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Why Are Smart People Choosing the Left?

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Clarissa

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Yes. Most smart people tend towards what the Left today is. It’s an important observation but the long article at the link never explains why.

The reason is that neoliberalism (or new Leftism) is exhilarating. It’s very enjoyable to smart people because it promises incredible rewards. And often it delivers.

Neoliberalism picks off the weakest first. It devastated blue-collar workers before anybody else. Now it’s doing the same for the lower-level white-collar workers. It will come for many (but not all) brainiacs, too.

Any conversation with children about drugs must start with the recognition that drugs are extremely enjoyable. It’s the same with neoliberalism. It speaks to the deepest, most pleasurable desire in human beings, which is to be godlike, to control everything, to be able to do everything, to decide and occasion everything. It appeals to hubris, which is the greatest temptation any of us can face.

The smarter people have more inner resources to resist the chaos that giving oneself over to these pleasures brings. As a result, it’s harder for them to see the downside. They will see it eventually but by that time it might be too late for them to do anything about it.

12 responses to “Why Are Smart People Choosing the Left?”

  1. mosckerr Avatar
    mosckerr

    Because the Left calls day – night and Night -Day.

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  2. methylethyl Avatar
    methylethyl

    Good news then! Because leftism is becoming increasingly monotonous, predictable, and boring.

    j/k. Sort of.

    There is a small trend going back the other way. I’ve been pondering it lately. You can see it among the catechumens. In our church it’s been about an even split between families with young children, and young, intelligent, single men. But our bishop says looking at the bigger picture in our diocese, and the flood of new converts, they are overwhelmingly bookish young men.

    I mean, your average cradle orthodox… he’s what? A restauranteur? A schoolteacher? Politician? Not dumb, but not overwhelmingly intellectual either. The new kids, though– they wanna have a conversation about this thing they just read in Gregory Nazianzen or St. Basil. Which is great. They’re kind of adorable. 

    But like… are we self-sorting by IQ now? And if so should we be maybe trying to broaden our outreach a bit? or is this a succession thing, like grass, then shrubs, then trees, and we just wait for all the ecological niches to fill in naturally? I think about it because the protestant churches I grew up with self-sorted very rigidly by social class and income, and I still think that’s ugly and reprehensible. You can’t be the universal church if you’re actually the white-collar church, and the blue-collar church is a different denomination. It is not good if Orthodoxy in America becomes the IQ130+ club. We should maybe be careful about that.

    But we are not lefties. Not the old guard, not the newbies. We are apparently exciting enough to attract some of the intelligent young folks. We’ll see if they stay. But what if we’re just at that point in the Spenglerian timeline where the well of innovation has run dry, and the smart folks revert to traditional religions?

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      It’s exactly the same where I am. We’ve had 3 nerdy-looking single young men join us since Christmas. This is in addition to 3 more who joined us last year (one brought a girlfriend in since then, and she was baptized last month).

      It’s definitely happening if we are observing it at different churches so far from each other.

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      1. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        The bishop reports that it is happening wall-to-wall across our diocese, which covers the entire southeast. Our parish is atypical in having a good crop of young families among the converts. More typical is it’s mostly young men. The sheer numbers, both at our parish and in the diocese, have been astonishing over the last 2 years.

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        1. methylethyl Avatar
          methylethyl

          …but I should note that the nice young single men (do you know any nice single bookish young ladies who might be interested?) do outnumber the rest even in our parish, if you count the families as single units. As individuals, the family of five, family of seven, family of six…. they add up really fast. As units it’s about evenish.

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  3. ShadowsCollide Avatar
    ShadowsCollide

    This is interesting, I’ve noticed something as someone who listens to a lot of alternative/indie/underground rock. Virtually all of the best indie and alternative rock and underground artists are very liberal, hardly any musicians are conservatives except for the worst mainstream bro-country and 70s rock dinosaurs.

    So if one listens to indie music, one has to take it for granted that the musicians are very liberal, which makes sense since artists tend to be left wing people. I’ve gotten used to it, I just tune out the politics. As a musical omnivore, the idea of being stuck listening to bad 70s dinosaur music and crappy country is horrifying

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  4. ed Avatar
    ed

    Because smart people like change and progress.

    Some of the stuff modern conservatives argue for sounds down right pre-historic. See abortion for example.

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    1. methylethyl Avatar
      methylethyl

      Nah, the prehistoric version is to just leave the unwanted babies in the woods for the local wildlife to dispose of.

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      1. ed Avatar
        ed

        I meant more things like forcing rape victims, including minors, to give birth.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          The number of abortions increased since Roe was repealed. It’s impossible to force anybody to give birth. These are all just slogans, on both sides. Abortion is a set of two pills. How hard is it to get them in a nation with a raging fentanyl epidemic?

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          1. ed Avatar
            ed

            And now they are trying to ban said pills.

            I’m not trying to argue that their ideas are successful, I’m just pointing out that they are archaic and unappealing to many people with inquisitive and intelligent minds.

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            1. Clarissa Avatar
              Clarissa

              I was told today that the federal government is investing money almost exclusively into the kind of research projects in the Humanities that spread DEI to other countries. My inquisitive and intelligent mind is still reeling from the news.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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