In today’s world many have started calling themselves liberal without actually knowing or even relating to the literal meanings of the word. A quick google shows that the word liberal means “willing to respect or accept behaviour or opinions different from one's own; open to new ideas.” However, those labelling themselves liberal are far from willing, not even close to respecting nor accepting any opinion different from their own.
The fine youth labelling themselves liberal seem to think that it means away from mainstream or more westernized/ modernized or anti religion. This leads them to reject, mock and criticize anything that is remotely different to their ways of thinking even something as small as a difference in opinion.
They outwardly ridicule those they term far extreme without realizing the similarities they share with these group, where the extreme can’t accept anything different from their own opinion or behavior and the confused liberal does exactly the same- an extraordinary similarity that goes unspoken about! Instead of being the opposite of the extreme they become the extreme and seem to fall on the other end of the same spectrum. Instead of being modern and well aware they seem to showcase a backward trend and habit of being extreme.
I have been reading different articles, research papers as well as chapters on liberal society and what defines a liberal and why they behave the way they do. Some of these resources showed that the word liberal was politically inclined others had a social touch and a handful mixed the two and took it to the political level. I wish to just summarize what I read and understood.
The social liberal is traditionally supposed to be broad minded and accepting. Theoretically, he or she is not supposed to disregard faith/ religion nor culture and customs but accept them irrespective of them not being in line with his or her thinking. However practically, this is hard to achieve as another psychological level is at play where people think they have “advanced” from such a thinking or they feel that a certain culture is too backward for them. What they forget is the meaning of liberal which is accepting. Accepting doesn’t mean that you have to follow it but it means you are above mocking or rejecting it!
Some studies as I have posted one such article (
Social psychologists are almost all liberals—and it’s really hurting the field) summarizes a study showing that a set of mindset has caused a certain field to heavily represent biased results. This has led to many believing that the liberal label is the “in” thing.
The political liberals are another confused set who are not sure if they want to support the party as per its name for being a liberal party, hate the conservatives hence think the opposite is liberal or actually agree with all the policies of the liberal one, which is rarely true as per many research studies (Conover and Feldman, 1981; Schiffer, 2000).
Another research (Neve, 2015) uses five traits, “(1) openness to experience; (2) conscientiousness; (3) extraversion; (4) agreeableness and (5) neuroticism to study the effect childhood environment has on political label. [Openness refers to open mindedness and a set of other personalities that is defined with curiosity, imagination and high risk behaviors. The second trait denotes responsibility, order and organization, dutifulness and self-control leading to a need to achieve. Extraversion is connected to socialable, lively and proactive while agreeableness is related to empathy and willingness to compromise or cooperative. Finally, neurotism is linked to emotionally unstable and negative emotions”]. The study was done in America with American children where childhood trauma included physical and sexual abuse, number of friends as well as being in a safe neighbourhood.
The article points out that not only social issues but also the environment has a large influence in grooming an ideology and even points out something like childhood experiences can lead one to changing or choosing a certain political orientation (Neve, 2015). The study further states that childhood trauma as well as psychological threats such as insecurity (threat and uncertainty) does mould political choices.
If this is the case, then the trauma of those in countries where children see and experience far worse should also be highlighted when hurling accusations against a certain race or people.
Finally, I conclude, sure everyone has their own opinion, beliefs and understanding. Until and unless you find something wrong with them and are capable of explaining the wrong, no one should have the right to bash another’s opinion by wearing the liberal label since that label doesn’t give you any such powers.
References:
Conover, P. J. and Feldman, S. (1981). The Origins and Meaning of Liberal/Conservative Self-Identifications
. American Journal of Political Science, 25 (4), pp. 617-645.
Duarte, J. L., Crawford, J. T., Stern, C., Haidt, J., Jussim, L., Tetlock, P. E. (2015). Political diversity will improve social psychological science
. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 38, e310.
Neve, J. D. (2015). Personality,ChildhoodExperience,andPoliticalIdeology. Political psychology 26 (1), 55-73.
Schiffer, A. J. (2000). I’M NOT THAT LIBERAL: Explaining Conservative Democratic Identification.
Political behavior, 22 (4), 293-310.
@Slav Defence Forgive my lack of flow...I am really sleepy right now I may have made changes thinking it is "right" but actually re arranged the article to flow less than it was initially
@Secur @Armstrong kindly do give it a read
@Djinn @Umair Nawaz yaar wholese is in this field
