Your Brains Won't Fall Out

You don't have to keep your mind closed.

You can be conservative in the present, centrist in the near term and more radical the farther you think into the future. 

In the present we need stability to continue the processes that give our lives meaning.  In the short run we need to support reforms, oppose threats and make the adjustments that keep our futures hopeful.   

With respect to the future, we need to consider long term trends, likely new technologies and various inevitable forms of global integration.  In the future, we will need to be prepared for ideological flexibility as our fixed mapping of reality becomes less and less responsive to change. 

If this makes sense, then what doesn’t make sense is our self-labels.  It isn’t just that one is a conservative in one aspect of life, say parks and streetlights, and a liberal in another, say more effective State EPA regulation of landfills.

That’s true of course.  But the larger picture requires us to be discerning about change itself.  We live amidst many trends and loyalties--all that the past presents for our support or concern.  We cannot be certain of how any choice will work out, what consequences and unintended consequences will follow both action or inaction. 

You can’t go into action fixed-minded if you want to be successful.  As they say of war, all plans are put aside in the midst of battle. 

Citizenship in a Democracy is not loyalty to a leader, or consistency of ideology, it is intelligent response to experience.  It is accepting and using the many feedback loops that give us “second sight” into the outcomes of choice.  What we intend will not always be what we have put into play.  That is as good a definition of living as I know. 

Therefore, if we continue to “play,” and this is what I mean by citizenship, an open mind is essential. 

Not, of course, as Bill Coffin used to say, so open that your brains fall out. 

I’ve related some different ideas in the above, but don’t let that keep you from replying. I’ll try to answer every comment. Remember, often what I say in my blogs are tentative and far from certain in my own mind.