If the political left/right axis comes increasingly to be defined by cultural values, with the left being the side that embraces and drives cultural change and the right being the side that refuses and resists it, we would expect this to strengthen the alignment between older people who find the cultural values they grew up with being marginalised and the political side that resists this process, and the alignment of younger people whose cultural values are on the rise with the political side that is driving this.
Insofar as higher levels of formal education align with greater receptiveness to cultural change, this would strengthen the tendency described above due to higher levels of formal educational attainment among younger generations.
Of course it is far from clear to me that the left should define itself *primarily* as the cultural change camp ahead of being the economic and social egalitarianism camp, or the strong sustainability camp.
This doubtless explains why I've never been at all conservative, as I thought the cultural values I grew up with were generally detestable. I remember Menzies, but not in a good way.
It's the Right defining the Left as "about change" because that's the button giving the biggest response when pushed. The Left is trying to define itself as about equality and opportunity, but those are old buttons, and the response is not nearly as strong when pushed. But people who have been convinced their privilege is being taken away and given to undeserving Others are easy to provoke to anger and resentment.
"Old hat", "old fashioned", "old news", etc. The word old has negative associations because it refers to a fairly general attribute, so I think that's one reason it's deprecated.
On the more substantive point, I heard (or read?) something interesting the other day about the fact many people think the world is getting worse. They situate the peak some time in their youth, I believe and then consider that things have gone downhill from there. Here's an article that hints at the phenomenon: https://www.wbs.ac.uk/news/why-we-think-life-was-better-in-the-good-old-days/ . Combine that with the fact most people don't think all that much, neither very critically nor in a way where they are genuinely open to changing their mind, and it's fairly inevitable that they will end up with a simplistic, nostalgic, reactionary political perspective. If your media and cultural diet consists mostly of commercial TV, mainstream social media, Murdoch, MSN, YouTube and so on, there is very little to challenge or expand your thinking.
For instance, not only is there widespread ignorance about political processes, there is no serious attempt to support lifelong learning about them. People generally carry whatever they took with them from high school along with whatever additional gleanings they've added by chance.
Maybe this is my own unconsidered prejudice, but I've always thought ignorance + time = reactionary.
As a final note I'll point out that none of the above is inevitable. You can meet people who didn't finish high school but have steadily educated themselves throughout their lives and maintained a sharp, empathetic curiosity for decades.
Good luck in the Tri ….. I am part of the small percent that disagree with the majority of my age groups views. I’m also part of a small percent of ‘old’ people the compete most weekends in criterium and road cycling events. Long live the cantankerous contrarian.
As an Old, I can speak with some certainty on the subject. Getting old sucks because of the decline in physical strength and stamina, and related memory retention issues. Aches and pains, unsteady balance and forgetfulness. The Good Old Days is a mixture of nostalgia and resentment of increased complexity and interdependence. Being a kid was great because you had no responsibility, simple as that. Everything is more fun when someone else is paying the bills. You didn't crack your head open riding a bike without a helmet, so it's just the oppressive nanny state micromanaging your life. This is the foundation of the weaponized culture war. Turns out Americans are really easy to manipulate if all you want to do is make them mad.
The elevation of youth and degradation of age in the culture is, like every corruptive influence in American society, the fault of the 60's. The sheer mass of the Baby Boom market made them the focus of American advertising, hence culture. Drink Pepsi, for those who think Young.
One percent?? That's hilarious, I laughed out loud. Imagine being a Young Tory. Literally 100% of them must have come from Eton, Rugby, Harrow.
"Old" is a word that regular people use in conversation, I don't know why it's unacceptable for public writing. It's quite like "fat", where you must only use the word heavy.
I'm in my 50s now, my politics haven't changed much at all since Uni, though I now distinguish between left and liberal much more so. I feel that the public debate hasn't really progressed much at all in three decades - about the only thing that's new under the sun is trans rights. Every point about gay, feminist or racial politics is basically the same as it was in the early 90s. The over 65s have had a long time to adjust!
Oh and good luck with the triathlon! My father was still regularly running and swimming well into his 60s, until he snapped his Achilles and failed to undertake proper rehabilitation, so it was only golf for him after that event.
Perhaps it’s the way the Left has become conflated in the public sphere with so-called “identity politics”. I’m as economically left-wing as ever, despise the materialism and moralistic rationalisations used to justiify neoliberalism but am also alienated by the competitive victimhood that seems to underlie many prevailing social narratives. I would never support a right-wing ideology but I can understand how prevailing identity issues could irritate people who grew up in a society where a shared history of mutual interdependence could be taken for granted.
Identity politics, to the extent that it divides people into increasingly smaller self-interested groups (see the ongoing addition of letters to LBTQT+ over time as an example), also serves as a distraction from addressing class issues; in this way the left by repeatedly emphasising differences between individuals the Left is undermining its own purported values.
PS conflicting attitudes to charges against Sam Kerr for insulting a policeman would repay some analysis here.
I think culture wars is the right explanation. This is exacerbated, I think, by what old people perceive as hostility to rather than disagreement with their old-fashioned views. Which is not to say there is no hostility going the other way even if that is mainly manufactured for political effect.
And immigration is a funny one to get coded as "cultural" rather than just about economic issue. Hostility to immigration is a pretty recent phenomenon that most old people did not grow up with.
Perhaps you haven't heard of the White Australia Policy, Enoch Powell "rivers of blood" etc. Assuming you're USian, anti-immigrant politics really took off with Pat Buchanan, around 1990.
Very much aware of Rivers of Blood. And I was referring to the US where anti-immigrant sentiment is not a "tradition" like gender specific pronouns and exclusively heterosexual marriage. It feels more like a manufactured innovation than a cultural holdover.
Completed the Tri in 3:14, my best time for some years
congrats john!
If the political left/right axis comes increasingly to be defined by cultural values, with the left being the side that embraces and drives cultural change and the right being the side that refuses and resists it, we would expect this to strengthen the alignment between older people who find the cultural values they grew up with being marginalised and the political side that resists this process, and the alignment of younger people whose cultural values are on the rise with the political side that is driving this.
Insofar as higher levels of formal education align with greater receptiveness to cultural change, this would strengthen the tendency described above due to higher levels of formal educational attainment among younger generations.
Of course it is far from clear to me that the left should define itself *primarily* as the cultural change camp ahead of being the economic and social egalitarianism camp, or the strong sustainability camp.
This doubtless explains why I've never been at all conservative, as I thought the cultural values I grew up with were generally detestable. I remember Menzies, but not in a good way.
It's the Right defining the Left as "about change" because that's the button giving the biggest response when pushed. The Left is trying to define itself as about equality and opportunity, but those are old buttons, and the response is not nearly as strong when pushed. But people who have been convinced their privilege is being taken away and given to undeserving Others are easy to provoke to anger and resentment.
I'm in my 60s and find myself becoming more left wing politically as I age. I wonder why?
"Old hat", "old fashioned", "old news", etc. The word old has negative associations because it refers to a fairly general attribute, so I think that's one reason it's deprecated.
On the more substantive point, I heard (or read?) something interesting the other day about the fact many people think the world is getting worse. They situate the peak some time in their youth, I believe and then consider that things have gone downhill from there. Here's an article that hints at the phenomenon: https://www.wbs.ac.uk/news/why-we-think-life-was-better-in-the-good-old-days/ . Combine that with the fact most people don't think all that much, neither very critically nor in a way where they are genuinely open to changing their mind, and it's fairly inevitable that they will end up with a simplistic, nostalgic, reactionary political perspective. If your media and cultural diet consists mostly of commercial TV, mainstream social media, Murdoch, MSN, YouTube and so on, there is very little to challenge or expand your thinking.
For instance, not only is there widespread ignorance about political processes, there is no serious attempt to support lifelong learning about them. People generally carry whatever they took with them from high school along with whatever additional gleanings they've added by chance.
Maybe this is my own unconsidered prejudice, but I've always thought ignorance + time = reactionary.
As a final note I'll point out that none of the above is inevitable. You can meet people who didn't finish high school but have steadily educated themselves throughout their lives and maintained a sharp, empathetic curiosity for decades.
Good luck in the Tri ….. I am part of the small percent that disagree with the majority of my age groups views. I’m also part of a small percent of ‘old’ people the compete most weekends in criterium and road cycling events. Long live the cantankerous contrarian.
As an Old, I can speak with some certainty on the subject. Getting old sucks because of the decline in physical strength and stamina, and related memory retention issues. Aches and pains, unsteady balance and forgetfulness. The Good Old Days is a mixture of nostalgia and resentment of increased complexity and interdependence. Being a kid was great because you had no responsibility, simple as that. Everything is more fun when someone else is paying the bills. You didn't crack your head open riding a bike without a helmet, so it's just the oppressive nanny state micromanaging your life. This is the foundation of the weaponized culture war. Turns out Americans are really easy to manipulate if all you want to do is make them mad.
The elevation of youth and degradation of age in the culture is, like every corruptive influence in American society, the fault of the 60's. The sheer mass of the Baby Boom market made them the focus of American advertising, hence culture. Drink Pepsi, for those who think Young.
One percent?? That's hilarious, I laughed out loud. Imagine being a Young Tory. Literally 100% of them must have come from Eton, Rugby, Harrow.
"Old" is a word that regular people use in conversation, I don't know why it's unacceptable for public writing. It's quite like "fat", where you must only use the word heavy.
I'm in my 50s now, my politics haven't changed much at all since Uni, though I now distinguish between left and liberal much more so. I feel that the public debate hasn't really progressed much at all in three decades - about the only thing that's new under the sun is trans rights. Every point about gay, feminist or racial politics is basically the same as it was in the early 90s. The over 65s have had a long time to adjust!
Oh and good luck with the triathlon! My father was still regularly running and swimming well into his 60s, until he snapped his Achilles and failed to undertake proper rehabilitation, so it was only golf for him after that event.
I've considered many possible alternatives, but golf is definitely not among them
Perhaps it’s the way the Left has become conflated in the public sphere with so-called “identity politics”. I’m as economically left-wing as ever, despise the materialism and moralistic rationalisations used to justiify neoliberalism but am also alienated by the competitive victimhood that seems to underlie many prevailing social narratives. I would never support a right-wing ideology but I can understand how prevailing identity issues could irritate people who grew up in a society where a shared history of mutual interdependence could be taken for granted.
Identity politics, to the extent that it divides people into increasingly smaller self-interested groups (see the ongoing addition of letters to LBTQT+ over time as an example), also serves as a distraction from addressing class issues; in this way the left by repeatedly emphasising differences between individuals the Left is undermining its own purported values.
PS conflicting attitudes to charges against Sam Kerr for insulting a policeman would repay some analysis here.
Most of the victimhood I see is coming from white males, upset that their position of dominance is being challenged.
I think culture wars is the right explanation. This is exacerbated, I think, by what old people perceive as hostility to rather than disagreement with their old-fashioned views. Which is not to say there is no hostility going the other way even if that is mainly manufactured for political effect.
And immigration is a funny one to get coded as "cultural" rather than just about economic issue. Hostility to immigration is a pretty recent phenomenon that most old people did not grow up with.
Perhaps you haven't heard of the White Australia Policy, Enoch Powell "rivers of blood" etc. Assuming you're USian, anti-immigrant politics really took off with Pat Buchanan, around 1990.
Very much aware of Rivers of Blood. And I was referring to the US where anti-immigrant sentiment is not a "tradition" like gender specific pronouns and exclusively heterosexual marriage. It feels more like a manufactured innovation than a cultural holdover.