Do conservative people lack imagination?

[NickGOT456]

http://www.therobinsonagency.com/pages.asp?pageid=44335

This is Phil Chalmers. He goes to schools to talk about teen killers. He says violent video games and movies are creating a generation of killers. His favorite TV shows are reality TV, Sports and Sitcoms. He appears on Fox News. He enjoys stock car racing, MMA, the UFC, NFL Football, and fast cars. He is a Republican and a NRA and police supporter.

Should people like him broaden their horizons and get interested in a work of sci fi or fantasy?

Or do some people lack intelligence and creativity to enjoy those genres?

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

Plenty of conservatives like science fiction and fantasy. Hell, that's pretty much Baen's target demographic.

[sologdin]

we should bring severe scrutiny to bear upon NFL appreciators, as the nexus between them and arriere garde politics is well known.

and weren't registered republicans proscribed by BHO? 

am supportive of stripping the franchise from consumers of reality television products.

[zelticgar]

Thanks Nick, you have allowed us to reach today's quota of dumb ass posts. 

 

[Boris the Blade]

 

2 hours ago, NickGOT456 said:

http://www.therobinsonagency.com/pages.asp?pageid=44335

This is Phil Chalmers. He goes to schools to talk about teen killers. He says violent video games and movies are creating a generation of killers. His favorite TV shows are reality TV, Sports and Sitcoms. He appears on Fox News. He enjoys stock car racing, MMA, the UFC, NFL Football, and fast cars. He is a Republican and a NRA and police supporter.

Should people like him broaden their horizons and get interested in a work of sci fi or fantasy?

Or do some people lack intelligence and creativity to enjoy those genres?

I wouldn't say they lack imagination, they come up with quite a lot of bullshit, I mean look at some of the xenophobic fear mongering they come up with. The lies to get the US to invade Iraq etc. 

I do find it funny he blames violent video games and movies for creating teen killers, like they didn't exist before any of those. Also, I guess he ignores how violent the MMA / UFC and the NFL are and supports an organization like the NRA that helps put weapons into the hands of teen killers / killers in general. 

He's just another jackass.

[The Anti-Targ]

They imagine themselves to be right (correct), so...

[James Arryn]

Only consistent difference I see is that they are much more fearful.

[Jo498]

@ James Arryn: Russell is spelled with "ll", sorry for nitpicking but I think names deserve correct spelling.

The conservative imagination is very florid but one-sided. It is as easy to imagine what can go wrong with training in MMA, handing out guns and fast cars to teenagers as to fantasize what can be caused by violent video games.

To be fair, I do not think that there is a large difference between most conservatives and progressives as far as imagination goes. Many people live in bubbles, recall that journalist who was puzzled how Nixon could have won the presidency because "nobody I know voted for him", and have a hard time imagining things could be very different. Actually, I think older, often tending to more conservative people should be better at imagining things done rather differently because someone who is about 70 years old today has in fact witnessed quite a few social and technological changes whereas teenagers cannot imagine a world without smartphones.

 

[ummester]

Jo,

You present an interesting point. Yes, the younger tend to be me progressive and the older more conservative. The older also, generally, have a broader scope of experience than the younger and therefore potentially greater scope to imagine a solution. Yet this makes it somewhat paradoxical because a big part of conservatism is opposing change. It's almost like the more of the world ones sees, the more of a moderate solution they will find and the less of a better world they can imagine. Reality trumps naivety, it seems.

James,

I think you confuse fearful with staid. I don't think most conservatives fear change, they just can't see the point of it.

Op,

I don't think conservative/progressive really has a correlation with the type of entertainment someone prefers. I like Sci Fi, fantasy and video games and my wife, who is a lot more progressive than myself, likes sitcoms and sports. I do think the amount of non-practical imagination someone has is relevant to this - but non practical imagination isn't the only type. An extremely analytical person might dislike all entertainment but leave everyone in the dust with problem solving imagination.

[Happy Ent]

It seems to be that non-conservative people are missing something (namely a “moral tastebud”). Conservatives are able to taste the full spectrum of ethics. (Haidt,  Moral foundations theory. Very interesting stuff.)

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

OP,

 

I'm at MidAmericon II and fall to the right of the politicl spectrum.  Trump scares the shit out of me precisely because I can vividly imagine what his presidency would look like.  Therefore, I think your thesis fails.

[sologdin]

1 hour ago, Happy Ent said:

It seems to be that non-conservative people are missing something (namely a “moral tastebud”). Conservatives are able to taste the full spectrum of ethics. (Haidt,  Moral foundations theory. Very interesting stuff.)

authority is the condition of possibility for every item on the list.  

[Jo498]

There is an interesting recent talk (youtube) by Haidt (to the American Psychologist's association). He points out the (not very original but not often enough explicitly mentioned) distinction between authoritarians and Burkean conservatives and the Republican party has "small government conservatives" who would be better described as Libertarians as well so it is a very diverse bunch. Trump poses and appeals apparently mostly to authoritarians (Haidt and a colleague tested this). Of course there are actually people who share some of the tenets of all three strains (and there might be more, to apply "Burkean" to a traditionalist catholic conservative is probably not an apt description).

Of course, "authority" is the condition of possibility for almost everything in politics (and elsewhere as Humpty Dumpty knew already...) But there are still differences in content.

[The Mance]

46 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

...and fall to the right of the politicl spectrum.

You've been saying this about yourself for years, Scot, and I just don't think it's true anymore.  While you may still have some beliefs that are rooted in historically conservative values, overall your stance is decidedly lily-livered.  

 

 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

While I think "conservatism" v. "liberalism" might influence the contents of the imagination, imagination itself is universal.

[Equilibrium]

23 hours ago, NickGOT456 said:

http://www.therobinsonagency.com/pages.asp?pageid=44335

This is Phil Chalmers. He goes to schools to talk about teen killers. He says violent video games and movies are creating a generation of killers. His favorite TV shows are reality TV, Sports and Sitcoms. He appears on Fox News. He enjoys stock car racing, MMA, the UFC, NFL Football, and fast cars. He is a Republican and a NRA and police supporter.

Should people like him broaden their horizons and get interested in a work of sci fi or fantasy?

Or do some people lack intelligence and creativity to enjoy those genres?

I am generally biased against the guys like that and in less restrained mood I would maybe jump to say he is stupid. 

But if we look honestly you didn't make a very good case, first you put "conservative" in the title and then omit it in text, he doesn't have to be conservative, Republican and conservative are not the same, there are conservative democrats (few now, but it used to be more of them not that long time ago) and there are libertarian and moderate Republicans.

Then we don't see what exactly is he saying about video games and movies, notes on the site also mention drugs, alcohol, bullying and social media. He is in any case partially right. Most people who play video games don't kill anyone, but most people who drink and use drugs don't either, but it's simply not true that sometimes those factors don't contribute. No one kills because of violent film, but in the tangle of factors that lead to murder, it's hard to divide the blame. I ask myself how would I think if I never played video games, but I can't know that, subtle influences on one's mind are impossible to uncover.

Should he read fantasy, would it really change a thing? I know plenty of liberals who never read fantasy and SF and I know few who never read any fiction (yes, ANY fiction) and are still progressive, intelligent and creative. Take GRRM for example, he is pretty upfront about his liberal ideas, and those themes are prominent in his books, some people non the less miss them, some of them are conservatives, but I know few conservatives that have read the Martin's work, got the points he was trying to bring across and dismissed them just as they would dismiss an article in Washington Post, some where mildly annoyed at ideology pushing, and some didn't mind hearing from the opposite side.

And then you said some people lack the intelligence and creativity to read fantasy and SF. Come on, creativity is needed to write something, not read it, no one needs creativity to read, maybe Finnegan's Wake. And intelligence, have you read the fantasy or SF? 99% of it is pretty straightforward (90% painfully so), ASOIAF is probably most complex work of fantasy and it's still enjoyable even if you don't pay attention to any details. Let's take popular and excellent First Law books, pretty straightforward, Bayaz is and evil puppet-master (spoiler, no regrets, eight years old), obviously I can't imagine how someone stupid would get that, but in any case I doubt it would be hard, as I got it in like first book, while I am still surprised with what people discover in ASOIAF after I read the whole thing seven times. So you probably can read and enjoy all the fantasy and SF (you may not get everything in a small minority of works) even if you aren't intelligent, so intelligence has nothing to do with it just as creativity doesn't.

[Jo498]

19 hours ago, ummester said:

You present an interesting point. Yes, the younger tend to be me progressive and the older more conservative. The older also, generally, have a broader scope of experience than the younger and therefore potentially greater scope to imagine a solution. Yet this makes it somewhat paradoxical because a big part of conservatism is opposing change. It's almost like the more of the world ones sees, the more of a moderate solution they will find and the less of a better world they can imagine. Reality trumps naivety, it seems.

I do no think there is a simple correlation, neither that most older people have become conservative by experience. Often it is just habit and nostalgia. But my point was that people can be parochial and live in bubbles regardless of their age and political stance and there is a higher probability for somewhat older people to have more experience with social and technological change and most of them also have changed their political attitudes. Again, not alway because of rational decisions but hopefully sometimes.

And I am not sure if a big part of conservatism is about opposing change per se. Most of today's conservatives have no problem with most technological changes. A Burkean conservative will be against some political and social changes but his main point seems to be caution with too rapid changes or especially changing what works pretty good for something that might disastrously fail. Only staunch traditionalists think that there is an objectively better way of organizing society (e.g. Monarchy, strong church, trad gender roles and families etc.) but this way has been mostly lost anyway and they don't really have political power nowadays.

I agree that there is probably very little systematic correlation with entertainment; we all know the notorious essay where Moore claimed Tolkien (and presumably many of his fans) craved a rural, feudal society. There would be a lot to like for reactionaries about a lot of fantasy.

[The Marquis de Leech]

At least part of the difficulty is a confusion about what conservatism actually is. Conservatism, at its heart, is the desire to conserve existing social institutions, or at least to ensure that any change is gradual and in accordance with historical roots. It is the absence of ideology - the status quo that liberalism (properly defined. ) and socialism are perennially fighting against, rather than an ideology unto itself. I don't particularly think conservatives lack imagination - but their imagination is the imagination of the horror genre - the untold nightmares that unchecked change might bring (the Boogey Man under the bed is most certainly Red...). 

I think it is more accurate to term conservatives pessimists and liberals and socialists optimists. 

[Jo498]

25 minutes ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

I think it is more accurate to term conservatives pessimists and liberals and socialists optimists. 

This is probably true but there are still a whole bunch of different positions often summed up with conservatism. And they are not always purely relational, i.e. conserving the status quo whatever that is.

E.g. if I was someone who held (somewhat older) mainstream social democratic positions I would be defending the status quo of the 1970s or so, i.e. I would basically be a Burkean conservative with respect to a lot of the changes of the 1980s (Reagan, Thatcher) and 1990s (New Labour and similar drifts of European "Social democrats). But I can still be a generally optimist "socialist".

But I could also be against all kinds of current positions because I hold a traditionalist stance that is generally pessimist about the "City of Man" in whatever form and thinks that church and family ties should be much stronger than they have been rendered by modern secularist institutions etc.

Or I could be fine with a lot of societal changes but still stick to the "conservatives" because of some issues where I do not want to compromise. (E.g. if I was close to the current Pope in economic issues but found some positions of the "progressives" (abortion) so abhorrent that I'd rather bracket my economic views and go with the conservatives because they are against it.)

 

[ummester]

3 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

I think it is more accurate to term conservatives pessimists and liberals and socialists optimists. 

So are you in conflict with yourself if you are a conservative socialist?

Also, I think you would find that socialism as a concept is always going to be more traditionalist than capitalism. We live in caves and hunters bring back meat for breeders and offspring - that is socialistic. We form agricultural society and store crops for the winter, again, more socialistic. Arguably, any society is geared more towards the whole than the individual, it just depends how the society is governed or moderated.

I personally would always promote change that benefits the greater whole of a given society and oppose change that is more for the benefit of individuals - I don't know if that means conservatism but it makes very little sense to me to live in a society and then promote change that works against it's functioning.