The Top 7 Advantages of the Left
Throughout recorded history, societies across the world have experienced a long-term trend towards becoming more liberal or left-wing.
That is to say that societies have become both increasingly "nicer" and "empowering" towards individuals and groups who find themselves in disadvantaged situations.
For example, over time there has been.
Less slavery, less torture, less execution, less war, more help for the poor, more help for the sick and disabled. More rights for women, more rights for minority groups, More legal emancipation, more nice words, more tolerant attitudes, more charity, more equality.
These shifts in laws, norms and attitudes can be observed going back thousands of years and across multiple societies. Currently, such shifts are rapidly accelerating in most Western nations. This liberal trend is a very striking empirical fact – indeed, it is among the most important trends in human history.
All of these shifts in values, laws, norms and attitudes have the same thing in common, they can appear or actually have the intention of being nice and or empowering towards individuals and groups in disadvantaged situations. And this is the core essence of liberalism or leftism, it is the common factor in nearly all views considered as left-wing or liberal and the opposite is true for what is usually considered rightwing.
The term nice may seem slightly vague but it is useful and appropriate, I essentially mean to seem positive and sympathetic towards a person or group without necessarily doing much of actual substance to help. Empowerment on the other hand involves more concrete measures to provide individuals or groups with genuine power and ability.
Where some disadvantage can be perceived to be suffered by an identifiable group or type then it seems that something deeply rooted in humanity will, given enough time, come with an offer of help, change or an inspiriting belief.
How are we to explain this trend towards liberalism? This so-called liberal trajectory?
For most of Human history, groups of people have been in a state of constant competition with other groups of people. Competing groups were ceaselessly expanding, declining or being wiped out. The better groups organised themselves the more successful they were at competing against other groups.
Similar to the way genes evolve within an individual such competition between groups naturally selected the morals and values of such groups on the basis of how well they maximized the effectiveness of group survival.
For most of our history, such intergroup competition has culturally evolved values to best serve the interests of the group given their particular circumstance.
The effect of this intergroup competition on the cultural evolution of political and moral values likely began to recede with the formation of some of the world's first large states and empires. Such political entities suppressed violence and conflict within their domains, reducing the scale of intergroup conflict.
With the formation of large political entities, group-level competition on the basis of values continued but in a much narrower way, existing largely through the competition between the various large political powers.
In specific regard to liberal values, it’s clear to see how some ideas of a more liberal nature helped many political entities succeed and expand.
Take the spread of Islam during the 7th century, the doctrine combined many liberal egalitarian Christian values such as the moral equality of man with a warrior ethos, such a combination of ideas very nearly led to the conquest of most of the known world at the time.
The strictly hierarchical religious order of Hinduism, which enforced a large subserviate and morally inferior underclass was dramatically extinguished across a huge swath of humanity in South and East Asia when it came into competition with the far more egalitarian and liberal religions of Buddhism and Islam.
Christianity during its spread through the Roman Empire was in effect a revolutionary liberal social movement. Its initial spread was not brought about by conflict, it spread within the largely peaceful Roman empire, and individual people chose the religion over many other competing religions. The effect of adopting Christianity in the Roman Empire is generally thought to have been a net negative in regard to the empire's ability to survive and fight off its enemies.
Later in history, we could perhaps say that British liberal values of individual rights and common law justice were important factors behind the industrial revolution, the British Empire and therefore the spread of such values around the world.
In the modern world, violent intergroup competition is a rare occurrence, the economic success of nations negatively predicts birth rates and national borders rarely change.
Intergroup competition as we knew it is clearly no longer an influential mechanism determining the political and moral views of Western societies or most others.
How much this is the case and how far back this goes is difficult to say. Clearly, some group-level competition on values continued until the end of the Soviet era. And maybe you could even say that a form of group selection on values and morality continues to this day in terms of nations and people imitating the ideas of others who seem more successful economically or militarily. However, this is clearly of little or no significance for developed Western nations existing today.
The political and moral views of people across the Western world are changing dramatically further towards the left, towards becoming more liberal and this is not happening because of intergroup competition. These changes are occurring due to various factors altering the incentives that individuals are subjected to in regard to how they choose their political and moral values.
The past intergroup competition our ancestors experienced has undoubtedly left cultural and genetic legacies. Since culture and genes co-evolve such intergroup competition has undoubtedly left a significant genetic legacy. It’s likely that many of the genetic changes brought about by intergroup competition are still with us.
One way we can clearly see the persistence of genes linked to intergroup competition is through people's strong desire to demonstrate their commitment and sacrifice to a particular set of beliefs associated with a group or community. Interestingly, this innate tribalistic-like trait seems to be highly adaptable, allowing individuals to choose and devote themselves to groups regardless of how much these groups share their own cultural or genetic background, or even any commonality at all.
Selfish gene theory would predict that individuals will always seek to maximise their genetic self-interest regardless of any natural group interests. Hence the common occurrence of individuals seeking to promote the interests of alien groups or even groups antagonistic to the welfare of their own group, such behaviour can fit in perfectly well with basic evolutionary theory.
The moral and political views held by individuals have always been critically important to their evolutionary success. Every part of us has evolved to serve and maximise our genetic interests and the cognitive mechanisms that determine how we choose our political and moral beliefs are no different.
As Aristotle said "Man is a political animal" That is to say that our political and moral beliefs are incredibly important to our survival and our success among others. If an individual were to hold political or moral beliefs that worked against their genetic self-interest then they could not be said to be well-evolved, in fact, it would be impossible to explain the repeated existence of individuals who hold political and moral views that worked against their genetic self-interest.
While a variety of external factors influence societal changes in political and moral views, it is important to recognize that the underlying mechanisms of the human mind always remain focused on serving genetic self-interest. By acknowledging this fundamental principle, we can come to understand the forces that shape our world.
As circumstances and dynamics shift over time, so too do the potential benefits that individuals stand to gain from advocating, accepting, or permitting certain political and moral positions. By analyzing the individual incentives associated with these shifts, we can come to understand the underlying factors that are behind the trend towards liberalism
I propose that there are seven key factors responsible for the continuous leftward trend or the so-called liberal trajectory. A combination of these seven factors has driven the recent acceleration of liberalism.
Before I go on to explain these 7 key factors, I first need to explain and emphasise 2 key assumptions that form the rationale behind my arguments. You should have these two key assumptions at the forefront of your mind when considering the ideas that come afterwards.
Important point No 1- Human beings are genetically selfish, we serve ourselves not any group we a part of. We may truly believe in the importance of certain ideas, our nations, our religions or ethnic groups etc, however, from an evolutionary perspective groups, countries, ideas and ideologies are simply means for individuals to serve their own genetic self-interest. Group selection has been an important part of our evolution but we are not group selected in the sense that ancestors always acted to further their individual genetic self-interest regardless of how it might have conflicted with any group interests.
Important point No 2- Most of our moral and political beliefs are made subconsciously.
Our political and moral beliefs are largely shaped subconsciously by our self-serving genes reacting to environmental factors. Some people may think that we have free will and simply consciously decide what we believe, however, a large body of scientific work shows this to be untrue. One potential method of identifying this process is by examining our internal dialogues when interacting with others. In many cases, we may find ourselves adapting our beliefs to align with theirs or offering moral or political perspectives that we believe will make the person feel better. These subtle behaviours are driven by an innate desire to serve our self-interest, even if we are not consciously aware of it.
Top 7 Reasons The Left Always Wins
In order in which they convey the best understanding
1. A stick to beat the blond beasts
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzschee described Europe of Old being dominated by an ancient race of powerful and free-spirited individuals he called the “blond beasts”. The concept of these blond beasts was based on a widely held historical belief at the time that a pure-blood race of Ayran blonds had once conquered Europe. He believed that the later Celts and other groups were still blond and a continuation of such people.
Weaker people, who he referred to as the "herd," were afraid of these blond beasts. The herd sought safety in numbers and conformity and created a moral system designed to keep the powerful individuals in check.
Although partly a racialised history of Europe, as Nietche clearly believed that there was a master race in Europe and that it was blond, Neitche uses the concept of the blond beasts as a metaphor applicable to mankind generally.
Nietzsche says that the herd's moral system, which emphasizes concepts like equality and altruism, is a form of "slave morality" that is designed to limit the power of the strong and elevate the weak. He believed that the herd resents the powerful and seeks to bring them down through guilt, shame, and other forms of social pressure.
According to Nietzsche, the weak resent the strong because they are unable to attain the same level of power and freedom, and so they try to limit the powerful individuals through social and moral constraints.
However, Nietche like many other famous philosophers never considered their phycological assumptions from an evolutionary perspective. From an evolutionary perspective, believing in or advocating a type of morality is simply a means for an individual to serve their genetic self-interest. It’s clearly not just resentment that drives slave morality. A moral stick can be used to attack or defend against others in a variety of circumstances in order to serve self-interests.
Morality often behaves like a weapon, and when we fight, we seek the most effective weapon to use against our opponents. Weapons that work against the weak or powerless are not in high demand, as by definition such people have little power or possessions that others want or worry about.
From this perspective, it seems more clear why morality has been historically weaponised against the strong and powerful. Such people would be more likely to stand in the way of other people trying to get what they want including other powerful people.
Consider contemporary liberalism or so-called wokism, it’s a moral and political framework that mostly serves as a means to allow people to morally attack or morally defend themselves against whites or white males who generally hold dominant positions in society.
Wokism is clearly an effective moral weapon for minority people to use against white people but interestingly it’s very often used against white people by other white people. In fact, the intellectual movement has been created by white people and has been mostly promoted by white people in order to attack other white people. It certainly would have never existed if it wasn’t simply permitted or unopposed by a large number of white people.
Why would such a weapon be created and highly popularised within countries that had a majority European population? The answer comes from basic biology. From the age of single-cell organisms, the same logic persists, if a self-interested organism has some ability to attack others in order to promote their own genetic interests and as day follows night such an ability will be used.
2. Mass migration and ethnic minority integration
Throughout history, sudden shifts towards the left have involved the mobilisation of a large disadvantaged underclass of sorts.
Over the past few decades, nearly all Western nations have witnessed massive immigration of ethnic minorities from third-world countries.
Although clearly a dramatic change, the effect this has had on individual incentives towards holding particular types of moral and political views isn’t widely considered.
Ethnic minority migrants to the West have all of the rights and privileges of the native European people, and nearly all of them have experienced a dramatic improvement in their quality of life since migrating.
However, they do suffer from a rather serious form of inequality, they suffer poor ethnic identity status. The migrating ethnic minorities have come from countries in which their own people and ancestors have failed to create a society that can provide them with a relatively decent standard of living, from societies that have failed to make any contributions to Western civilisation and from societies that are continuing to fail.
Such failure is associated with these people as individuals, whether spoken of or not the association is made minds of most. Such a thing can put a tremendous amount of hate in the heart. Historically, racism has been a more potent motivator for the side that feels inferior.
This origin of anger and resentment from ethnic minorities, not any legal or institutional injustice has been a source of political capital for left-wing parties across the Western world.
Such resentment has been used to further perpetuate other seemly unrelated left-wing moral and political ideas.
This has partly happened through tribal association, for example, left-wing parties say and offer nice things to get minority votes and this therefore helps pass other left-wing legislation.
Another probably far more important way in which the resentment of ethnic minorities has caused a dramatic change in the political and moral landscape of the West is simply through its effects on the minds of everyday individuals evaluating their individual incentives for holding particular moral and political views.
Nearly all European people will be aware that will likely meet many ethnic minorities over the course of their life and that their success and often their safety will depend upon getting along with them. It will obviously be in their self-interest to make such people feel good about themselves and not to imply that they consider themselves and their people to be inherently superior.
In multi-ethnic environments the poor ethnic identity status of minority people with be an ever-present elephant in the room. Subconsciously the minds of those seeking to get along and form alliances with minorities will naturally gravitate towards forming beliefs that negate or excuse the failure of minority people and the achievements of Europeans.
Such incentives undermine many ideological notions that support and promote the interests of their own ethnicity in the European person’s mind.
Nationalism is bad, our country was only successful because we had slaves, racism is the cause of ethnic minority problems, and empire and white people have somehow caused all of their failures. All these types of ideas become appealing and useful for individuals seeking to further their own interests in multi-ethnic environments.
The recent acceleration in liberalism often referred to as wokism has been largely driven by this effect combined with the recent mass migrations of third-world populations to Western nations and their accumulation.
If you look at the numbers, an incredibly tiny number of people are participating in protests or activism regarding issues such as transgenderism or feminism however, the recent BLM protest was the largest protest movement in American history and was mostly attended by European people. The protests were held across the world and were largest in countries that had experienced the most amount of third world immigration and almost no existent in countries that hadn’t such as Japan and Eastern Europe.
This shows how European individuals intuitively recognise the importance and incentives behind having political and moral beliefs that make ethnic minority people feel equal and positive towards them as individuals over their group.
The use of such strong beliefs allows left-wing movements, institutions and parties to defeat their opponents and therefore push through other more left-wing moral and political positions such as acceptance of child transgenderism and the like.
3. Return to Innocence
As farming and agriculture began to take over from hunter-gathering some 10,000 years ago, arcological evidence shows that societies developed more hierarchical social orders. The evidence reveals that within early farming communities, significant economic inequalities existed between households, even within small groups. Later recorded history shows that slavery or related forms of economic systems such as serfdom were widely practised by all known farming societies.
Egalitarian or more sharing-type farming communities without strict hierarchies or significant economic inequality didn’t exist. Had such groups existed and been successful then they would have likely outcompeted other groups and had their way of life and values spread widely.
A strict social hierarchy, economic inequality and supporting values allowed farming groups to function better economically and therefore made them better able to outcompete other groups.
This is comparable to how modern businesses require hierarchies with managers, CEOs and formal type relations in order to be successful.
In this way, economic realities pushed farming groups away from a more natural state of social and moral order.
But what natural state is that? Do humans have a natural state? Do we have universal biological values?
As a species, most humans have spent roughly 90% of their existence living in hunter-gather groups. An estimated 10 million people still live in such a fashion today. A large body of anthropological research shows that such different groups have remarkably similar moral and political views. The values of such Hunter gather groups living today can be generally categorised as being highly egalitarian and accepting of violence as a means of resolving disputes.
Such groups rarely have a hierarchal social order instead power and influence are usually somewhat evenly distributed among its members including women. Sharing food is close to mandatory and economic wealth is generally evenly distributed.
Given that we lived as hunter-gatherers for 90% of our evolutionary past, it’s likely that most if not all of us still have many inherited biological values that are adapted to a hunter-gather way of life. A highly egalitarian way of life. It’s possible that evolution acted against such genes given the environmental changes over the last 10,000 years but it’s more likely that many such genes persisted.
Therefore it’s likely that a person's moral and political beliefs will somewhat naturally revert back to morals and political outlooks adapted to a hunter gathers way of life once other factors are taken out of the equation.
Given that many of these values, derived from a distant past, are still shared by others living today, that provides us with an individual incentive to abide by them or apply them.
With wealth comes freedom. As aforementioned the economics of farming created a functional constraint on such egalitarian values. We now live in an age of plenty, nobody starves and we have a lot more individual anatomy as to how we live our lives, increased wealth has reduced many of the functional constraints suppressing the expression of universal biological values that are more inclined towards egalitarianism.
It seems no great coincidence that the emergence of some of the world's earliest philanthropists, liberal secular philosophies, and liberal campaign movements coincided with the single greatest period of wealth generation brought about by the British industrial revolution. Liberal campaign movements started in Victorian Britain are ancestral to many of those of today philosophically, inspirationally and literally as continuing organizations.
4. Anchoring of Laws and Norms
Imagine a tug of war, a long rope, a point in the middle and two sets of people on either side trying to pull the rope further towards their side. Now let's imagine that one side represents everything considered left-wing or liberal and the other side represents everything considered right-wing.
Both sides start pulling on the rope, once the rope moves 1 inch past the point in the middle then the tug of war is stopped, when the next tug of war round starts the inch of rope won in the previous round remains with the side that won and the other side has a piece of rope an inch shorter.
Imagine both sides were completely evenly matched, the outcome would be completely random and unpredictable. Now imagine that the left side develops some advantage that increases their chances of winning by say 1% each round, each individual round would still be rather random and unpredictable as the odds would be 49 to 51% but over time given enough rounds and a long enough rope it becomes a 99.99% certainty that the entire rope will end up on the left side.
Starting each round from where the previous round ended is the anchoring effect and this same effect occurs across various societal mechanisms that determine moral and political positions today.
Moral and political norms/positions get anchored by society in a variety of ways. Revolutions in the way society thinks or institutes rarely happen, most change in moral and political positions are built upon something that previously existed and is often built upon a chain of ideas that can go back many generations.
For example, in basic arguments, people refer to past thinkers and prior consensus, in courtrooms, lawyers constantly refer to decisions made previously, in parliaments the most common type of argument made by its members is of the order “This goes against what we previously decided was right”.
This anchoring effect has the potential to compound and magnify subtle biases in favour of left or liberal moral and political positions. Just like with the tug of war, if the left has even the slightest advantage that is consistent over time then simply by the passage of time or the number of rounds, there will be an endless shift to the left.
In political elections, for example, candidates will often argue about being more or less nice to some disadvantaged groups such as migrants or other minority groups by providing more resources or rights or the like.
Now say the nicer candidate won and did all the nice things he said he would. In the following elections, the only way of being the nice candidate would be to advocate for even more resources and rights than before. Now this could go in either direction but if there is a subtle bias that constantly applies in favour of the nice candidate then just like in the tug of war, the more rounds or elections had the higher the certainty that things will move further and further to towards a nicer or more left-wing society.
Consider common law court rulings as an additional illustration. For instance, in the context of expanding human rights, an anchor effect becomes apparent. This effect arises because laws are more prone to be established rather than challenged, and they are often built upon preexisting laws or introduced as incremental amendments. Consequently, this process resembles the tug of war previously described, where each successive court ruling further increases the certainty of laws moving towards a more liberal stance.
In summary, even a tiny advantage in favour of liberal ideas, combined with the anchoring effect of political and moral positions, can lead to a near-certain outcome of left-wing positions winning out over time.
To some extent, many liberals are aware of this in the way they often advocate against referendums and against judicial reform, as both of these allow a potential disanchoring by sweeping away accumulated left-wing gains.
5. Right-wing people are less nice people
People are by nature pattern recognisers. The most effective way to make predictions about the future including a person's behaviour is to assume that what happened before will happen again given the same or similar circumstances.
People can very quickly come to instinctive judgements about how useful a person will be to them based on minimal amounts of information.
A right-wing political or moral belief is quite simply one that is somehow opposed to a left-wing belief. Therefore, by definition and by necessity a right-wing perspective must be critical or in some way stand against assistance and liberties being granted to disadvantaged groups or individuals.
Express such right-wing views only shows negative associations to others with respect to how you might behave towards them as an individual unless other information is known.
This is because humans tend to seek and invest in social relationships as a form of insurance for future challenges and difficulties. Everyone has their limits in regards to how much they will help someone in need or how much they will tolerate types of negative behaviour, the expression of right wing views essentially signals to others that they would be less helpful and tolerant.
To some extent, this is probably true about right wing people but the much stronger effect on the moral and political landscape most likely comes from people recognising the problems resulting from the associations and adjusting their political beliefs towards the left in order to avoid such negative associations being towards themselves as individuals.
This phenomenon may have existed for some time, but it has become even more prominent in modern society where many of the individuals we interact with on a regular basis are not close friends or family members who have a deep understanding of our character. As a result, these individuals may make judgments about us based on limited information. In this context, a right-leaning individual who is perceived as less kind or principled may be viewed negatively even if these traits are only a minor aspect of their overall character.
6. Female emancipation and empowerment
There has been a relatively recent process of female empowerment, including greater access to legal rights, voting, increased workforce participation and promotion opportunities. This trend has been driven by liberalism and has accelerated liberalism through the growing influence of women in society. Women tend to hold more liberal views, female empowerment has therefore resulted in the adoption of more liberal policies and institutional practices.
Women and especially single women are incredibly concerned with how attractive they are to eligible males. They spend a lot of time and effort putting on make-up, buying clothes wearing high heels etc. Another way they can signal how evolutionary attractive they are is through their moral and political beliefs.
Speaking out in favour of liberal beliefs is clearly an effective means for a woman to signal her evolutionary attractiveness. Successfully rearing a child requires constant empathy and care from the mother, to further the chances of successfully mating empathy and care need to be maintained regardless of the mother's situation and the behaviour of the child.
By speaking out in favour of moral or political views that are more empathetic, nice or forgiving to disadvantaged groups of individuals they can signal a pattern in their behaviour of being empathetic and caring and therefore signal a sexually desirable trait applicable to child-rearing.
However, a liberal position is always relative, in order to be liberal and achieve their evolutionary aim, a woman needs to have a view that is more empathetic and caring than the status quo or opposing view. Therefore there exists an endless spiralling demand from females for ideas and views that are even more left-wing than the last to further their selfish sexual interests.
7. Institutional capture
Nearly all major institutions in the Western world are more left-wing than the general population as a whole.
The root of this phenomenon can be explained by the difference in incentives faced by individuals working within the institutions and those who don’t.
As we’ve just discussed, in society people are generally incentivised to adopt left-wing views, but the level of incentive will vary depending upon their circumstances.
For people in certain types of employment, their ideological beliefs can strongly influence their career prospects. People who work in education, the media, the judiciary, the civil service, Parliament, large corporations have a stronger incentive than others to adopt left wing beliefs.
The liberal influence on individuals working in institutions is intensified due to their greater dependence on the views of others for career and economic success. In many occupations, success can be largely independent of how well they get along with others, this gives them more independence in terms of their choice over their political and moral beliefs. The opposite is true for people who work in institutions, within nearly all institutions having left-wing views will gain you friends, and advancement whilst right-wing views would generally have the opposite effect. Since it’s much easier for people to simply adopt liberal beliefs rather than having to always pretend to have them, such a circumstance generates genuine left-wing believers in the most powerful and influential positions.
The strength of this intensified liberal influence on institutional members has led to a situation in most Western nations in which the views of the ruling elites and institutions are at odds with a large section of the population.
The degree to which this has happened is rather significant and is responsible for numerous scenarios in which the democratic wishes of the majority of the population are entirely ignored.
Conclusion
Although not discussed it is known to many that liberalism has become a destructive and sinister force.
A combination of the 7 factors discussed has fostered a circumstance in which the majority of Western individuals are subjected to an array of potent incentives, incentives that have often detached their political and moral beliefs from reality and largely turned them against the interests of their people and civilisation.
The ceaseless progress of liberalism has led to an ideological landscape that works against both the founding European population group and the common good generally.
A tremendous number of individuals of varying power and persuasion are gaining further power and reward in return for their contribution to the destruction of the most important things that make our civilisation good and successful.
Fundamentally this ceaseless trend towards liberalism is due to the fact that we have evolved to ultimately serve our own genetic self-interests and not the interests of our group or our civilisation.