A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.
Conservatism isn't what you think it is. Conservatism is, and always has been, about establishing and maintaining social/power/wealth hierarchies and inequity. It only happens to correlate with "prevent[ing] a radical change" to the status quo only to the extent that the status quo has historically been hierarchical and inequitable.
Conservatism and conservationism might share a Latin root, but that's where the similarity ends.
Not necessarily true. In Canada the Conservative party led the way on conservation of the Commons before the green party even existed. Not anymore, obviously, but in the past, yes.
They were NIMBYs with farms, essentially.
No conservativism is about using government power conservatively. It’s about only using the government when it’s absolutely necessary to do so.
Yes. A real conservative who actually wanted to preserve our way of life would defend the clean rivers and intact forests that it depends on.
Nope.
Conservative as a label in politics vs conservative as in slow to change are as different as theory in science and how lay people use theory to mean speculation.
Oh, I'm well aware political and ideological "conservatism" is like North Korean "democracy" — nothing more than a hollow, objectively false, virtue signal.
I just find it hilarious that the literal definition of conservative is the opposite. It's so comical it's like an allegory of their entire being. Like they fundamentally, to their very core, can't be trusted...
Conservative in politics is the same as in conservative in using the gas pedal, conservative in how much butter one puts on toast, conservative in estimates.
It’s about using as little as possible. As in “small government”.
A liberal helping of mashed potatoes is a big helping. A conservative golf swing is one designed to keep the ball from going too far. It’s the same concept when applied to politics.
If that was true conservatives wouldn't be trying to speedrun the running longstanding public programs into the ground or overturning decades of precedent.
They don't mean the same thing.
You’re thinking of Republicans, not conservatives.
There are so few shower thoughts that are worth pondering. This is one that is.
In the German novel "Er ist wieder da" (He is back again) Adolf Hitler is transported to modern day Berlin and has to adapt to the modern world while everyone around him takes him for a very dedicated method actor/comedian. He also likes the Green party for their efforts to preserve the good old German countryside.
The movie is available on Netflix. Very funny.
Others here have explained the political meaning of "conservatism". I think maybe you conflated that word with conservationism. They are definitely not the same thing.
Yep, I was about to make the same comment. While they share the the same root "conserve," they absolutely don't share the same meaning. I've met plenty of liberal conservationists, as well as some conservative conservationists. Folks who love and enjoy nature as it is want to conserve and protect it from the encroachment of people and industry. A lot of the conservative conservationists I know are hunters that at least talk about sustainability, unlike other conservatives I'm forced to be around. I don't understand how they can deal with the cognitive dissonance of wanting to protect wildlife while supporting the party of climate change denial, but I suppose that people are complex animals.
OP's shower thought is reductive and depends on a semantic misunderstanding. To be fair to OP, that's how many shower thoughts are.
Prevent radical change to the climate, by advocating for radical change in the way with live, produce, consume, work, do politics, organize our society. Any climate activist will tell you it's already too late to preserve or revert to the climate before the industrial revolution. It's all about saving what still can and stop the damage now.
They really aren't conservative at all.
P.S: Conservatives on the other hand, are advocating to return our society to the feudal age, and if we let them, they will effortlessly succeed...
Conservatism is about preserving a historical social order, rather than existing conditions generally. Acknowledging an environmental change and altering the structure of the economy to prevent it threatens the social order that allows oil companies, chemical companies, and auto manufacturers to be some of the wealthiest and politically powerful entities in the world.
Further, in the short term, ignoring climate change preserves the status quo for the wealthy and powerful. In the long term, though, it only really becomes an existential threat to those who are not positioned to profit from it -- look at Nestle attempting to take control of water supplies for an early example of what this might look like. Cataclysm is a life-and-death issue for the masses. For the powerful, it's an opportunity.
I am always saying this. And that medicare for all/socialized healthcare is the moderate position. The extreme position is that terminal patients should be tasked with spending their precious last moments of life navigating the private insurance bureaucracy.
That’s conservationism.
Conservativism and conservationism are not the same thing.
The terms “conservative” and “liberal” refer to how much government power should be used.
i recall Neil D. Tyson saying this few years ago on tv
Yeah kind of, but they are aiming to do that through radical change hehe
Depends on what you think the status quo and natural order of life is.
If you think the status quo and order of life is burning coal and oil (and drill baby drill), then anything that changes that is radical, liberal, and evil to their way of life. That was the world they grew up in, so that's the world they want to conserve.
Only if you can see the bigger picture and beyond your personal life does conservative and conservation become anti pollution.
One of the most impressive political maneuverings of the modern day has been the success of the pro-gun and pro-fossil fuel lobbies at driving a wedge into the old partnership between environmental activists and hunters/fisherman, that was responsible for much of our past success in passing environmental regulation. Neither group on its own has anything resembling a majority, but together it becomes a very powerful bloc. And the interests of the two groups are very clearly aligned on preservation of wildlands and environmental health.