General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsI was always told that as people get older, they get more conservative. What happened to me?
I just turned 38 three weeks ago and I am looking at myself.
I think I am more liberal now than I was 20 years ago. Now that I am becoming a successful screenwriter and producer, I should be getting more and more conservative. In a few weeks time, I will become a millionaire on the sale of three screenplays and have a back end deal for 5% of the movie at the box office.
I am becoming exactly what a Republican wants and a conservative is. What happened? I am even more liberal now with an even bigger social conscience.
Now that I will have the means to do what I can, I can't bring myself to hoard. I will put away for my family and my children, but I have so many projects planned (building school libraries, funding arts and humanities departments, my wife is planning to work at World Hunger Year and my pet charity, the Innocence Project).
Aren't I supposed to not care anymore because I got mine? If so, why can't I do it in good conscience?
ladjf
(17,320 posts)understand the cause and effect process better than when they were younger. They see the connections.
onecaliberal
(32,863 posts)To make a long story short you're not a republican.
Wounded Bear
(58,662 posts)just not more Republican.
Hayduke Bomgarte
(1,965 posts)Who says? Why do they say it?
I have always leaned liberal/progressive. I am much more adamant about it now, at 52, than I was 30 years ago.
I'm right there with ya, man.
Pakid
(478 posts)and more liberal now than I was at 18
Frank Cannon
(7,570 posts)Some years later, I read a couple of books by Noam Chomsky and Norman Solomon, and that was the end of that. What the hell was I thinking.
B Calm
(28,762 posts)CBGLuthier
(12,723 posts)Fuck the right. Fuck the me generation. Fuck them all. Fuck Churchill who supposedly said if we didn't vote conservative at our age we didn't have a brain.
Feeling the Bern
(3,839 posts)unavoidable.
Orrex
(63,215 posts)Fuck him indeed.
Zorra
(27,670 posts)"I do not admit... that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia... by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race... has come in and taken its place."
Churchill to Palestine Royal Commission, 1937
Dude was totally twisted.
bklyncowgirl
(7,960 posts)Unless you have a life changing experience you'll probably keep the same basic views your entire life and become increasingly resistant to new information as you grow old.
If you were basically a conservative in your formative years you'll probably get more and more conservative in your senior years until you are wingnut batty old fool arguing that Reagan was the greatest president ever in the assisted living home lounge.
If you were a liberal your 20s & 30s you'll likely remain a liberal. I'm planning on being that old lefty woman, marching with my walker to fight the good fight and driving the wingnuts in the nursing home to distraction.
Feeling the Bern
(3,839 posts)But I'm a moonbat because it's who I am, not because it will give me good pub.
Christ, I'm a writer. I can walk down the street and no one will know me. Good thing about working behind the scenes.
Zing Zing Zingbah
(6,496 posts)I swear "moonbat" is that man's favorite word. I never heard of the word until I heard his show. He says it over and over. I hate his show too. He's basically Rush Limbaugh of New England. I'm sure he's buds with the incompetent, asshole governor from my state.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)in an old cottage hidden in a jungle of overgrown plants -- just a bus ride from where people like to go make noise. I can see it now. My bossy daughter and daughter-in-law will descend on me now and then to haul away old political signs and make sure a path is still clear from the sidewalk to the front door.
Good for you, Feeling the Bern. It's like Bklyn says. I was born strong liberal and will die strong liberal. When you were a child, people like the Kochs were already investing vast sums convincing an entire nation that good people were strongly conservative and that liberalism was a pernicious, dysfunctional aberration. I'm guessing your life is now relatively independent of those influences, strong as they very much are for those who are drawn to them.
disillusioned73
(2,872 posts)But not nearly as successful you my friend
CurtEastPoint
(18,649 posts)the interconnections we all have.
Feeling the Bern
(3,839 posts)I've seen poverty and the end result of hunger. I've seen people struggling in a system designed to only benefit the top.
Go to any hole in western China and see crippling poverty and starvation. I went out to Ningxia once and pretty much spent about $1000 dollars (which is a king's ransom in Ningxia) on feeding the village's children for the time I was there.
Changed my life forever. I had never seen people more thankful for a few pieces of meat, bean sprouts, rice and a simple can of coke.
CurtEastPoint
(18,649 posts)To help someone out.
Feeling the Bern
(3,839 posts)And that's just the beginning.
Harry Chapin is one of the biggest influences in my life. I want to be a Hollywood person like he was.
God bless Harry, taken from us way too soon.
SheilaT
(23,156 posts)It's possible it was true then, but I don't think it's a very good general rule any more. If it ever was.
I'm 67, and I become vastly more liberal the older I get.
LiberalArkie
(15,719 posts)The "New Money" find that they want more and more any any cost.
However, the people raised in multi-generation wealth are indeed more liberal than those before them. Think Rockefeller and Vanderbilt etc. They generally want to do something for others, think of it as a legacy. A lot of them do not want to be millionaire living in a poor society. The New Money folks feel that they can build big enough fences and hire enough guards to protect them.
I recommend "Daemon" and Freedom(TM) by Daniel Suarez. I think he has a lot of this nailed down.
WhaTHellsgoingonhere
(5,252 posts)Good grief..,
Nitram
(22,813 posts)Thanks to growing up with right wing parents.
My first vote was Reagan's second term. Ugh, I didn't see the attraction. I voted blue! I started reading anything I could about politics and have gotten more liberal as I age. My parents are brainwashed fox news junkies and it's very sad. I can't reach them. I'm 52.
KG
(28,751 posts)JanMichael
(24,890 posts)leftist dog or cat whistler. ie get us going full on left then bait and switch back to plain ole vanilla middle once winning.
back to mltoday....
Nitram
(22,813 posts)Based on a favorite conservative saying, "If You Are Not a Liberal at 25, You Have No Heart. If You Are Not a Conservative at 35 You Have No Brain". Only a conservative doesn't think you can have both.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)Just like the sun rising is actually the Earth rotating, the place where you observe the system is important.
People tend to develop their political views by about 30-ish, and then they more-or-less remain in the same place. (Obviously, individual cases may vary). In the past, society kept getting more liberal. What was scandalous in the 1920s was not at all scandalous in the 1960s.
If you measure from the perspective of a person passing through those 40 years, they "became more conservative". But what really happened was society became more liberal.
The conservative renaissance over the last 40 years stalled the "society gets more liberal" trend.
kacekwl
(7,017 posts)I believe I'm just smarter than everyone else.
kimbutgar
(21,157 posts)But if are the type that thinks I already learned enough and become close minded you become a conservative. A typical fox right winger thinks in black and white and a progressive liberal thinks gray.
To this day I try to look at both sides before making a decision. And I have no problem changing my positions if presented with facts.
k8conant
(3,030 posts)there are always more than two sides and a progressive liberal thinks rainbow.
nichomachus
(12,754 posts)It came about in the upper classes in Britain. When members of the privileged class were young, they could be idealistic. As they got older and became lord of the manor or were placed in parliament or rose in the military or government service, their role was to keep the lower classes down, and to practically enslave people in the colonies. So they became more conservative. It was a necessity. It wouldn't do to let the lower classes gain an upper hand. If they did, it would diminish their privilege.
It really doesn't apply to us here today. As others have said, the more you see about how government and The System works in the US -- if you're paying attention -- you can't help but become more "liberal."
It comes from realizing -- as George Carlin famously pointed out -- "It's all a big club, and you're not in it."
treestar
(82,383 posts)Not happening to me either.
But I thought the baby boomers who were so liberal and change making when young would make this country far more liberal over time - but no, baby boomers are now as old as 70 and over 65 is still conservative by most polls. I think there may be some truth in the concept most baby boomers were not hippies, radicals or activists and the 80s certainly are an argument that generation went for making money and now having saved some of it are making it true that you become conservative the more you have to conserve.
TexasProgresive
(12,157 posts)I am very conservative in what I eat and drink.
I don't smoke even though I would like to.
I refrain from impulse buying.
I try to do things that improve my health.
I try to not do things that are detrimental to my health.
I am so conservative that I want to reign in large corporations back to reasonable levels.
I am so conservative that I think insurance companies running health care is a waste of money.
This list goes on and on.
valerief
(53,235 posts)makes you a failure, in 1%er terms.
Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)OriginalGeek
(12,132 posts)but you can most likely attribute that to my deconversion from religious fundamentalism.
When I realized I was an atheist I still had a lot of the conservative values I had been indoctrinated with even though some of them were the reasons I started questioning religion and god.
It took a while to work a lot of those issues out.
Still working even.
But yeah, I look at my liberal 94 y/o grandpa and thank stardust I escaped my mother and stepfather's cult and now have a pretty awesome guide for life.
Matrosov
(1,098 posts)People like to cite that disputed Churchill quote, but in reality, many normal human beings become more left-leaning with age.
The older you become, the more injustices you've seen. The more the cancerous consequences of conservatism you've seen. It makes sense then, if you are a caring person with empathy for others, that you actually become more liberal.
haele
(12,659 posts)A world that consists of primarily their job, family, friends, social sphere, and/or neighborhood. Their world revolves around their interests, not the other way around. Because they don't see what isn't in front of them or what they've experienced...it's as if there isn't a whole larger rest of the world that might affect what they see around them. So they feel they can be big "c" Conservative; they simply don't feel they have to consider dealing with anything that doesn't affect job, family, neighborhood etc...
Like a turtle or a cat, they believe it won't hurt them if they don't care about anything they can't see, hear, touch, or otherwise experience. Anything outside their immediate concerns or imagined future has no importance to them.
They don't understand - or want to understand - that the world as a series of links and cogs; that they're only a small part of a greater whole that's only as strong as its weakest link.
Haele
raccoon
(31,111 posts)Festivito
(13,452 posts)For example, the current Dem platform is like the Republican platform from 1956.
Also, take Roosevelt, spend on people holding shovels. Make government jobs.
Taking such chances with the economy scares older people who see themselves with not enough time to recover from the whims of big government big spenders. Large projects such as Hoover dam, rural electrification, national highway system, a space race (unless we are challenged by outside forces), ... are new ideas that might not pan out and might hurt the future of an older persons security.
So, these chancy ideas scare the head and callous the heart. Thus, he who is not a Democrat when young has no heart, and not a Republican when old has no head. But, things have gone so far to the right that this old adage no longer rings true.
J_J_
(1,213 posts)Most media sucks these days, we would do well if someone started writing better messages in our movies and tv shows.
For instance, have you seen 'Deeds' with Adam Sandler where he comes in to a bit of wealth and starts giving it away?
Most of our media has brainwashed people into self centeredness, as if life is a competition to get the most money/toys and screw everyone else.
I have been wishing someone would write a screenplay or a tv reality show which illustrates a super rich guy unhappy with just having money, who finds more joy in giving his money away than hoarding it.
The show could follow a rich person who instead of buying something for themselves, buys a home for a homeless guy, puts a poor kid through college,buys an African country a well driller, pays off a struggling family's bills, fills up the food bank with food etc.
The show could illustrate the joy in other people this person creates by the giving, and the joy that the rich person receives in return, far greater than anything they ever experienced before when buying a boat or drinking an expensive bottle of wine.
This show of giving could help wake up the other hoarders into realizing that we are all connected, and that real joy and love comes from working together, helping eachother, lifting other's spirits.
Just like we have been brainwashed with greed by the media, we could keep this show on until everyone is reprogrammed into understanding that humanity is more important than wealth.
dmosh42
(2,217 posts)as a lifetime union member(CWA). Now at 74, I'm in same age bracket as Bernie and understand and support his campaign completely!
Vinca
(50,276 posts)The GOP mind seems programmed to be mean, self-centered, greedy and dismissive of those in need. I've always been a lefty, but every year I seem to become "leftier."
jillan
(39,451 posts)Le Taz Hot
(22,271 posts)I've gone WAAAAAY further left.
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)It's social change that causes people to seem more conservative as they get older, the Depression/WW2 Generation is a good example of this.
This myth came from the 50s, and the elderly generation of the time, the so-called "Lost Generation", leaned very conservative economically and sociologists wrongly generalized that to all old people.
Zing Zing Zingbah
(6,496 posts)I will be 37 in a couple months. I think am about the same as I was in high school in terms of politics.
HuckleB
(35,773 posts)I think that was a cliche pushed by a few closed-minded fools who thought being liberal when young meant getting drunk and high, and having sex. It didn't. And it doesn't.
dog_lovin_dem
(309 posts)hit the nail on the head, HuckleB. I will be 58 this year and have gradually become more liberal over time, though in retrospect, I was never anything but liberal.
HuckleB
(35,773 posts)Even cons are less so, as they grow older, IME.
phylny
(8,380 posts)a bleeding-heart liberal. I'm also a Christian, and my brand of Christianity makes me responsible for feeding the poor and hungry, housing the homeless, and educating the kids who will probably be my doctors if I'm lucky enough to live that long.
malaise
(269,045 posts)and I'm still a Democratic Socialist
randys1
(16,286 posts)that the longer Women live the more they learn how fucked up and misogynist America is so the more liberal they become.
NaturalHigh
(12,778 posts)arcane1
(38,613 posts)noretreatnosurrender
(1,890 posts)It was conservatives telling you that. lol I started liberal and I'm still liberal. Looks like you are too. There are a lot of us like that. lol
fun n serious
(4,451 posts)If you continue to read and educate yourself you're likely to stay liberal all your life. We have internet so long gone are the days we got old and lost touch.
Kalidurga
(14,177 posts)Right now I am far to the left of Bernie. In a couple of years who knows.
jaysunb
(11,856 posts)eat and hangout. Otherwise, I'm still a bleeding heart liberal.
CanonRay
(14,104 posts)REP
(21,691 posts)My family has always been leftish; I believe my grandmother was the only vote for FDR in her precinct. She was counter-picketing at clinics (on the pro-choice side) into her 80s.
My mother had gone from being a Sunday school teacher with some rather provincial ideas to an atheist convinced that gender and sexuality is a spectrum by the end of her life.
I'm 51 now. I can't think what I could be more liberal about but I'm sure I'll be about something as I get older.
ladyVet
(1,587 posts)Funny thing, my daddy's people seem to be moderate Republicans, but they don't act really weird for the most part.
I suspect, the way I'm going, I'll die an anarchist, but I'm hoping the Democratic Socialist will hold from now on.
rufus dog
(8,419 posts)I would have to search but there are studies on the subject. Turns out both conservatives and liberals become MORE entrenched in their beliefs. As noted anecdotally by all the posts upthread.
moondust
(19,991 posts)The older you get the more you may want to be careful/conservative with your money because it only gets harder to start over and build up some savings.
Manifestor_of_Light
(21,046 posts)They were yellow dog Democrats their whole lives. Dad voted Socialist in 1932 for Norman Thomas and mellowed into a liberal Ted Kennedy Democrat by 1980. Mom stayed liberal too. Neither of them ever voted for a republican. Mom bitched about "That Bastard Richard Nixon" and Dad angrily said "Reagan ruined this country" and told me he was so disgusted he'd spit when he saw a Republican on TV.
When I was little, we had three pictures of John F. Kennedy on the wall.
They both died in their 80s about the time George W. Bush was selected by the SCROTUS.
My parents were already against the Vietnam War so I didn't have to rebel very much. Saved a lot of energy.
I've never voted for a Republican politician. I've voted for a few Republican judges, back when there were some sensible ones.
My folks would be appalled but not surprised at how wacky the Republicans have gotten.
Feeling the Bern
(3,839 posts)a flapper, smoked and drank in public and casually dated in the 1920s.
My mother and I are pretty much to the left of Bernie Sanders.
My brother is finally coming back around to the correct side of the spectrum on everything except Muslims and guns (but he is a combat vet so he has a different view on those two things). My conservative brother is behind Bernie Sanders.
Counting my extended family, Bernie has at least six votes.