I’ve heard leftists say “It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.” The implication here is that anyone who wishes to preserve capitalism lacks the imagination to want something more than that. But must a more conservative attitude be due to a limitation of imagination?
I see two alternative explanations. First, conservatives might be better at imagining what might go horribly wrong.
Second, it could be due to an acute awareness of imagination’s limits. We can imagine utopic or dystopic outcomes of change, but in my experience, the future often unfolds in ways nobody imagined.
This is why I prefer reform. If we make slow, incremental changes, we are better able to foresee the consequences and to respond to the inevitable surprises . The greater the scale and speed of change, the less predictable it is and the harder it is to correct if things go off the rails.
A third important reason conservatives are skeptical of revolutions, economic and otherwise, is that conservatives believe societies develop organically, by complex, distributed, localized processes — far too complex for any expert or group of experts however imaginative, insightful, knowledgable and intelligent they might be. Experts can effectively influence and shape these organic processes, but a belief that they can crate them from scratch is a sign of naive hubris. Friedrich Hayek called it “the fatal conceit.”
Does this make me a conservative? That is relative. Compared to a revolutionary (whether a left radical or right reactionary), yes, I am conservative. Compared to people who think things are perfectly fine as-is and not requiring significant reform, no, I am progressive, albeit a cautious one who respects conservatives. But I’m not so conservative that sensibly-paced, sensibly-scaled socialist solutions to social problems automatically horrify me.
How are you accounting for either conservatives or liberals looking at the future by building power structures?
I’m not sure what you’re asking. Can you say more?
Your post seems to make the assumption that either side is acting in a rational manner, but with differing objectives. What happens when the objective isn’t rational?
Nothing I ever say or do is based on a belief that humans, in general, behave rationally. Like you, I’m a designer, and am presented daily with overwhelming evidence that humans are barely rational at all!
In this post, I am only shooting at the smug conceit of some Marxists that the essential difference between those who hate and oppose capitalism and those who defend it is capacity to imagine something better. I’m pointing out that the difference can be explained just as easily and less self-flatteringly in terms of naive unwarranted trust in our imagination’s power to envision plausible futures, or in terms of capacity to imagine how utopian fantasies might in execution turn dystopian.
But of course, most radicals today, as you correctly point out, are not driven by rationality, nor imagination, but rather social passivity. If society demands of us radical and subversive beliefs, and fierce independence, precisely the most timid conformists will present themselves as revolutionaries and will recite critical thinking they accepted uncritically, out of craving for belonging and fear of social disapproval. Or are you speaking of irrational conservatism, which fears all change and who clings to the crappiest present to avoid risk of a crappier future?