Interesting to me to see this talked about. I have observed in myself over the years becoming more left leaning, 20 years ago I considered myself maybe just left of center. Now with more real world observations and experiences I am much further over to the left side.
Always wondered why people “traditionally” moved right as they aged, since it has been the opposite of me. I guess many people take something different out of their life experiences, I don’t know. Interestingly as well, I think my parents (born in the early 50s) may have changed similar to me, but that could just be a difference in my own perception. I think they have always been somewhat left leaning despite being fairly religious, but probably 10 or more years ago they stopped attending church. I don’t think they claim much to any religion these days, despite my father having been a preacher for like 25 years.
Always wondered why people “traditionally” moved right as they aged
I don’t believe it has ever been seriously suggested (by serious researchers) that there’s a link directly between age and conservatism. Rather, there are links between conservatism and various things that tend to be more common with age. Marriage, home ownership, higher wealth, etc. So it’s unsurprising that a generation where that is happening much less would be the one where the correlation with age disappears.
Boomers are telling us how great their home investment is while I’m just patiently waiting for Hugh Morgan to die.
Authoritarianism will do that to a motherfucker
Well, they say if you go left far enough you wrap back around.
If by they you mean proponents of the horseshoe political theory, yes.
And, in case anyone doesn’t already know, the left-right model of politics and all its variants (political compass, horseshoe, etc.) are not useful models for analysing politics.
No kidding. The left-right compass assumes the right are conservative.
Centre is conservative. Moving in neither direction. Right has demonstrably proved itself to be in fact, regressive.
Of course, noone wants to actually change the general incorrect assumption, like always.
I’ve given up putting myself on the spectrum. I know what I believe in, and not everything seems to align neatly with the progressive majority. Standardised categories are useless bunk in the end.
