This is not to say that I think they are equally bad or that there should be a “united front” or some non-sense like that.
It just seems like the traditional left / right distinction, even when extended by the authoritarian / liberal axis doesn’t seem to reflect political opinions a very well anymore (and maybe never did).
As a shower-thought I recently considered “rooted” Vs. “mobile” as less ideologically loaded and more descriptive terms of the actually different mind-sets people seem to have. This seems to fit to many aspects of the ideological divide found in today’s world.
Any other suggestions?
P.S.: of course just inventing new terms & definitions doesn’t change anything (and NewSpeak is certainly a danger), but keep using outdated and overloaded terms is also not the solution.
This is an interesting question and discussion.
I do feel that left/right is a useful distinction. It is useful from my perspective in terms of values, even though we don’t focus on this in most discussions.
The point is: are you are ok with a person next to you suffering. Suffering because they did wrong, suffering because they have to for a bigger cause. If you are ok with it, you will, in the end, support some form of right wing or authoritarian policies.
The alternative is “One for all and all for one”.
You quote David Graeber somewhere else. In his spirit, I do believe that this is a decision. We either care or we don’t.
Yes, but this is one of the points where the left/right distinction already fails.
There are plenty of conservatives with “christian values” (or similar for many other religions) that would be deeply offended by your care/don’t care distinction and do actually put a lot of effort into caring for others (although usually on a more local scale).
On the other hand there are plenty of leftists who try to absolve themselves from caring for others by claiming that they already pay taxes for that (or made a donation to some NGO) and thus they have done their part…
I am not saying that one is necessarily worse then the other and you could probably argue to no end about effectiveness and/or ulterior motives etc. but it does show that left/right doesn’t really work as a distinction for that.