- 01 Jun 14, 22:25#403032Very insightfull and promising thread topic! Ironically enough the topic itself will answer its own question the more people comment. So heres what I think
Yes I would agree that there is an overall and evolutionary dialectic within everyone that can be grouped broadly as conservative or progressive. And it permeates most activities and endeavours. For example, away from the right/left political connotations, and at a micro level we can see this manifest on discussion forums.
Forums and their participants and moderators can be grouped in this fashion. The conservative mindset has knows its place in the scheme of things and assumes change would be detrimental and could lead to having to 'get lucky' again to 'get back' to its comfort zone. So the automatic reaction to anything not 'established' i.e. 'knows its place in the scheme of things' is rejection or dismissal. The progressive mindset on the other hand will tend to be confident in its ability to always regain its 'place' and is therefore willing to entertain the idea of change or of new concepts.
It is generally accepted that there are 3 levels in intellectual aptitude, level 1 - discusses people, level 2 discusses events, level 3 discusses concepts
So the conservative mindset on forums will be predisposed to discuss what is established and known - people and events. They will tend to reject projections, speculation, reading between the lines, inferring for facts, extrapolation etc. Typically they will contend themselves with spamming the forum with reported news items without adding any opinion beyond acceptance as it will confirm their tastes. The mindset will manifest in the fabric of the forum by discouraging arguments or dialectic and instead strive for agreement and no 'rocking of the boat'. The mods with this mindet will say things like 'I am glad there are no topics that cause people to engage, discuss and argue - it gives me less work to do'. This would be like a barman at a pub saying 'I like when we have no customers so I dont have to do more of my work'
The progressive mindset on the other hand manifests with participants eager to join discussions that could yield more insight into more things, and in particular into areas outside their own comfort zone. What if scenarios, concepts and gravitation towards topics not reported or unestablished or new. The forum will encourage discussions and arguments (but no ad hominem stuff). The mods would actually enjoy stimulating discussions and would encourage new and unknown angles from new and old participants. Instead of articles cut and paste from established news sources the emphasis would be on opinions about the news. Like the barman saying 'I like it when we have more customers as there is more chance to engage with interesting and new people'
While checking out different types of forums and especially over parkgate it has been interesting to notice certain patterns now the internet has matured. Over the parkgate affair certain forumslike Autosport exploded in activity. Scores of lurkers turned active to have their say, all the haters and fans were out in force to say their piece. On the other hand on certain forums like CTA a small clique of regulars continued to just regurgitate the press reports and discourage any alternative views or any posts that might cause them to take on new ideas or concepts about the people and events the press had already presented to them.
So conservative vs progressive mindsets and their resultant behaviour and actions manifests through the fabric of society. Apart from the obvious political leanings, we have conservative artistic movements that stick to established notions vs progressive artistic movements that strive to challenge established notions of beauty, thought, medium or 'commodity firmness'
Even with the drivers, you have the conservative 'smooth' narrow operating window types who can go round a track doing the same thing each time but once things change, performance disappears vs the progressive types who embrace instability as a chance to adapt and evolve. Seb, Button, Kimi vs Lewis, Alonso, Danny Ric. This is reflected in F1 supporters, those who will blindly refuse to see anything but their established notions about their team/driver vs those eager for their driver/team to be at their best with no excuses.
All in all as long as we know all this we can focus our energies on like minded company or environments. What is dangerous is when conservatives begin to go beyond acceptance and start to deny others the expression of a progressive mindset. When censorship and book burning begin, when deep thinking and new ideas are discouraged or stamped upon by those with any power to modify or edit.
This is when the dialectic of conservative vs progressive is joined by another energy - the fascistic and perverted (perverted doesnt mean a predilection for the doggie position, but it means behaviour which is not conducive with natures way of progress - variety, growth, balance etc)
Last edited by CookinFlat6 on 01 Jun 14, 22:53, edited 1 time in total.
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