I'm only 31, but I'm starting to feel the tug. Not a serious tug, but I'm feeling the pull a little bit. And I want to know why, so I've been thinking about it a lot lately. But it was only with Robin Williams' death that I started to piece together some cogent thoughts about it.
(My parents, who are conservative, think this is maturity kicking in. I don't know that I'd call it that. I think people confuse maturity with cynicism.)
So let me explain the Robin Williams thing. My first thought when I heard that Robin Williams killed himself - after the shock and sadness - was, "Hold on a second. How many kids got kidnapped and sold into sex slavery, or bombed by weapons we paid for, just since Robin Williams died? Why are we as a culture crying over THIS one guy, while kids are getting killed left and right and we just sigh and shake our heads? Why all the consternation over this but not that?"
And I shook my head because we are so shortsighted. We aren't affected by these kids dying and getting sold because we haven't ENCOUNTERED them. They never made an impact on US, PERSONALLY -- so the idea of them getting killed is abstract. It doesn't hit close to home. It's just vague, distant, general woe. Bad tidings from afar. It doesn't AFFECT us because THEY don't affect us. But Robin Williams made us laugh, so the end result is, we get sad when a 63-year-old dude kills himself but barely spare a thought when an entire house full of Palestinian children gets killed by a bomb we paid for. How awful. How unconscionable. What is wrong with us.
And as I went to post about it on Facebook, in my righteous indignation, I sagged. That's too obvious a thing to complain about. Of course we're hypocrites. Of course our priorities are messed up. Why bother joining the chorus of the Righteous Captains Obvious?
That's when it hit me. This is the overture to the seduction of Conservatism.
Going from liberal to conservative is the exact same path as the five stages of grief. Here is the Liberal-To-Conservative Five Stages:
First, you're in denial. This is when you're a kid and have the rose-colored glasses and the world is a wonderful place, a simple place with good guys and bad guys.
Second, you're angry. This is when you're a teenager and early adult, and you are becoming aware something is dreadfully, fundamentally WRONG with society. This is when Rage Against the Machine does you some good. You detect the staggering amount of BS that society is built upon, and you can't STAND it. It offends the purity you are still used to insisting upon.
Third, you bargain. This is when you're in that activism phase, early adult to college. "If only" is your mantra, and you have all the ideas for how things could be fixed. You're probably right, too. You try to find a way to make it work.
Fourth, you get depressed. This happens when you realize you begin to realize that humans pretty much deserve whatever they get because we are a selfish and shallow bunch of monkey-spawn who refuses to grow up. We start realizing, in the words of Bob Dylan, that we "know too much to argue or to judge." We "let it be." We start thinking we're wise now, transcending the whole affair by being aloof and detached. We can't change anything, and we no longer have the energy to waste on a hopeless affair.
Fifth, we accept it. Human beings are hopelessly myopic and we can't change it. Why continue to expend our energy and passion caring so fully about something too huge to contain? We can't be responsible for the entire world. It's far too tiring. Better to focus our energies on a small group of people - the people who affect us. We no longer have room in our hearts for Palestinian children getting bombed. We can't change it anyway. We only have room for the Robin Williams in our lives. We focus on that stuff; we push out the other stuff. We stop voting for the needs of mankind; it's a waste of time anyway. We vote in our own self-interest instead. And we have kids, who grow up to loathe who and what we've become, who hate that we've stopped fighting the man and become in the man out of our weariness. And we look down at them and say with our sorrowful wisdom, "I was once like you. I guess I just grew out of it."
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DISCLAIMER TIME:Now this is a model that could be applied to other transitions - not just liberal to conservative. I'm only using the terms "liberal" and "conservative" to represent "convictions for change based on what's good for society at large" vs "convictions based on what's good for my group(s)." I'm aware there are some conservative libertarians who promote their philosophy for the empowerment of society at large. I'm adding this disclaimer so my younger, passionate conservative friends don't feel like I'm calling them myopic and calloused. That's not what I'm trying to say.
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I'm currently at the tail end of Stage 4, verging on Acceptance. But there are two acceptances. There is the "surrender" acceptance and the "zen" acceptance. I'm choosing the "zen" acceptance - society is what it is. I may be able to change it; I may not. Either way, I am going to stay true to my outrage. I wasn't wrong when I got angry and listened to Rage Against the Machine. I wasn't wrong when I tried to find ways to change it. I wasn't wrong until my inability to make a vast difference got me depressed. I'm only a drop in a bucket; but that doesn't mean I should let myself be polluted.
And here I quote one of my favorite authors, Stephen R Donaldson...
"Mortal lives are not stones. They are not seas. For impermanence to judge itself by the standards of permanence is folly. Or it is arrogance. Life merely is what it is, neither more nor less. To deem it less because it is not more is to heed the counsels of Despair... We were not promised ease. The purpose of life - if it may be said to have purpose - is not ease. It is to choose, and to act upon the choice. In that task, we are not measured by outcomes. We are measured only by daring and effort and resolve."
So this is what I learned from Robin Williams, and how I answer Winston Churchil.
