Part of the problem is that our culture operates under the assumption of an idealist monism, where everything is assumed to ultimately reduce to a singular state, such as with materialism. Yet the reality is more a tension and balance of opposites. Even matter is more a polarity of positive and negative charge, than any singular substance.

So conservatism can only really be defined by its relation with liberalism. As Robert Frost put it most succinctly; “If you’re not liberal when you are young, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative when you are old, you have no head.”

It is that dichotomy of youth and age. The anarchy of desires driving us on, versus the tyranny of judgement required to bring order to them.

That’s why those aspects of society associated with growth and expansion tend to be identified as liberal, even economic growth. While those aspects associated with sustaining the civil and cultural order, from which this growth necessarily springs, are identified as conservative.

Yet because we have this linear, goal oriented paradigm, presumaably leading us to that idealized state, each side of this dynamic see themselves on the road to nirvana, while those going the opposite direction must be misbegotten fools, if not evil.

In terms of the culture of the West, the logical fallacy of its guiding paradigm, monotheism, is that a spiritual absolute would necessarily be the essence of sentience, from which life rises. Not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which it fell. The youthful energy and desire driving it, rather than the hard decisions required to steer it. Consciousness seeking knowledge and wisdom, not any particular itineration of it. The light shining through the film, rather then the images on it.

Yet no culture could function, if it simply reveled in sentience and the desires bubbling forth, so we do have this top down father figure lawgiver as the ideal.

The problem though, of conflating the ideal with the absolute is that for most mortal humans, it means assuming one’s cultural ideals must be universal, rather than unique. Consequently validating the most fundamentalist believers in the culture and sentencing the society to rule by its most intransigent members. Christianity managed to sidestep this somewhat, with the Trinity, but that’s a much longer story.

One aspect is this belief system holds good and bad to be some cosmic conflict between the forces of righteousness and evil, when they are the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental. The 1/0 of life, that even bacteria sense.

It is from this elemental dichotomy that all the higher order emotions and social ethics evolve, through increasingly complex feedback. Such as respect, responsibility, love, trust, honor, morality, consciousness, sympathy, etc. Not to mention the negatives as well; envy, hate, jealousy, etc.

So when we view good and bad as the highest ideal, rather than the most elemental distinction, conflicts quickly become a race to the bottom, of us versus them, good versus bad, black versus white. Rather than each side holding to and expecting the other to hold up the higher evolved and nuanced standards of civilized behavior, as breaking them down is detrimental to the whole situation and any relationship involved.

Then conflicts can be viewed as an opportunity to further explore the potential nuances and evolutionary possibilities of life on this planet, rather than each side acting like petulant children fighting over the toys, in a less than zero sum game.

Expansion/consolidation. It’s a cycle that adds up, like spring and fall, youth and age.