Blogger Fie Upon This Quiet Life made the following valuable comment:
Different stages in life will affect the way you view things politically, in my opinion. However, the core principles should stay the same.
I agree completely with Fie. My political beliefs are in constant flux. I keep learning new things and that, obviously, influences my political stance. However, my core political principles stay the same. They are central to my entire worldview, which is why I cannot imagine them ever changing. Here they are:
– the human body is inviolable. Nobody has the right to invade it. Nobody’s beliefs, opinions, religious agendas, and do-gooder concerns should trump an individual’s fundamental freedom to do what s/he wants to do with her or his body. The same goes for people’s sex lives.
– freedom of speech is more important than its capacity to hurt somebody’s feelings (including mine).
– individual responsibility. If everything I do is “conditioned by society”, if I’m nothing but a reflection of societal forces working on me, then said society should have the right to dictate my every move. Those of us who don’t enjoy this prospect, should accept responsibility for our lives.
– equality under the law. This means, among other things, that when Mr. Blankfein mismanages his huge company, he should deal with the consequences the way any owner of a tiny corner store does.
– a civilized society must ensure that nobody has to suffer without adequate medical care.
– children are human beings and their rights should be protected.
I can’t think of anything more right now. Am I forgetting anything?
Do share what your core political principles are.
Clarissa's Blog 
The only thing I could add would be that men and women have the same intrinsic value. Otherwise I would agree with your list. Can’t think of anything else to add for the moment.
Oh, and respect for the environment. No loony green policies here, just respect for the planet and a desire to keep it healthy.
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My core beliefs:
1. Everybody is “conditioned”. It is your responsibility to work your way from a conditioned to a thoughtful and genuinely reflective state.
2. Both women and men have emotions and intellect. It’s a biological fact, so you can’t go dividing it up and making out that one group has the emotions and the other group has intellect.
3. Humans have the neurological capacity to experience mystical states. Your sense of the sacred is demeaned if you try to make it mine as well.
4. Morality and politics are worlds apart. Aim for a sustainable life and don’t get caught up by either of these principles. They’re the left and the right of delusion, respectively.
5. I’m not responsible for your feelings. It’s not my job to cooperate with you (generic you) in order to prove my sincerity, value, political credibility, anything.
6. If you do anything in order to feel “powerful”, you have already lost. Don’t succumb to delusion. Be pragmatic.
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Solid core principles! However, it can be difficult to state a principle that is applicable in each and every case, no exceptions.
Regarding a person’s right to do what they want with her or his own body: I wouldn’t apply that to self-destructive actions that impact others, either directly or indirectly. I don’t think a person should have the right to use their body as a suicide bomb to kill others. Also, I tend to think that society has a right to expect a motorcyclist to wear a helmet, if society is going to have to pay for the health care of a fearless but unfortunate motorcyclist. Just splitting hairs, I suppose.
Along with respect for the environment, I might add respect for future generations and the future of the planet.
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Oh, and democracy should rest on the misleadingly simple principle of one person, one vote. But I haven’t figured out how to prevent the corruption of democracy by money, power, or coercion.
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That’s where eternal vigilance comes in. Unfortunately the people who talk most about eternal vigilance use it in defense of what they call negative liberty, and they tend to be explicitly against democracy. But I say ‘one person one vote’ is a far more legitimate indicator of consent than ‘one share one vote’ which is how business is run.
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The politics in this country is being run more and more like a business: whoever buys the most “shares” wins. This election will be crucial in showing that it doesn’t necessarily have to be the case.
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1. Control over one’s own body is the fundamental ground that all other rights are built on. Without it, all other rights are irrelevant.
2. When someone violates another person’s right to control their body, then the fate of the perpetrator should be determined by the victim. No questions asked. No exceptions.
3. Individuals are responsible for their actions, but they do not act in a vacuum.
4. No government or state of human affairs will ever be ideal.
5. Human beings are smaller and less important than we intuitively believe–but sometimes we are also bigger than we realize. (I mean this particularly with regards to environmentalism.)
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I like number 2.
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Elizabeth, I feel your points about the body politic are rooted in arguments about women’s right over their own bodies in instances of reproduction and sexuality, and in these context, I agree with you to the absolute fullest. But if your absolutist phrasing makes yourself open to yourself open for deliberate misunderstanding and appropriation by people with much shadier motives.
And of course, 2 nullifies 1. A justice system based on vengence — which is what I yearned for, when I first hit puberty and started facing sexual harassment on the streets — cannot be sustained unless unless one lives in a totalitarian regime. I doubt greatly that you’d want your ideal political climate to be a dictatorial one.
In other words, be very careful what you wish for.
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Oh, and thank you for asking us to share. Writing that out was a very useful exercise!
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Also, I tend to think that society has a right to expect a motorcyclist to wear a helmet, if society is going to have to pay for the health care of a fearless but unfortunate motorcyclist(John)
I guess you like Mayor Bloombergs ban of big soda then? 😉
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Wow, this stuff gets difficult! I support a ban on cigarettes (or possibly on all tobacco) because cigarettes are a proven killer, at significant cost to society. But I think the ban on big sodas is silly. The distinction I’m making between cigarettes and soda is probably not logically consistent, but I’ll stick with it until persuaded otherwise.
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” support a ban on cigarettes (or possibly on all tobacco) because cigarettes are a proven killer, at significant cost to society. ”
– So you would trample on the rights of an individual because somebody unknown called “society” suffers according to your subjective opinion? Why not respect individual people enough to let them choose what substances they ingest? In return, you can expect them to respect your choices. The policy you suggest opens the door to all anti-abortion, homo=phobic legislation anybody can wish to introduce.
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I’ll admit I’m not totally objective about the cigarette issue, but I’ve seen people die of lung cancer up close. I would disagree that “significant cost to society” is a subjective opinion. I think it’s a fact that under our health care system, society at large pays for the care of cigarette victims through health insurance premiums and taxes. I think it’s the tobacco corporations that are trampling on people’s rights and taking away people’s right to freedom over their own bodies by: 1. Seducing young customers with sophisticated psychological advertising, and 2. Manipulating the nicotine content of cigarettes to make people addicted. Making someone addicted to something is taking away their freedom.
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Goodness. You don’t realise how much conflict there is in simple, positive beliefs till someone declares them to be immutable. Normally, I’d have said “Hell yes!” to your first belief, but up on reflection, I must say I disagree. The human body is not inviolable, because certain human beings tend to put things inside their system that then allows/compels/accidentaly makes them impign on the inviolability of other people’s bodies.
For example, I was firmly of the belief that drug use shouldn’t be penalised — it is a personal emotional and medical problem, not a legal one — till an acquaintance’s son was finally arrested for violence, torture, stealing, and endangering the safety of other people to support his habit. This person’s family hadn’t the money to put him in rehab, so till the state forced rehabilitation on his body, his estranged wife, child and parents suffered at his hands. Indeed, to stay aloof from this man’s addiction would be to allow continued domestic and child abuse, or to take the child away from an otherwise fit mother on the sole grounds that the father knew where the mother lived, and dropped by whenever he needed money that his parents wouldn’t cough up.
Of course, people who fancy themselves very emotionally strong have since blamed the family and the wife for not ‘standing up to’ this person strongly enough, but the delusions of self-righteous people who have not lived this sort of abuse first-hand can, I think, be safely , discounted.
I also am wary of rejecting social conditioning outright. I’ve seen enough instances of clearly unrepentant offenders being let off using the aww, s/he knew no better excuse, and it’s downright rotten, but I simply cannot subscribe to a system which holds a certain value system as absolute, and penalises everyone who comes from a different system. An American man I briefly went out with, for example, once said that in his culture, my direct, emphatic manner of speaking would indicate that I had ‘anger issues’, especially since I am a woman. Now, not only am I socially conditioned to speak my mind, I’ve also never been told that it is unfeminine, or worse, threatening (‘verbal assault’ is not an idea native to my culture). If, instead of merely commenting on our cultural difference, this man had told me to take personal responsibility for my ‘aggressive’ speech and not blame it on my social conditioning, I’d ask him to sod off and be an ethnocentric idiot elsewhere. I appreciate your point, but I think it needs to be articulated with greater finnesse.
On the other hand, I completely agree with equality under law (where the law allows for case-by-case contextualisation), freedom of speech, and public medical care. My personal utopia would have all of these.
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Addictions cannot be cured against the addicted person’s will. Addicts might drop their addiction but then pick up a different one. Especially if the enablers remain in their lives.
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I don’t see how this pertains to my comment at all.
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You mentioned that “the state forced rehabilitation on his body.” I’m pointing out that nobody can “force” rehabilitation. But, of course, this person should have been arrested for crimes against others.
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My core beliefs:
1. We are all on a learning curve, and have to be responsible for what information gets put into our brains. You can’t fault anybody else for your own ignorance once you’re an adult living on your own.
2. My body is my own, and how I choose to nourish it, how I choose to please it, and how I choose to use it are my own business.
3. My rights end where other people’s begin.
4. Human rights are inalienable, and belong to us all from birth. Nobody is deprived of these rights due to gender identity, sex, colour, disability, or life circumstance.
I’m sure there are others, but those are the foundational four.
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I like these beliefs!
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Thanks! I wish I could say I put a lot of thought into them, but really, they’re pretty self-explanatory, so it didn’t take me that long to formulate them. But they’re excellent in their simplicity, if I do say so myself.
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Thanks for the link love!
Here is my core belief:
1. Compassion should be used whenever possible.
I think my other core beliefs all lead back to this one.
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I agree with what you listed. Here is what I would add of my own. I believe that an empathetic capacity and a sense of aesthetics are the two most important traits of a fully realized human being. With those traits fully developed, humans naturally act compassionately, kindly, and create works that enhance the self and society more largely. Humans with a finely developed empathetic capacity for instance would never infringe on another body or infringe on another’s right because they have the ability to see the world through that “other’s” perspective. And I mean the phrase “sense of aesthetics” very broadly: art, literature, science, mathematics, nature, food, even a beautifully realized political system etc. etc. In my opinion, human greatness occurs when empathy and aesthetics are present and cruelty occurs when they are lacking. Of course, you can’t legislate empathy or aesthetics. But you can encourage, develop, and teach them. And this is why I believe public education is one of the most important facets of the “good society.” And a true education—not one that focuses on careers or test scores. But one that focuses on beauty, connection, and wonder. So that’s at the core of my belief system. 🙂
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This is a very beautiful and profound comment. Thank you, Evelina!
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I think it is better to allow core principles to evolve as well. Sometimes one is wrong! It used to be a core principle of mine that religion is inherently anti-rational and hence always a bad thing; now I take a more nuanced view. Moral and political questions are very difficult to answer, and one should always keep a piece of one’s mind open to the possibility that even a very strongly held opinion may be mistaken.
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I’m not making any efforts to prevent the core principles from evolving. But I have to confess that they haven’t changed in forever, so it isn’t likely that they would now, all of a sudden. Of course, if they do, I don;t think I will resist. 🙂
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“I’ll admit I’m not totally objective about the cigarette issue, but I’ve seen people die of lung cancer up close. I would disagree that “significant cost to society” is a subjective opinion. I think it’s a fact that under our health care system, society at large pays for the care of cigarette victims through health insurance premiums and taxes. I think it’s the tobacco corporations that are trampling on people’s rights and taking away people’s right to freedom over their own bodies by: 1. Seducing young customers with sophisticated psychological advertising, and 2. Manipulating the nicotine content of cigarettes to make people addicted. Making someone addicted to something is taking away their freedom.”
– With all due respect, it’s obvious that you don’t understand the nature of smoking. It’s an addiction that fulfills a very important set of needs for the addicts. You will not be helping them by simply removing the substance. They will go to something heavier instead, that’s all. Please understand that trying to force happiness upon people is ALWAYS a mistake. And it’s always extremely disrespectful of them.
I also saw a man who was told he had terminal lung cancer and who immediately reached for his pack of cigarettes. He died at 54, within weeks of the diagnosis. Yet, I wouldn’t judge him. He had a harsh life and smoking was his coping mechanism. I am strongly convinced that, without cigarettes, he’d not have gone even as long as that.
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