It was recently reported (Scientific American, Sept. 4 2012) that liberalism and conservatism are personality-driven choices.
The more anxious personality seeks the security of rules and order, prefers everyone to follow the same rules, to keep the world more predictable. Being so fear-based, I see that this is a body-driven personality, where Self is identified with the body's perspectives and imperatives When such a personality looks to the spiritual for support, it is looking at the Divine, however it defines that, as something beyond and seperate from itself, as greater and distant. It creates the Divine, moreover, in its own image: a Divinity of rules and order, rights and wrongs, goods and evils, a Divinity that is the ultimate arbiter of universal, absolute Right and Good. Then, it wraps that up in packaging of dogma and ritual, to make sure everyone is working with the same information, the same ways of managing it. Through a world-view built around Right and Wrong, Good and Evil, there runs a volatile thread of Love and Hate: passionate feelings, choices, judgements.
The personality that leans towards liberalism is less concerned with what is safe and sure, tried-and-true. It is a novelty-driven personality, loving to change things up, try whatever is new, create original things, shape old things in new ways... Prone to casting out bath and baby, soap and tub and sponge, in favor of a new system that promises to solve the problems of today, and sees old as the same as obsolete. Sometimes that may be the case: that an old solution is now a problem. But--not always. This personality is a gnostic spiritualist: wanting to touch the Divine, experience it; believes in a Divine so full of joy and love, It can have nothing of the oppressor or meanness in it: It does not impose rules on spirit, though It might offer a few guidelines for what works, or doesn't. Right and Wrong, Good and Evil, are subjective, and a true and absolute Divinity encompasses all things. Cause, and Effect, though far more complex, can be objective and emotionally neutral. Tolerance and co-existence, in this world-view, are the essentials of balance and stability.
Bodies need rules, they need conservatism: caution, patience, tradition, to feel safe in the world. The conservative mind is anxiety-prone, fear-driven. Spirit needs freedom: the liberty to go beyond the bounds of established order, it needs transcendence of tradition. It is risk-prone, novelty-driven. It is important to remember that each one of us, harbors both, and some parts of anyone will be more conservative/passionate/exclusive (this or that) and others will be liberal/rational/inclusive (this and that).
The mind is the place where body and spirit meet. Mind mediates, establishes the balance between them. Unmediated, unmanaged, unbalanced, either one is a tyrant. The Mediator itself, the mind, can't have everything its own way, either: we can't analyze or organize our way to Truth. We cannot feed a starving child with strong words, or simply observing and understanding the problem.
How we feed a starving child, that's a body problem, and requires physical solutions: producing, packaging and delivering the food that child needs. It requires physical effort and commitment.
Why we feed that child, is a mind problem, a question of philosophy and technical creativity, which requires an unencumbered mind.
That we feed the child, is the spirit's problem: the choices we make to care and commit, or not, that are a measure of our own soul's awareness and maturity.
Ending world hunger is a problem, a test, of what we can do, with being human.
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