Regarding modern mainstream liberal idealism, how much remains of the original concept of liberal? How does it compare to the more extreme politically left?
Wikipedia describes “Left-wing” as;
“Politics typically involve a concern for those in society whom its adherents perceive as disadvantaged relative to others as well as a belief that there are unjustified inequalities that need to be reduced or abolished.”
A technical definition for “liberal” that comes up on Google, is;
“a supporter of a political and social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise.”
Is this idealism still what mainstream liberal stands for?
It seems it may be becoming more and more common for people in society to support politics and idealisms that are far enough to the left that they over focus on individuals or groups of people that they believe are disadvantaged. By over-focusing, they seem to disregard
1) relevant details which affect whether the group or person actually is disadvantaged and the cause of what might be suppressing them, as well as
2) disregard any negative unintended effects caused to others in an attempt to counter the supposed disadvantage.
As for 1), relevant details in the cause of what seems to be a disadvantage are ignored, likely from the instincts to notice distress in others and feel pity. Then with a simple lack of conscious comprehension of understanding the cause of the distress, vague assumptions can be quickly made that there is an unfair system causing it. This would happen as the subconscious part of the mind tends to react to factors to a more generalized degree, categorizing a wide variety of details in the same rough group, and picking out patterns that are coincidence or unrelated.
2) Once someone is focused on a certain victim (group or individual), the subconscious mind (steered by the instinct to make the scenario fair) disregards negative side-effects which are too detailed in cause and effect. Even when taking actions to attempt to counter the (assumed) disadvantage that they are focused on causes the same affective disadvantage toward another, this is often ignored because the subconscious mind is over-focused on the initial disadvantage that got their attention.
It seems that since this section of the spectrum of idealism is driven mostly by instinct steering that which is moreso subconscious perception of more generalized factors, double standards and hypocritical stances are quite common, without the skills to comprehend the details of reasoning of cause and effect of the concept of any given topic.
With this more emotional reactiveness, comes additional problematic effects for interaction with society. Being quick to anger and judge others that disagree, seems to be another common problem with a lot of people with leftist tendencies. This anger combined with a lower ability to comprehend concepts, causes someone to quickly and readily ignore any rationality explained by someone attempting to portray faults in their beliefs. Even when faults in their idealism are blatantly obvious, cognitive dissonance can still cause them to ignore the faults, and come up with excuses, including that the person who disagrees is evil.
With modern larger populations and ease of communication through technology, joining any crowd that shows similar perspectives has become much easier. Echo chambers and acceptance and encouragement from an easy to find group are perhaps artificially excessive positive reinforcement, making it easy to blindly follow trending leftist views.
It seems there is a combination of emotional reactiveness and reduced ability to consciously comprehend conceptual details, which is potentially dangerous for society as technology significantly increases the ease of spreading incorrect ideology. Besides being too quick to pick out a victim and incorrectly assume unfair opportunity, they disregard negative side effects of claimed solutions, and become angry and judgemental at anyone that points out faults. They receive excessive positive reinforcement from a herd mentality that shares faults in logic, and perhaps often society is so shifted from the more natural life that our instinctual minds are suited for, that consequences and practicality are more disconnected. So it seems that in modern day society, encouragement of emotional reactiveness and a disregard for conceptual comprehension is; What’s Left of Liberal.
