Why bother being socially conservative?

Question

The progressive 100 years ago would look embarrassingly close-minded and socially conservative. The trend has been for an increase in personal freedoms the last 400 or so years in the Western world. So why bother advocating for what is destined to be the losing belief?

Answer 1

Are you proposing that people be able to roam free with no restrictions? Are you trying to say that recreational sex, drug abuse, violence, etc. should all be acceptable social standards?

Read Brave New World

If a person were on a plateau, he would be able to roam around freely, but he would have to be careful so he does not fall off the edge. Now if there were a wall built around the plateau, he would be able to do as he pleased but with more freedom because he is no longer in danger of falling.

Social conserviality is the same way. Although it may seem stifling, it can actually allow us to expand without fear.

In Brave New World, the setting is a society were no bonds between people are formed, sex is practiced at a young age, animal-like desires and drives propel people.

Living without being socially conservative seems like living like animals, on instinct with no thought process or reason.

Answer 2

Watch Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and you'll understand how the so-called "lost cause" doesn't mean its wrong. And just because some of it is gone doesn't mean that it was wrong. The winner writes the history books. Also, there is only a certain level of progressiveness available. We were balancing the injustices that built up over thousands of years. Its not like in the future we'll be so liberal as to allow NAMBLA (North American Man Boy Love Association...basically glorified pedophilia) reign free. There is only a certain limit.

Answer 3

In my observation, the trend has been for a decrease in personal freedoms and increase of government. (Can't own land, own a gun, smoke, public school system not meeting the needs of children regardless of how much $ we throw into it) I do see the world becoming more and more liberal, but that does not mean increase in personal freedom. More government means less freedom. As for the "why bother" part of the question, well, I highly respect those who stand up for what they believe in, and practice what they preach, regardless of popular opinion. Somebody has to advocate and speak out against socialism and communism.

Answer 4

Social conservatism is the nagging feeling that someone, somewhere, somehow is having a good time!

Basic psychology would explain it this way: Social conservatives want to engage in certain behaviors that they label "bad" or "sinful". So they bury those feelings and instead act "good" or "righteous". So consciously they can feel good about themselves, but subconsciously they despise those desires they have repressed. When they see or hear about others engaging in those behaviors, they resent it because it reminds them, on a subconscious level, of their hidden desires. To protect their ego they judge those exhibiting the forbidden behaviors.

Answer 5

Behind the conservative flag one can spout their hatreds and prejudices with impunity because the " Party" espouses these same non-virtues.
This takes the responsibility off the individual and places in the group domain - where it is unexamined in the rush for pwoer.

Answer 6

"Socially conservative" has too many varied definitions to answer without further clarification.

Are you talking about moral relativism vs absolute truths?
Or communal responsibility vs personal responsibility?
Or promiscuity vs monogamy?
Or single/no parent families vs the traditional two-parent (e.g. heterosexuals) family?
Or the right of convience vs the right to life?

Answer 7

Individual freedom is the dream of our age. It's what our leaders promise to give us, it defines how we think of ourselves and, repeatedly, we have gone to war to impose freedom around the world. But if you step back and look at what freedom actually means for us today, it's a strange and limited kind of freedom.

Politicians promised to liberate us from the old dead hand of bureaucracy, but they have created an evermore controlling system of social management, driven by targets and numbers. Governments committed to freedom of choice have presided over a rise in inequality and a dramatic collapse in social mobility. And abroad, in Iraq and Afghanistan, the attempt to enforce freedom has led to bloody mayhem and the rise of an authoritarian anti-democratic Islamism. This, in turn, has helped inspire terrorist attacks in Britain. In response, the Government has dismantled long-standing laws designed to protect our freedom.
The origins of our contemporary, narrow idea of freedom.
shows how a simplistic model of human beings as self-seeking, almost robotic, creatures led to today's idea of freedom. This model was derived from ideas and techniques developed by nuclear strategists during the Cold War to control the behaviour of the Soviet enemy.

Mathematicians such as John Nash developed paranoid game theories whose equations required people to be seen as selfish and isolated creatures, constantly monitoring each other suspiciously – always intent on their own advantage.

This model was then developed by genetic biologists, anthropologists, radical psychiatrists and free market economists, and has come to dominate both political thinking since the Seventies and the way people think about themselves as human beings.

However, within this simplistic idea lay the seeds of new forms of control. And what people have forgotten is that there are other ideas of freedom. We are, in a trap of our own making that controls us, deprives us of meaning and causes death and chaos abroad.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo/noise/?id=trap

Answer 8

People go to church.

The less people go, the less likely they will be socially conservative.

Answer 9

Mrs Thatcher will answer this:"The aim of this government is to make eveyone as miserable as possible!"

Answer 10

i live my life socially conservative, i just don't impose it. I love my life this way over my socially liberal past.