Be sure to follow the rule before you head out.
Rule: You must post before you leave.
Me at 20 "I think we can improve things a bit by making some adjustments"
me at 30, much more privileged in general "Ok so I think we should probably start by offering everyone with an investment property execution or voluntary collectivisation of everything they own"
It's a tough call. I was as liberal as it gets on my 20s, now I'm in my 40s. I see a lot of people bitching about inequality, injustice etc. that acquired a ton of student loan debt to major in subjects that would very clearly not land them a job.
Socially, still very liberal. Fiscally? Stop wasting my tax dollars on anything that's not defense or legit scientific research.
Quite a naive (and also stereotypically American) perspective, really. Just ignoring major parts of the economy, like the music, film, book publishing industries etc. They are all based on people doing anything that's not "legit" according to this guy. Also a smell of a very naive concept of "legit science" lurks behind this. Clearly someone who has no clue about how science works.
How many successful filmmakers, authors and musicians do you know personally? Let's keep the bar real low: ones that can feed themselves and retire without supplemental income from a spouse that does something more pragmatic?
I was a Physicist before leaving for industry. What would you like to know about how science works and how it is funded?
What is legit science?
counterpoint: broad educations and different perspectives enrich society and keep culture alive.
I studied physics and still ended up not getting a job in it, but in a world of people educated only like me I'd have learned so much less about all the things that bring me joy. People contribute in more ways than working for dollars. They give you insight in conversations, expose you to new ideas/experiences, make the world interesting with their own styles and interpretation, challenge dogmatic practices or cultural norms.
Also just like using your brain on stuff helps you grow and develop, and people ought to be allowed to do that even if their interests are a bit strange or less "useful", it's part of growing up. It's not like we're strapped for resources, it's just that like 100 people own half the world.
Believe it or not, I have several degrees in physics. I worked in the field for a bit then left for industry. I don't disagree with the premise that diverse educational backgrounds can be a good thing, they are more often than not a fine pathway to being a very interesting bartender buried in crippling student debt. Why not double major in something useful on top of Art History?
what is useful? Did I use my knowledge of polaritons when working for an insurance company? Perhaps the details of etching -OH terminated diamond under esem helped me when I was maintaining servers, no no it must have been linear alg that enabled me to tutor kids in ochem.
like my degree hasn't helped me to much explicitly, but it was fun. sometimes answering peoples' questions about physics is fulfilling to them, and the act of learning crap helped fill me out (including realising how utterly naive I was at assuming scientific knowledge was more valueable than other kinds).
You see a problem in our society: that we only reward a very narrow subset of kinds of labour and grossly unevenly at that and you blame people for studying something that interested them. Why? Would we be better off if they were buying up apartments and renting them to an underclass? that's something that pays highly. Maybe we need more gunsmiths! afterall inventing the machine gun reduced death and destruction during war. Perhaps instead they should have studied finance, because we have far too few insurance brokers?
I'm not blaming anyone for studying anything. I'm simply stating that the bill for that education will come due and it might be a good idea to have acquired a skill to help pay it if the projected return on investment is non-existent.
Ever have a conversation with people in your local service industry? I live in a major US city and this is a common story:
Do you think they'd have advised a younger version of themselves to do something else?
A nice thing about Physics: quantitative reasoning is a highly valued skill in many paying jobs and something you have to acquire along the way to learning things like QED. The end result of knowing, say, if a neutrino has mass isnt terribly useful.
I'm 60 now and lean WAY over to the left
I am over 40 and I just keep going further left
Right?
The older I get, the more I realize how much I've been screwed by the older generations, and because of that, my positions on issues have sort of "forked", having both a "what I think should reasonably be our course of action as a democratic republic" and "what I'd do if I were supreme overlord"...but both of those forks skew further left now than they did when I was in my teens.
Grim acceptance of the reality of our current sad state of affairs has led some of my "do what's feasible and don't let the perfect become the enemy of the good" positions to be fairly moderate...but for every one of those positions, there's a "supreme overlord" opinion that basically consists of "they're a blight upon mankind and should be dragged through the streets to a public place where they're thrown in a pillory for a day or two then hanged, with their assets liquidated and the funds used to undo their damages".
53 year old me.
Screw that, I've got empathy unlike conservatives.
the whole notion of "people growing more conservative as they grow older" is a relic from the time before conservatism started becoming the party of gamergate edgelords and identity politics.
The funny part is that conservatism has been on the losing of human progress for thousands of years. Over and over and over again, the same political, social and economic patterns play out. Something disruptive happens, conservatives recoil from it, progressives embrace it, conservatives eventually get pulled along kicking and screaming, often violently.
I just don't understand how people can read even a little bit of history and not see that conservatism is doomed to lose every battle it fights until it finally destroys everything for good.
You're ignoring the times when the conservatives do succeed in killing everyone they hate.
I'm not sure it was ever accurate for people who weren't already conservative.
It makes a lot more sense that, as you get older, you stop growing and learning, so as society progresses, your formerly progressive views become commonplace and eventually anachronistic.
(That's 100% what happened to my mother, who was a hippie, literally flowers in her hair, and now "just doesn't really get the whole trans thing")
And, if a person was progressive, but had some secret conservative or regressive values, those values come into sharper relief when their other views become commonplace -- and, as you get older, you're less interested in hiding your flaws and/or shameful values, so they come out more.
(That's what happened with my dad, he was in folk music groups in the 70s and then became a doctor and didn't like the idea of poor people getting some of his money (even though it was those same programs that kept his mother afloat after his father didn't come back from Korea).)
The unspoken part about people growing more conservative as they grow older is the assumption that they're growing wealthier as they grow older. If everyone under 50 has lived paycheck to paycheck their entire lives they're not very likely to buy into trickle down Reganomics bullshit.
Fuck yeah
Haven't hit the moltov throwing antifa stage but yeah.
Give it some time
Im actually more conservative as im approaching my 30s.
I used to have this overly inclusive bleeding heart "everyone is equal" kind of attitude which I now see isnt really true. When you actually get past the narrative and look at the reality and statistics, its undeniable that certain "types" of people are just more pre-disposed to violence and thuggery than most normal people. Like you might not like what im saying, but you cant disagree with the actual data that shows how much more naturally violent those low-lifes are. So thats why now im not ashamed to be vocally prejudiced against cops.
I agree that we shouldn’t treat everyone equally. Some people need special care, and denying that is being an asshole.
Got me in the first half, not gonna lie
First 95%
I hope I’ll never become like my bigot father
I'm in this picture, and i like it.
PSA: the second amendment protects molotov cocktails.
That's why so many americans want gas station in walking distance!
Maybe in the future it is short-circuited car batteries.