I beg to differ with the association of the baddies with the “Left” and the goodies with “conservatism”.
I am egalitarian in the sense of not favoring any living human being any more than any other (no hierarchy of CONCERN for individuals). That doesn't mean forcing everyone to have a life as miserable as the most miserable person alive t…
I beg to differ with the association of the baddies with the “Left” and the goodies with “conservatism”.
I am egalitarian in the sense of not favoring any living human being any more than any other (no hierarchy of CONCERN for individuals). That doesn't mean forcing everyone to have a life as miserable as the most miserable person alive though! No, it means maximising every individual's quality of life (over time). If there are any cases when we see no way around a trade-off between one person's quality of life and any others' quality of life, I think they are very rare.
And I don't believe in conserving anything (a practice/custom) unless we know it can't get any better, and that isn't something we CAN know, even if it has been perfect for everyone so far (also impossible to be definitive about, no?), because we can't know the future perfectly (or rather we can't know we know the future perfectly). That doesn't mean we can't ever do anything optimally—we just can't know for sure we're doing it. It also doesn't mean that I'm in favor of all change—only change that increases humans' quality of life. And tentative experimentation (with the consent of all affected parties!) may sometimes be agreed to be part of the process of determining what can be done to further increase humans' quality of life.
I beg to differ with the association of the baddies with the “Left” and the goodies with “conservatism”.
I am egalitarian in the sense of not favoring any living human being any more than any other (no hierarchy of CONCERN for individuals). That doesn't mean forcing everyone to have a life as miserable as the most miserable person alive though! No, it means maximising every individual's quality of life (over time). If there are any cases when we see no way around a trade-off between one person's quality of life and any others' quality of life, I think they are very rare.
And I don't believe in conserving anything (a practice/custom) unless we know it can't get any better, and that isn't something we CAN know, even if it has been perfect for everyone so far (also impossible to be definitive about, no?), because we can't know the future perfectly (or rather we can't know we know the future perfectly). That doesn't mean we can't ever do anything optimally—we just can't know for sure we're doing it. It also doesn't mean that I'm in favor of all change—only change that increases humans' quality of life. And tentative experimentation (with the consent of all affected parties!) may sometimes be agreed to be part of the process of determining what can be done to further increase humans' quality of life.