…When I first registered to vote - I was a registered Republican for 8 to 10 years and i will never go back to being a conversvative under any circumstances, and I will tell you the number 1 reason. Every conservative ideology I have ever partaken in-whether it be an online space, a local discussion, or tons of conversation with my very conservative friends and family-miss the mark of humans are and how they operate.
I'll illustrate this best with a story. So, one of my dear friends works in marketing. her only job in marketing is to make sure that grocery store products end up on grocery store end caps. Sometimes it's a product that's on sale; oftentimes, it's a new product that's being featured.
Anyway, her only job is getting products featured on that end cap. Her job is actually negotiating what payment is going to take place. Brands like General Mills, Pepridge Farms, name any huge brand-Coca Cola, pay huge dollars to have their products featured on the end cap. The reason they shell out this enormous amount of money is because the end caps is where the most money is made. It turns out grocery store consumers aren't complicated people; they reach for what's easiest and what's easiest, is on the end caps. Corporations understand this and understand it really well so they fight tooth and nail; they pay for grocery store chains to feature their products, and they have entire marketing teams dedicated to getting their products featured there. Because humans aren't a product of individual choices. They know oftentimes, mostoften times humans are defaulting to something that's easiest-the end cap.
This is also really well illustrated in tons of studies that have been done on Americans who struggle with obescity or weight. Without any weight enhancement drugs whatsoever, when you take Americans that are struggling with their weight and you plop them in Japan, in cities in Spain, [place] that is walkable and the food system is better, those Americans automatically lose weight. Those Americans automatically begin to meet all kinds of healthy benchmarks-blood pressure, diabetes-all those things improve, without any drugs.
And the reason it improves isn't because Americans suddenly developed discipline. It's not because those Americans suddenly became better with their own habits. They just joined a place that had designed infrastructure, for humans, to naturally make healthier choices. The lived environment is designed for human thriving. Suddenly those Americans who moved very little at home are taking 10,000-20,000 steps a day. Somehow those Americans who ate very poor diets in America are now living in places where processed foods are harder to find and fresh foods are easier to find, so they're eating better.
But they didn't develop individually more disciplined. They're just in a place where making better decisions is easier.
And this is why I will never be a conservative again, because all of the conservatives I interact with, all of the discourse in online conservative spaces completely forsakes this absolute truth in favor of the delusion that human beings are a product of their individual choices. It completely forsakes the idea that we are all, like seedlings in a soil, and our health is most accurately determined by the health of our surroundings, by the health of that soil. And as a result, conservatives spend very little time making sure that that environment improves."
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