 One of the challenges of being too far ahead is the push-back you get on some of your ideas and beliefs. My ideas and beliefs tend to fall into three categories:
- Beliefs that were once unpopular but are now accepted by the great majority of people. Examples:
- Gender and racial equality.
- Abhorrence of cruelty to animals.
- Evolution.
- Beliefs that are still unpopular among conservatives but increasingly popular among progressives. Examples:
- Homosexuality as a perfectly natural alternative to heterosexuality.
- Universal, not-for-profit health care.
- Allowing
people to evolve their own cultures at the pace and the way they want,
as long as they respect the ideas and beliefs of others, and respect
acknowledged universal rights and freedoms; acknowledging as well that
democracy and constitutional liberalism cannot be imposed.
- Unschooling,
letting young people learn in the community, their own way, at their
own pace, the things that they need to learn to live and make a living
productively.
- War must only be a last resort, and never has winners. Humans are by nature peaceful, generous, and well-intentioned.
- Beliefs that are still unpopular, even among progressives. Examples:
- Communal ownership of property; the idea that we belong to the land, rather than it to us.
- Egalitarian consensus decision-making, rather than hiererchical, role-based decision-making.
- Polyamorism as being a more natural and healthy way to live than monogamy.
- Encouragement
of negative population growth, to naturally reduce human population
below one billion, and commensurately setting aside most of the Earth's
inhabitable land as wildlands, uninhabited by humans.
In
the progressive press, news that some people still haven't accepted
Category 1 beliefs is often reported dismissively, derisively,
impatiently, even angrily. There is a sense that we're past that, that
we shouldn't still have to deal with these issues.
In the
progressive press, there is a lot of debate about Category 2 beliefs.
The progressive point of view is advanced, articulated, argued
vociferously. Other points of view are presented, in an effort to
understand and refute them.
You will not find much in the
progressive press, or anywhere else, on Category 3 beliefs. These are
fringe thoughts, limited to the left-wing and anarcho-press. Some
progressives may be sympathetic to these beliefs, but they don't want
to discuss them, be associated with them, have to defend them against
the rabid antipathy of the mainstream. Some progressives may be
completely unsympathetic to them, and consider them a betrayal, a
distraction, ammunition to the other side.
I have always
believed that things are the way they are for a reason. When I've held
unpopular beliefs in past, I've remained suspicious of them, kept them
mostly to myself, thrown them out not as my own but as 'straw man'
ideas to be prodded, exposed, poked full of holes. Perhaps as a result,
most of the unpopular beliefs I held as a young man I no longer espouse.
Or
perhaps it is because it was more important to me to be accepted,
popular, everybody-else. If you hold an unpopular belief too
vociferously, you can be trampled, brutalized, ostracized, lynched.
Just ask anyone who espoused Category 1 or 2 beliefs when they were
still Category 3 beliefs.
As I get older, I am no longer as
concerned with what people think of my beliefs, and I am modestly more
competent at defending them, at least with those who are capable of
listening. And while some of my youthful unpopular beliefs are no
longer things I believe in, I have lots of new Category 3 beliefs, most
of which I have aired on this blog at one time or another.
The
response I have received to my articles about them, and my espousal of
these beliefs, has been, for the most part, pretty hostile, and
sometimes downright nasty. Sometimes I feel like just keeping them to
myself. But then I ask myself: What if I had lived in a previous
generation or more conservative country, and I had chosen to keep
silent about then-unpopular beliefs that have since become (thanks in
part to people who fought for them) Category 1 or 2 beliefs?
The
four examples of Category 3 beliefs above are the ones I have received
the most violent negative response to. Most of the people I know (and
Americans in particular, for some reason) seem to abhor the idea that
we don't have a 'right' to 'own' and use the planet and everything that
comes from our resources for human, personal purposes. They believe
almost religiously that leadership and hierarchy are essential to a
functional society, and that there is an inalienable human right to
reproduce as many of our own kind as we choose.
There are
times when I just shut up about my unpopular beliefs, because to some
extent, as Daniel Quinn says, people will only listen to new ideas when
they are ready. Arguing with people who are viscerally hostile to what
you believe is a waste of time and energy.
But there are other
times when I cannot remain silent. When I just have to stand up for
what I believe in. "If at first an idea isn't considered absurd",
Einstein said, "there is no hope for it." Maybe I'm just stubborn. Or
maybe I'm relearning to pay attention to and trust my instincts. If you
don't like what I say, that's fine. I don't want to argue. But I'm
unrepentent. My unpopular beliefs' time is coming.
New Yorker cover by Charles E Martin from September 11, 1971
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
