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Notes -
I’ve always found the Peterson “ideological possession” idea useful as an explanation. Some people need a political and social framework outside of themselves to function and thus run from ideology to ideology in hopes that simply believing the ideology and living by it will provide structure they personally need to function. Other people don’t need as much structure in their lives so they tend not to follow or build one.
There’s a qualitative difference to me between someone who goes from one ideology— hook, line, and sinker— to another with no gaps in between, especially if they’re extremely different, and someone whose thinking evolved over time and can admit to nuances in their positions both before and after. If I go from fundamentalist Christian to hard core atheist SJW with pink hair and a nose ring, you’d be right to be at least suspicious of my reasoning— and at least from my observation of them, there wasn’t any hard dispassionate reasoning in between. People who reason themselves into a position are much less likely to make that position into a large portion of their personality.
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