[Serious] When you left theism, did you go Left?

[Belacqua]

There's a wall there which makes connection and ideas incapable of jumping through.

I've always been an atheist and always about as far left as it's possible to be. So no change there. 

What has changed for me is pretty typical I think -- when you're 18 you think you know everything and then when you grow up you realize you don't. The main thing is not to close down. What you say here about a wall is what's scary.

It just shouldn't be team sports. It's too simple to say that the left is always correct or religious people have nothing to add that's helpful. 

One trouble is that "liberal" and "conservative" have lost their real meanings. Conservatives on TV are radicals. Liberals on TV are corporate shills. Actual left-wing people have zero presence in corporate media. 

But in recent times there have been genuine conservative critics who are seriously intelligent and deserve a hearing. Like Philip Rieff or Augusto del Noce. They are wildly unlike Ben Shapiro and that type of media idiot. There have also been Christian thinkers in recent times who enrich our thinking in challenging ways, like Simone Weil or Michel Henry. You will never ever see people like this in the mainstream media, but we do ourselves an injustice by ruling them out because they're on the opposing "team," or supposing that they somehow resemble goons like Jordan Peterson.

I guess I have become conservative in certain fields. I think traditional art and architecture are far more worthwhile than anything at the Tate Modern or the Whitney. I see no reason why this is incompatible with left-wing political values, and could probably put together an argument as to why the art of the traditional "greats," like Titian or Hokusai, is in fact more compatible with leftist goals than the academic stuff that's famous today.