Tested Over Time

Whenever I take a shallow online test to determine my political positions, I always end up in the same corner: extreme left, extreme libertarian. Yet despite this, I am very much a cultural conservative, because I believe that tradition is an open doorway into the past, where methods of art were beaten into shape like bronze, and tested over centuries. I believe, as well, that traditional methods can be used to test my own abilities, to show what I can do within and against a framework that has remained steady over time. Without such a framework, how could I judge myself? How could I correct myself, whenever I fall short or fall apart?


What I do not believe is that everyone must be tested against this framework, that everyone must embrace the traditions I love.

I have my own preferences, and they guide me whenever I try to read, to watch, to hear something new. There are many works of today that I love, and many more that I find opaque, but these are my responses. If I am unable to understand why certain people write or compose or paint or direct in certain ways, I try to contrast their methods with methods that work for me, so that I can understand why something might not communicate, but I do this for myself. I am not a critic; I am, instead, a technician. I do not want to tell others what they should or should not enjoy; I want, instead, to understand the methods that appeal to me, so that I can use them for my own purposes.

So yes: I am left, I am libertarian. I am also culturally conservative, but the methods I conserve are for me, and for what I hope to do.