About Ideologies

Hi guys, welcome to Orygyn!

In this post I'll be getting to the heart of why Orygyn exists. This relates to any instance of an opinion being expressed on the internet. It is an excellent forum for the free exchange of ideas, and I couldn't disagree more with the "special Olympics" remark. Even if you lose, you gain something. In the community I've been a part of on YouTube, many atheists have found a place where they can interact with like-minded people when, in their private life, expressing their atheism would be the death sentence to their social life, or career, or both. Likewise, sheltered children (used loosely here) of extremely religious parents can be exposed to other belief systems, and their indoctrination can be challenged. To belittle these benefits with the "special Olympics" remark or something like it is disgusting to me.

While I play my role in these arguments myself, first and foremost, the purpose of Orygyn is to encourage those arguments to be well thought out, for that thought to be your own, and to discourage idolisation of popular internet figures. At times I've made videos stating the obvious because it became clear to me that maybe it's not as obvious as I might have thought. At other times I've had confrontations with mindless drones who support certain popular YouTubers no matter what. At all times, though, I feel like I've contributed.

What I want to say in this post is probably the most important thing I'll ever say. Don't label yourself.

In the discussions I had about tax, it was clear to me that most of the people who disagreed with me assumed that I disagreed with them on the wider issue, that I was a statist. This is not an assumption that I can confirm or deny, as my position on the issue is context-specific. My fundamental view is that societies should be formed with an awareness of the environment it is formed within. Depending on the ability of the land to produce certain resources, technological progress, weather, size, and many other things, a smart society would be formed with these factors in mind. Sometimes that might require a government, sometimes it might not, but my position is always in 2 parts: the first being what I think is the best way to run a society at this point in time, the second being my ideal society, but I couldn't advocate such a society if we couldn't pull it off today. I would advocate for any means of achieving those conditions first. If I ever use a label to describe my position, I have no allegiance to it, it is only a simple (at most times, overly so) way of summing up my position. As things currently stand, my "current society" position is closer to liberalism than anything else, but this will change in accordance with new information about human behaviour or feasible, less authoritarian societies.

I would guess that such an approach to forming your political perspective is common, and that I've simply expressed it in an explicit form, but in case I'm wrong, forming your political perspective around a label is naive IMO. Becoming too set in such a mindset leaves you closed to information which challenges that mindset. If you've ever argued on the internet, you must have some experience of this. I know I do. To those who agree with what I've said and found it to be common sense, I encourage you to do your bit to spread these thoughts to people who haven't considered them.

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