In an age of rapid and disruptive technological and scientific advancement, can the United States, as well as humanity, afford the impulses of conservatives to block legislative and cultural change? My thoughts are this..,dealing with the accelerating, disruptive advancement and change, coupled with ongoing environmental challenges and accelerating consumption of non-renewable resources, will require flexibility and adaptability, along with a willingness to pursue and accept scientific evidence and solutions, even when contrary to long held beliefs. It will require an ability to imagine and anticipate the oncoming future.
These are not things that people with conservative mind sets naturally do well. The natural inclination of a conservative personality is to resist change. Change in these basic attitudes or core realities of people with a conservative mind set is highly unlikely. I believe that the ongoing disruptive technological change will leave conservatives bewildered and increasingly frustrated, as our society starts to really reach levels of accelerated social and cultural fragmentation accompanied and generated by disruptive advancement in many fields of science, such as biotechnology, nanotechnology and computer intelligence.
As a society, and as individuals, we have to recognize that with rapid technological and scientific change, will come needed adjustments to our socieities legislative and regulatory schemes, as well as re-alignment and restructuring of basic institutions and infrastructures. As conservatives are showing today, their strong impulses to try to stop change by obstructing new legislation can be very successful in derailing and causing great skepticism in legislative efforts, that frankly our lives and the continued success of our society will depend on. The battle to reshape our healthcare system is a good example. Even though we have the least effective system in term of coverage and healthcare outcomes (a higher percentage of americans die of preventable disease) of any industrialized nations, conservatives react with fear at any suggestion of any change, even though they may agree that the old way of doing things just isn't working and that the accelerating price of healthcare is unsustainable.
A person can only speculate as to the consequences of the coming freak out by a significant segment of our population when people start to implant computerized devices in their heads and bodies or key pieces of critical infrastructure are controlled and operated by artificial intelligences. We may see a model of that coming freak out in the recent appearance of the Tea Party movement. The core realities of many conservative movement members seem to reflect a high level of viscerally perceived threat, with many of the group responding with violent language, along with public displays of weaponry, such as we saw from some members immediately after Obama's election. If you also consider the sudden and rapid rise of militia movements in response to both Clinton and Obama, I think you see evidence of a violent potential reaction in some conservative demographics to the rapid technological, biological and social changes of our near future. With the reported fragility of many of our societies centralized infrastructure hierarchies, I wonder how long it is before the U.S. and the rest of the world starts to experience the saboteur caused infrastructure failures, such as those created by the hackers who have been causing ongoing power failures in Brazil over the past year. Or perhaps militia backed attacks like the OKC bombing aimed at installations necessary to those critical infrastructures in an attempt to stop the progress of technological change.
This speculation on adverse reactions and influences of the conservative mindset on our societies ability to effectively adapt to the rapid change of our near future is not to suggest that there aren't other demographic mind sets in our society which also carry potential negative influences on our future, than just those with conservative impulses. But it's important to recognize that the "Luddite" response to technological change is a very human response and one which has been with us for a long time. The question is, will it serve us well, or help bring down our house of cards?
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