to function in harmony. In other words: we need each other.
I’m not taking sufficient time here to illustrate why we need each other, but I’ll just ask that roll with me on this for the time being: since we need each other, we need to learn to hear one another. And in order do to that, we need to understand the underlying need that fuels each of these outlooks. (Most people, I would argue, do not fall neatly into a strictly-left or strictly-right outlook, but let’s just treat them as distinct for the sake of argument.)
In a nutshell, leftist/progressive and rightist/conservative viewpoints — at least in their current-day American manifestations — are each driven by a fundamental paradox: One the one hand, you’ve got people who deeply, fundamentally value their freedom from social norms — religion, sexual mores, etc — but who are all too willing to run into the arms of the state as a kind of parental force. Conversely, you’ve got another group of people who deeply value their freedom from the state, but who are all too willing to turn to social rules — religion, family values, etc — to dictate the terms by which they live.
My long-held theory is that everyone’s just looking for the love of their parents and projecting it outwards. And here’s the thing: the craving for that love operates at both a conscious and unconscious level. Of course it does!
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American progressives since about the late 20th century — so I’m not talking about working-class union protestors from the labor movement, but the Left in its more modern incarnation in a relatively more comfortable/stable socio-economic and political backdrop — tend to come from secular, non-religious backgrounds with permissive parents. Of course, I’m painting with very broad blanket strokes here, but I think these stereotypes are actually useful in helping us drill-down to a more granular understanding.
People who fit the “progressive” NPR-listening/New York Times-reading stereotype tend to come from families where the authoritative element of parental guidance is largely absent. In these homes, maternal lenience tends to define the atmosphere, often to the point of excess. Again, we’re talking stereotypes here, but stay with me for a moment.
Thus, people from this kind of background consciously crave a sense of latitude from rules but unconsciously crave the authoritative firmness that was absent from their upbringings. They may value the wide berth of freedom and autonomy that Mom and Dad gave them, but they also pine inside for something that offsets the pervasive sense of neglect that nagged at them.
On the flipside, the stereotype of the modern conservative is of someone who comes from a pretty solid authoritative familial framework — or at least a social milieu in which a “strong” sense of family is valued, if not necessarily fulfilled. Authoritative — often over-authoritative — masculine energy tends to define the atmosphere in these homes. People from this type of background consciously crave a firm foundational structure. They feel fulfilled and safe adhering to rules.
Unconsciously, though, they feel that Dad was too much of a tyrant and, thus, project their feelings towards their fathers onto the government. Hence the vehemence with which modern-day American conservatives resist what they see as governmental overreach — even going so far as to lionize states’ rights when state governments are still The State. Think about it, if conservatives got their ultimate wish and managed to curb Federal power as much as they’d like to, who else but individual state-level governments would step in to fill that void?
This model doesn’t accommodate libertarians, who run the gamut from Left to Right. And, I’ll repeat myself: it’s a crude model that operates on gigantic broad-brush generalizations. But I challenge you to look at the people around you and see if what I’m proposing here doesn’t chime with what you observe about what motivates them.
Both of the paradoxes I’m pointing to came to light in an almost-beautiful illustration in 2021-22. As media commentator Kim Iversen pointed out on The Hill at the time, pro-abortion rights proponents shouting “my body, my choice!” were often the same people who staunchly defended covid vaccine mandates. Likewise, proponents shouting “medical freedom” in opposition to covid vaccine mandates were often willing to jump in with both feet in celebrating the government’s “right” to restrict abortion.
I don’t point these inconsistencies out to ridicule anyone, but as a prescription for mutual understanding. The next time you’re facing someone who’s red in the face with passion over something that strikes you as fundamentally wrong, I would urge you not to argue with them over the actual points in question, but to instead hone-in on the need they’re expressing underneath whatever opinion they’re pointing at you.
I would also urge you to ask yourself about your own needs, and where you too might be seeking the love of your parents. It’s not necessarily that we’re “looking for love in all the wrong places” — but we can’t assess what it is we’re looking for if we don’t even know that we’re looking in the first place. And when we see everyone — including ourselves — as basically just a big baby crying out for something we all need, it’s much easier to see one another as human beings, even when it looks like we’re at cross purposes. Try it!
A very wise older friend and mentor of mine once told me that what appears to us as demons are always angels in need of our love. We must stop seeing demons everywhere — both in the form of others and in the aspects of ourselves which we’ve disavowed. Until we embrace the latter, we will always recoil from the former. And when we do that, we seal our fate and relegate ourselves to a perpetual state of war — fighting, fighting, fighting all to just get back to what we needed from Mommy and Daddy all along.
We can get there! But it requires an adjustment. Luckily, that adjustment is well within reach.
Hope that helps.
<3 SRK
Well said. I know you are generalizing, which can get you into trouble, of course.
For instance, while I come from a very progressive family (where my dad even got me to become involved in his activism - think "Bilateral Nuclear Freeze" days), they still provided sufficient structure. Sure, I had no curfew, but there were consequences the few times I fucked up.
So, not sure I am craving any more guidance/structure than I had growing up. It was pretty balanced.