The older we get, the more conservative we become?

[EddyF]

Just wondering if people believe this. I’m in my thirties and although I have always had real socialist views and I have always voted Labour, I am struggling with some of my current viewpoints which lean more to the conservative way. I think I have lost a bit of societal empathy and seeing things as a ‘dog eat dog world; everyone out for themselves’.

There are so many issues I see locally (London) that I just think not everyone can be saved. The services are stretched; high streets are depressing and people have too many needs and often those needs are not isolated and are multiple. I feel less empathetic and more “can’t you just help yourself”. There doesn’t appear to be a safety net or one that is efficient enough, which to my surprise, has harden me a bit. Maybe it is age😆

Right wingers love spending other people's money. Look at the billions of taxpayers' money they siphoned off to their rich mates for dodgy Covid contracts during the pandemic. Look at the billions lost to the economy due to Brexit.

The idea that right wing governments are fiscally responsible is ridiculous.

My mum always said this to me, and while I think it used to be true, for the middle classes at least, it no longer is as strong.

Husband and I are the classic sort of people who ought to have got more right wing as we got older - decent earning, home owning. We're supposed to have gone 'Well, we've done all right for ourselves under this system so we need to keep this going so that our children will get the same and continue to do at least as well or better than us'

But the fact is, more of us are recognising a) we've done OK despite the system, because we have been lucky and were born into families with property that enabled us to buy ourselves b) our capital is getting eaten up faster and faster and it's hard to see how our children will ever own property and they are far more likely to end up poorer than us than richer than us, with declining lifestyle quality overall c) the middle class are getting less and less empowered and politically sidelined as we move towards oligarchy d) the earth is burning, no one's doing anything about it and our kids are headed for a very uncertain future.

The 'getting more rightwing' thing relies on seeing a stable or better future for your kids/the world under the existing system. And after decades of relative peace and prosperity, everything's frankly heading down the shitter and we don't have that security anymore.

We were brought up quite binary “student politics” left is good / right us bad view. Took me to my 40s to learn this is not the case. Lefts treatment of women over the last decade has been depressingly eye opening. That and starting my own business have shifted my views. It’s far more nuanced and don’t ally with one particular party agree with some policies on both sides.

Totally agree Echo spot on analysis. Everything is so different now the old cliches don’t apply any more. Young men in particular are become more right wing and conservative while my 70 something parents are veering further left.

I think the value of little c conservativism gains credibility the older that you get. In your own life you know that radical change comes with radical risk and potential unknown consequences. You know that stability is the foundation for a calm and peaceful life. Tradition provides a few useful anchors and a nod to the people who went before.

I don't think it easily converts to voting intentions though.

Excuse me?

Not necessarily. I’m 57. Still a proud leftie. I hope I’ll always be. It’s part of who I am.

Not in my case- I've always been very much 'in the middle' now at 62 I'm still the same- I'm centre left in terms of being liberal minded and believe in a scandi/ German style of capitalism with strong social underpinning - - I've met too many self serving pink shirted fat fingered rotarians in business to be a Tory ( of the current type) but no I don't think everything can be solved in society by a far left agenda either - it's incredibly naive -

I don't agree. I thought I was very liberal when I was young but actually i had quite fixed ideas. As I get older I live and let live a lot more, but I notice young people around me are very woke and very much of the 'be kind' brigade but again their ideas are very rigid, you agree with them or you are the enemy. What I do find as I get older is that I am more cautious, but i guess that's a natural consequence of aging, being less physically strong etc.

I think modern conservatism appears to be focused on ‘anti-woke’ culture wars, and blocking equality to prevent meritocracy for the benefit of the super rich and powerful.

This is aided and abetted by those claiming they are ‘left behind’ but don’t want to better themselves. They want to stop anyone else progressing so they don’t feel bad about themselves and therefore punch down.

They are supportive of socialism when it involves being given benefits or heavily taxing those with £1m more than them though. So socially conservative and economically socialist for themselves.

I prefer earlier conservative values around working hard to better yourself through education and hard work. And leaving others alone who’ve done nothing to you and committed no crimes.

@Deadringer I agree totally- find a lot of young people incredibly humourless- guess it's just a whole different mental way of being- I have experienced several guys I know being'pulled up' for such trivial shit that I would hate to be a man these days-one got reported as he asked a 20 odd female employee if she could 'pull his braces up ' as he had a broken arm and it was slipping down his arm - she could I guess have just said no- but did it and then reported him - he is such a lovely guy too - affected his mental health for weeks. I'm not remotely right wing but can honestly say I know a fair few 'far ' left supporters and every one ( that I know) is humourless and closed minded and incredibly unrealistic about the fact most people aren't as interested as they are in pet causes.

@Coolasfeck very well put .

Interesting discussion.
From personal experience, and im certainly not saying this is everyone, people who I've known who are conservative in their later years puzzle me a bit with where their sympathies lie. A recent conversation illustrates this - paraphrased here for brevity - we were talking about two different people that we know.

Talking about a single mother with 2 children from unpleasant men, needing social assistance.
Them: She should have chosen better, she's let those kids down, why do we have to pay for her mistakes - why can't she get a second job.
Me: She grew up with a terrible dad and had no good relationship model, was dyslexic so struggled with grades at school, then got pregnant young - her family are not well off, so all work full time and can't help with childcare, so she struggles to work - first father was a waste of space and the second hit her so she had to escape, but he's kept the rental house as she moved in with him initially. She's made some questionable choices absolutely, but you can see how she would have made them.

Talking about a friend whose husband recently initiated a divorce:
Them: It's awful, she's being kicked out of her lovely house - she's being pressured to go back to work, after she has dedicated her life to looking after the kids and she's in her 50s now. She's not entitled to any support while people get given handouts. It's absolutely outrageous.
Me: It is awful that her relationship has broken down, i feel so bad for her. But they had their two children aged 20 and she hasn't worked a single day since - she's not being kicked out of the house, she can't afford to take over the mortgage as it's a giant 5 bedroom house and she hasn't worked in 35 years so cant get a mortgage. She's not entitled to any support because she will receive a good sum of money in the divorce that's more than enough to buy outright a 2 bed house in a nice area. While it was a joint choice for her to give up work when raising the kids, she's had about 15 years to get a job and chose not to, they didn't get married in the 1950s, it was the late 80s and people around her have worked after they were married and had kids. She has plenty of people around her who could have helped her get into jobs and her own sister runs a business that not only would have enabled her to work part time around school hours when the kids were young, but her sister is now offering her a job she can just walk into after 35 years out of the workforce.
Them: how horrendous, you've got no empathy

It's so confusing! 'People are responsible for their own choices' but also not??

I think you get generally less tolerant of everyone as you get older, and that includes both political extremes. It feels like you get more right wing, but that's because the things on the right which bothered you have stayed the same throughout (schools being underfunded, hospitals being underfunded, millionaires trying to avoid inheritance tax, Jacob Rees Mogg) whereas all the lefties stuff starts to grate too with age.

I am in my 40s and used to be fairly left, but now I'm fed up with the "all women are women" narrative that is trampling over women's rights and safety. I'm fed up with people moaning that they don't have a council house because they should have one by now because they are entitled to one and have been waiting for ages and it is unfair that their kids don't have their own bedrooms (yes it is unfair, but there is a waiting list 1.28million people long and so probably time to come up with a new plan that doesn't involve just waiting).

So I don't know if I have moved to the right or if I've just moved the goal posts of what annoys me closer to myself.

I always assumed the ‘move to the right as you get older’ meme was true – but, actually, looking at the people I know, the idealistic ones are still bleeding-heart lefties and the sceptical types are still on the no-bullshit right.

So now what I think is your politics get fixed when you’re about 18, and although the landscape may change you basically just keep them.

I think the meme came from a basic boomer misunderstanding back in the sixties, where older people were pretty trad and younger folk did want to smash everything up. With typical solipsism, the young boomers assumed that was how things were always going to be.

But afaict now, the young are absolutely hurtling rightwards, while the old haven’t noticed and still say things like ‘you move right as you get older’ – even though their own lives don’t bear that out at all.

What do they say when you challenge them on their hypocricy?

My particular favourite is the right wing sanctifying of pensioners as a class. Someone who would be at the top of their list for villification, e.g. a single parent who never worked, on benefits up until the day before they reach state pension age, is transformed into a hard-done-to saint on the day they become a pensioner.

Same. As I've got older I've gained more knowledge and life experience, and have more time to read, research and learn. Any misconceptions i may have once held about level playing fields and the key to success lying with the individual now seem extremely naive. I don't think I've ever been more passionate in my political beliefs.

I'm over 70 and always been centre left but more left than I used to be. I think our government (both Tory and Labour) have moved far more to the right than when I was young but I have stayed left.

I’m the opposite, I’ve always been left wing but have become increasingly so the older I get. I feel like when I was twenty I was idealistically left wing, now I see socialism as the only realistic approach to societal issues.

Many many years ago it used to be said that if you weren't socialist when you were under 21 you were soft in the heart, if you were socialist after 21 you were soft in the head!
Not agreeing necessarily, just retelling!
My late mother was a lifelong Labour voter, we used to say she'd vote for a goat wearing a red ribbon but after listening to her putting the world to rights I told her that she would get on well with Mrs Thatcher and I just managed to live to tell the tale.

I think people move more to the centre as they get older. I used to be pretty far-right on most things, I guess I've moved more towards the middle as I have got older. Young people tend to be idealists on the left and move to the centre as they learn about how the world really works. Moving left to centre means moving towards the right - but not necessarily actually getting there.

I think it’s unlikely that you’ve moved to the centre. It’s much more likely that the centre has moved right.

'That's different" and then if you say 'how, I'm genuinely interested' they revert to soundbites about handouts and the like. Never actually want to have a proper in depth discussion about it and hear other opinions or facts and challenge themselves or their worldview, no matter how pleasant or amicable the conversation is, they just wanted to start conversations about controversial things and you agree with them. It's sad, but it is what it is. I am absolutely open to my views being challenged, and want to listen (to make sure im not just sitting in an acho chamber) but they just don't want to and don't see why they should.

Agree with the fetishising of pensioners - lots of people worked hard and had tough lives, sure, but there's also lots of people who bloody didn't.

@Foxblue ah that would be my now deceased relative - very much of the 'we worked hard' mould- when she never worked more than 10 hours out the house a week for 40 years- and for lots of it nil!

I'm not saying they maybe didn't have more housework etc- but it's not said in that kind of way - what she actually means is my H worked hard, I did a bit of part time 'at times' and popped round my sister's a lot.

I agree totally about fetishing pensioners.

@50shadesofnay I think we have very similar views- agree with you totally -