Are you a leftist or a rightist?

[Muddy]

Right-wing because I see equality as immoral, Left-wing because I believe in progress and innovation rather than tradition.

My views toward politics are not binary in the manner you seem to state here regarding yours, correct if me I'm wrong. Equality can be good or bad depending on an ass ton of variables and the method which it is achieve. Same goes for progress versus tradition. It all depends on whether those traditions have any value truly worth keeping, and if innovation will truly help us in the end.

For example some traditions might look dumb and senseless on the surface but when you look at the grand effect of those traditions that could be playing a key role in making people's overall lives happier, even though it may not be visible or obvious. Progress isn't always good either. The industrial revolution made countless people's lives shitter and we currently live under the threat of a multitude of man-induced apocalypses that were made possible because of progress and innovation.

Of course, I do think there are lot backwards non-beneficial traditions that we should discard and that there have been goods things that have come from innovation but I'm sure you get my point here.

[Ave]

My views toward politics are not binary in the manner you seem to state here regarding yours, correct if me I'm wrong. Equality can be good or bad depending on an ass ton of variables and the method which it is achieve. Same goes for progress versus tradition. It all depends on whether those traditions have any value truly worth keeping, and if innovation will truly help us in the end.

For example some traditions might look dumb and senseless on the surface but when you look at the grand effect of those traditions that could be playing a key role in making people's overall lives happier, even though it may not be visible or obvious. Progress isn't always good either. The industrial revolution made countless people's lives shitter and we currently live under the threat of a multitude of man-induced apocalypses that were made possible because of progress and innovation.

Of course, I do think there are lot backwards non-beneficial traditions that we should discard and that there have been goods things that have come from innovation but I'm sure you get my point here.

I pretty much agree with what you're saying here.

My post was purposefully stated in a binary manner to prove how stupid grouping people's views into "left" vs "right" is.

Not that what I wrote was insencere, in terms of the content, just in how I said it.

The reason I say equality is immoral is because I don't think it can be acheived in a large group of people. Perhaps the better term to describe ineqaulity would be unjust, rather than immoral. The consequences of trying to establish ineqaulity, though, such as communist regimes killing people in the name of equality (as per the idea of class struggle) is immoral, though, I should specify. Some formal equality can be maintained in small groups but even then it's only a formality to keep the group pacified.

I agree about tradition. Some can be beneficial, but my point was that people tend to cling to traditions more for emotional reasons than because of reason. It kind of reminds me of Russel Kirk who I read about, he said that conservatism is more of a sensibility than something that is chosen purely out of reason. I could be miscontruing Kirk's views here but he seems to argue that emotional attachment is a justification for that thing being preserved. Obviously there are other factors that come into play whe considering if a tradition should be preserved, according to Kirk, at least I think.

I basically disagree with this view, though; emotional attachment is not a valid justification for doing something a certain way. For example, earlier today on facebook my first girlfriend posted something about how some US schools were removing old school clocks from classrooms because kids didn't know how to read them. She seemed to regret this, and yeah, it's always better to know more than to know less, I could say the same about archeology. But knowing archeology is not necessary to make it in the world, and I think kids will do fine not knowing how to read old clocks. Think about it. The reason the clock is circular is because the first humans told time by inserting a stick in the ground and watching the shadow of the stick cast against the sunlight hitting the ground. This had a circular motion. This is also why the dials move in a circular pattern. The way most objects are designed does not reflect their function, because humans cling to tradition.

As far as innovation and progress go, I agree that technology, which brings these things, can also bring equal amounts of disasters, depeding on how humans use it. I don't think the industrial revolution made people's lives worse though. I'm not saying the children working in mines during the 19th century had it easy, but I don't think plowing fields in cow manure (which is what they did before there were factories, mines, and soot) was the life, either, lol.

[Muddy]

The reason I say equality is immoral is because I don't think it can be achieved in a large group of people. Perhaps the better term to describe ineqaulity would be unjust, rather than immoral. The consequences of trying to establish ineqaulity, though, such as communist regimes killing people in the name of equality (as per the idea of class struggle) is immoral, though, I should specify. Some formal equality can be maintained in small groups but even then it's only a formality to keep the group pacified.

Can't speak for other communist countries like Cambodia under Pol Pot as I simply don't know anything about them but The USSR and Communist China at least never killed people solely because of their class. The people they killed were either in support of opposing regimes or were actively resisting policies the communist were putting forth. The Ukrainian holodomar for example happened because the kulaks (wealthy farmers) resisted Stalin's policy of food collectivization and protested by killing their own livestock. The kulaks got sent to the gulags not because they were just bourgeoisie but because they resisted the law and caused others to starve in the process. In Mao's case the mass deaths were caused more by peasant confusion over how food would be provided to them under Mao which led to over consumption of what they had available. In both these cases these was also bad weather that devastated crops which obviously made the situations even worse.

There could of course been some in ranks of USSR and China that carried out class motivated violence and were nutjobs, like every army has. The regimes themselves though never called for killing people based on class.

You could however argue that the laws the communist put forth were too forceful and idealistic. This is what China learned after Mao and instead why they opted for a much slower but more feasible means of eventually achieving communism that they continue moving towards this day. The deaths all comes down to how it was executed and not the communist ideology itself.