It’s Hard to Be Me

I am going through a very turbulent period philosophically. Am I a “conservative?” I have certainly professed to be, publicly, for quite some time.

In fact, I have lashed out at others in the past for distancing themselves from the term. Now here I am. How hypocritical of me.

Having been exposed more closely to elements in our society that have demonstratively shown flaws in my personal reality of perceptions, made me feel humility in the face of these realizations, I am left feeling alienated from organized politics in general.

Have my politics changed? No, not really. They have solidified. They have become more encompassing and less grounded in the status quo.

The frustration I feel right now is not so much a disenchantment with society and mainstream politics, but an internal struggle; an inability for me to reconcile certain aspects of my ideologies with what are, quite possibly, nothing more than gut feelings and instincts.

Some or all of these feelings and instincts are socially conditioned. Others may be a result of some higher-level reasoning. Or maybe not …

A major internal conflict is the struggle between trying to hold a personal set of philosophies and morals in absolute while having the “gut feeling” and “instinct” that holding philosophies and morals in absolute is wrong. It leads to dangerous, horrible things.

So my mind tries to reconcile this problem, and in so doing, manages to reject virtually every political philosophy short of anarchism. Although, I reject anarchism on more gut feelings and instincts, and end up where I started, through some crazed internal compromise: libertarianism.

Am I going crazy? Probably. I hope I’m back to normal by the fall.