• 0 Posts
  • 2 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
cake
Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

help-circle
  • I think you have pinpointed the core issue.

    Right-wing republican policies and ideas lends themselves to simple (but often wrong) models of explanation; “it is the fault of the immigrants; the poor; abortion is always immoral”, etc. You get candidates that radiate confident leadership spewing simple talking points they believe in.

    Left-wing, especially progressive, ideas are often rooted in insight into the incomplete understanding we have of the underlying complexities. People who navigate these ideas won’t be as confident: “the cause is a bit of this and a bit of that; we don’t really know, but research points at” etc. To confidently sell policies based on these ideas to voters requires a level of cognitive dissonance, and also opens for criticism on being indecisive.

    How can we package left-wing ideas in a way that attracts voters who are swayed by simple ideas presented with absolut confidence?


  • Non-religious but likes plot analysis.

    An important factor here is free will. Without free will, one may easily have a perfect utopia of the kind you think an omnipotent God should be able to achieve. But it would be a meaningless utopia; like a kid playing with toy figurines, just deciding everything we say and do.

    God doesn’t want that, and thus self-impose a limit on the omnipotence to not interfere with our free will. We are children that need to be taught, rather than marionetted to “save us” from the negative urges of free will.

    Here, the (self-)sacrifice of Jesus enters. It is not about God using Jesus to fulfill some perverse quota of pain and suffering that God has decided is due before we are allowed into heaven. It is more about what humanity must experience for the lesson that makes heaven remotely possible as a concept. Only through pain and suffering will we come to understand how our actions affect the world and those around us. Jesus takes (some of) the pain and suffering “in our place” with the aim that the message will resonate with people throughout the ages to teach us about love and understanding, making the concept of a heaven possible despite our nature as (non-brainwashed) beings of free will.

    In reality, even after 2000+ years, we still seem pretty far off the mark. Maybe the lesson didn’t take the way it was intended; free will is a fickle thing. Or maybe God is playing an even longer game.