My current inquiry into the possible consciences of conservatives is not
quite so contestational. I am still defining myself as a normal
liberal-radical academic and conservatives as strangely Other, in need of
exegesis. I am trying, like a Method Actor, to find the Conservative in my
pool of selves (he's there all right!) and let him teach the rest of me
better understanding. My long post on this topic was a first installment in
trying to make the strange familiar. I was trying there to reconstruct
conservative views along lines that liberals or radicals would find at
least plausible if not uncomfortably compelling. The point of this is
because, like Eugene Matusov and others in another xmca thread, I think
that healthy dialogue must commit both sides to the possibility of coming
to conclusions we might not have liked had we stayed at home in our
monological discourses.
Installment 2 is about a possible typology of conservatisms, one whose
dimensions of distinction also embrace liberals and progressive radicals.
Read no further if you have better things to do!
Type 1 Conservatism.
This part of me is ready to defend the present status quo against proposals
for changes in practices, beliefs, and values that I see as likely to be
destructive of what I currently value. As a systemic disposition, it is
based on the view that radical change is more likely to lead to chaos and
horror (as in most violent revolutions) than to utopia. It values, in the
Burkean tradition, the wisdom of social and cultural evolution, and advises
me not to tinker with what I don't understand.
Even the radical theorist in me has to agree with this view in part. The
odds often are that between one quasi-stable dynamical state of a complex
ecosocial system and another there lies a sea of chaotic non-states. You
can't make an omelet often enough without breaking the eggs, and the eggs
may not consent to being broken just on my say-so that a better omelet
world lies beyond their present and foreseeable pain.
Type 2 Conservatism
This, much smaller, part of me is a sort of radical, or retrogressive
conservative, who wants radical change in practices, beliefs, and values in
order to restore a lost Eden, to get us back to the true path from which we
have wandered so long, lost in hybris. Monarchists, Christian and Moslem
fundamentalists seem to express this disposition most characteristically.
We do not see our position as a return to the past as such, but as an
escape from the delusions of Progress and linear, irreversible time. In our
view there are indeed universal and timeless principles and every age
wanders from them and must be brought back to them.
Well, it would be _nice_ to have some convictions that I could believe
transcended the contemporary state of my world ..., I think I only have one
such, that there is some sort of, call it Spirituality, of which the human
soul is capable, that is rooted in our material being-in-the-world prior to
all semiotic mediation. Zen, Nirvana, Samadhi, Union, Harmony, Tao ...
whatever. I have this sense in spades, and it sure didn't come from my
contemporary culture, though perhaps it came in reaction to it. From this
vantage point I can certainly sympathize with those who rally against the
Great Satans of materialism and humanism. Can this me imagine an
institutionally different world that would be more supportive of, and
better reflect, human transcendant possibilities? maybe. Pursuing such a
vision would be radical, and whether conservative or not may be a moot point.
Type 3 conservatism.
This is the me who is content with the existing value system, but would
like to re-order its priorities a bit and make its realities better fit its
ideals. Sounds a lot like the Liberal me (below), except for the question
of which Values should be on top. A Libertarian conservative (a growing and
powerful force in the U.S. today, e.g. among cybernauts) of this type puts
Freedom first (understandable as a reaction against the excessively
authoritarian family systems here which regard children as mostly
incompetent and without civil rights). Freud might have called these the
Kill-the-Father conservatives. In the U.S. context, you are conservative if
your primary values are Freedom, Order, Obedience to
God/Church/Religion/Authority, etc., but Liberal if they are Justice,
Democracy, Equality, Diversity, etc. In both cases the disposition is
reformist rather than either reactionary (Type 1) or revolutionary (Type
2). Individualism as a value used to be ok on either side, but lately has
drifted into the conservative camp.
It is important to note in these cases that from different dispositional
positions, the alliances and oppositions among values may look different.
Just because Liberals are in favor of Diversity does not mean that
Conservatives (Type 3, or even Type 1) are against it; they are just less
likely to privilege it above other values that lead to different policies.
Progressives, as the formal contrast to Conservatives, do not come in Type
1 guise, since they always want change. Liberal progressives correspond as
above to Type 3, and Radical progressives to Type 2. Liberals are content
with existing Ideals and want reality to fit them better. Radicals think we
need new Ideals. Liberals want to reform institutions; radicals to abolish
many existing ones and create new ones. We all understand this side,
because this is where most of us live. Liberals should perhaps understand
that they do not differ all that much from Type 3 conservatives, and
Radicals and Type 2 conservatives do also show an uncomfortable number of
similarities (e.g. tendencies toward fanaticism, violence, internal
splintering, desperation, utopian fantasies, etc.)
Finally, a little guide to the comprehensive description of value
orientations. Sometimes a more multidimensional view of values can help us
see that our differences with Others are never a matter of simple
dichotomous polarities. The following system is based on my recent research
on the semantics of evaluations of propositions:
Importance: What are our/their priorities?
Warrantability: What are our/their core beliefs, assumptions about what is
and can be?
Normativity: What do we/they consider to be our primary obligations,
responsibilities, duties, necessities, and taboos?
Usuality: What are our/their expectations, customs, habits, dispositions?
Desirability: What are our/their ideals, goals, 'values' in the limited sense?
Comprehensibility: What do we/they believe is essentially comprehensible or
inevitably unknowable and mysterious?
Humor: What do we/they find to be funny? take seriously?
Is it true that it is more masculine to adversarially polarize differences,
and more feminine to seek common ground? JAY.
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JAY L. LEMKE
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
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