Right-Wing Discussion Thread XVII: The Snark Enlightenment

[Nakena]

We're both on a personal journey and mature as we get older.

We never mature. Like old pipes, we just get drier and more brittle.

That is unironically somewhat true.

[The Xenopolis Confederation]

You are Xeno. What that entails is up to you.

That's very profound, I guess. No idea what to make of it though.

Thankfully.

You say that but you don't mean it.

What is it, to be white?

To have fair skin, or in my case, to be worryingly pale.

Oh?

Yeah, I don't remember it too well, but from reading my english essays from the time, you'd believe I was pretty authoritarian. More in a benevolent way than a malevolent way but still. It coincided with a time in my life when I was very concerned about conforming and being seen as cool, so that might've had something to do with it.

[Old Tyrannia]

I don't really remember my whole ideological progression. For most of my time on NationStates I think that I've been a conservative monarchist of some sort, but for a short period after I first came here as an edgy kid I had no idea what my beliefs were and spent some time having a different professed ideology every week.

I can recall a few significant changes in my worldview over the past few years. The most significant was almost certainly my decision to convert to Christianity, which I feel consummated and completed my worldview as it had been developing up to then. Another would be my abandonment of distributism after deciding that it was philosophically flawed even if the general principles underlying it continue to influence my economic views. I've also stopped styling myself as a High Tory or traditionalist conservative so much, not so much because I've made any substantial ideological change but because I'm increasingly uncomfortable grouping myself with other people who style themselves that way. Now I tend to describe myself as a one nation conservative. I'm not so single-mindedly focused on monarchism anymore, although I'm still a royalist of course. And of course, I've become much more staunchly opposed to Roman Catholicism and Islam.

[The Xenopolis Confederation]

We're both on a personal journey and mature as we get older.

We never mature. Like old pipes, we just get drier and more brittle.

Never mistake pessimism for realism.

[Old Tyrannia]

We never mature. Like old pipes, we just get drier and more brittle.

Never mistake pessimism for realism.

The two reach the same conclusions more often than not.

[Kowani]

You are Xeno. What that entails is up to you.

That's very profound, I guess. No idea what to make of it though.

It was not intended to be made of. It was intended to let you decide who you want to be.

You say that but you don't mean it.

To have fair skin, or in my case, to be worryingly pale.

Yeah, I don't remember it too well, but from reading my english essays from the time, you'd believe I was pretty authoritarian. More in a benevolent way than a malevolent way but still. It coincided with a time in my life when I was very concerned about conforming and being seen as cool, so that might've had something to do with it.

Agh, that’s the worst kind of authoritarianism!

Never mistake pessimism for realism.

The two reach the same conclusions more often than not.

Nah. What you get is pessimism masquerading as realism.

[Old Tyrannia]

The two reach the same conclusions more often than not.

Nah. What you get is pessimism masquerading as realism.

Studies have demonstrated that people with clinical depression are better at accurately predicting the future than non-depressed people. Optimism is just an evolutionary strategy to help us cope with the fact that in reality, the world is awful.

[Kowani]

Nah. What you get is pessimism masquerading as realism.

Studies have demonstrated that people with clinical depression are better at accurately predicting the future than non-depressed people. Optimism is just an evolutionary strategy to help us cope with the fact that in reality, the world is awful.

The future of what? The world? Or their own personal future? Cite these studies, if you will.

[Telconi]

Personally, though I can get heated myself at times, most of the time, I just try to be level headed even towards people who are heated as that's the only effective way to keep an argument under control other than leaving lol

I don't know why we come here to argue. People very rarely seem to change another's mind.

Not me. I hardly know you even though I ironically have you on Discord lol

For a while i kinda mistook you for Novus.

Understandable.

Theres Novus and then there's LiberNovus.

Can get confusing. But both have different flags and signatures.

That reminds me, someone in F7 thought I was the same person as First American Empire despite the fact that we have very different political views. They even put me on their foe list because I criticized antifa.

I was a hardcore socialist when I first arrived on NSG... That's been a long slow change to where I'm at now tho. As for recent changes. I am now opposed to the death penalty on the basis of a single conversation with another Nationstater.

[Old Tyrannia]

Studies have demonstrated that people with clinical depression are better at accurately predicting the future than non-depressed people. Optimism is just an evolutionary strategy to help us cope with the fact that in reality, the world is awful.

The future of what? The world? Or their own personal future? Cite these studies, if you will.

The hypothesis is called depressive realism, and the initial study supporting it is here.

[Kowani]

The future of what? The world? Or their own personal future? Cite these studies, if you will.

The hypothesis is called depressive realism, and the initial study supporting it is here.

Turns out, they might win in the lab. Not so much in real-world events.

[Dumb Ideologies]

The hypothesis is called depressive realism, and the initial study supporting it is here.

Turns out, they might win in the lab. Not so much in real-world events.

Take away my one solitary victory why don't you

[Neanderthaland]

The hypothesis is called depressive realism, and the initial study supporting it is here.

Turns out, they might win in the lab. Not so much in real-world events.

Only because reality turned out worse than my worst case scenario.

[Kowani]

Turns out, they might win in the lab. Not so much in real-world events.

Take away my one solitary victory why don't you

I refuse to let you win!

Turns out, they might win in the lab. Not so much in real-world events.

Only because reality turned out worse than my worst case scenario.

It’s not that bad!
Okay, no, it is pretty bad. But we’re getting better!

[Old Tyrannia]

The hypothesis is called depressive realism, and the initial study supporting it is here.

Turns out, they might win in the lab. Not so much in real-world events.

So far we've each presented one study. I'm not sure that's sufficient to reach a sound conclusion on the hypothesis. Many psychologists continue to take depressive realism seriously.

[Kowani]

Turns out, they might win in the lab. Not so much in real-world events.

So far we've each presented one study. I'm not sure that's sufficient to reach a sound conclusion on the hypothesis. Many psychologists continue to take depressive realism seriously.

That is fair.

[Novus America]

I was honestly surprised to read you're still in high school.

Wait, what.

When you are in high school your hormones are raging, your brain still physically developing, you have not lived without your parents, lived on your own.
Experimenting with edgy, undeveloped ideologies are common at that stage, generally a the development of well developed syncretic political views comes later.

When one is 30 they generally look back at their high school self and shudder.

[The New California Republic]

Wait, what.

When you are in high school your hormones are raging, your brain still physically developing, you have not lived without your parents, lived on your own.
Experimenting with edgy, undeveloped ideologies are common at that stage, generally a the development of well developed syncretic political views comes later.

When one is 30 they generally look back at their high school self and shudder.

One's thirties is a decade of regrets, so that's no great surprise.

[Nea Byzantia]

All we really need for defense is a minimal military and intelligence agencies. We don't need to interfere in every country's affairs. We have a bloated military budget and an unneeded surplus of war machines.

This is not true. I agreed that too much involvement overseas is dangerous but problems come to you, even if you ignore them.

You really think if we cut our military to the minimum Russia and the PRC would play nice?
Russia would be in Riga and Kiev and the PRC in Tapei if we tried that.

Who cares as long as they don't come for North America?

[Nea Byzantia]

Wait, what.

When you are in high school your hormones are raging, your brain still physically developing, you have not lived without your parents, lived on your own.
Experimenting with edgy, undeveloped ideologies are common at that stage, generally a the development of well developed syncretic political views comes later.

When one is 30 they generally look back at their high school self and shudder.

I'm 20 and I already do...

[Nea Byzantia]

For a forum, this is pretty good. The mods are a mixed bag though. Some of the mods are good, like Farnhamia. I question the impartiality of some of them though, and some can be very rude.

Arch is awesome.

Arch is the real Indiana Jones...Harrison Ford is an imposter.

[Hanafuridake]

The main thing that I remember about my ideological transition on NS is that I was originally a libertarian poster on here in '12, whether or not I could be categorized as left, or right-, libertarian is hard for me to determine. I was pretty staunchly in favor of same sex marriage and abortion rights, while disliking Ayn Rand's deification of selfishness and too much privatization, but didn't really know anything about communism. Over time I started becoming more nationalistic, and combined with feeling that a lot of atheists and secularists in the blogosphere were too permissive, I went in a hard-right social direction for a couple of years before mellowing out and returning to a less restrictive stance. My interest in Kokugakusha was mostly out of a desire to have a nationalism that wasn't generic or abstract, but over time I started to decide that you couldn't really separate Confucianism and Buddhism from Japaneseness, and now I believe that instead of following Western liberal ideology, we should look to Buddhism and Confucianism for our solutions to the problems that are inherent in modernity.

[Fahran]

The two reach the same conclusions more often than not.

Hence why I flit between romanticism and depression.

[Fahran]

Who cares as long as they don't come for North America?

The US is a touch less nakedly imperialistic when compared to China, who openly claims the territorial waters of other countries and is actively engaged in the ethnic cleansing non-Han populations in regions that have a history of independent government, and Russia, who keeps annexing regions populated by Russians and meddling in the Baltic and Caucasus. Not that the US saving countries from themselves is especially laudable. Never mind that all of these powers are corrupt and vapid.

Since we're discussing our transitions, I might as well make a contribution. I was a pretty standard neocon when I arrived on this site, albeit with some progressive tendencies socially, namely my feminism. My philosophy wasn't especially comprehensive or nuanced either. As time passed, I shifted gradually to a more libertarian worldview with a love for capitalism that now frightens me in hindsight. That said, after extensive reading, I've sort of taken a hard lurch right, albeit tempered by modernity and local communal interests. I appreciate, for example, the excesses of neoliberalism while realizing that dismantling that system tomorrow would doom farmers and ranchers in communities like mine within a few decades without a massive government overhaul/bailout. I'm a lot more sympathetic to distributism than I was two years ago while still possessing a healthy distrust of corporatism. In short, I've changed a lot in some ways.

[Greater Loegria]

My ideological progression has largely taken place beyond the realm of nation states. I’ve more or less always identified with the ‘right’ but have flirted with all sorts of various lines of thought. I’d long been a fairly cringe ‘small c conservative’ type who was fairly socially conservative but also very pro capitalism. But as I’ve read more widely and made my own reading of history I’ve drawn my own lines in the sand. I’ve grown a lot more cynical about things, though that comes with age anyway but the most formative was my entry into low level politics and my frequent brush-ins with politicians: many of whom after a dinner and plenty to drink you’d find might agree with you but never had the spine to articulate those beliefs. I suppose the extent now to which I realise the way which my country, the UK, was irrevocably changed over the the 20th Century that people don’t really give much thought to both angers and amuses me. A big turning point for me came with the realisation that the two world wars were utterly Pyrrhic victories for Britain and also the narratives behind our deliberate de-industrialisation and the liberal-left’s ‘long march to the institutions’.