I applaud that. It takes courage to stand up and say things‘ve gotten outta hand.

I disagree with you. Want to talk?

ah i love that you two are talking!

Classical liberalism is first and foremost about individual liberty - seems to be a natural place for 'sexual/gender non-conformists'! Modern liberalism has no connection to it - it is the flip-side of the social conservative (which is also the natural home of the classical conservative: the head of the State is ruler of all). I too get crap from both sides. I give as well as I get though.

In the end it is less about the label and more about the attitude: give me liberty, or give me death.

@tracycoyle I mean I love the state of mind but the odd thing I find is that the result of class-lib/libaterianism ends up hurting people like you and me the most and the people who espouse it usually want the "freedom" to be mean to people and not be critisised...

I'm not necessarily saying that you're like that and "give me liberty, or give me death", I stan sister. I stan. But... I dunno I don't think I have the answers either of us are looking for and neither do I think any ideology does.

hah story of my life

Hey I'd be interested in joining

I have similar concerns on microlabelling... do we make it broad and accept that when people say a certain word they might mean different things, or do we microlabel to be specific so that there is less confusion (at least inernally). I also have a linguistics streak and especially from that perspective its an interesting but confusing question

@Creamegg There may very well be useful ones, but think my issue with micro-labeling is that it begins to describe things that every human being experiences to some degree, and so we are having people who are having completely normal and healthy experiences being told they’re unique and LGBT. I’ve noticed this a lot with labels like demisexual or with certain non-binary identities, and I personally think it’s gotten to an unhealthy point of people spending so much time thinking about and breaking down their identities into smaller and smaller boxes, building themselves inward and hyper focusing on it. It’s created an environment within the LGBT community that is obsessed with labels to the point of redefining existing terms into meaninglessness, with the community as a whole feeling confused and distant from one another. The LGBT community was never meant to be “anything I think is different/weird,” and differences in individual experiences between people was something I think we took as a normal part of being human. From a personal perspective, I’ve seen homophobia, biphoba, and transphobia repackaged as queer micro-labels enough times for me to find harm in it.

I’m sorry if that doesn’t quite make sense. I just woke up so I’m having trouble figuring out how I want to explain myself.

maybe we started a new group then? of free thinkers haha! where we learn from each other

@ariellescarcella Ancient philosophers did that - learned from each other. Seems to be a much better way to go about things.

I understand the sentiment loads but I feel like pretending its new without understanding the historical context of politics is dangerous in and of itself. Politics is like a huge game of Go, you start out as a free thinker or you put your ideas out there as a free-thinking ideology, but it as you put down your thoughts, your ideology and your ideals other people react and you form your friends and your enemies. Marx was once a "free thinker" and look at his ideology now.

I think if you got this ball rolling poperly, made a free thinker movement, it might be a breath of fresh air but I don't know how I (say) vote for a free thinker? How do I know they won't just comprimise and fold on everything?

Although on a tangent I feel like I'm on the left trying to reason with both sides too

@Creamegg The real problem is free-thinkers can't create free thinking. Generally free thinkers unintentionally indoctrinate non free-thinkers. This is what creates factions in my opinion.

This is why exposure in colleges was meant to be across the spectrum. The only way to create a free thinker is to give all options and allow for discussion on differences. You have to be taught to continue to be open even when you form a belief/opinion.

As for the voting problem, I think the issue is more that we have locked on to extremes in our parties. I would say the left has done this more so than the right at the moment, but this is a more recent development. I think free thinkers may always feel left out because we see reason from both sides but it is easier to garner support from a biased base.

We also have to as a society break the unaccountability that seems to permeate the government. Moderate democrats won seats in 2018 talking about issues that mattered to their people, and then they proceeded to push impeachment sometimes against the will of their people. I myself am more moderate left and can't stand the hypocrisy of the party.

@KariPanda I love that take honestly, although I'd like to offer you some food for thought: free thinkers aren't always (or even necessarily often) moderate and are often radical in their own ways.

Consider disabled communities, which are largely non-partizan, but still relative radical for the empowerment and accessibility of disabled people.

@Creamegg I can agree with that, and you can have free thinkers that hold radical views in specific areas. I also know that while many of them may hold radical views in a specific area they are open to hearing critique or alternatives that could provide a positive outcome.