The Conservative Mindset is Adolescent

First, to save time, lets set out a few assumptions, firstly, that liberalism equates to Civilization – large cooperative social organizations, while conservative ideology equates to Barbarism where, for the lack of sufficient social guarantees for life and property, habits of individual initiative are culturally acquired which mostly aim at settling all disputes through violence.

Because Civilization has less conflict, the populations are permitted to age to something of an adult maturity. Barbarism, on the other hand, favors the young. A man is at his athletic peak at the age of 24, and after that it is all downhill. In a society where physical prowess is a Man’s Measure, then we cannot expect many of the active leaders to be much older than 24.

The Size of Social Organizations also fits into our figuring. I’ve recently read some book which states that the optimum size of a group, where everyone knows each other and where everybody is understood to have a place in the scheme of things, is about 150 people. When groups get above that number, then they subdivide into effective castes and classes, proletariats and elites. Civilizations, being much more populated than Barbarisms, would certainly evolve these much more specific and specialized Groupings. The Police and Security Castes would be on the watch for young aggressive males and through the application of numerical superiority, would be able to pacify these youngsters with not much danger of harm to themselves. Barbaric Communities, on the other hand, especially the smaller Communities, would be under the complete mercy of any especially big and stupid boy… unless some should get together and kill him while he sleeps.

So it is a certain amount of justified paranoia exists within the small barbaric communities. Rank and Property are acquired through force, but the exercise of force would engender resentment which would in turn engender an insidious sub-current of treachery. The Leaders would have to learn to sleep with one eye open, or not sleep at all… which would go a long ways toward making them even more crazy. We could expect to see young leaders who would lash out not only at overt challenges to their superiority, but also launch pre-emptive assaults on those who are suspected of not being entirely loyal and supportive. This would be an awful lot to think about even by the Old and the Wise, but we need to remember that most of the players in the Barbaric System are mere teenagers.

When we think of Barbarism, we should realize that the perfect model example of such a thing is the modern Urban Youth Gang. Defending Territory, posing Honor, chest-beating their Loyalties, but really an awful mess of dissention and conflict. They would have to be, just to make some kind of room for the personal ambitions of those growing up within the Gang. Allow me some space below to explain.

I have often contemplated Personality Types. I have noticed vaguely that out of every group of about a hundred people, one can find every sort of person that one needs, and about in the correct proportions that one needs them. There will be at least one True Healer. There will be one person who HATES cats, that is able to sense the presence of lions or tigers without needing to see or hear them… just know that they are there. This treat goes WAY back to Humanity’s earliest days, when we were still fresh out of the Trees and still probably had residual tails, and had to be very afraid of Cats, whatever their size. There will be one good Shaman, a few good Musicians and Storytellers, there will be a number of good selfless hunters, a number of caring women, etc. etc. The ordinary Mix of People is typically about just right. But what about Leaders? Out of a hundred or a hundred and fifty people in a primary social group, how many would be competing for the Leadership Role? And there would necessarily be more than one. Nature must see the competitive component in that classification and provide for it. So we see in many of the social and herding species that there is a struggle for Alpha Dominance as Redundant Leaders vie for power. Yes, most of the adolescent males would be happy to recognize that they are slightly too small to seriously compete for power, and would support whoever emerges as The King of the Mountain. However, there would always arrive the tall and big boys who had yet never lost a fight. These are the children that destabilize the Barbaric System. Nothing is ever settled… not for very long. Every year a few new boys hit their Growth Spurt and the consequential power shifts come into play. Life for these kids is definitely Nasty, Brutish, and Short.

Oh, by the way, nowadays there are so many Leadership Seminars, with so much advice about how to establish oneself as a Leader. They always leave out the most basic point… to kill off all of the competition.

Anyway, That is Barbarism. As much as we might now be frowning upon it, we still must accept the dark realization that such a Life builds into Culture, Traditions and Life Expectations. And Cultures persist. People from the Nomadic Steppes of Eurasia and Africa, the Hill people of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Iberian Peninsula, indeed anywhere that has not had a strong Civilizing Influence for at least 4 or 5 hundred years – in all of these Cultures much of the Behaviors and Expectations are formed up around these, well, adolescent, Barbaric Dynamics of Social Grouping and Aggression.

It goes a long ways toward explaining the problem that has always mystified the Liberal, and that is how otherwise intelligent adult Conservatives can be so, well, ‘stupid’? Basically it is because they come from Cultures that had never grown up.