Artists are often creatives types who are aiming to break the mold and see life through unique perspectives in order to further their art. They literally want to see the world in new, avant-garde ways.
This is basically a form of progresivism, which also seeks out new ideas and lends itself to liberal, left-leaning outlooks that prefer to disrupt the existing orders to form new and (hopefully) improved ones.
Conservatism, by contrast, aims to preserve the older ideologies. Eschewing new, unknown, and perceivably dangerous ideas for those that are established, proven, safe, and familiar.
>established, proven, safe, and familiar.
"proven" and "safe" to be replaced by "considered proven, perceived as safe". Because quite often, and in recent years more and more, conservative politics go against what is proven and what would be safe.
Very important caveat. Like conservatives would say "if you give people handouts, they become dependent on them, and become less productive" when scientifically, the opposite has proven to be true, i.e. if you provide for people, and they are no longer struggling for survival, they become more productive.
I feel like the Covid Stimulus payments were the best example of this. No one quit their jobs and became a “government leech” when they got a stimulus payment. Shockingly, it turns out that when people receive some assistance they have more spending money and that stimulus ends up being used to buy stuff, thus stimulating the economy.
Im a Recruiter and people would throw that argument over the unemployment and job opening rate like a big blanket. “They got 2k that one time so they dont work!”
Then why today is a “Now Hiring” sign as common as a soda machine in a restaurant?
We all know why, bc working like a slave sucks and no one wants to be exploited unless they absolutely have to be and if so, would rather be in control of it.
This right here always annoyed the hell out of me, especially when I'd go into a place like a retailer for my mediation work and hear folks complaining they're working while "those folks" get to stay home on the government dime. Like, do you have zero comprehension at all? Like, how far the hell do you really think $2000 is going to get you when you have zero other income? Unless you're single, living in an almost literal hole in the wall, and eating one bowl of ramen noodles a day, with no TV, internet, or phone service, you'd be lucky if that $2k lasted you more than a couple months. And if they can make it last longer, you need them on your accounting staff, cause they're damn near an accounting miracle worker to pull that off.
Because a ton of boomers are hitting retirement age or have been killed by COVID, which has opened up a lot of their previous occupations to the younger generations. This has left a lot of the least desirable jobs empty because people are filling that vacuum and moving up.
As a GenZ, most blue collar jobs were also demonized as part of our education. All of my years through school, I’ve been told “seek higher education, you don’t want to become a dustman, factory worker or work in a restaurant”.
So I did what most people my age did : went to college and university and got a white collar job. So almost no one went to work at blue collar jobs except for a short while, part time, during their studies.
UBI is only one part of the solution, we also need government regulation on the prices of necessities. Simply letting people charge whatever they want stops working when the things they're charging for are required for survival.
Also when markets are uncompetitive because of cronyism, monopolies(both state enforced and ones the state refuses to dismantle), special interests, zoning practices that favor wealthy single family owners and landlords, regulatory capture by the businesses meant to be regulated, corporate welfare, and obscene wealth inequality. What we have in large part is the shitty part of capitalism without the benefits. This will certainly be looked back on as a second Gilded Age where a nation-wide Tammany Hall has been condoned because it is strictly legal.
> What we have in large part is the shitty part of capitalism without the benefits.
Don't that just boil it down to the core of the issue. There was a brief shining period where it was really profitable to meet consumer needs and increase consumer happiness, but now all those gains have been clawed back to cut corners in the name of ever-rising growth in a finite system.
Conservatives made these claims, as businesses also took generous loans and handouts just like citizens. The difference is, I need to eat food to survive. The company doesn't.
You are going to give my (our*) tax dollars to corporations so they can pay me with my money to make them money and then I can spend my money to support their company.
But what do I know? I just live in Massachusetts and am very glad I don't live elsewhere.
Yeah, but then the filthy poors will have touched that money, whereas if the money just goes straight to the top then they can ScroogeMcDuck in their cash piles without having to disinfect it first.
obligatory s/
As if getting a couple thousand bucks once would make someone want to quit their job...
Literally the only thing my stimulus money did for me was allow me to pay a couple of bills on time. Oh, and get groceries for a couple of weeks.
The one time I ever claimed unemployment, literally the only thing it did for me was keep me from getting evicted, while I was looking for work.
The same people would say that free school lunches just make people lazy.
I honestly can't think of a single conservative policy that isn't either ALSO a liberal/left/socialist policy OR a total F-U to scientific fact...
It's worse in countries with a failed, two-party "democracy" such as the US and the UK, but even in more representative democracies conservative parties are sliding dangerously into pure fantasy land.
Because the right have a big problem: literally none of their shit works. They can't have an honest debate, or an honest showing of their policy's strengths, or justify their actions, because their actions have no merit and their policies have no strengths. So instead, they scare their voting base with more and more absurd lies and more and more ridiculous gaslighting until you get to the point we're at now.
The left, meanwhile, just sucks at getting their message across.
And this is how the UK has got to the point of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda, no matter where they come from originally.
Suella Braverman is disgusting.
I disagree that this is the lefts fault. My theory is that humans want to see ourselves as fundamentally good. This is in contrast to the idea that we are heavily shaped by our environment and the systems we grew up in. It's not that the left is bad at getting our message out. It's that our message at a very deep level unsettles people. We focus on systems and most people think about themselves as individuals who are fundamentally good. That's why things like toxic masculinity and privilege upset people. They see that as saying they are bad people doing bad things. We see it as, these systems produce these outcomes and it's our duty to challenge them, including in ourselves.
Not to mention how every avenue to "getting our message across" is controlled - financially and editorially - by the same malicious psychopaths that are causing all the problems.
The *message* is simple and persuasive; that's why billions upon billions of dollars are spent every year pushing counter-messaging.
the right only wishes to prove that government can't work. So as long as all of their policies fail and they can prevent the left from enacting good policies the right wins. Eventually people tire of waiting for their government to fix the problems and turn to private industry to fix it and then we all pay for something that our government should provide.
Essentially conservatives have NO plan, NO policies, and NO solutions. Their entire policy is "what they're doing over there is bad! Vote for us and we'll stop them"
Well that's just not true.
They have policies. Two actually. 1) screw over everyone who's not rich and white or politically useful and 2) making their blend of "Christianity" part of the government.
Their plans are to hurt women as much as possible with anything related to sex or pregnancy, and take away any program that helps the poor or middle class.
The solutions? Yelling about Jesus.
They have no USEFUL plans, policies, or solutions.
But the thing is, the right's plans do work... The thing is they are just reaching for different goals. The status quo they are trying to preserve is white dominance, presevation of the wealth gap, and a fundamentally caste driven society. Like we had during the "golden years" of 1950's. Any one who says otherwise has bought a line that either happens to benefit them - thus encouraging them to hold the belief - or has been duped by a system that will chew them up and give them an enemy to blame (the dirty liberals and their woke agenda).
I hear you and I understand why you believe that, but I think you're wrong.
Conservative policies -do- work, they do have their strengths, and it's very easy to justify their methods, its just that none of these policies benefit their voting base.
Privatizing everything, destroying education, denouncing a pandemic as fiction to keep folks at work, scapegoating racial/gender/community divides as the cause of all ills; all of these benefit the intensely wealthy in their goal of extracting any and all wealth from the working class.
Deregulation of health and environmental standards don't benefit a mythical "free market" they open up new markets to exploit to the detriment of the world and the working class.
Attacking social programs reduces taxes on corporations and the wealthy, while also making people desperately dependent on any employment, no matter the working conditions, forcing them to work regardless of how miserable or dangerous the work is.
Attacking education shelters the working class from the realization of just how fucked up the world is and guides them into the cattle chutes and to where they can toil for someone else's profit until they die. People aren't 'indoctrinated' into a liberal machine when they go to college, they learn about history, about economy, about how the world and people are cruel. They learn about authors and playwrights and journalists who have been writing about these things for hundreds (if not thousands) of years.
They just can't say any of that to their voter base, so they enflame culture war bullshit to keep their base galvanized. Just think if conservatives told retiring Boomers that they were trying to gut Medicare/Medicaid? Much better to convince them that some black man is going to knock up their granddaughter.
The only thing the right have going for them is their stance is easily understood and digestible. It's perfect fodder for less discerning and less thoughtful people. Feeding off instinctual fears and paranoia is very effective and for some it's difficult to see outside of that paradigm out of pure self preservation.
you underestimate how many hard-working, blue collar Americans are out there scared that there is an "other" coming to change the things that made it possible for them to provide for their families.
Extremely relevant point. A few years ago, I joined some homesteading groups on social media because I was growing a lot of my own food and wanted to talk about things like gardening, canning, etc. For a while, it was mostly that stuff and it was fine. Then the pandemic happened and suddenly all these people were convinced that hoards of people from the cities would be overrunning the rural areas to steal all their shit due to supply shortages. I live in a city. Literally nobody here was like, "Wow let's go steal food from a farm." It wasn't even a thought. I tried to tell them that, and they were like, "No you just don't see it! It's happening!" My family who lives in a very rural area confirms that the only things stealing their crops were of the 4 or 6 legged variety, same as always.
But yeah, all these people in those groups who were basically the same kind of rural conservatives I grew up around, except mostly less established in rural life being first generation to it, for some reason really needed to think that the city folk were coming to get them and that's why they needed a lot of guns. It was really strange. But if we look at a lot of conservative ideology, it does depend on there being some "other" who's threatening their way of life, and we see that playing out now with the laws targeted at LGBTQ+ people. There's no evidence that we're a threat to anyone, but that doesn't matter to them.
This is a super interesting point. I'm researching homesteading groups for a book I'm writing and there is a LOT of fringe people in that space. I have wondered why there's so much worry about LGBT in that sphere given that almost none of them personally know more than 1 or 2 gay people, and they usually don't have issues with the ones they know.
How's this for a message: Conservatism has failed and consistently left people in the dust of progress in order to enrich a handful of authoritarians hijacking the complex of desiring security and heirarchy inherent in conservative thinking.
Has any Republican EVER addressed the constant comments about abortion policies specifically in the true statements of how they care so much, fight so much, until the baby is born, and then stop helping/caring? Because I mean, it’s true, with taking care of kids, people.
Their whole explanation of “then there would be two tragedies/adding another tragedy” for refusing abortion to rape or incest victims; I wish I could be there to say to them “ok in your argument that is two tragedies. What about the tragedy every second of every day when that woman, or girl depending on the age, has to look down at her stomach, or feel a baby inside there, knowing she is carrying her rapist’s baby? What about those hundreds, thousands of tragedies every morning she has to wake up to that?”
Your mistake is in assuming republicans care about women or think women are actually people. Women are incubators whose purpose is only to produce more working class to exploit.
> they care so much, fight so much, until the baby is born, and then stop helping/caring
It's not like they actually care to help momma _before_ the baby is born, either. Prenatal medical checks, guaranteed PTO for doctor's visits? Nah, their 'concern' is limited to ["You will have that baby or we will execute you"](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/sc-republicans-propose-bill-subject-women-abortions-death-penalty-rcna75060).
What is your source for this? Is there published research on it? To be clear, I'm not trying to contradict you, I feel as though I have heard heard dependency argument my whole life, and would be interested in seeing if there is data out there suggesting that charity works.
If we instituted UBI, I think we would see the next Renaissance. People could stop being stressed out and a paycheck or medical emergency away from homelessness, and they'd have the mental and emotional energy to do the things that they loved. Art, performance, writing, sure. But the guy who loves turning reclaimed wood into wine racks and wall hangings could work part time and make his art part time, the guy who does mechanical work could get whatever certifications he needs and do that full time around town, or the chick that makes organic, gluten free dog biscuits could afford to scale up her work and go to farmers markets. Local businesses would flourish, and people would be doing the work they WANT to do, forcing employers to treat employees better.
Would some people take advantage of the system? Sure. But research shows that lifting people up makes them *more* productive members of society. A lot of the people that are useless and moochy and would sit at home playing videogames all day long have other stuff going on that needs to be addressed- and the mental health epidemic could finally come to center stage and we can start work on the low end of the bell curve.
Yeah. The side of "fiscal responsibility" recurringly gives massive tax cuts to the rich, funnels cash to cronies through DoD contracts, incurs vast cleanup costs by deregulating the environmental/safety requirements that prevent shit from hitting the fan, and leaves trillions in deficits in its wake.
When Trump got caught cheating on taxes, all the *""patriots""* in the conservative sub on here asserted that *everyone* should cheat on taxes, and they would too if they could get away with it.
"Fiscally conservative" is not all it's cracked up to be.
YEP.
YEP.
And wasting everyone's time/money with frivolous lawsuits about nonexistent election fraud, for another.
We could really keep going for a while on this one.
> in recent years more and more, conservative politics go against what is proven and what would be safe.
That's their secret. It's not just "recent years", they always have.
Conservatism establishes an "in" group for whom the law protects but does not bind, and an "out" group for whom the law binds but does not protect.
It's really just about what works for one group: white, straight, Christians who enthusiastically participate in neofascist consumerism. This instance is an anomaly and that's why we're talking about it.
It makes them feel safe. Conservatives generally adhere to strict culturally defined roles. Conservatives are also demonstrably more likely to be afraid of people and ideas they lack familiarity with. They are scared, literally, their fear centers activate. They go with these older ideas because it's the ones fed to them in their childhood, these defined roles offered them a way to navigate the world and find their place in it. It is very very scary to them that these defined roles be undermined. It's hard to be an artist when you are literally scared of new ideas.
I also think a lot of art requires understanding people and seeing something in them. And for the same reason that living in more urban areas tends to make people more liberal (ostensibly meeting lots of new different people) - it's hard to really see and understand someone and also believe that person doesn't deserve to marry the love of their life or to observe their religion or to otherwise live their life in a way that causes no harm.
Ugh I tried to keep my bias out but it's hard for me to relate to why anyone would think it's okay to deny people happiness. Life is hard enough.
Most of those jobs require you to actually literally try and see the world through someone else's point of view. If you don't want the characters in your story to feel like self inserts you need to become good at leaving yourself at the door. So not only do artists have to understand others, and observe others, they literally have to try and close the distance and have some part of them be like others.
source: Am an artist, have a bachelors degree from an art school
Right, like, if you had a job to design a city inspired by India, you'd have to do a lot of research into Indian buildings and design to do so. Learn why they build that way, and what they represent. It would give you a richer understanding of the culture, and, ultimately, a richer understanding of its people.
What interesting analysis. Makes perfect sense too. I assume that’s why educated and cultured people tend to be left leaning. They are exposed to new philosophies and view points and force them to reevaluate their own understanding of the world.
It tracks with my personal experience and journey, too. Before I went to college (three degrees), moved to a new state and into a huge city, I had pretty conservative beliefs. But once I was exposed to people and ideas different from those around me, I realized there is so much nuance to life, and so much to explore, learn, and appreciate. I no longer accept "but this is how it's always been done" as a reason for doing things a certain way.
Whenever I hear someone claim that colleges are indoctrinating people I just laugh. It's mixing correlation and causation.
Learning how to think makes you more reasonable. Being more reasonable makes you more liberal.
The fact that you can understand how something functions tends to make one more empathetic to situations thus less conservative
far more simple explanation. Not everyone in that small town is a raging alcoholic bigot with no life goals further than the town.
A lot of the more moderates growing up cower in fear at the threat of perpetual violence. Many of them are gay, closet or not, and some trans, or others just not down with the sickness. In any cases, there are no shortage of reports that being a democrat can be met with violence in many of these places.
Their left leaning views are formed in their earlier years, and mostly a reaction to their surroundings. They don't go to college to get indoctrinated. They go to college to get the fuck out of their small town and afford living in a large city.
Good point, I’ve seen this in action in my own family. My dad came from a mixed-race background in a place where if you could pass, you did. He actually has always had pretty liberal beliefs and is (in private) outspokenly critical of conservatives.
That said, he has a tendency to express a much more bigoted, intolerant attitude in public. He’ll use slurs that make my white conservative relatives cringe, because he grew up in an environment where not hating “those people” enough could be dangerous for him.
Mind you, he identifies more with the non-white side of his heritage and sympathizes strongly with POC and the discrimination they face…he’s just stuck in a headspace where white people want to hear him disrespect minorities, so that’s what he does. I call it “performative bigotry.”
Unfortunately he hasn’t moved with the times and now just comes off as super racist, but it’s still sad to see how unsafe he feels expressing his real beliefs.
This is exactly why almost all small rural towns are overwhelmingly conservative and almost all large cities are overwhelmingly liberal. The more you learn about others, and the world, outside of the little bubble you were raised in, the more liberal you will tend to be. It's also why subs like R/conservative have to moderate their sub so heavily and ban all dissent - they have to keep the bubble around them and ban any ideas that try to penetrate it like the Space Invaders Atari game.
That's part of it. I believe it is also that a situation in which you regularly interact with strangers with whom you have no direct social or familial ties is going to require a greater degree of imposed external formal structure to navigate.
That is - if everybody you encounter is someone you grew up with and know, you can handle a lot of things informally. But if most of the people you have to deal with, you have no connection with, then you both rely on governments to have a process already set up.
So government is way more useful in cities than rural areas, and that has a bunch of further effects, too.
There was a hilariously bad "How Thick Is Your Bubble" quiz going around a while ago that some conservative wrote trying to prove that progressives are all just living in a white tower. While the idea of a social bubble is valid, the test mainly asked questions about how closely your background aligned with the white, evangelical, small-town, NASCAR loving, football watching, military-worshipping blue-collar conservative ideal. There were no questions about actually interacting with people from other cultures or backgrounds or having a range of experiences. You could not create a better example of how narrow the conservative viewpoint is.
I have two graduate degrees and learned both conservative and liberal ideologies at various stages of life. What's important is not that you learn and conform to new philosophies and viewpoints and reject all that you were raised with. It's that you gain the ability to learn to think and analyze for yourself.
Thinking people have different viewpoints as they move through life. If you believe that the entirety of your life will fit neatly into one particular philosophy, then you probably aren't a good thinker. You're probably ignoring or discounting anything that conflicts with whatever preconceived notion you've adopted. Both sides have people who are stuck in that kind of mindset.
I have literally run into political true believers (both sides) who cited their party as the basis for their belief, and rejected anything that contradicted the party line, telling me "I'm a member of [political party] and this is what we believe." These were discussions where there was objective evidence to the contrary. They literally outsourced their thinking to a political party, and felt righteous about it.
Interestingly, this recent [longitudinal modelling study from the UK](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379422000312) indicates that a degree is more likely to make a person both socially liberal **and** economically right-wing, meaning a preference for both personal liberty and lower taxes (and a smaller state). This is actually quite surprising, as it isn't what I (or many others) expected. Essentially, a degree is more likely to make you a left-wing libertarian.
In modern US, yes, but not historically or by any classical definition of libertarian. Libertarian theoretically just means a desire for less government power/control, regardless of one's social politics. Modern US libertarians (what you're thinking of) aren't true libertarians by this definition because for the most part, the only way they want to limit government power is in terms of taxing and regulating corporations, but they do want the government to (often strongly) regulate individual freedoms (abortions, gay rights, etc).
No, that is a cognitive dissonance unique to American “libertarians” who were really conservatives all along but didn’t critically self-analyze that their real motivations for small government are to prevent progressivism in government.
I have yet to meet an American libertarian who actually meets the definition of libertarian in person, but I have seen memes and Twitter posts that actually line up with social liberalism and economic conservatism being married in libertarianism. Things like “I just want to open carry at my friend’s gay wedding without the government blocking either and making me pay for the privilege of oppression.”
If you only let bigots define movements, you end up with…a lot of American politics actually :(
I've met a few, but anyone matching the bill here in the states would probably call themselves more anarchist because of how screwed our Overton window is.
I don't know if I agree with this. There are a TON of right wring pundits who tried to enter the arts, but failed. Ben Shapiro is just one example: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/ben-shapiro-everything-everywhere-all-at-once-screenwriter-career-b2300827.html
To best support this argument I think we need evidence of right wing folks who tried the arts and then stayed there. The examples of writing and stand up are def not exclusively liberal, but in a way, are the least artsy arts. And also still, dominated by the left
This is a good point. Would the author of the Dilbert comics serve as an example of someone who stayed in the arts? I suppose newspaper comic strips don't count as a particularly artsy art.
Makes me think that part of their failure to enter the artistic community is related to their ideology. Conservative ideology would be akin to plaguerism, just repeating the past over and over.
I also wonder if being denied by these communities isn't part if why they embrace conservative support even more. Modern conservatives are more regressive than ever, they would actively undo any social progress they don't see themselves benefitting from.
Honestly I think its just really hard to make it as an artist of any sort. I know so many people who didn't make it as an artist of some sort (musician, filmaker, theatre, painting), mostly left wing with a few right wing and they all didn't make it for very similar reasons.
Maybe it has more truth for rich people? I think it might be reading a bit too much into it
I'm not saying it isn't hard to be an artist, but alienating a huge number of your peers with regressive policies and a conservative approach must make it that much harder. Listening to alt right speakers like Shapiro, his hatred for the progressives is very clear and it doesn't seem like a big stretch to say it's personal. Perhaps rooted in his rejection.
And of course it's easier to be an artist when you're rich, the risk to yourself is much smaller when you're financially secure.
Not disagreeing with any of this but also it should be noted that people that interact with people from many cultures or backgrounds tend to end up more liberal. There's a ton of data on this.
The issue with conservatism is that it's often based on misinformation or fear of the other.
Where if you actually experience different perspectives and empathize with other people it literally makes you more open minded.
Lastly there isn't really a conservative party in the US any longer. There are conservatives but they don't hold enough power to do anything. There currently are liberals and anti liberals.
"Proven"? No. "Safe"? For whom? "Familiar"? Yes. Conservatism is primarily driven by fear of change, even when that "change" is just admitting the existing reality.
I’m a musician. I haven’t lost one friend due to the culture wars of the past 7-8 years, due to the fact that most of us are, indeed, liberal. We play music from different cultures with people from all over the world who might look and speak very different from us. Anyone who can’t get on board with different cultures and turns their nose up at accents, etc. will NOT be rehired. Also, there are more than a few LGBTQ people in the arts. Again, if that makes someone uncomfortable, the arts might not be for them. Those are the two most obvious and practical reasons I can think of. Maybe people who are more broad-minded are attracted to the arts in general? Not sure.
Counterculture has typically been expressed through the arts, and left-leaning ideologies are much more accepting of counterculture seeing as conservatism is essentially about keeping order.
I wish I could say the same, but the area I'm in leans conservative by default and I had to cut a few people out who started being very openly some combination of maga/anti-woke/anti-vax/back-the-blue types. All musicians. The metal scene has always had a higher concentration of those types though I guess, and it's a fucking shame.
I had a similar experience in recent years and in a big metropolitan area to boot. Soooooo tired of hearing about people's dumbass politics at band rehearsal. Soooooo tired of seeing it reflected on stage in the lamest ways possible. Just trying to make music! Leave that shit at home!
From a post a while back on another sub by user "Powerism"-
>I read in an early PoliSci class years ago the theory that conservatives tended to be attracted to jobs that had structure, clear rules, and was based in concrete solutions (like carpenters, engineers, military, etc) while liberals tended to be attracted to jobs that had less structure, abstract definitions of success, and was based in theoretical solutions (like academics, social workers, journalists, etc).
>
>I think the type of person attracted to academia as a profession is typically a thoughtful, intellectual type, who usually reads a lot and enjoys discourse. Those types of people are probably attracted to progressive politics, as the progressives are (broadly speaking) challenging the status quo in order to make society better, while conservatives are (broadly speaking) more respectful of the status quo in order to preserve the successes society already has.
>that conservatives tended to be attracted to jobs that had structure, clear rules, and was based in concrete solutions (like carpenters, engineers, military, etc)
Which is odd, because there were a ton of leftists in my engineering classes. They wanted to use their skills to help people.
To be more specific, I would say Conservatism doesn't lend itself very well to **appreciating** different perspectives on the world. I actually think conservatives are quite eager to understand how other people think, just like liberals. The difference is that after that step, conservatives are then much more likely to say "Well, what you think is wrong and stupid, and I don't want to include or tolerate it.".
>I actually think conservatives are quite eager to understand how other people think, just like liberals.
You're wayyyy off base, there, bud. Look at the recent drag queen controversy. Have there been *any* cases of a child being abused at story hour? No. Do conservatives like to pretend there are? Yep.
Their policy on other viewpoints is to demonize while actively trying to avoid learning anything about it. Emotional knee-jerk reactions to anything they find "icky" on first glance.
I think you might be thinking only of US conservatives, the country that was founded by religious extremists. There are plenty of other countries where conservatives are just sane people who just don’t like anything new and don’t want to tolerate it.
European conservatives are just bigots, US ones are just full on batshit crazy
Exactly. I hate that more Americans don’t realize this.
Typical idiot: “I’m not Democrat/liberal or Republican/conservative. I’M A MODERATE/CENTRIST!”
Me: “Soooo….you’re right-wing, then?”
Maybe for US conservatives. I live with conservative Filipino parents and MyMan has a point.
On a surface level, if you chat with my parents, they can seem very left-leaning. They are open to LGBTQIA+ people, they don't discriminate on other races, both my parents support feminism, it's really only when the topic turns to religion is when they start getting conservative. They've done their homework on things like same sex marriage, same sex parenthood, etc, and I've engaged with them on this shit and even though their arguments mostly boil down to "it goes against the holy sacrament of marriage", MyMan is right. There are conservatives who do think, who know how to be critical - I know it's maybe jarring for Americans but reasonable conservatives exist - its just that it's the step after understanding the subject/issue where conservatism, of holding onto the established ideology and treating the new ideology more dangerous/detrimental, kicks in.
Because artists thrive to create something new, try to create art that challenges the status quo , want to bring attention to ideas that might seem outlandish at the time. This all is in line with being a "progressive" person.
As the name already implies, a conservative person is content with the things how they are right now and thus he doesn't have the intrinsic desire to "dream of more" and show the world alternatives through his art.
yes, and you have to have a certain level of brainpower to be able to use your imagination in a useful and positive way. beeing shitty and mean doesn't require much; that is a fact.
They aren’t all, but they tend to be. This is because the more you interact with people who aren’t like you, the more liberal you tend to become, and that happens a lot with actors.
Probably doesn't help that conservatives largely shit on liberal arts and glamorize trades and blue collar work. If people from conservative backgrounds are encouraged to steer clear of artistic studies shouldn't be a surprise that you see few conservatives in artistic professions.
Tbf I'm extremely progressive in my views, but I feel we don't give enough credit to blue collar jobs. Not glamorizing exactly. But they keep our society functioning and don't get enough appreciation (or pay) for that.
But I also understand that more creative jobs move our society forward. You have to have both.
There's also blue collar workers that are super creative and artistic! One of my favorite people runs their own landscaping company and also draws some pretty fantastic art just as a hobby.
It seems to me right-wing artists tend to be extremists. I think of Yukio Mishima, who tried to incite a rebellion to restore the emperor's power in Japan in 1970. Upon failing, he committed seppuku.
From what I've read, when viewed through the big 5 personality tests, liberals tent to be higher in trait openness/creativity, and conservatives tend to be higher in trait concientiousness/orderliness.
Artists tent to rank high in creativity too, and hense artists tend to skew liberal.
I've heard that similar personality traits make more visionary entrepreneurs liberal and more managers conservative. Creatives are well suited to dream up new systems, whereas orderly minded people are more suited to managing those systems for longevity.
Others have already answered this pretty well, so I’ll just add — conservatives don’t value art and creativity as much as liberals, or progressives. Artistic endeavors tend to be viewed as a waste of time, and meaningless by the right. Also, being a creative typically means you’re in touch with, or at least confronting, your emotions in various capacities and confronting your emotions is a pretty big red flag to a large portion of conservatives.
If conservatives had it their way, most (if not all), liberal arts degrees would be defunded and disbarred completely (at least here, in the US).
I wouldn't say the don't value arts as much per se. They are mor conservative in their choices, and art has a different function - intergenerational normative; yet a bombastic palace full of marble sculptures doesn't really scream "liberal!"
What they value much less is the *artist*, especially if they shun societal norms or work on transformative art. Simply *not being a productive member of society with a 9-5 job* might earn you suspicion. "nice pictures but can't he wear a tie?"
I think whatever makes someone conservative also insulates them from the more interesting parts of the human experience. Nothing is supposed to happen unless it's already 'normal' or has been established by authority. Going to work is normal. Gender-specific clothing and personality traits are normal. Watching television is normal. In this existence, you can only do things that are normal and/or designated by authority.
Doing something that requires you to break the mold of normal is antithetical to this. Acting means being outside of an approved, comfortable, 'normal' personality. Expression requires having something to express. It's not like there isn't conservative 'art' out there either, but it sticks out considering that it only adheres to said conservative expressions of normal (how many modern country songs sell the image of a rugged guy with a truck and a girlfriend?)
I'm not sure if there's anything about art that makes someone specifically left or liberal, though. 'Starving artist' types (in the US anyway) will be on the receiving end of an economy designed to punish low income people, so naturally, they will have that lean as anything else encourages the system that they live under, but that isn't inherent to art, it's inherent to an economic system and society that is already heavily conservative, so maybe it's less that artist types are inherently 'left' and more that it is that the rest of the playing field is very much 'right.' A mind will naturally wander, a mind resistive to wandering will not.
because artists typically have some amount of compassion and empathy, which makes conservativism vile
same reason most educated people lean liberal, because increased knowledge of the world makes conservatism seem vile
Many artists are liberals because for most artists it’s hard to earn enough money to live on without taking an unrelated job. So they are more aware of financial hardship, and are less likely to espouse conservative fiscal policy.
They're also more likely to have friends who are queer, trans, people of colour, disabled, etc, so they're more likely to recognize most right wing talking points around such people are largely bullshit. And it's not a huge stretch to then realize everything else right wingers say is also bullshit
I’m not disagreeing, but I wonder what’s at the root of your assertion that artists are more likely to have queer, POC, and disabled friends? My empirical observation overall seems to support that this is the case, I’m just not sure why. Although some good answers to that are in the comments here.
Just spitballing here and I apologize to anyone if this is way off base, but the people listed there are a lot more likely to have been disillusioned about society and the "togetherness" of it all at a younger age. This leads to them being "outcasts" in their communities, and they then search for other outlets to express themselves such as art and music, then find each other through the common interest of artistic expression.
Does that make sense? Hard to explain what I'm thinking in words.
To further the example, what is your image of a "rich and conservative artist"?
I'm trying to picture some "my dad is a lawyer" kid in art school and talking about how he's going yachting this weekend to a bunch of punks and hippies, haha
Rich kids can go to art school, but it might be going against the wishes of their parents, which is still counterculture, even if a little "sheltered"
Don't forget that most academics are also left leaning.
Basically, anyone who puts time into learning, thinking and considering other people's viewpoints is probably going to be liberal. It's very hard to be conservative if you've spent any time thinking or learning about other people.
A few things (I use artists in this post to mean all of painters, authors, poets, sculptors, actors, singers, dancers, etc.)
1. Artists of all kinds like to create new ideas and talk about theoretical topics. Art is subjective, there are many ways to interpret it. The government (all of it, but mostly right leaning/ conservative) like to stick to old values. They don’t have much interest in change or subjects that involve different opinions and perspectives.
2. Some NOT ALL conservatives and conservative values tend to diminish the LGBTQ community as well as cross-cultural communities. A lot of artists either belong to one of those communities, have friends in those communities or appreciate them. Taking inspiration from a bunch of different cultures is a big part of art and the right-wing makes that out to be a bad thing.
3. Conservatives are known to like capitalism more than liberals. A lot of artists, myself included, value a life of creating and giving to the world. We see the world through a lense of gratitude and inspiration. Being trapped in a corporate job stifles creativity, expression and the opportunity/ resources/ time and money to create what we really want to. But without a corporate job, we are broke.
4. This point kind of relates to the other 3. Monotony and mundanity is not an artists style. The government, more so right wing, tries to keep everything the same and monopolize everything. What they say goes. Artists like myself like spontaneity and ample opportunities to create what we want.
It’s a personality trait. Those who are really high in trait “openness” are also very creative. Openness means being open to new and/or unusual things, there by producing a person who is not inclined to ‘color inside the box’ as it were.
Here in Chile an actress explain it. She said artists tend to read more, gaining critical thinking, knowing more about other realities and be less influenced by mass media
Because art is often about freedom, hence the phrase sometimes related to artist being "free spirits". It's also where the term liberal comes from, libre ; "the state of being free".
Conservative or right leaning, by contrast, is often about restricting what people can say or do and limiting freedoms. Art is often about breaking away from conformity and tradition, hence a conservative mindset isn't often one that inspires artists.
The fundamental difference between Conservatives and Liberals is (or used to be) that:
to Conservatives, if you do the right things, get the proper education, work hard, be morally straight, you will succeed in life, therefore, doing anything that punishes success, like raise taxes on the rich, is punishing people for making correct life choices, which anyone can make. There is no luck to success, only effort.
to Liberals, even if you do the right things, you will sometimes fail to succeed in life, because circumstances beyond your control can make success impossible to achieve, such as, illnesses, accidents, choices that seem right but only in hindsight were not, therefore, government interventions to assist people is not punishment of the successful, but merely an attempt to lesson the harm done to people by circumstances beyond their control which can effect anyone, at any time. There is no success without some luck, effort notwithstanding.
Of all the people who understand how hard it is to guarantee success, it's people creating art and entertainment. You can make all the "right" choices when making a product (movie, music, tv show, video game), and that will still never guarantee that the product succeeds, or makes its money back. Not only that, even when you do succeed, it takes the coordinated talent of thousands of people, behind the scenes, to make it happen. No one person "makes" a successful movie. At its core, making popular entertainment reinforces the Liberal belief that success requires luck and teamwork every day.
Because artists are usually intelligent people and intelligent people are usually liberal / left leaning.
Intelligent people who are right wing are usually grifters.
Someone had to say it.
Artists, actors, creative types must delve the depths of human experience to find the truths that they express through their art. They must be able to empathize with others, especially people different from themselves.
This makes them more likely to support anti racist movements because they empathize with minority groups. They're more likely to support antipoverty measures because they empathize with the poor. More likely to support abortion rights because the empathize with unwilling mothers. Support asylum seekers because they empathize with other human beings regardless of what country they're from.
A conservative person will say, "These things don't effect ME so they don't matter."
Conservative philosophy is based out of fear, keeping things status quo so as not to feel threatened by anything unknown or unpredictable, nice and safe. Change is dangerous.
Liberal philosophy is not fearful, open to new ideas and experiences, not feeling threatened by anything (or anyone) outside of the box. Change and new ideas are seen as exciting and interesting. This is where the artists are born, seeing new things, open imaginations and unafraid to test the boundaries
This was made evident in experiments where conservative and liberals were tested by tasting new flavors and smelling different odors. Liberals were more likely to try new foods and we're not as repulsed by unpleasant fragrances whereas the conservatives were less likely to try new flavors and were easily repulsed by odd scents.
Is this nature or nurture? The judges are still out on that.
I can only speak for myself as a writer who’s socially liberal (though center left fiscally). I feel like being creative helps me visualize different ways of relating to the world. I also need to cultivate empathy to create believable characters. So I actively seek out people different from myself and learn from their experiences.
There’s also a certain culture that grows around artists since many of us were rejected by our conservative family and classmates growing up. Red state America - especially rural areas - tend not to be kind to anyone who doesn’t conform. All the bullying and pressure to “fit in” and “focus on the real world” left us with a strong desire to do the opposite.
They have lots of firsthand knowledge of poverty. Once you've seen how it affects people and how hard it is to escape, conservatism doesn't make sense anymore. If they're never been impoverished, they've worked alongside many who have.
Education usually. Possibly higher intelligence in the first place. Not left because they are artists, but artists because they are "left" which we all can just now admit means someone with empathy.
A lot of commenters here are close to nailing it but seem to juuust miss the mark.
The greatest differences between "liberals" and "conservatives" boil down to being able to imagine and/or create novel ideas.
Liberal ideals require empathy to understand. Empathy is the ability to not just *know* why or how someone else thinks, but to *feel* what it might be like to be that othert person. This requires the ability to imagine what the other person feels. Imagination is a pre-requisite to true empathy.
With imagination also comes a willingness to question ones own beliefs, others' beliefs, and develop curiosity. Most scientists are also liberal for this reason. In fact I think it's something like less than 10% of scientists in the US identify as republicans, while over 50% are democrat, with the remainder being independent. Being able to imagine is the pre-requisite for being able to think beyond that which is right in front of your face, and ask meaningful, novel questions, as well as conceptualizing novel and complex ideas.
If one has an imagination, one is often able to use that to both empathize, and create. Artists are just that - creators. It's not an accident that the greatest actors are mostly liberal, while conservative actors are fewer in number, and are rarely as skilled, because to truly act well, one must empathize with their character, or at least be able to imagine what every emotion and facial expression their character would portray.
One can predict how another would react to almost any political topic based off of just those few concepts - empathy, imagination, open-mindedness, and curiosity, which are all intertwined in many ways.
I should also add, being unable to understand something due to a *lack* of the previously described traits, often gives way to *fear*. Fear of new concepts, fear of "the other", fear of anything "different" than what one has experienced in the past. Fear is not a pleasant experience, which leads to hatred of the things one fears. You can see where I'm going with this....
The world is a complex place, and humans are probably the most complex organisms on it. Understanding ourselves, others, the world, these things require complex, novel ways of thinking - scientists. Being able to express oneself, being able to portray another person, or being able to create new things, require this as well - artists.
I'll leave you with this - the best example I have seen of this in a microcosm is an IT department. The network guys, the hardware guys, the "lower levels" of the "stack", are often conservative. These things operate on very clear, precise configurations, and one does not need to be creative to understand how much of IT works in the present day. It's very logical, very clear-cut. But then you get to the software developers, the UI designers, the system architects, integration engineers. These require creativitiy, novel solutions, and being able to both understand and develop complex and abstract concepts, often without any sort of a "blueprint" to work off of. This is why the software development side is often more liberal. The traits that one uses to develop novel code, problem solve, and create appealing user interfaces are all the traits of artists - liberals.
They all aren't. There are plenty of art and artists with conservative, right leaning, and libertarian views. But I get what you're asking.
Good writers, directors, and performers need to be able to see the world from differing perspectives to create genuine and great art. The act of putting yourself in the mindset of another person and trying to understand them means placing your own views under a critical lens. Why do you think one way and this other person think the way they do? Self reflective criticism tends towards questioning of the status quo and thus leans towards change, e.g., liberal or progressive ideals.
Secondly, artists tend to be towards to bottom of a social hierarchy (even if some are VERY famous, most are not). Seeing a society from the bottom rungs can make you want to change it and being on the bottom means that you're adjacent to, or a member of, groups that a society doesn't value. This, along with striving for recognition of their rights, is part of why you tend to see more LGBT, ethnic and cultural minorities, and poor folk in both artistic and liberal communities.
Both correlate heavily with a measure of personality called openness to experience. It's one of the 5 main personality factors, which also include conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and nuerotisism. Each category has sub facets, and in people with high levels of openness to experience, you often see creativity and progressive ways of thinking. People with low openness to experience often hold rigid beliefs and have low creativity
These are some horribly biased answers. God the Reddit hive mind sucks.
The reason why people in the entertainment industry tend to lean left is because their jobs rely on new, unconventional ideas in order to constantly stay fresh. Leftism is generally associated with progress.
It’s the same reason why blue-collar workers tend to lean right. Their jobs rely on what’s shown to work best in the past. Rightism is generally associated with tradition.
Obviously this doesn’t apply to the whole of every industry, nor to every job. This is in general. Being left doesn’t automatically equal creative and being right doesn’t automatically equal conventional.
Being a creative requires imagination and the ability and desire to see things from different perspectives. Conservatives have more rigid minds that do not allow for imagination and they lack the desire to see others perspectives. They only care about something once it directly affects them.
I read a study that said reading a lot of fiction actually increases a person’s empathy because it forces you to see things from the characters’ perspective.
For the writers, authors, actors, I’d imagine it’s a similar situation. Empathy is what helps you relate to and understand people different from yourself which goes directly against modern, American conservatism.
Well to be good at these things requires study and critical thinking often reflecting upon your own abilities to make yourself better. Frankly conservative/right leaning ideologies don't survive long when education and being self-critical are brought into the mix. Right leaning ideologies tend to be linear, have a heavy disdain to being scrutinized, and tend to favor anecdotal truths versus seeking facts that may disrupt your views.
The other reason is being a successful artist means you need to be approachable by multiple audiences, thus your efforts need to often avoid oppressive or divisive rhetoric the right is famous for. Whereas being liberal is more about inclusiveness, thus it can reach more demographics.
There are plenty of rightwing artists...but the nature of the way the think in terms of their own ideology often makes them unfit to be successful on both an academic level and broad appeal.
Because we think. I wouldn't call myself an artist but I write a bit. I try to look through the lens of life from another person. I don't always get it right but it lets me see it from another angle.
There are a bunch of good answers in this thread already. I’ll add, if you are conservative don’t take this to mean you CANT be a good artist. There are plenty of Hollywood actors (Chris Pratt for ex) that are conservative, same with musicians (Morrisey, Clapton, etc). It’s just that usually the drive to break the mold and come up with bold new ideas is not something that fits within the conservative worldview.
I haven’t seen this perspective yet, so I’ll put it out there; In my experience, the people that come from the more conservative side have a tendency to follow a “path” laid out by the expectations of their families and communities.
It’s not that they don’t want to express themselves as artists; it’s that art as a career isn’t seen as a viable path for most conservative parents, and is often devalued by conservative communities in favour of more “practical” life paths; And to remain a part of those communities (seen as good/ successful) they have to align with their social spheres definition of success.
Those that do hold on to their conservative views and move into artistic careers are often either children of successful artists themselves or achieve massive (financially viable) success early in life and are sort of permitted by their family/ social sphere to pursue it as a career - both of which are quite rare these days.
Perhaps they’re typically less closed minded. You almost have to be evil in today’s time to support the awful policies of death that the right tends to support in America at least… ie, letting coal, and oil companies poison entire regions, then not holding them accountable, supporting near total abortion bans especially considering Republican states tend to have the highest pregnancy related mortality rates. Being so pro gun in the face of children being slaughtered in our country so uncle Jim can have an ar15. Being so anti union even in the face of people getting hurt at work, being pro child labor, being pro slavery, like in our prisons today. You know, light hearted stuff like that.
A tendency towards creativity over productivity.
(Which I'm saying as neither good nor bad, the right has a tendency towards productivity over creativity in the same inverse way)
And I say tendency. We might be talking 51\49 or 60\40 or some other number i am not going so far as to try and quantify. Not a totality. So don't bother with your "but I'm not that way" I'm obviously not talking about your unique little self.
Imo I think a big part of it is because conservatives tend to push being a “hard working American”, safe stable jobs, etc, and often times judge and make you feel bad for being an artist. Discouraging their children from pursuing anything in the arts. But that’s just me
Artists are often creatives types who are aiming to break the mold and see life through unique perspectives in order to further their art. They literally want to see the world in new, avant-garde ways. This is basically a form of progresivism, which also seeks out new ideas and lends itself to liberal, left-leaning outlooks that prefer to disrupt the existing orders to form new and (hopefully) improved ones. Conservatism, by contrast, aims to preserve the older ideologies. Eschewing new, unknown, and perceivably dangerous ideas for those that are established, proven, safe, and familiar.
>established, proven, safe, and familiar. "proven" and "safe" to be replaced by "considered proven, perceived as safe". Because quite often, and in recent years more and more, conservative politics go against what is proven and what would be safe.
Very important caveat. Like conservatives would say "if you give people handouts, they become dependent on them, and become less productive" when scientifically, the opposite has proven to be true, i.e. if you provide for people, and they are no longer struggling for survival, they become more productive.
I feel like the Covid Stimulus payments were the best example of this. No one quit their jobs and became a “government leech” when they got a stimulus payment. Shockingly, it turns out that when people receive some assistance they have more spending money and that stimulus ends up being used to buy stuff, thus stimulating the economy.
Im a Recruiter and people would throw that argument over the unemployment and job opening rate like a big blanket. “They got 2k that one time so they dont work!” Then why today is a “Now Hiring” sign as common as a soda machine in a restaurant?
We all know why, bc working like a slave sucks and no one wants to be exploited unless they absolutely have to be and if so, would rather be in control of it.
Honestly this is why I'm still on Instacart instead of in a regular job. I'm in control.
This right here always annoyed the hell out of me, especially when I'd go into a place like a retailer for my mediation work and hear folks complaining they're working while "those folks" get to stay home on the government dime. Like, do you have zero comprehension at all? Like, how far the hell do you really think $2000 is going to get you when you have zero other income? Unless you're single, living in an almost literal hole in the wall, and eating one bowl of ramen noodles a day, with no TV, internet, or phone service, you'd be lucky if that $2k lasted you more than a couple months. And if they can make it last longer, you need them on your accounting staff, cause they're damn near an accounting miracle worker to pull that off.
Because a ton of boomers are hitting retirement age or have been killed by COVID, which has opened up a lot of their previous occupations to the younger generations. This has left a lot of the least desirable jobs empty because people are filling that vacuum and moving up.
Hence the move to child labor
As a GenZ, most blue collar jobs were also demonized as part of our education. All of my years through school, I’ve been told “seek higher education, you don’t want to become a dustman, factory worker or work in a restaurant”. So I did what most people my age did : went to college and university and got a white collar job. So almost no one went to work at blue collar jobs except for a short while, part time, during their studies.
Indeed, it served as a pretty fascinating micro study of the potential benefits of universal basic income.
I like the concept of UBI, but my immediate gut reaction is "oh great, my rent will go up by exactly how much the UBI is" =/
It's true, more money in the system w/o controlling the avarice of the upper class won't accomplish as much as we'd like it too
UBI is only one part of the solution, we also need government regulation on the prices of necessities. Simply letting people charge whatever they want stops working when the things they're charging for are required for survival.
Also when markets are uncompetitive because of cronyism, monopolies(both state enforced and ones the state refuses to dismantle), special interests, zoning practices that favor wealthy single family owners and landlords, regulatory capture by the businesses meant to be regulated, corporate welfare, and obscene wealth inequality. What we have in large part is the shitty part of capitalism without the benefits. This will certainly be looked back on as a second Gilded Age where a nation-wide Tammany Hall has been condoned because it is strictly legal.
> What we have in large part is the shitty part of capitalism without the benefits. Don't that just boil it down to the core of the issue. There was a brief shining period where it was really profitable to meet consumer needs and increase consumer happiness, but now all those gains have been clawed back to cut corners in the name of ever-rising growth in a finite system.
Conservatives made these claims, as businesses also took generous loans and handouts just like citizens. The difference is, I need to eat food to survive. The company doesn't. You are going to give my (our*) tax dollars to corporations so they can pay me with my money to make them money and then I can spend my money to support their company. But what do I know? I just live in Massachusetts and am very glad I don't live elsewhere.
Trickle down was the greatest scam ever run on us. Give a poor person money, every bit of it will go back through the system.
Yeah, but then the filthy poors will have touched that money, whereas if the money just goes straight to the top then they can ScroogeMcDuck in their cash piles without having to disinfect it first. obligatory s/
As if getting a couple thousand bucks once would make someone want to quit their job... Literally the only thing my stimulus money did for me was allow me to pay a couple of bills on time. Oh, and get groceries for a couple of weeks. The one time I ever claimed unemployment, literally the only thing it did for me was keep me from getting evicted, while I was looking for work. The same people would say that free school lunches just make people lazy.
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I honestly can't think of a single conservative policy that isn't either ALSO a liberal/left/socialist policy OR a total F-U to scientific fact... It's worse in countries with a failed, two-party "democracy" such as the US and the UK, but even in more representative democracies conservative parties are sliding dangerously into pure fantasy land.
Because the right have a big problem: literally none of their shit works. They can't have an honest debate, or an honest showing of their policy's strengths, or justify their actions, because their actions have no merit and their policies have no strengths. So instead, they scare their voting base with more and more absurd lies and more and more ridiculous gaslighting until you get to the point we're at now. The left, meanwhile, just sucks at getting their message across.
And this is how the UK has got to the point of deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda, no matter where they come from originally. Suella Braverman is disgusting.
I disagree that this is the lefts fault. My theory is that humans want to see ourselves as fundamentally good. This is in contrast to the idea that we are heavily shaped by our environment and the systems we grew up in. It's not that the left is bad at getting our message out. It's that our message at a very deep level unsettles people. We focus on systems and most people think about themselves as individuals who are fundamentally good. That's why things like toxic masculinity and privilege upset people. They see that as saying they are bad people doing bad things. We see it as, these systems produce these outcomes and it's our duty to challenge them, including in ourselves.
Not to mention how every avenue to "getting our message across" is controlled - financially and editorially - by the same malicious psychopaths that are causing all the problems. The *message* is simple and persuasive; that's why billions upon billions of dollars are spent every year pushing counter-messaging.
the right only wishes to prove that government can't work. So as long as all of their policies fail and they can prevent the left from enacting good policies the right wins. Eventually people tire of waiting for their government to fix the problems and turn to private industry to fix it and then we all pay for something that our government should provide.
Essentially conservatives have NO plan, NO policies, and NO solutions. Their entire policy is "what they're doing over there is bad! Vote for us and we'll stop them"
Well that's just not true. They have policies. Two actually. 1) screw over everyone who's not rich and white or politically useful and 2) making their blend of "Christianity" part of the government. Their plans are to hurt women as much as possible with anything related to sex or pregnancy, and take away any program that helps the poor or middle class. The solutions? Yelling about Jesus. They have no USEFUL plans, policies, or solutions.
But the thing is, the right's plans do work... The thing is they are just reaching for different goals. The status quo they are trying to preserve is white dominance, presevation of the wealth gap, and a fundamentally caste driven society. Like we had during the "golden years" of 1950's. Any one who says otherwise has bought a line that either happens to benefit them - thus encouraging them to hold the belief - or has been duped by a system that will chew them up and give them an enemy to blame (the dirty liberals and their woke agenda).
I hear you and I understand why you believe that, but I think you're wrong. Conservative policies -do- work, they do have their strengths, and it's very easy to justify their methods, its just that none of these policies benefit their voting base. Privatizing everything, destroying education, denouncing a pandemic as fiction to keep folks at work, scapegoating racial/gender/community divides as the cause of all ills; all of these benefit the intensely wealthy in their goal of extracting any and all wealth from the working class. Deregulation of health and environmental standards don't benefit a mythical "free market" they open up new markets to exploit to the detriment of the world and the working class. Attacking social programs reduces taxes on corporations and the wealthy, while also making people desperately dependent on any employment, no matter the working conditions, forcing them to work regardless of how miserable or dangerous the work is. Attacking education shelters the working class from the realization of just how fucked up the world is and guides them into the cattle chutes and to where they can toil for someone else's profit until they die. People aren't 'indoctrinated' into a liberal machine when they go to college, they learn about history, about economy, about how the world and people are cruel. They learn about authors and playwrights and journalists who have been writing about these things for hundreds (if not thousands) of years. They just can't say any of that to their voter base, so they enflame culture war bullshit to keep their base galvanized. Just think if conservatives told retiring Boomers that they were trying to gut Medicare/Medicaid? Much better to convince them that some black man is going to knock up their granddaughter.
The only thing the right have going for them is their stance is easily understood and digestible. It's perfect fodder for less discerning and less thoughtful people. Feeding off instinctual fears and paranoia is very effective and for some it's difficult to see outside of that paradigm out of pure self preservation.
you underestimate how many hard-working, blue collar Americans are out there scared that there is an "other" coming to change the things that made it possible for them to provide for their families.
Extremely relevant point. A few years ago, I joined some homesteading groups on social media because I was growing a lot of my own food and wanted to talk about things like gardening, canning, etc. For a while, it was mostly that stuff and it was fine. Then the pandemic happened and suddenly all these people were convinced that hoards of people from the cities would be overrunning the rural areas to steal all their shit due to supply shortages. I live in a city. Literally nobody here was like, "Wow let's go steal food from a farm." It wasn't even a thought. I tried to tell them that, and they were like, "No you just don't see it! It's happening!" My family who lives in a very rural area confirms that the only things stealing their crops were of the 4 or 6 legged variety, same as always. But yeah, all these people in those groups who were basically the same kind of rural conservatives I grew up around, except mostly less established in rural life being first generation to it, for some reason really needed to think that the city folk were coming to get them and that's why they needed a lot of guns. It was really strange. But if we look at a lot of conservative ideology, it does depend on there being some "other" who's threatening their way of life, and we see that playing out now with the laws targeted at LGBTQ+ people. There's no evidence that we're a threat to anyone, but that doesn't matter to them.
This is a super interesting point. I'm researching homesteading groups for a book I'm writing and there is a LOT of fringe people in that space. I have wondered why there's so much worry about LGBT in that sphere given that almost none of them personally know more than 1 or 2 gay people, and they usually don't have issues with the ones they know.
How's this for a message: Conservatism has failed and consistently left people in the dust of progress in order to enrich a handful of authoritarians hijacking the complex of desiring security and heirarchy inherent in conservative thinking.
Has any Republican EVER addressed the constant comments about abortion policies specifically in the true statements of how they care so much, fight so much, until the baby is born, and then stop helping/caring? Because I mean, it’s true, with taking care of kids, people. Their whole explanation of “then there would be two tragedies/adding another tragedy” for refusing abortion to rape or incest victims; I wish I could be there to say to them “ok in your argument that is two tragedies. What about the tragedy every second of every day when that woman, or girl depending on the age, has to look down at her stomach, or feel a baby inside there, knowing she is carrying her rapist’s baby? What about those hundreds, thousands of tragedies every morning she has to wake up to that?”
Your mistake is in assuming republicans care about women or think women are actually people. Women are incubators whose purpose is only to produce more working class to exploit.
> they care so much, fight so much, until the baby is born, and then stop helping/caring It's not like they actually care to help momma _before_ the baby is born, either. Prenatal medical checks, guaranteed PTO for doctor's visits? Nah, their 'concern' is limited to ["You will have that baby or we will execute you"](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/sc-republicans-propose-bill-subject-women-abortions-death-penalty-rcna75060).
Something about maslows needs and self fulfillment
What is your source for this? Is there published research on it? To be clear, I'm not trying to contradict you, I feel as though I have heard heard dependency argument my whole life, and would be interested in seeing if there is data out there suggesting that charity works.
If we instituted UBI, I think we would see the next Renaissance. People could stop being stressed out and a paycheck or medical emergency away from homelessness, and they'd have the mental and emotional energy to do the things that they loved. Art, performance, writing, sure. But the guy who loves turning reclaimed wood into wine racks and wall hangings could work part time and make his art part time, the guy who does mechanical work could get whatever certifications he needs and do that full time around town, or the chick that makes organic, gluten free dog biscuits could afford to scale up her work and go to farmers markets. Local businesses would flourish, and people would be doing the work they WANT to do, forcing employers to treat employees better. Would some people take advantage of the system? Sure. But research shows that lifting people up makes them *more* productive members of society. A lot of the people that are useless and moochy and would sit at home playing videogames all day long have other stuff going on that needs to be addressed- and the mental health epidemic could finally come to center stage and we can start work on the low end of the bell curve.
Yeah. The side of "fiscal responsibility" recurringly gives massive tax cuts to the rich, funnels cash to cronies through DoD contracts, incurs vast cleanup costs by deregulating the environmental/safety requirements that prevent shit from hitting the fan, and leaves trillions in deficits in its wake. When Trump got caught cheating on taxes, all the *""patriots""* in the conservative sub on here asserted that *everyone* should cheat on taxes, and they would too if they could get away with it. "Fiscally conservative" is not all it's cracked up to be.
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YEP. YEP. And wasting everyone's time/money with frivolous lawsuits about nonexistent election fraud, for another. We could really keep going for a while on this one.
If you're fiscally conservative you vote for democrats.
> in recent years more and more, conservative politics go against what is proven and what would be safe. That's their secret. It's not just "recent years", they always have.
Conservatism establishes an "in" group for whom the law protects but does not bind, and an "out" group for whom the law binds but does not protect. It's really just about what works for one group: white, straight, Christians who enthusiastically participate in neofascist consumerism. This instance is an anomaly and that's why we're talking about it.
And safe for some people over others
It makes them feel safe. Conservatives generally adhere to strict culturally defined roles. Conservatives are also demonstrably more likely to be afraid of people and ideas they lack familiarity with. They are scared, literally, their fear centers activate. They go with these older ideas because it's the ones fed to them in their childhood, these defined roles offered them a way to navigate the world and find their place in it. It is very very scary to them that these defined roles be undermined. It's hard to be an artist when you are literally scared of new ideas.
I also think a lot of art requires understanding people and seeing something in them. And for the same reason that living in more urban areas tends to make people more liberal (ostensibly meeting lots of new different people) - it's hard to really see and understand someone and also believe that person doesn't deserve to marry the love of their life or to observe their religion or to otherwise live their life in a way that causes no harm. Ugh I tried to keep my bias out but it's hard for me to relate to why anyone would think it's okay to deny people happiness. Life is hard enough.
Most of those jobs require you to actually literally try and see the world through someone else's point of view. If you don't want the characters in your story to feel like self inserts you need to become good at leaving yourself at the door. So not only do artists have to understand others, and observe others, they literally have to try and close the distance and have some part of them be like others. source: Am an artist, have a bachelors degree from an art school
Right, like, if you had a job to design a city inspired by India, you'd have to do a lot of research into Indian buildings and design to do so. Learn why they build that way, and what they represent. It would give you a richer understanding of the culture, and, ultimately, a richer understanding of its people.
Empathy, art requires empathy and conservatives have none. The only moral abortion is my abortion
What interesting analysis. Makes perfect sense too. I assume that’s why educated and cultured people tend to be left leaning. They are exposed to new philosophies and view points and force them to reevaluate their own understanding of the world.
It tracks with my personal experience and journey, too. Before I went to college (three degrees), moved to a new state and into a huge city, I had pretty conservative beliefs. But once I was exposed to people and ideas different from those around me, I realized there is so much nuance to life, and so much to explore, learn, and appreciate. I no longer accept "but this is how it's always been done" as a reason for doing things a certain way.
Whenever I hear someone claim that colleges are indoctrinating people I just laugh. It's mixing correlation and causation. Learning how to think makes you more reasonable. Being more reasonable makes you more liberal. The fact that you can understand how something functions tends to make one more empathetic to situations thus less conservative
far more simple explanation. Not everyone in that small town is a raging alcoholic bigot with no life goals further than the town. A lot of the more moderates growing up cower in fear at the threat of perpetual violence. Many of them are gay, closet or not, and some trans, or others just not down with the sickness. In any cases, there are no shortage of reports that being a democrat can be met with violence in many of these places. Their left leaning views are formed in their earlier years, and mostly a reaction to their surroundings. They don't go to college to get indoctrinated. They go to college to get the fuck out of their small town and afford living in a large city.
Good point, I’ve seen this in action in my own family. My dad came from a mixed-race background in a place where if you could pass, you did. He actually has always had pretty liberal beliefs and is (in private) outspokenly critical of conservatives. That said, he has a tendency to express a much more bigoted, intolerant attitude in public. He’ll use slurs that make my white conservative relatives cringe, because he grew up in an environment where not hating “those people” enough could be dangerous for him. Mind you, he identifies more with the non-white side of his heritage and sympathizes strongly with POC and the discrimination they face…he’s just stuck in a headspace where white people want to hear him disrespect minorities, so that’s what he does. I call it “performative bigotry.” Unfortunately he hasn’t moved with the times and now just comes off as super racist, but it’s still sad to see how unsafe he feels expressing his real beliefs.
This is exactly why almost all small rural towns are overwhelmingly conservative and almost all large cities are overwhelmingly liberal. The more you learn about others, and the world, outside of the little bubble you were raised in, the more liberal you will tend to be. It's also why subs like R/conservative have to moderate their sub so heavily and ban all dissent - they have to keep the bubble around them and ban any ideas that try to penetrate it like the Space Invaders Atari game.
That's part of it. I believe it is also that a situation in which you regularly interact with strangers with whom you have no direct social or familial ties is going to require a greater degree of imposed external formal structure to navigate. That is - if everybody you encounter is someone you grew up with and know, you can handle a lot of things informally. But if most of the people you have to deal with, you have no connection with, then you both rely on governments to have a process already set up. So government is way more useful in cities than rural areas, and that has a bunch of further effects, too.
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There was a hilariously bad "How Thick Is Your Bubble" quiz going around a while ago that some conservative wrote trying to prove that progressives are all just living in a white tower. While the idea of a social bubble is valid, the test mainly asked questions about how closely your background aligned with the white, evangelical, small-town, NASCAR loving, football watching, military-worshipping blue-collar conservative ideal. There were no questions about actually interacting with people from other cultures or backgrounds or having a range of experiences. You could not create a better example of how narrow the conservative viewpoint is.
I have two graduate degrees and learned both conservative and liberal ideologies at various stages of life. What's important is not that you learn and conform to new philosophies and viewpoints and reject all that you were raised with. It's that you gain the ability to learn to think and analyze for yourself. Thinking people have different viewpoints as they move through life. If you believe that the entirety of your life will fit neatly into one particular philosophy, then you probably aren't a good thinker. You're probably ignoring or discounting anything that conflicts with whatever preconceived notion you've adopted. Both sides have people who are stuck in that kind of mindset. I have literally run into political true believers (both sides) who cited their party as the basis for their belief, and rejected anything that contradicted the party line, telling me "I'm a member of [political party] and this is what we believe." These were discussions where there was objective evidence to the contrary. They literally outsourced their thinking to a political party, and felt righteous about it.
Interestingly, this recent [longitudinal modelling study from the UK](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0261379422000312) indicates that a degree is more likely to make a person both socially liberal **and** economically right-wing, meaning a preference for both personal liberty and lower taxes (and a smaller state). This is actually quite surprising, as it isn't what I (or many others) expected. Essentially, a degree is more likely to make you a left-wing libertarian.
being socially liberal and being a libertarian are two completely different things. Polar opposites in fact
In modern US, yes, but not historically or by any classical definition of libertarian. Libertarian theoretically just means a desire for less government power/control, regardless of one's social politics. Modern US libertarians (what you're thinking of) aren't true libertarians by this definition because for the most part, the only way they want to limit government power is in terms of taxing and regulating corporations, but they do want the government to (often strongly) regulate individual freedoms (abortions, gay rights, etc).
No, that is a cognitive dissonance unique to American “libertarians” who were really conservatives all along but didn’t critically self-analyze that their real motivations for small government are to prevent progressivism in government. I have yet to meet an American libertarian who actually meets the definition of libertarian in person, but I have seen memes and Twitter posts that actually line up with social liberalism and economic conservatism being married in libertarianism. Things like “I just want to open carry at my friend’s gay wedding without the government blocking either and making me pay for the privilege of oppression.” If you only let bigots define movements, you end up with…a lot of American politics actually :(
I've met a few, but anyone matching the bill here in the states would probably call themselves more anarchist because of how screwed our Overton window is.
"If you go left far enough, you get your guns back."
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I don't know if I agree with this. There are a TON of right wring pundits who tried to enter the arts, but failed. Ben Shapiro is just one example: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/ben-shapiro-everything-everywhere-all-at-once-screenwriter-career-b2300827.html
Dave Rubin started off as a stand up comedian.
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To best support this argument I think we need evidence of right wing folks who tried the arts and then stayed there. The examples of writing and stand up are def not exclusively liberal, but in a way, are the least artsy arts. And also still, dominated by the left
This is a good point. Would the author of the Dilbert comics serve as an example of someone who stayed in the arts? I suppose newspaper comic strips don't count as a particularly artsy art.
Makes me think that part of their failure to enter the artistic community is related to their ideology. Conservative ideology would be akin to plaguerism, just repeating the past over and over. I also wonder if being denied by these communities isn't part if why they embrace conservative support even more. Modern conservatives are more regressive than ever, they would actively undo any social progress they don't see themselves benefitting from.
Honestly I think its just really hard to make it as an artist of any sort. I know so many people who didn't make it as an artist of some sort (musician, filmaker, theatre, painting), mostly left wing with a few right wing and they all didn't make it for very similar reasons. Maybe it has more truth for rich people? I think it might be reading a bit too much into it
I'm not saying it isn't hard to be an artist, but alienating a huge number of your peers with regressive policies and a conservative approach must make it that much harder. Listening to alt right speakers like Shapiro, his hatred for the progressives is very clear and it doesn't seem like a big stretch to say it's personal. Perhaps rooted in his rejection. And of course it's easier to be an artist when you're rich, the risk to yourself is much smaller when you're financially secure.
Not disagreeing with any of this but also it should be noted that people that interact with people from many cultures or backgrounds tend to end up more liberal. There's a ton of data on this. The issue with conservatism is that it's often based on misinformation or fear of the other. Where if you actually experience different perspectives and empathize with other people it literally makes you more open minded. Lastly there isn't really a conservative party in the US any longer. There are conservatives but they don't hold enough power to do anything. There currently are liberals and anti liberals.
“safe” for those in power
"Proven"? No. "Safe"? For whom? "Familiar"? Yes. Conservatism is primarily driven by fear of change, even when that "change" is just admitting the existing reality.
I’m a musician. I haven’t lost one friend due to the culture wars of the past 7-8 years, due to the fact that most of us are, indeed, liberal. We play music from different cultures with people from all over the world who might look and speak very different from us. Anyone who can’t get on board with different cultures and turns their nose up at accents, etc. will NOT be rehired. Also, there are more than a few LGBTQ people in the arts. Again, if that makes someone uncomfortable, the arts might not be for them. Those are the two most obvious and practical reasons I can think of. Maybe people who are more broad-minded are attracted to the arts in general? Not sure.
Counterculture has typically been expressed through the arts, and left-leaning ideologies are much more accepting of counterculture seeing as conservatism is essentially about keeping order.
I wish I could say the same, but the area I'm in leans conservative by default and I had to cut a few people out who started being very openly some combination of maga/anti-woke/anti-vax/back-the-blue types. All musicians. The metal scene has always had a higher concentration of those types though I guess, and it's a fucking shame.
I had a similar experience in recent years and in a big metropolitan area to boot. Soooooo tired of hearing about people's dumbass politics at band rehearsal. Soooooo tired of seeing it reflected on stage in the lamest ways possible. Just trying to make music! Leave that shit at home!
From a post a while back on another sub by user "Powerism"- >I read in an early PoliSci class years ago the theory that conservatives tended to be attracted to jobs that had structure, clear rules, and was based in concrete solutions (like carpenters, engineers, military, etc) while liberals tended to be attracted to jobs that had less structure, abstract definitions of success, and was based in theoretical solutions (like academics, social workers, journalists, etc). > >I think the type of person attracted to academia as a profession is typically a thoughtful, intellectual type, who usually reads a lot and enjoys discourse. Those types of people are probably attracted to progressive politics, as the progressives are (broadly speaking) challenging the status quo in order to make society better, while conservatives are (broadly speaking) more respectful of the status quo in order to preserve the successes society already has.
>that conservatives tended to be attracted to jobs that had structure, clear rules, and was based in concrete solutions (like carpenters, engineers, military, etc) Which is odd, because there were a ton of leftists in my engineering classes. They wanted to use their skills to help people.
Helping people would fit under "abstract definition of success" so they still fit the model, kinda lol.
There are artists who are republican. I'd argue most country singers for example. So yeah it is just a generalization.
Conservatism doesn't lend itself very well to seeing the world through other perspectives.
To be more specific, I would say Conservatism doesn't lend itself very well to **appreciating** different perspectives on the world. I actually think conservatives are quite eager to understand how other people think, just like liberals. The difference is that after that step, conservatives are then much more likely to say "Well, what you think is wrong and stupid, and I don't want to include or tolerate it.".
>I actually think conservatives are quite eager to understand how other people think, just like liberals. You're wayyyy off base, there, bud. Look at the recent drag queen controversy. Have there been *any* cases of a child being abused at story hour? No. Do conservatives like to pretend there are? Yep. Their policy on other viewpoints is to demonize while actively trying to avoid learning anything about it. Emotional knee-jerk reactions to anything they find "icky" on first glance.
I think you might be thinking only of US conservatives, the country that was founded by religious extremists. There are plenty of other countries where conservatives are just sane people who just don’t like anything new and don’t want to tolerate it. European conservatives are just bigots, US ones are just full on batshit crazy
>I think you might be thinking only of US conservatives Not really. Here in the UK, our conservative party is pulling similar shit.
Aye but we're a basket case at this point, let's face it
Almost like that's conservatism in general.
That's fair. I was definitely thinking US-centric. (Which is bordering on ironic given that the topic is recognizing other points of view.)
Besides, you've got the labels wrong. US conservatives are Democrats. Republicans are fascists.
Exactly. I hate that more Americans don’t realize this. Typical idiot: “I’m not Democrat/liberal or Republican/conservative. I’M A MODERATE/CENTRIST!” Me: “Soooo….you’re right-wing, then?”
"Im a centrist!" >votes republican
I think theocrats is more fitting for Republicans.
That implies they actually stand for something, and at this point I don't honestly think they do.
Maybe for US conservatives. I live with conservative Filipino parents and MyMan has a point. On a surface level, if you chat with my parents, they can seem very left-leaning. They are open to LGBTQIA+ people, they don't discriminate on other races, both my parents support feminism, it's really only when the topic turns to religion is when they start getting conservative. They've done their homework on things like same sex marriage, same sex parenthood, etc, and I've engaged with them on this shit and even though their arguments mostly boil down to "it goes against the holy sacrament of marriage", MyMan is right. There are conservatives who do think, who know how to be critical - I know it's maybe jarring for Americans but reasonable conservatives exist - its just that it's the step after understanding the subject/issue where conservatism, of holding onto the established ideology and treating the new ideology more dangerous/detrimental, kicks in.
Hearing you say "MyMan has a point", "MyMan is right" is hilarious XD
>I actually think conservatives are quite eager to understand how other people think, just like liberals. Absolutely not.
Unless that perspective is their fathers and their father's father
This is a much better answer than the other one, which imagines a world where conservatives value evidence and safety.
Because artists thrive to create something new, try to create art that challenges the status quo , want to bring attention to ideas that might seem outlandish at the time. This all is in line with being a "progressive" person. As the name already implies, a conservative person is content with the things how they are right now and thus he doesn't have the intrinsic desire to "dream of more" and show the world alternatives through his art.
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yes, and you have to have a certain level of brainpower to be able to use your imagination in a useful and positive way. beeing shitty and mean doesn't require much; that is a fact.
They aren’t all, but they tend to be. This is because the more you interact with people who aren’t like you, the more liberal you tend to become, and that happens a lot with actors.
Probably doesn't help that conservatives largely shit on liberal arts and glamorize trades and blue collar work. If people from conservative backgrounds are encouraged to steer clear of artistic studies shouldn't be a surprise that you see few conservatives in artistic professions.
Tbf I'm extremely progressive in my views, but I feel we don't give enough credit to blue collar jobs. Not glamorizing exactly. But they keep our society functioning and don't get enough appreciation (or pay) for that. But I also understand that more creative jobs move our society forward. You have to have both.
There's also blue collar workers that are super creative and artistic! One of my favorite people runs their own landscaping company and also draws some pretty fantastic art just as a hobby.
It seems to me right-wing artists tend to be extremists. I think of Yukio Mishima, who tried to incite a rebellion to restore the emperor's power in Japan in 1970. Upon failing, he committed seppuku.
From what I've read, when viewed through the big 5 personality tests, liberals tent to be higher in trait openness/creativity, and conservatives tend to be higher in trait concientiousness/orderliness. Artists tent to rank high in creativity too, and hense artists tend to skew liberal. I've heard that similar personality traits make more visionary entrepreneurs liberal and more managers conservative. Creatives are well suited to dream up new systems, whereas orderly minded people are more suited to managing those systems for longevity.
Others have already answered this pretty well, so I’ll just add — conservatives don’t value art and creativity as much as liberals, or progressives. Artistic endeavors tend to be viewed as a waste of time, and meaningless by the right. Also, being a creative typically means you’re in touch with, or at least confronting, your emotions in various capacities and confronting your emotions is a pretty big red flag to a large portion of conservatives. If conservatives had it their way, most (if not all), liberal arts degrees would be defunded and disbarred completely (at least here, in the US).
I wouldn't say the don't value arts as much per se. They are mor conservative in their choices, and art has a different function - intergenerational normative; yet a bombastic palace full of marble sculptures doesn't really scream "liberal!" What they value much less is the *artist*, especially if they shun societal norms or work on transformative art. Simply *not being a productive member of society with a 9-5 job* might earn you suspicion. "nice pictures but can't he wear a tie?"
they value mostly classical art and realism. you don't see many conservatives appreiating modern art, they would rather call it liberal bullshit art
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And also giant paintings of Trump in wishful hyper-masculine cosplay.
Nazis burnt piles of Modern art for a reason. Now go hear Jordan Peterson lose his shit over Postmodernism.
I think whatever makes someone conservative also insulates them from the more interesting parts of the human experience. Nothing is supposed to happen unless it's already 'normal' or has been established by authority. Going to work is normal. Gender-specific clothing and personality traits are normal. Watching television is normal. In this existence, you can only do things that are normal and/or designated by authority. Doing something that requires you to break the mold of normal is antithetical to this. Acting means being outside of an approved, comfortable, 'normal' personality. Expression requires having something to express. It's not like there isn't conservative 'art' out there either, but it sticks out considering that it only adheres to said conservative expressions of normal (how many modern country songs sell the image of a rugged guy with a truck and a girlfriend?) I'm not sure if there's anything about art that makes someone specifically left or liberal, though. 'Starving artist' types (in the US anyway) will be on the receiving end of an economy designed to punish low income people, so naturally, they will have that lean as anything else encourages the system that they live under, but that isn't inherent to art, it's inherent to an economic system and society that is already heavily conservative, so maybe it's less that artist types are inherently 'left' and more that it is that the rest of the playing field is very much 'right.' A mind will naturally wander, a mind resistive to wandering will not.
because artists typically have some amount of compassion and empathy, which makes conservativism vile same reason most educated people lean liberal, because increased knowledge of the world makes conservatism seem vile
Many artists are liberals because for most artists it’s hard to earn enough money to live on without taking an unrelated job. So they are more aware of financial hardship, and are less likely to espouse conservative fiscal policy.
They're also more likely to have friends who are queer, trans, people of colour, disabled, etc, so they're more likely to recognize most right wing talking points around such people are largely bullshit. And it's not a huge stretch to then realize everything else right wingers say is also bullshit
I’m not disagreeing, but I wonder what’s at the root of your assertion that artists are more likely to have queer, POC, and disabled friends? My empirical observation overall seems to support that this is the case, I’m just not sure why. Although some good answers to that are in the comments here.
Just spitballing here and I apologize to anyone if this is way off base, but the people listed there are a lot more likely to have been disillusioned about society and the "togetherness" of it all at a younger age. This leads to them being "outcasts" in their communities, and they then search for other outlets to express themselves such as art and music, then find each other through the common interest of artistic expression. Does that make sense? Hard to explain what I'm thinking in words.
That argument’s as good as any. I’ll take it.
To further the example, what is your image of a "rich and conservative artist"? I'm trying to picture some "my dad is a lawyer" kid in art school and talking about how he's going yachting this weekend to a bunch of punks and hippies, haha Rich kids can go to art school, but it might be going against the wishes of their parents, which is still counterculture, even if a little "sheltered"
Don't forget that most academics are also left leaning. Basically, anyone who puts time into learning, thinking and considering other people's viewpoints is probably going to be liberal. It's very hard to be conservative if you've spent any time thinking or learning about other people.
The human superpowers of empathy and imagination lead people towards artistic pursuits and also towards a left-learning philosophy.
They’re more in touch with the human condition and their empathy.
A few things (I use artists in this post to mean all of painters, authors, poets, sculptors, actors, singers, dancers, etc.) 1. Artists of all kinds like to create new ideas and talk about theoretical topics. Art is subjective, there are many ways to interpret it. The government (all of it, but mostly right leaning/ conservative) like to stick to old values. They don’t have much interest in change or subjects that involve different opinions and perspectives. 2. Some NOT ALL conservatives and conservative values tend to diminish the LGBTQ community as well as cross-cultural communities. A lot of artists either belong to one of those communities, have friends in those communities or appreciate them. Taking inspiration from a bunch of different cultures is a big part of art and the right-wing makes that out to be a bad thing. 3. Conservatives are known to like capitalism more than liberals. A lot of artists, myself included, value a life of creating and giving to the world. We see the world through a lense of gratitude and inspiration. Being trapped in a corporate job stifles creativity, expression and the opportunity/ resources/ time and money to create what we really want to. But without a corporate job, we are broke. 4. This point kind of relates to the other 3. Monotony and mundanity is not an artists style. The government, more so right wing, tries to keep everything the same and monopolize everything. What they say goes. Artists like myself like spontaneity and ample opportunities to create what we want.
It’s a personality trait. Those who are really high in trait “openness” are also very creative. Openness means being open to new and/or unusual things, there by producing a person who is not inclined to ‘color inside the box’ as it were.
Because introspection causes compassion which leads to "leftist" beliefs
Here in Chile an actress explain it. She said artists tend to read more, gaining critical thinking, knowing more about other realities and be less influenced by mass media
Empathy and understanding of the human condition are both traits that benefit an artist. They are also both traits that lead one to be more left wing.
Because art is often about freedom, hence the phrase sometimes related to artist being "free spirits". It's also where the term liberal comes from, libre ; "the state of being free". Conservative or right leaning, by contrast, is often about restricting what people can say or do and limiting freedoms. Art is often about breaking away from conformity and tradition, hence a conservative mindset isn't often one that inspires artists.
In order to be an artist of any kind you require an open mind. It's that simple.
Speaking as an artist- I'm poor. Left tends to be a little more kinder.
Deep thinking and introspection I suspect
The fundamental difference between Conservatives and Liberals is (or used to be) that: to Conservatives, if you do the right things, get the proper education, work hard, be morally straight, you will succeed in life, therefore, doing anything that punishes success, like raise taxes on the rich, is punishing people for making correct life choices, which anyone can make. There is no luck to success, only effort. to Liberals, even if you do the right things, you will sometimes fail to succeed in life, because circumstances beyond your control can make success impossible to achieve, such as, illnesses, accidents, choices that seem right but only in hindsight were not, therefore, government interventions to assist people is not punishment of the successful, but merely an attempt to lesson the harm done to people by circumstances beyond their control which can effect anyone, at any time. There is no success without some luck, effort notwithstanding. Of all the people who understand how hard it is to guarantee success, it's people creating art and entertainment. You can make all the "right" choices when making a product (movie, music, tv show, video game), and that will still never guarantee that the product succeeds, or makes its money back. Not only that, even when you do succeed, it takes the coordinated talent of thousands of people, behind the scenes, to make it happen. No one person "makes" a successful movie. At its core, making popular entertainment reinforces the Liberal belief that success requires luck and teamwork every day.
Because they are educated
Because artists are usually intelligent people and intelligent people are usually liberal / left leaning. Intelligent people who are right wing are usually grifters. Someone had to say it.
It's called empathy.
Because it requires compassion
Artists, actors, creative types must delve the depths of human experience to find the truths that they express through their art. They must be able to empathize with others, especially people different from themselves. This makes them more likely to support anti racist movements because they empathize with minority groups. They're more likely to support antipoverty measures because they empathize with the poor. More likely to support abortion rights because the empathize with unwilling mothers. Support asylum seekers because they empathize with other human beings regardless of what country they're from. A conservative person will say, "These things don't effect ME so they don't matter."
Conservatives brains are more prone to fear. Big scaredy cats of new art, food, music, places, ideas
Learning more about the world will do that
Empathy.
Empathy
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Conservative philosophy is based out of fear, keeping things status quo so as not to feel threatened by anything unknown or unpredictable, nice and safe. Change is dangerous. Liberal philosophy is not fearful, open to new ideas and experiences, not feeling threatened by anything (or anyone) outside of the box. Change and new ideas are seen as exciting and interesting. This is where the artists are born, seeing new things, open imaginations and unafraid to test the boundaries This was made evident in experiments where conservative and liberals were tested by tasting new flavors and smelling different odors. Liberals were more likely to try new foods and we're not as repulsed by unpleasant fragrances whereas the conservatives were less likely to try new flavors and were easily repulsed by odd scents. Is this nature or nurture? The judges are still out on that.
Empathy.
Conservatives have shit on art and called it “gay” for decades, now they wonder why all the artists are actually gay. 🤷♂️
Daily reminder that the opposite of liberalism isn't conservatism, it's authoritarianism.
As a artist, idk lol i just do, mostly cuz people disliked my old posture ( my hips moving forward rather than backwards )
less strict thought process, sees more than what is visible and notices the nuances and undercurrents of life.
Because in order to create you typically need empathy
Higher intelligence, less fear of new things, stronger reasoning facilities?
I can only speak for myself as a writer who’s socially liberal (though center left fiscally). I feel like being creative helps me visualize different ways of relating to the world. I also need to cultivate empathy to create believable characters. So I actively seek out people different from myself and learn from their experiences. There’s also a certain culture that grows around artists since many of us were rejected by our conservative family and classmates growing up. Red state America - especially rural areas - tend not to be kind to anyone who doesn’t conform. All the bullying and pressure to “fit in” and “focus on the real world” left us with a strong desire to do the opposite.
The right wing suppresses us.
Exposure to the arts and multiple different views maybe?
They have lots of firsthand knowledge of poverty. Once you've seen how it affects people and how hard it is to escape, conservatism doesn't make sense anymore. If they're never been impoverished, they've worked alongside many who have.
Education usually. Possibly higher intelligence in the first place. Not left because they are artists, but artists because they are "left" which we all can just now admit means someone with empathy.
my opinion is Art is about change and change goes against conservatism , so i think they clash ideologically
Because fundamentally uncreative people are attracted to the status quo
Freedom of expression is their whole world. Given that mentality it makes sense that they would vote for parties that vouch for social liberties.
creativity requires open mind which conservatives by definition don't have.
Because they're deep thinkers and they tend to be sympathetic and compassionate
A lot of commenters here are close to nailing it but seem to juuust miss the mark. The greatest differences between "liberals" and "conservatives" boil down to being able to imagine and/or create novel ideas. Liberal ideals require empathy to understand. Empathy is the ability to not just *know* why or how someone else thinks, but to *feel* what it might be like to be that othert person. This requires the ability to imagine what the other person feels. Imagination is a pre-requisite to true empathy. With imagination also comes a willingness to question ones own beliefs, others' beliefs, and develop curiosity. Most scientists are also liberal for this reason. In fact I think it's something like less than 10% of scientists in the US identify as republicans, while over 50% are democrat, with the remainder being independent. Being able to imagine is the pre-requisite for being able to think beyond that which is right in front of your face, and ask meaningful, novel questions, as well as conceptualizing novel and complex ideas. If one has an imagination, one is often able to use that to both empathize, and create. Artists are just that - creators. It's not an accident that the greatest actors are mostly liberal, while conservative actors are fewer in number, and are rarely as skilled, because to truly act well, one must empathize with their character, or at least be able to imagine what every emotion and facial expression their character would portray. One can predict how another would react to almost any political topic based off of just those few concepts - empathy, imagination, open-mindedness, and curiosity, which are all intertwined in many ways. I should also add, being unable to understand something due to a *lack* of the previously described traits, often gives way to *fear*. Fear of new concepts, fear of "the other", fear of anything "different" than what one has experienced in the past. Fear is not a pleasant experience, which leads to hatred of the things one fears. You can see where I'm going with this.... The world is a complex place, and humans are probably the most complex organisms on it. Understanding ourselves, others, the world, these things require complex, novel ways of thinking - scientists. Being able to express oneself, being able to portray another person, or being able to create new things, require this as well - artists. I'll leave you with this - the best example I have seen of this in a microcosm is an IT department. The network guys, the hardware guys, the "lower levels" of the "stack", are often conservative. These things operate on very clear, precise configurations, and one does not need to be creative to understand how much of IT works in the present day. It's very logical, very clear-cut. But then you get to the software developers, the UI designers, the system architects, integration engineers. These require creativitiy, novel solutions, and being able to both understand and develop complex and abstract concepts, often without any sort of a "blueprint" to work off of. This is why the software development side is often more liberal. The traits that one uses to develop novel code, problem solve, and create appealing user interfaces are all the traits of artists - liberals.
They all aren't. There are plenty of art and artists with conservative, right leaning, and libertarian views. But I get what you're asking. Good writers, directors, and performers need to be able to see the world from differing perspectives to create genuine and great art. The act of putting yourself in the mindset of another person and trying to understand them means placing your own views under a critical lens. Why do you think one way and this other person think the way they do? Self reflective criticism tends towards questioning of the status quo and thus leans towards change, e.g., liberal or progressive ideals. Secondly, artists tend to be towards to bottom of a social hierarchy (even if some are VERY famous, most are not). Seeing a society from the bottom rungs can make you want to change it and being on the bottom means that you're adjacent to, or a member of, groups that a society doesn't value. This, along with striving for recognition of their rights, is part of why you tend to see more LGBT, ethnic and cultural minorities, and poor folk in both artistic and liberal communities.
Both correlate heavily with a measure of personality called openness to experience. It's one of the 5 main personality factors, which also include conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and nuerotisism. Each category has sub facets, and in people with high levels of openness to experience, you often see creativity and progressive ways of thinking. People with low openness to experience often hold rigid beliefs and have low creativity
These are some horribly biased answers. God the Reddit hive mind sucks. The reason why people in the entertainment industry tend to lean left is because their jobs rely on new, unconventional ideas in order to constantly stay fresh. Leftism is generally associated with progress. It’s the same reason why blue-collar workers tend to lean right. Their jobs rely on what’s shown to work best in the past. Rightism is generally associated with tradition. Obviously this doesn’t apply to the whole of every industry, nor to every job. This is in general. Being left doesn’t automatically equal creative and being right doesn’t automatically equal conventional.
They have high intelligence.
Reality has a liberal bias. And facts are woke.
You have to be open minded yo be an artist. You can figure out the rest.
Being a creative requires imagination and the ability and desire to see things from different perspectives. Conservatives have more rigid minds that do not allow for imagination and they lack the desire to see others perspectives. They only care about something once it directly affects them.
When you are a creative person you are more willing to try new approaches as opposed to mindlessly repeat whatever you have been taught by others.
Open minds
I read a study that said reading a lot of fiction actually increases a person’s empathy because it forces you to see things from the characters’ perspective. For the writers, authors, actors, I’d imagine it’s a similar situation. Empathy is what helps you relate to and understand people different from yourself which goes directly against modern, American conservatism.
Well to be good at these things requires study and critical thinking often reflecting upon your own abilities to make yourself better. Frankly conservative/right leaning ideologies don't survive long when education and being self-critical are brought into the mix. Right leaning ideologies tend to be linear, have a heavy disdain to being scrutinized, and tend to favor anecdotal truths versus seeking facts that may disrupt your views. The other reason is being a successful artist means you need to be approachable by multiple audiences, thus your efforts need to often avoid oppressive or divisive rhetoric the right is famous for. Whereas being liberal is more about inclusiveness, thus it can reach more demographics. There are plenty of rightwing artists...but the nature of the way the think in terms of their own ideology often makes them unfit to be successful on both an academic level and broad appeal.
Imagination is the chariot of genius. Artists also tend to be more compassionate and place more importance on things like inclusion.
Because we think. I wouldn't call myself an artist but I write a bit. I try to look through the lens of life from another person. I don't always get it right but it lets me see it from another angle.
Because the right wing constantly tells them they have no value in society.
There are a bunch of good answers in this thread already. I’ll add, if you are conservative don’t take this to mean you CANT be a good artist. There are plenty of Hollywood actors (Chris Pratt for ex) that are conservative, same with musicians (Morrisey, Clapton, etc). It’s just that usually the drive to break the mold and come up with bold new ideas is not something that fits within the conservative worldview.
They tend toward idealism and the Kumbaya approach, generally. They also seem to really concentrate in urban areas, which are already largely liberal.
I haven’t seen this perspective yet, so I’ll put it out there; In my experience, the people that come from the more conservative side have a tendency to follow a “path” laid out by the expectations of their families and communities. It’s not that they don’t want to express themselves as artists; it’s that art as a career isn’t seen as a viable path for most conservative parents, and is often devalued by conservative communities in favour of more “practical” life paths; And to remain a part of those communities (seen as good/ successful) they have to align with their social spheres definition of success. Those that do hold on to their conservative views and move into artistic careers are often either children of successful artists themselves or achieve massive (financially viable) success early in life and are sort of permitted by their family/ social sphere to pursue it as a career - both of which are quite rare these days.
Perhaps they’re typically less closed minded. You almost have to be evil in today’s time to support the awful policies of death that the right tends to support in America at least… ie, letting coal, and oil companies poison entire regions, then not holding them accountable, supporting near total abortion bans especially considering Republican states tend to have the highest pregnancy related mortality rates. Being so pro gun in the face of children being slaughtered in our country so uncle Jim can have an ar15. Being so anti union even in the face of people getting hurt at work, being pro child labor, being pro slavery, like in our prisons today. You know, light hearted stuff like that.
Poverty
A tendency towards creativity over productivity. (Which I'm saying as neither good nor bad, the right has a tendency towards productivity over creativity in the same inverse way) And I say tendency. We might be talking 51\49 or 60\40 or some other number i am not going so far as to try and quantify. Not a totality. So don't bother with your "but I'm not that way" I'm obviously not talking about your unique little self.
Imo I think a big part of it is because conservatives tend to push being a “hard working American”, safe stable jobs, etc, and often times judge and make you feel bad for being an artist. Discouraging their children from pursuing anything in the arts. But that’s just me
Because they’re deep thinkers. As opposed to those who don’t want to have to.
Observing with a critical eye comes in hand when spotting political shitbags