This I Believe (1952)awakin.org
It is also possible, maybe even likely, that we are the ones who are odd.
Interesting that you choose "regressive" as the opposite of progressive. thinking emoji
Yes. Philip K. Dick wrote this about Heinlein:
"Several years ago, when I was ill, Heinlein offered his help, anything he could do, and we had never met; he would phone me to cheer me up and see how I was doing. He wanted to buy me an electric typewriter, God bless him—one of the few true gentlemen in this world. I don't agree with any ideas he puts forth in his writing, but that is neither here nor there. One time when I owed the IRS a lot of money and couldn't raise it, Heinlein loaned the money to me. I think a great deal of him and his wife; I dedicated a book to them in appreciation. Robert Heinlein is a fine-looking man, very impressive and very military in stance; you can tell he has a military background, even to the haircut. He knows I'm a flipped-out freak and still he helped me and my wife when we were in trouble. That is the best in humanity, there; that is who and what I love."
Heinlein wasn't "regressive" but conservative. Your formulation indicates that it is you who might not be progressive but regressive since conservatism - same root as conservatorship - is a legitimate and, especially in good times, logical and effective strategy: keep that which works, change only that which needs changing and be careful not to change it too much or too fast lest you destroy that which worked. Heinlein wrote this in 1952 when the sky wasn't the limit anymore and people were reaching for the "stars" - well, low earth orbit anyway - so he had plenty of backing for his conservatism.
> conservatism is a legitimate and, especially in good times, logical and effective strategy: keep that which works, change only that which needs changing and be careful not to change it too much
Conservatism runs entirely on the ingroup-outgroup divide - "keep that which works for us", and be a force opposing changes sought by people for whom things are not going so well, for whom change is the logical strategy.
Honest conservatives can see past the blind spot of the divide and don't try to present their strategy as a universal ethical good.
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it sounds like youre saying that protecting a group in the conservative mindset must arise at cost to others , is that right ?
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If the person takes into account the needs of other groups to assess what "works", we no longer call them conservatives but "centrists".
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ok , so does this imply that the opposite of conservatism is to protect an out group at cost to the in group ?
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In a sense, yes. That one's usually called 'fairness'.
A corollary is that people tend not to be conservatives when they belong to the less well-off ingroup. Suddenly bringing about change becomes more important.
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ok. so if its fairness to protect an outgroup by costing an in group, how would you label protecting both an ingroup and an outgroup ?
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Two instances of the same principle
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thanks for helping understand your perspective , all the best
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You're welcome. It's great that your questions came from a genuine desire of understanding. Though to be honest, that interaction - a sequence of short direct questions without further context - seemed to me like you were testing me, trying to lead me into a contradiction. I assumed less-than-good faith, I'm glad I was mistaken.
>Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
>There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progre...
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ive seen this quote posted many times and never understood it. thanks for linking the original (?) essay, things make sense now. i do disagree with the author though; his statement is plainly defensible.
That is not what conservativism as political ideology is. Like common, not clearly that and we have multiple years where this was made super clear by conservatives themselves.
Conservativism has nothing to do with "conservatorship". They are not trying to conserve, they are trying to force radical change - sometimes to imaginary past and sometimes toward something completely new. And then violently keep it there regardless of needs of other people.
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No. That is reactionary. Conservatism means "government should govern as little as possible to guarantee freedoms, and no less. it should not provide services for a fee (aka tax)."
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You definition sounds more like anarchism or some kind of ultra-libertarian end goal.
It never meant that. Conservativism does not care about freedoms, except for cherry picked few freedoms for selected few. It also does not care about small government, it cares about government small in some areas and huge in others.
Conservative voters do not care about freedom, conservative politicians do not care about freedom and and considerable amounts of them are actively opposed to it.
Conservativism is consistently very authoritarian. It is about hierarchies, not freedom.
Conservatism is a vague set of ideas about promoting and maintaining traditional institutions and values. That has various political manifestations, depending on circumstances. In the UK at the turn of the 20th Century for example, it meant heavy protectionist tariffs, as that supported domestic agriculture and the landed aristocracy. Nowadays the UK Conservative party opposes protectionist tariffs and champions free trade, as that maintains the current economic climate.
Your definition is pretty much minarchist forms of libertarianism. Not conservatism.
It’s one of those cases where the label has stayed the same, but the thing it commonly describes has changed so much that the word just has multiple completely different meanings.
There’s the “let’s create National Parks to conserve our natural treasures!” conservatism and there’s the “let’s sell our National Parks to the highest bidder so they can drill for oil!” conservatism. It can mean fiscal responsibility and small government, or it can mean crypto scams and surveillance state.
This happens a lot when describing political positions.
This is like how Americans of the "conservative" bent use "liberal" as a perjorative, despite holding to liberal (or, occasionally, neoliberal) economic theory. I don't get America at all.
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I am not bending anything. Ibam describing belives and behavior of people who call themselves "comswrvatives".
They have known political program and agenda. They vote in congress, senate and general election. They write articles, they have tv shows, podcasts and radio shows.
They are consistently pro-Trump, pro-authoritarian, pro-war, anti-abortion, anti-whatever-not-them groups rights. Except big business, they are pro big business.
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No, I didn't say you were, I was agreeing with you, my apologies for confusion :)
The kind of conservatism that Heinlein embraced supported the idea that world government was necessary to prevent nuclear war. Today, granting more power to the UN or any other international body is ridiculed by most conservatives.
What is called conservatism in many countries today is totally different from what it was while Heinlein was alive.
>keep that which works
you forgot the "pretend that everything works" part
>keep that which works, change only that which needs changing and be careful not to change it too much or too fast lest you destroy that which worked
This sounds great until you start arguing over what "works" means, who is making the distinction, and and where their interests are.
>… keep that which works, change only that which needs changing and be careful not to change it too much or too fast lest you destroy that which worked…
Where “works” is defined as “we’re seeing a lot of very obvious problems but we have faith they’ll work themselves out over time without any intervention”, and the opposite is “we’re seeing a lot of very obvious problems and we think a change is necessary”. Note that the thing under debate has problems and it is not obvious to everyone that it “works”. The conservative says “let’s wait and see” and the reformer says “we must change this now”.
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You're misstating the alternatives. Most "obvious" problems do get worked out without intervention from outside parties who have no skin in the game. Some don't--but even in those cases, "change" driven by outside third parties who have no skin in the game almost never actually solves the problem. To paraphrase the programmer's saying about regular expressions, some people, whenever they see a problem, think, I know! We'll put a reform in place to fix it. Now they have two problems.
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1.) Conservatives oppose reforms by "directly affected people with skin in the game". They opposed those reforms even when they themselves have zero actual skin in the game.
2.) Conservatives themselves frequently demand changes to things that work just fine for affected people. They want reform, because the world does not conform their ideological vision to how it should work.
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Now we're just quibbling over labeling. By "conservative" I mean the kind of conservative that the GP of my original post in this subthread said Heinlein was. If you want to use "conservative" to mean something else, well, then we're just talking past each other.
We can use the terms “conserve”/“reform” to describe what someone does on a particular issue (e.g. does not or does “demand changes”), or we can use the terms in the very loose way we often do when describing political parties. No party is uniformly “change nothing”/“change everything” so parties aren’t particularly useful for clarifying what “conservative” or “reform” mean.
>from outside parties who have no skin in the game
Redefining the context to include a nebulous group of people “with no skin in the game”… Why should we exclude a “conservative” who has no skin in the game from this group, but include a “reformer” who also does not?
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I'm "excluding" both the reformer and the conservative from "people who have skin in the game". The difference is that the reformer wants to interfere with the people who do have skin in the game working out their own solution to the problem, but the conservative does not.
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You seem to be implying that no reformers have skin in the game though. Certainly this can’t be true?
Edit: Re-reading… are you saying there’s a third group?
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> You seem to be implying that no reformers have skin in the game though.
I'm only describing that case (for both reformers and conservatives), yes. Historically, that seems to be the most relevant case, at least if we want to talk in terms of size of human impact.
To put it another way: if the problem (if there is one--see further comments below) can be solved by the people who do have skin in the game working things out among themselves, the labels "reformer" and "conservative" don't even come into play. You just have people who have to find some way of working together, doing it. So the only cases where those labels even arise are the cases where the people who do have skin in the game can't work things out among themselves--or at least that the people looking in from the outside, who don't have skin in the game themselves, think so.
The term "reformer", historically, does have another meaning: people who have some grand idea for how society should be organized, observing that it currently is not organized that way, and treating that as a Problem even if others don't agree that it is. A "conservative" seeing that would just say, look, you can't just impose your own idea of how society should be on everyone else. But historically, "reformers" in such cases have always framed things in terms of there being a Problem that isn't just "society isn't the way I think it should be"--the workers are oppressed, or the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer, or whatever, and using that as an excuse to implement their ideas for the ideal society. Which has never worked out well.
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Ah I see so for you “conservative” and “reformer” are labels that have lost all meaning, they are wielded by busy-bodies who poke their nose at where it doesn’t belong. Whereas for me the words describe what people are trying to do in practice, regardless of political labels. (Canada had a “Reform” party for a while, which was conservative, so personally I don’t give the labels much credence either. Shame on me for assuming the words could be used at all without the baggage.)
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> they are wielded by busy-bodies who poke their nose at where it doesn’t belong
I never said that about conservatives; indeed, I said the opposite.
"Reformers", yes--but I don't think the label is one I just made up. I think what I said is true of most people that call themselves "reformers".
> Whereas for me the words describe what people are trying to do in practice, regardless of political labels.
Since this is exactly how I was defining the labels--by what the people do, not what political party they claim to belong to or support--I am confused about why you think you are doing something different.
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I think there’s a chicken and egg problem here…
>To put it another way: if the problem (if there is one--see further comments below) can be solved by the people who do have skin in the game working things out among themselves, the labels "reformer" and "conservative" don't even come into play. You just have people who have to find some way of working together, doing it.
… where you’ve hand-waved away the debate within the group about whether to do something or not.
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I haven't hand-waved anything away. I said there are cases where the people who do have skin in the game can't work things out among themselves. What you're describing is one case of that--those people can't even come to agreement about whether something needs to be done or not.
I did qualify my statement with the caveat that whether people looking in from the outside, who don't have skin in the game, think there's a problem that the people who do have skin in the game can't resolve among themselves, doesn't always match whether there actually is such a problem (a caveat which I could argue that you have hand-waved away). But I am not saying that all cases are like that.
What I am saying is that, even in the cases that aren't like that, the cases where the people who do have skin in the game really can't resolve a problem by working among themselves, that does not mean that reformers coming in from outside can do any better. I think such outside interventions, through human history, have a very poor track record of working. A quick summary of my point about conservatives and reformers would then be that conservatives recognize this unpleasant truth of human history, whereas reformers don't acknowledge it and are way, way too eager to make such interventions, and end up making things even worse.
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You keep asserting that “reformer” means “outsider” but they’re not synonyms.
So basicly, you are making people and historical events up in your head so that you can criticize imaginary "repformers" and praise imaginary "conservatives". Where conservatives want no change, (expect a bunch of new laws which does not count as change for reasons).
> The conservative says “let’s wait and see”
No, the conservative says, even if there are problems, that doesn't mean everything is a problem, nor does it mean that you, looking in from the outside, can dictate a solution.
> the reformer says “we must change this now”.
No matter how much has to be burned down to do it. This mentality killed well north of 100 million people in the 20th century.
Conservatism is humility. Progressivism is hubris.
Agreed. "Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is a good example - Heinlein tries quite hard to envisage a society in which women wield more social power, but can't quite relinquish the idea that women wish and deserve to be dominated by powerful men. Worth stating that 1952 was shortly after WW2 i.e. at the start of Heinlein's "middle period" when his worldview shifted dramatically towards more right-wing values (military patriotism, anti-communism, and individual self-reliance).
Exactly my point. Some other commenters got wrapped around themselves thinking I was using regressive as a synonym for conservative, but no, I said what I meant; specific words mean specific things.
I believe countries and civilizations die when they stop believing this.
I believe much of it or want to believe much of it. But the section:
>I believe that almost all politicians are honest ... there are hundreds of politicians, low paid or not paid at all, doing their level best without thanks or glory to make our system work. If this were not true we would never have gotten past the 13 colonies.
I just cannot believe this is even remotely true any more. We seem to have descended into widespread corruption and hypocrisy since his time and that rot is apparent at the very top of the political ladder and seems to inhere downwards. Can’t see how it is going to improve now that it’s been legitimised and the political process completely gutted.
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Results of that still up in the air.
I don't think the next generation of Democrats is as corrupt as Trump. Jeffries seems like a pretty standard politician, and even progressives like AOC, Mamdani, Sanders, etc. do not seem venally corrupt.
And even Trump's corruption is not the problem. If that were his only sin the US would be fine.
Our political disfunction is caused not by personal failings (although those abound) but by genuine disagreement on which direction the US should take.
Excellent points on the intrinsic motivations and qualities absolutely dominating any control system.
But also plenty of places are nothing like Heinlein's hometown so this is far from universal.
Damn good.
Ah, Heinlein. There's not much energy up there, and the energy question is a big one. It's now 2026 and we are still at the point where we can only move a fraction to actual space of what we originally start off with down here. Our fuel is still not anywhere close to what we'd need in terms of energy density and throughput.
I love it and I believe the same as him.
In dark hours I remind myself that humanity must be at least 50.1% good and 49.9% bad. Otherwise we would never have come so far.
THIS IS EDITED by the whoever owns the site. Might be slop generated.
Few paragraphs are taken out to smooth it out.
I think that this is the original: https://thisibelieve.org/essay/16630/
Between this https://thisibelieve.org/essay/16630/ and https://www.awakin.org/v2/read/view.php?tid=468 there are additional paragraph breaks, which might be attributable to it being transcribed from audio; the first link has an audio recording, the second link does not. In one a pause is transcribed as "-" and in the other as comma.
However, the second awakin.org version is also missing a piece of text:
"I believe in Rodger Young. You and I are free today because of endless unnamed heroes from Valley Forge to the Yalu River. I believe in—I am proud to belong to—the United States. Despite shortcomings—from lynchings, to bad faith in high places—our nation has had the most decent and kindly internal practices and foreign policies to be found anywhere in history."
I had to google Rodger Young: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodger_Young
In 2026, it is not wise to believe that almost all politicians are honest. It is better to be skeptical of their motivations and hope they are honest enough to do the right thing for the citizens they represent.
Mate, it wasn't wise to believe that in 1952 either. It's gotten worse, sure, especially at the top, but there are still thousands of "politicians" out there running local board meetings and trying to do their best to keep their communities going.
And these thousands still represent the vast majority. Vote for them.
It has not gotten any worse. The rapacious greed of politicians in service to their own interest has been universal since the beginning of politics.
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History would have some objections to what you believe. In defense of your position, however, the last 40 years (at least in the US) have been dominated by the ethos you describe, and the eras and the politicians who were not consumed by greed tend to be less common than the reverse.
"Universal" is a massive stretch. What seems more certain is that the many countries where your take is widely shared are less successful than the few countries where it is not.
Social media enables unseen before levels of fear mongering, misinformation and astroturfing. There are so many “issues” that were created and inflated to rile up voters it’s insane.
Standing for an evil heinous party doesn't get offset by this, though, were it the case.
The thing is, we tend to hear about the politicians who are ravenous for power, wealth, or recognition. The politicians who aren't (the backbenchers, the ones who run for local office, etc.) we rarely hear about outside of election cycles. While we may not agree with their politics, and may even go as far as disparaging their politics, it doesn't mean they are dishonest. It simply means that our personal values aren't aligned with the values of that politician.
verity
Politicians were never honest (never like since Minoan civilization and earlier probably too). You can have an honest, successful politician, as you can have short, successful volleyball player, but that would be an extremely rare case (like Muggsy Bogues).
And that's not really politicians fault, they say what electorate expects, and electorate likes to be cheated.
I believe Mr. Bogues played basketball, not volleyball.
Politicians and CEO's. The processes for both, funnel psychopaths to the top.
Any competition that does not select for a specific skill will select people who are good at competition. Psychopaths are good at competition.
I don't think it's possible to make it to the national level as an honest politician. Crony capitalism has ensured that every politician in Washington is bought and paid for in one way or another. God bless the few state and many local politicians that remain honest, and God bless their rose tinted glasses, too. Unfortunately, it never lasts.
Which is why we need to keep a close watch on how we structure our elections so we can understand why the good ones can't win a primary; and then fix the problem.
Heinlein's preferred title for this essay was "Our Noble, Essential Decency."
The point about politicians is the one I think today most needs. Our public systems don't work when we inherently distrust them. This isn't reason alone to trust, but a bias towards distrust is a pernicious thing for society.
This might be terribly controversial, but I think that even today, even at the highest levels of power, evil is a rare exception, rather than the rule, and we oughta be aware of that.
I’m not sure I believe this anymore. Maybe around 2 years ago, I think.
But the trajectory, of everything it seems, has completely changed. And I have no optimism left.
The world would need to possibly take up arms against its leadership to recover from where it is right now. The problem is, I know the masses are pacifist and reasonable, and it’s the insane few that are either running everything or have all the money. That dreads me, because just as I wouldn’t take up arms, nobody else will either, so who will stop the descent?
You got voted down, but your sentiment is reasonable. Times are pretty rough right now, politicians seem worse than ever, and people seem to be more ready to hate each other than ever. But the trajectory is controlled by individuals.
Heinlein wrote this in a dark period in history too. The writing of it was resistance against the trajectory of his times. Belief is a choice. Action is a choice. If you don't feel optimism, that's OK to recognize. But then make a choice: to believe something good about your neighbor, to honor something noble about someone you disagree with, and to act as if we each can do better than societal trends seem to indicate.
The world will definitely keep getting better
It's not automatic, but it is the trend.
Thanks for sharing. The last time I saw this sentence, it was because of him.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liang_Shuming
>Politicians
I have yet to see one that isn't in it for personal gain without regard for the voters.
For the rest of the text, agree completely.
Did you engage in local politics?
Someone explain how we’re getting out of this poor situation we’ve created.
There’s a non zero chance we create AGI, it catches up on the latest news, and genuinely believes the solution to save Earth is to subjugate humanity to some degree to prevent humanity from nuking itself.
Of course super low chance, but the AI bubble has somehow started right around when 3 major wars popped up, globalism/immigration problems peaking, and the post-WW2 world order crumbling all within 3-5 years.
This essay format is surprisingly challenging, and one that is fresh every time you try it.
One that stuck with me from the NPR series is "I believe in BBQ"
Give it a try!
I believe the same. For this I am called Pollyanna by my family.
(And in fact I did hitchhike by myself from Anchorage, Alaska down to Moses Lake, Washington in my youth…)
Sure, Robert. KBI: keep believing it.
That essay believing in townsfolk was written while lynchings were still happening and schools were segregated and land deeds prohibited sale to blacks and Jews. Levittowns and the federal highway system were actively indulging and encouraging white flight. But, yeah, anyone will feed you.
Nowadays our children endure “active shooter” drills and sometimes die at the hands of active shooters. Parents are charged with neglect for letting children go to the store unaccompanied. Stand-your-ground laws defend shooting someone through a locked door, or in a parking lot. Vote canvassers have been shot at for turning onto the wrong driveway. Salt of the earth, those townsfolk.
The price of housing continues to rise mainly because those already there prevent building for those who would come. San Francisco is 1/2 the density of New York. It’s expensive because Palo Alto looks like Levittown and not, say, Queens. That was decided by those same sweet townsfolk.
Maybe Heinlein’s essay was inspirational in the McCarthy Era. In the present day, when Republicans root for deporting citizens elected to congress, it’s a transparent fantasy. Take every sentence as false, and it’s a useful guide to the world that we sadly actually live in.
I believe USAers are the most effectively propagandized people on the planet and the good nature of many has been sullied by that bullshit.
Certainly not true in every culture. Because this is not an intrinsic truth of humanity. The evils the author sees as exceptions are actually the rule of our nature, but for one reason or another, most people (in some cultures) these days choose to operate on better principles because the outcome is preferable.
A murderer might enjoy killing, but will only be able to do so for a short time before being caught and imprisoned (or better, executed). But few people have ever been jailed or hurt for exercising charity and kindness on others. It's not that humans are normally or mostly good (we're very clearly not), but that living as such tends towards better and longer lives.
So in that sense I also believe, for the most part, that those around me are more willing to help than to hurt. Sadly those with the most influence on our lives don't represent a random sampling of "most people".
Why am I not surprised that Heinlein wrote this?
The guy was an incurable optimist.
(1952).
Heinlein was such an odd fellow. Extremely progressive on one hand and extremely regressive on the other, sometimes in the span of a single paragraph.