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blue bits. red rocks.
Monday 28 September 2009

…the main difference between the Left and the Right lying in its orientation toward time—the Right oriented toward the past; the left toward the future.  It’s suggested in the very names conservative and progressive. I’ve also written about how all premodern societies are predominantly past oriented, and modern societies are predominantly future oriented. And I’ve argued that modernity came to the west because of the unique Jewish-Christian validation given to history as meaningful, as the stage upon which a cosmic salvation drama is played out. Progressivism as it emerged in the 19th Century depends for its inspiration on Hegelian and Marxist eschatology which in turn would be impossible without the Jewish-Christian mythos in the background. So the difference between past-oriented conservatives and future oriented progressives is where they find the locus of meaning—either passed on from the ancestors in the first instance, or yet to be discovered in the future in the second instance.  A key element that characterizes conservative thinking derives from premodern traditionalist societies, which is a desire for stability, for time-honored rituals, for studying and understanding the wisdom that comes from the ancestors who lived in the golden age of the culture’s founding. The key element that characterizes progressive thinking is a longing for liberation from the restrictions of the past, for its irrational rules and attitudes. After the Future

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