Politics that feel good.

Sometimes I miss being a conservative.  (The libertarian kind, not the Republican “we are very concerned about people having the wrong kind of sex” kind.  But I’m not talking about some palatably reconstructed anarcho-techno-eco-libertarianism, I’m talking about the kind with guns.)

Not that I think it was more right or ethical or useful or really anything.  It just felt better.

There’s great comfort and even pride in holding a political philosophy that says you earned what you have by being individually strong and smart, and that you should keep what you earned because no one is better qualified than you to decide how to use it.  Believing that you are the master of your own fate and that the greatest good is for you to do whatever you want–that’s a nice feeling.

Maybe more than anything, conservatism puts the feeling of being Good Enough in reach.  You don’t have to be constantly trying to save the world.  You just have to carve out and clean up your little patch of the world (ideally some sort of cabin or ranch) and provide for yourself and your family without bothering the neighbors, and you’re Good Enough.

Again, I’m not saying any of this is right or politically defensible.  I’m just saying that when you’ve grown up with messages that you’re incompetent to make your own decisions, that you don’t deserve any of the things you have, and that you’ll never be good enough, the fantasy of rugged individualism starts looking pretty damn good.

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Intellectually, I think my current political milieu of feminism/progressivism/social justice is more correct, far better for the world in general, and more helpful to me since I don’t actually live in a perfectly isolated cabin.

But god, it’s uncomfortable.  It's intentionally uncomfortable–it’s all about getting angry at injustice and questioning the rightness of your own actions and being sad so many people still live such painful lives.  Instead of looking at your cabin and declaring “I shall name it… CLIFFORDSON MANOR,” you need to look at your cabin and recognize that a long series of brutal injustices are responsible for the fact that you have a white-collar job that lets you buy a big useless house in the woods while the original owners of the land have been murdered or forced off it.

And you’re never good enough.  You can be good–certainly you get major points for charity and activism and fighting the good fight–but not good enough.  No matter what you do, you’re still participating in plenty of corrupt systems that enforce oppression.  Short of bringing about a total revolution of everything, your work will never be done, you’ll never be good enough.

Once again, to be clear, I don’t think this is wrong.  I just think it’s a bummer.

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I don’t know of a solution to this.  (Bummer again.)  I don’t think progressivism can ever compete with the cozy self-satisfaction of the cabin fantasy.  I don’t think it should.  Change is necessary in the world, people don’t change if they’re totally happy and comfortable, therefore discomfort is necessary.

But I think this is all just… something to be aware of.  When you wonder why someone would ascribe to political beliefs that seem evil or uncaring, it’s frequently because those beliefs make them feel good.  And not in some lazy greedy “muahahaha” sense.  In the very human “I want to like myself and feel like I’m doing okay” sense.