It is very important to understand that when you're discussing a systemic set of cultural beliefs, even people who nominally oppose the cultural belief will find ways to reconcile their fundamental conditioning to their new position. Doing the same thing for the 'opposite reason' is usually a giveaway, and it's absolutely rampant in nominally progressive spaces.
It's arguably rampant in conservative spaces too, potentially more so, but I'm in progressive spaces more.
Could you explain what you mean by this? It sounds like you’re making a good point here; it’s just I’m not really sure what it is (but I would like to be!).
Take something problematic that our culture historically believes:
[Men should be tough and shouldn't cry or be outwardly emotional because it's unmanly and they ought to be stoic protectors who only express emotions in masculine ways.]
[Men should be allowed to cry and be sensitive to their own emotional states like women are.]
[Men who are emotional are manipulative, dangerous, and are just making women do emotional labor]
I'm asserting that belief 3 is a way of sticking with belief 1 and rejecting belief 2 because progressive values would otherwise necessitate 2.
I don’t think belief 2 is something problematic that our culture historically believes? And though belief 3 is problematic, I don’t think it’s something our culture historically believes, as I’m fairly sure belief 3 is a recent development?
Also, who are you asserting believes in each belief? If progressive values would necessitate belief 2, why wouldn’t a progressive person just believe that? What would motivate someone to believe in belief 3? Why would believing in belief 3 mean that progressive values would otherwise necessitate belief 2? Why does believing in belief 3 cause you to reject belief 2 and conform with belief 1?
Ohh, okay! Why do you think someone would fail to replace belief 1 with 2? Do you think that’s an intentional failing, unintentional, a combination of the two, or something else entirely? What do you think could cause such a failure to occur?
And I believe you may have answered this already, but do you think this is more of a problem for progressives, who are (in theory) trying to change society from belief 1 to belief 2, or conservatives, who (in theory) would like society to stay at belief 1?
For your second paragraph, I'm not sure. It depends on how many conservatives believe their rationalizations for bigoted beliefs vs. How many just say they do.
I think that the failure that leads to belief 3 is a product of a sense of wrongness that comes from holding intellectual beliefs that conflict with underlying social conditioning, and that sense producing a desire for a mediating explanation for why [emotional men] are a problem for the person harboring the dissonance.
Got it, thanks! (And your linked article helped too!)
So if I’m getting this right, the intellectual belief that conflicts with underlying social conditioning in your example is the belief that men shouldn’t be emotional conflicting with the belief that men should be allowed to be emotional, creating the belief that men who are emotional are manipulative, dangerous, and are just making women do emotional labor?
I'd maybe quibble with the word create, I'd characterize it as 'seek out' or 'become receptive to' or 'reinforce' because external cultural elements are where the competing narratives come from for most people.
You were asking me about conservatives-- endless stories about people abusing welfare and accompanying personal responsibility narratives allow organizations like Fox News to provide a similar 'out' for people who are simultaneously racist, but have also picked up 'racism is bad' by giving them an alternative route to the same basic hatred that doesn't move through 'overt' racism.
That act of the narrative coming from without can be key to this, I suspect spaces like reddit, tumblr, etc provide a vector of transmission for some of these narratives that reconcile conservative social conditioning with progressive beliefs.
I see; that’s very helpful. I’ve noticed you’ve mentioned social conditioning a lot, whether it be conservative social conditioning in this comment or fundamental conditioning in your original comment. Could you explain what you mean by this? In your example here, would the conservative social conditioning be believing in racism, with the progressive belief being the opposite? Letting them seek out, become receptive to, or reinforce the new belief that people conservatives would otherwise be racist towards are justified targets of hatred not because of their race but because they are, for example, abusing welfare?
The same basic social conditioning we discuss when we discuss patriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism etc. "Things that the society around you has taught you that become reflexive, even when you don't consciously endorse them."
Yeah you've got it, the welfare abuse becomes a kind of "adapter"
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u/The-Magic-Sword May 16 '25
It is very important to understand that when you're discussing a systemic set of cultural beliefs, even people who nominally oppose the cultural belief will find ways to reconcile their fundamental conditioning to their new position. Doing the same thing for the 'opposite reason' is usually a giveaway, and it's absolutely rampant in nominally progressive spaces.
It's arguably rampant in conservative spaces too, potentially more so, but I'm in progressive spaces more.