QuoteThanks.  I'll have to do some reading on that.  Having not studied political theory, the idea that the first set are not conservative seems peculiar to me, as does WWW's 3% comment.  My experience in living in the U.S.and a fair amount of political activism says that they are very much associated with practiced conservatism.  If one considers that conservatism can described as "defense of the status quo" and that the U.S. was founded almost 250 years ago with the Bil of Rights as founding principles, defending personal liberties seems conservative indeed.

USA is country build on liberal rebellion my friend, and it simply cannot be conservative whatsoever You just have social liberals fighting with libertarians, two bunches of freedom obsessed groups believing freedom is achieved by totally different means. Meanwhile conservatism is about order, about hierarchy and diversity in complex web, over human rights and egalitarianism.
Authority over democracy, and so on. Now in terms of pragmatic conservatism which is more tactical choice acquired to other ideologies - sure defending your Constitution and stuff is conservative in this regard, and nuking your cities and bringing back iron fist of English king would be revolution in method. But personally I consider defining conservatism just by tactical approach bit meh. In this regard if socialdemocrats in US shall win and rule for 3 generation then they will be conservative while all libertarians, and free market thumpers will be revolutionist liberals.

Quote from: Mishihari on January 29, 2021, 09:31:00 PM
Thanks.  I'll have to do some reading on that.  Having not studied political theory, the idea that the first set are not conservative seems peculiar to me, as does WWW's 3% comment.  My experience in living in the U.S.and a fair amount of political activism says that they are very much associated with practiced conservatism.  If one considers that conservatism can described as "defense of the status quo" and that the U.S. was founded almost 250 years ago with the Bil of Rights as founding principles, defending personal liberties seems conservative indeed.

Political terminology has a tendency to drift, and the perversion of the word "liberalism" is one of the more extreme examples. Liberalism, in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries meant lassiez faire, natural rights, and human dignity -- i.e. your first list. It was an extreme philosophy, perhaps the most extreme in history, and radically changed how people think and assess the world. Aspects of it are shared by all Western cultures and cultures influenced by Western culture, but the American expression of those ideas is uniquely strong. The powerful emphasis on free speech is not shared to the same degree by France or Germany, for instance. To you it's conservative, but that's because you're from the US, and you're conserving that tradition. But if you were from somewhere else, even another Western nation, your traditions, and thus what you consider conservative, would be quite different.

People can share those values, because they're conservative, and believe in upholding the traditions. Or because the believe in the philosophical basis of those values, and want to change the world. They've reached the same destination, but they've taken very different paths. This is important, because it means some of the people who share your values do so for a very different reason. These ways of thinking seem to be objective and universal, across cultures. The first set of your values that I separated out maps to classical liberalism, which is a radical philosophy that those from the certain cultural complex may also want to conserve because it's part of their traditions. The second set of your values is more emblematic of the conservative way of thinking, and would be universally conservative across all cultures.

You might be interested in Haidt's The Righteous Mind. It doesn't really get into political theory, rather it focuses on the cultural and psychological aspects. It's an attempt to analyze those two types of thinking, as well as looking at how the Western liberal tradition is a sharp break from previous value systems.

To bring it back to games, traditional fantasy draws on heavily conservative or even reactionary ideas. Kings, princesses, the idea that everyone has a natural place and some people are innately more important than others. But often, it's very superficial. That's because it's always filtered through the lens of the authors and players, who all came from cultures that highly valued individual rights, equality, and achievement. This is really evident in games like OD&D, where yes there are lords and ladies, but the whole idea of zero to hero, and a points of light campaign structure where individual can carve their own domains out of the wilderness, is extremely American, and thus is very liberal. That's one way to determine the degree to which a game expresses conservative ideals.

Quote from: Pat on January 30, 2021, 09:51:21 AM
This is really evident in games like OD&D, where yes there are lords and ladies, but the whole idea of zero to hero, and a points of light campaign structure where individual can carve their own domains out of the wilderness, is extremely American, and thus is very liberal. That's one way to determine the degree to which a game expresses conservative ideals.

  In my experience, the general culture around original D&D and the OSR is libertarian or left-libertarian. WoD tends more progressive, as does the official word from Paizo and WotC. Traditionalist conservatives are pretty rare, perhaps because of the Satanic Panic of the 80s and the seeds it sowed in the hobby.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on January 30, 2021, 11:36:02 AM
In my experience, the general culture around original D&D and the OSR is libertarian or left-libertarian. WoD tends more progressive, as does the official word from Paizo and WotC. Traditionalist conservatives are pretty rare, perhaps because of the Satanic Panic of the 80s and the seeds it sowed in the hobby.

I think the effects of the Satanic Panic were very regional. In this part of the country you're safer presuming traditional conservative than not.

My one personal experience with the Panic was that one of my friend's mom's found his D&D books, boxed them up and took him and the box of books to our priest and told him "This is my son's devil worship kit." The priest took one look in the box, sat the mom down and explained to her that D&D isn't satanic. My friend still got to play D&D with us. I ran games every night throughout summer camp for my Catholic Boy Scout troop.

And that was all the Satanic Panic amounted to in my neck of the woods.

I suspect it depended a lot on which church you went to and the local culture within that church.  A Catholic friend of mine once observed about his daughter coming home from Sunday School at his wife's Lutheran church, "nothing is more profitable than scared protestants."

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 30, 2021, 12:27:01 PM
I think the effects of the Satanic Panic were very regional. In this part of the country you're safer presuming traditional conservative than not.

  Good point. I tend to make too much of online culture as opposed to real culture.

Quote from: Chris24601 on January 30, 2021, 12:27:01 PM

Quote from: Armchair Gamer on January 30, 2021, 11:36:02 AM
In my experience, the general culture around original D&D and the OSR is libertarian or left-libertarian. WoD tends more progressive, as does the official word from Paizo and WotC. Traditionalist conservatives are pretty rare, perhaps because of the Satanic Panic of the 80s and the seeds it sowed in the hobby.

I think the effects of the Satanic Panic were very regional. In this part of the country you're safer presuming traditional conservative than not.

My one personal experience with the Panic was that one of my friend's mom's found his D&D books, boxed them up and took him and the box of books to our priest and told him "This is my son's devil worship kit." The priest took one look in the box, sat the mom down and explained to her that D&D isn't satanic. My friend still got to play D&D with us. I ran games every night throughout summer camp for my Catholic Boy Scout troop.

And that was all the Satanic Panic amounted to in my neck of the woods.

As an older religion I would suspect it does a better job of managing group neurosis. A point of failure however is that as a vertical, centralized power structure it seems that there is a passivity in its members to creeping corruption, as people generally assume that the institution itself will handle things and that correct participation in the institution is all that is required. In gameplay, I like to use the intellectual aspects of the Catholic Church to model good vs evil, however I think that for a decentralized post-apocalyptic/quasi-medieval setting like Greyhawk, the aggressive zeal in confronting spiritual evil (represented in pre-Internet parody by St. Cuthbert and Pholtus) as can be found in Network Pentecostal Christianity to be a more appropriate social model, as it is a decentralized power structure that relies on loosely structured cooperative units (connected by the Internet and social media) that are resistant to corruption, in the same way that blockchain technology, vis-à-vis cryptocurrency, is resistant to corruption. Network nodes that go bad can be easily recognized and rejected by the whole and weeded out. I certainly see the spirit world acting as a sort of Internet with respect to the connectivity of nodes, so clerics of the same alignment will be part of a world-wide decentralized spiritual network, forming a network society.

Regarding the Satanic Panic, one must remember that in the late 70's very few people had any idea what D&D was. Until I got the D&D Holmes set for Xmas in 1979, I thought that it was a cult, thanks to the Fake News which played a central role in the D&D Satanic Panic as well as the preschool scare of the 1980's when allegedly 1 in 4 preschools were fronts for devil worship and child prostitution, and the Fake News continues to do damage by spreading "pandemic" fears. There is a longstanding tradition of group neurosis being exploited by news media.

Quote from: "Pat"....The powerful emphasis on free speech is not shared to the same degree by France or Germany, for instance. To you it's conservative, but that's because you're from the US, and you're conserving that tradition. But if you were from somewhere else, even another Western nation, your traditions, and thus what you consider conservative, would be quite different....

It must be remembered that free speech is a direct threat to the old and corrupt aristocracy of Europe, represented in the USA by the democrat neolibs and neomarxists, and by the republican neocons, where lies and propaganda have long been normalized and used to manipulate the dirty, germ-infested peasantry. That mind set lead to two world wars. The concept of free speech however is thousands of years old, so it is absolutely the bedrock foundation of our cultural traditions and is most certainly a conservative value.

QuoteAnd ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free (John 8:32)

Christianity is a very rebellious and populist mode of thought as contrasted with those that came before it when society was rigidly stratified from top to bottom and individuals were defined by the group to which they belonged and slavery was a natural part of all human society. It is from this new way of looking at the human world that the sovereignty of the individual arises, whereas systems such as socialism and communism hearken back to much older, darker times.

QuoteThe concept of free speech however is thousands of years old, so it is absolutely the bedrock foundation of our cultural traditions

Maybe to American cultural traditions, not really Christian ones.
And pagans were certainly not lenient towards blasphemers and other folk of this kind.

QuoteIt is from this new way of looking at the human world that the sovereignty of the individual arises, whereas systems such as socialism and communism hearken back to much older, darker times.

Not really. I'd say both liberalism with it's more rampant forms like libertarianism, and totalitarian systems stems from simmilar - usually abrahamic induced - concepts of universalism (as lil cults/religions of old have universalist absolute tendencies and pan-human aspirations), but they lack balance between social order and personal growth religions promoted - taking each of those values to absolute extreme and abandoning the other one.