One of the most difficult things to do in life is to step out of one’s views and life and comfort zone in a dispassionate way, and rebuild your world view and ethical/philosophical underpinnings from the ground up. Most people do this in their mid-late twenties, when they transition out of their adolescent, “college sophomore” phase.

For those who do not naturally and organically make that transition when young, it takes a great deal of effort and courage to do this, because it requires that you admit to yourself either

1. that you were wrong about some important things for a very long time, and you’ll always have to deal with that, and/or

2. you became comfortable, even lazy, with a worldview that did not consider all the facts, and/or

3. at a particular age you told yourself you had it all figured out and you’ve never changed since, despite the facts.

Addressing the list above, among the left

1. part of the attraction of being a leftist is that they give each other permission to go through life thinking that simply being left of center politically means you’re never wrong about anything, ever (inability to admit error)

2. facts are NOT required for decisions, and in fact are often derided (eurocentric, phallocentric, etc., vs mature and rational), and being too lazy to use logic instead of emotion is acceptable

3. thinking about things in a post-adolescent fashion is uncool and “sell-out” at best and fascist at worst.

Steeped as they are in worshiping the gray area and the belonging to cult of “no objective truth”, they additionally have a fourth obstacle, which is a blunted ability to resolve cognitive dissonance. Better to maintain a notion that is contradicted by the facts but allows one to feeeeeeeeeeeel good and present an image of being “compassionate” than make a difficult but necessary choice.

For anyone to make hard decisions about the way they approach life or a particular philosophy is work and can be tough. For someone to grow beyond being a leftist when they had been steeped in leftism for so long is remarkable, particulary as a post adolescent.

RIP, Mr. Silver