This I Believe (1952)

163 pointsposted 6 days ago
by ctoth
(awakin.org)

100 Comments

johnohara

5 days ago

In 2026, it is not wise to believe that almost all politicians are honest. It is better to be skeptical of their motivations and hope they are honest enough to do the right thing for the citizens they represent.

CobrastanJorji

5 days ago

Mate, it wasn't wise to believe that in 1952 either. It's gotten worse, sure, especially at the top, but there are still thousands of "politicians" out there running local board meetings and trying to do their best to keep their communities going.

xbar

5 days ago

It has not gotten any worse. The rapacious greed of politicians in service to their own interest has been universal since the beginning of politics.

bluebarbet

5 days ago

"Universal" is a massive stretch. What seems more certain is that the many countries where your take is widely shared are less successful than the few countries where it is not.

ds_opseeker

5 days ago

History would have some objections to what you believe. In defense of your position, however, the last 40 years (at least in the US) have been dominated by the ethos you describe, and the eras and the politicians who were not consumed by greed tend to be less common than the reverse.

blks

3 days ago

Social media enables unseen before levels of fear mongering, misinformation and astroturfing. There are so many “issues” that were created and inflated to rile up voters it’s insane.

fifilura

5 days ago

And these thousands still represent the vast majority. Vote for them.

gf000

5 days ago

Standing for an evil heinous party doesn't get offset by this, though, were it the case.

II2II

5 days ago

The thing is, we tend to hear about the politicians who are ravenous for power, wealth, or recognition. The politicians who aren't (the backbenchers, the ones who run for local office, etc.) we rarely hear about outside of election cycles. While we may not agree with their politics, and may even go as far as disparaging their politics, it doesn't mean they are dishonest. It simply means that our personal values aren't aligned with the values of that politician.

gwbas1c

5 days ago

Which is why we need to keep a close watch on how we structure our elections so we can understand why the good ones can't win a primary; and then fix the problem.

piokoch

5 days ago

Politicians were never honest (never like since Minoan civilization and earlier probably too). You can have an honest, successful politician, as you can have short, successful volleyball player, but that would be an extremely rare case (like Muggsy Bogues).

And that's not really politicians fault, they say what electorate expects, and electorate likes to be cheated.

FroshKiller

5 days ago

I believe Mr. Bogues played basketball, not volleyball.

stronglikedan

5 days ago

I don't think it's possible to make it to the national level as an honest politician. Crony capitalism has ensured that every politician in Washington is bought and paid for in one way or another. God bless the few state and many local politicians that remain honest, and God bless their rose tinted glasses, too. Unfortunately, it never lasts.

FrustratedMonky

5 days ago

Politicians and CEO's. The processes for both, funnel psychopaths to the top.

rixed

5 days ago

Any competition that does not select for a specific skill will select people who are good at competition. Psychopaths are good at competition.

ballmerpoint

6 days ago

(1952).

Heinlein was such an odd fellow. Extremely progressive on one hand and extremely regressive on the other, sometimes in the span of a single paragraph.

jankovicsandras

5 days ago

Yes. Philip K. Dick wrote this about Heinlein:

"Several years ago, when I was ill, Heinlein offered his help, anything he could do, and we had never met; he would phone me to cheer me up and see how I was doing. He wanted to buy me an electric typewriter, God bless him—one of the few true gentlemen in this world. I don't agree with any ideas he puts forth in his writing, but that is neither here nor there. One time when I owed the IRS a lot of money and couldn't raise it, Heinlein loaned the money to me. I think a great deal of him and his wife; I dedicated a book to them in appreciation. Robert Heinlein is a fine-looking man, very impressive and very military in stance; you can tell he has a military background, even to the haircut. He knows I'm a flipped-out freak and still he helped me and my wife when we were in trouble. That is the best in humanity, there; that is who and what I love."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick#cite_note-32

Leonard_of_Q

5 days ago

Heinlein wasn't "regressive" but conservative. Your formulation indicates that it is you who might not be progressive but regressive since conservatism - same root as conservatorship - is a legitimate and, especially in good times, logical and effective strategy: keep that which works, change only that which needs changing and be careful not to change it too much or too fast lest you destroy that which worked. Heinlein wrote this in 1952 when the sky wasn't the limit anymore and people were reaching for the "stars" - well, low earth orbit anyway - so he had plenty of backing for his conservatism.

jt2190

5 days ago

> … keep that which works, change only that which needs changing and be careful not to change it too much or too fast lest you destroy that which worked…

Where “works” is defined as “we’re seeing a lot of very obvious problems but we have faith they’ll work themselves out over time without any intervention”, and the opposite is “we’re seeing a lot of very obvious problems and we think a change is necessary”. Note that the thing under debate has problems and it is not obvious to everyone that it “works”. The conservative says “let’s wait and see” and the reformer says “we must change this now”.

pdonis

5 days ago

You're misstating the alternatives. Most "obvious" problems do get worked out without intervention from outside parties who have no skin in the game. Some don't--but even in those cases, "change" driven by outside third parties who have no skin in the game almost never actually solves the problem. To paraphrase the programmer's saying about regular expressions, some people, whenever they see a problem, think, I know! We'll put a reform in place to fix it. Now they have two problems.

jt2190

5 days ago

> from outside parties who have no skin in the game

Redefining the context to include a nebulous group of people “with no skin in the game”… Why should we exclude a “conservative” who has no skin in the game from this group, but include a “reformer” who also does not?

pdonis

5 days ago

I'm "excluding" both the reformer and the conservative from "people who have skin in the game". The difference is that the reformer wants to interfere with the people who do have skin in the game working out their own solution to the problem, but the conservative does not.

jt2190

5 days ago

You seem to be implying that no reformers have skin in the game though. Certainly this can’t be true?

Edit: Re-reading… are you saying there’s a third group?

pdonis

5 days ago

> You seem to be implying that no reformers have skin in the game though.

I'm only describing that case (for both reformers and conservatives), yes. Historically, that seems to be the most relevant case, at least if we want to talk in terms of size of human impact.

To put it another way: if the problem (if there is one--see further comments below) can be solved by the people who do have skin in the game working things out among themselves, the labels "reformer" and "conservative" don't even come into play. You just have people who have to find some way of working together, doing it. So the only cases where those labels even arise are the cases where the people who do have skin in the game can't work things out among themselves--or at least that the people looking in from the outside, who don't have skin in the game themselves, think so.

The term "reformer", historically, does have another meaning: people who have some grand idea for how society should be organized, observing that it currently is not organized that way, and treating that as a Problem even if others don't agree that it is. A "conservative" seeing that would just say, look, you can't just impose your own idea of how society should be on everyone else. But historically, "reformers" in such cases have always framed things in terms of there being a Problem that isn't just "society isn't the way I think it should be"--the workers are oppressed, or the rich are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer, or whatever, and using that as an excuse to implement their ideas for the ideal society. Which has never worked out well.

jt2190

5 days ago

Ah I see so for you “conservative” and “reformer” are labels that have lost all meaning, they are wielded by busy-bodies who poke their nose at where it doesn’t belong. Whereas for me the words describe what people are trying to do in practice, regardless of political labels. (Canada had a “Reform” party for a while, which was conservative, so personally I don’t give the labels much credence either. Shame on me for assuming the words could be used at all without the baggage.)

pdonis

5 days ago

> they are wielded by busy-bodies who poke their nose at where it doesn’t belong

I never said that about conservatives; indeed, I said the opposite.

"Reformers", yes--but I don't think the label is one I just made up. I think what I said is true of most people that call themselves "reformers".

> Whereas for me the words describe what people are trying to do in practice, regardless of political labels.

Since this is exactly how I was defining the labels--by what the people do, not what political party they claim to belong to or support--I am confused about why you think you are doing something different.

jt2190

5 days ago

I think there’s a chicken and egg problem here…

> To put it another way: if the problem (if there is one--see further comments below) can be solved by the people who do have skin in the game working things out among themselves, the labels "reformer" and "conservative" don't even come into play. You just have people who have to find some way of working together, doing it.

… where you’ve hand-waved away the debate within the group about whether to do something or not.

pdonis

5 days ago

I haven't hand-waved anything away. I said there are cases where the people who do have skin in the game can't work things out among themselves. What you're describing is one case of that--those people can't even come to agreement about whether something needs to be done or not.

I did qualify my statement with the caveat that whether people looking in from the outside, who don't have skin in the game, think there's a problem that the people who do have skin in the game can't resolve among themselves, doesn't always match whether there actually is such a problem (a caveat which I could argue that you have hand-waved away). But I am not saying that all cases are like that.

What I am saying is that, even in the cases that aren't like that, the cases where the people who do have skin in the game really can't resolve a problem by working among themselves, that does not mean that reformers coming in from outside can do any better. I think such outside interventions, through human history, have a very poor track record of working. A quick summary of my point about conservatives and reformers would then be that conservatives recognize this unpleasant truth of human history, whereas reformers don't acknowledge it and are way, way too eager to make such interventions, and end up making things even worse.

jt2190

5 days ago

You keep asserting that “reformer” means “outsider” but they’re not synonyms.

watwut

4 days ago

So basicly, you are making people and historical events up in your head so that you can criticize imaginary "repformers" and praise imaginary "conservatives". Where conservatives want no change, (expect a bunch of new laws which does not count as change for reasons).

watwut

5 days ago

1.) Conservatives oppose reforms by "directly affected people with skin in the game". They opposed those reforms even when they themselves have zero actual skin in the game.

2.) Conservatives themselves frequently demand changes to things that work just fine for affected people. They want reform, because the world does not conform their ideological vision to how it should work.

pdonis

5 days ago

Now we're just quibbling over labeling. By "conservative" I mean the kind of conservative that the GP of my original post in this subthread said Heinlein was. If you want to use "conservative" to mean something else, well, then we're just talking past each other.

jt2190

5 days ago

We can use the terms “conserve”/“reform” to describe what someone does on a particular issue (e.g. does not or does “demand changes”), or we can use the terms in the very loose way we often do when describing political parties. No party is uniformly “change nothing”/“change everything” so parties aren’t particularly useful for clarifying what “conservative” or “reform” mean.

pdonis

5 days ago

> The conservative says “let’s wait and see”

No, the conservative says, even if there are problems, that doesn't mean everything is a problem, nor does it mean that you, looking in from the outside, can dictate a solution.

> the reformer says “we must change this now”.

No matter how much has to be burned down to do it. This mentality killed well north of 100 million people in the 20th century.

Conservatism is humility. Progressivism is hubris.

user

5 days ago

[deleted]

helterskelter2

5 days ago

> keep that which works, change only that which needs changing and be careful not to change it too much or too fast lest you destroy that which worked

This sounds great until you start arguing over what "works" means, who is making the distinction, and and where their interests are.

watwut

5 days ago

That is not what conservativism as political ideology is. Like common, not clearly that and we have multiple years where this was made super clear by conservatives themselves.

Conservativism has nothing to do with "conservatorship". They are not trying to conserve, they are trying to force radical change - sometimes to imaginary past and sometimes toward something completely new. And then violently keep it there regardless of needs of other people.

ileonichwiesz

5 days ago

It’s one of those cases where the label has stayed the same, but the thing it commonly describes has changed so much that the word just has multiple completely different meanings.

There’s the “let’s create National Parks to conserve our natural treasures!” conservatism and there’s the “let’s sell our National Parks to the highest bidder so they can drill for oil!” conservatism. It can mean fiscal responsibility and small government, or it can mean crypto scams and surveillance state.

This happens a lot when describing political positions.

beloch

5 days ago

The kind of conservatism that Heinlein embraced supported the idea that world government was necessary to prevent nuclear war. Today, granting more power to the UN or any other international body is ridiculed by most conservatives.

What is called conservatism in many countries today is totally different from what it was while Heinlein was alive.

xbar

5 days ago

No. That is reactionary. Conservatism means "government should govern as little as possible to guarantee freedoms, and no less. it should not provide services for a fee (aka tax)."

n4r9

5 days ago

Conservatism is a vague set of ideas about promoting and maintaining traditional institutions and values. That has various political manifestations, depending on circumstances. In the UK at the turn of the 20th Century for example, it meant heavy protectionist tariffs, as that supported domestic agriculture and the landed aristocracy. Nowadays the UK Conservative party opposes protectionist tariffs and champions free trade, as that maintains the current economic climate.

watwut

5 days ago

It never meant that. Conservativism does not care about freedoms, except for cherry picked few freedoms for selected few. It also does not care about small government, it cares about government small in some areas and huge in others.

Conservative voters do not care about freedom, conservative politicians do not care about freedom and and considerable amounts of them are actively opposed to it.

Conservativism is consistently very authoritarian. It is about hierarchies, not freedom.

TimPC

5 days ago

Your definition is pretty much minarchist forms of libertarianism. Not conservatism.

actionfromafar

5 days ago

You definition sounds more like anarchism or some kind of ultra-libertarian end goal.

EdwardDiego

5 days ago

This is like how Americans of the "conservative" bent use "liberal" as a perjorative, despite holding to liberal (or, occasionally, neoliberal) economic theory. I don't get America at all.

watwut

5 days ago

I am not bending anything. Ibam describing belives and behavior of people who call themselves "comswrvatives".

They have known political program and agenda. They vote in congress, senate and general election. They write articles, they have tv shows, podcasts and radio shows.

They are consistently pro-Trump, pro-authoritarian, pro-war, anti-abortion, anti-whatever-not-them groups rights. Except big business, they are pro big business.

EdwardDiego

5 days ago

No, I didn't say you were, I was agreeing with you, my apologies for confusion :)

gojogs

5 days ago

> keep that which works

you forgot the "pretend that everything works" part

TuringTest

5 days ago

> conservatism is a legitimate and, especially in good times, logical and effective strategy: keep that which works, change only that which needs changing and be careful not to change it too much

Conservatism runs entirely on the ingroup-outgroup divide - "keep that which works for us", and be a force opposing changes sought by people for whom things are not going so well, for whom change is the logical strategy.

Honest conservatives can see past the blind spot of the divide and don't try to present their strategy as a universal ethical good.

thin_carapace

5 days ago

it sounds like youre saying that protecting a group in the conservative mindset must arise at cost to others , is that right ?

vermilingua

4 days ago

> Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:

> There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progre...

thin_carapace

3 days ago

ive seen this quote posted many times and never understood it. thanks for linking the original (?) essay, things make sense now. i do disagree with the author though; his statement is plainly defensible.

TuringTest

5 days ago

If the person takes into account the needs of other groups to assess what "works", we no longer call them conservatives but "centrists".

thin_carapace

5 days ago

ok , so does this imply that the opposite of conservatism is to protect an out group at cost to the in group ?

TuringTest

5 days ago

In a sense, yes. That one's usually called 'fairness'.

A corollary is that people tend not to be conservatives when they belong to the less well-off ingroup. Suddenly bringing about change becomes more important.

thin_carapace

4 days ago

ok. so if its fairness to protect an outgroup by costing an in group, how would you label protecting both an ingroup and an outgroup ?

TuringTest

4 days ago

Two instances of the same principle

thin_carapace

4 days ago

thanks for helping understand your perspective , all the best

TuringTest

4 days ago

You're welcome. It's great that your questions came from a genuine desire of understanding. Though to be honest, that interaction - a sequence of short direct questions without further context - seemed to me like you were testing me, trying to lead me into a contradiction. I assumed less-than-good faith, I'm glad I was mistaken.

user

3 days ago

[deleted]

n4r9

5 days ago

Agreed. "Moon is a Harsh Mistress" is a good example - Heinlein tries quite hard to envisage a society in which women wield more social power, but can't quite relinquish the idea that women wish and deserve to be dominated by powerful men. Worth stating that 1952 was shortly after WW2 i.e. at the start of Heinlein's "middle period" when his worldview shifted dramatically towards more right-wing values (military patriotism, anti-communism, and individual self-reliance).

ballmerpoint

5 days ago

Exactly my point. Some other commenters got wrapped around themselves thinking I was using regressive as a synonym for conservative, but no, I said what I meant; specific words mean specific things.

GMoromisato

6 days ago

It is also possible, maybe even likely, that we are the ones who are odd.

user

6 days ago

[deleted]

chr15m

5 days ago

Interesting that you choose "regressive" as the opposite of progressive. thinking emoji

rf15

5 days ago

Ah, Heinlein. There's not much energy up there, and the energy question is a big one. It's now 2026 and we are still at the point where we can only move a fraction to actual space of what we originally start off with down here. Our fuel is still not anywhere close to what we'd need in terms of energy density and throughput.

manlymuppet

5 days ago

The point about politicians is the one I think today most needs. Our public systems don't work when we inherently distrust them. This isn't reason alone to trust, but a bias towards distrust is a pernicious thing for society.

This might be terribly controversial, but I think that even today, even at the highest levels of power, evil is a rare exception, rather than the rule, and we oughta be aware of that.

user

5 days ago

[deleted]

blfr

5 days ago

Excellent points on the intrinsic motivations and qualities absolutely dominating any control system.

But also plenty of places are nothing like Heinlein's hometown so this is far from universal.

aetherspawn

5 days ago

I’m not sure I believe this anymore. Maybe around 2 years ago, I think.

But the trajectory, of everything it seems, has completely changed. And I have no optimism left.

The world would need to possibly take up arms against its leadership to recover from where it is right now. The problem is, I know the masses are pacifist and reasonable, and it’s the insane few that are either running everything or have all the money. That dreads me, because just as I wouldn’t take up arms, nobody else will either, so who will stop the descent?

codepoet80

5 days ago

You got voted down, but your sentiment is reasonable. Times are pretty rough right now, politicians seem worse than ever, and people seem to be more ready to hate each other than ever. But the trajectory is controlled by individuals.

Heinlein wrote this in a dark period in history too. The writing of it was resistance against the trajectory of his times. Belief is a choice. Action is a choice. If you don't feel optimism, that's OK to recognize. But then make a choice: to believe something good about your neighbor, to honor something noble about someone you disagree with, and to act as if we each can do better than societal trends seem to indicate.

user

5 days ago

[deleted]

wyclif

5 days ago

Heinlein's preferred title for this essay was "Our Noble, Essential Decency."

JKCalhoun

5 days ago

I believe the same. For this I am called Pollyanna by my family.

(And in fact I did hitchhike by myself from Anchorage, Alaska down to Moses Lake, Washington in my youth…)

jklowden

5 days ago

Sure, Robert. KBI: keep believing it.

That essay believing in townsfolk was written while lynchings were still happening and schools were segregated and land deeds prohibited sale to blacks and Jews. Levittowns and the federal highway system were actively indulging and encouraging white flight. But, yeah, anyone will feed you.

Nowadays our children endure “active shooter” drills and sometimes die at the hands of active shooters. Parents are charged with neglect for letting children go to the store unaccompanied. Stand-your-ground laws defend shooting someone through a locked door, or in a parking lot. Vote canvassers have been shot at for turning onto the wrong driveway. Salt of the earth, those townsfolk.

The price of housing continues to rise mainly because those already there prevent building for those who would come. San Francisco is 1/2 the density of New York. It’s expensive because Palo Alto looks like Levittown and not, say, Queens. That was decided by those same sweet townsfolk.

Maybe Heinlein’s essay was inspirational in the McCarthy Era. In the present day, when Republicans root for deporting citizens elected to congress, it’s a transparent fantasy. Take every sentence as false, and it’s a useful guide to the world that we sadly actually live in.

Magicrafter13

5 days ago

Certainly not true in every culture. Because this is not an intrinsic truth of humanity. The evils the author sees as exceptions are actually the rule of our nature, but for one reason or another, most people (in some cultures) these days choose to operate on better principles because the outcome is preferable.

A murderer might enjoy killing, but will only be able to do so for a short time before being caught and imprisoned (or better, executed). But few people have ever been jailed or hurt for exercising charity and kindness on others. It's not that humans are normally or mostly good (we're very clearly not), but that living as such tends towards better and longer lives.

So in that sense I also believe, for the most part, that those around me are more willing to help than to hurt. Sadly those with the most influence on our lives don't represent a random sampling of "most people".

u1hcw9nx

5 days ago

THIS IS EDITED by the whoever owns the site. Might be slop generated.

Few paragraphs are taken out to smooth it out.

amanaplanacanal

5 days ago

I think that this is the original: https://thisibelieve.org/essay/16630/

RobGR

4 days ago

Between this https://thisibelieve.org/essay/16630/ and https://www.awakin.org/v2/read/view.php?tid=468 there are additional paragraph breaks, which might be attributable to it being transcribed from audio; the first link has an audio recording, the second link does not. In one a pause is transcribed as "-" and in the other as comma.

However, the second awakin.org version is also missing a piece of text:

"I believe in Rodger Young. You and I are free today because of endless unnamed heroes from Valley Forge to the Yalu River. I believe in—I am proud to belong to—the United States. Despite shortcomings—from lynchings, to bad faith in high places—our nation has had the most decent and kindly internal practices and foreign policies to be found anywhere in history."

I had to google Rodger Young: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodger_Young

fifilura

5 days ago

I love it and I believe the same as him.

In dark hours I remind myself that humanity must be at least 50.1% good and 49.9% bad. Otherwise we would never have come so far.

sparse-Matrix

2 days ago

Why am I not surprised that Heinlein wrote this?

The guy was an incurable optimist.

tkdb

5 days ago

This essay format is surprisingly challenging, and one that is fresh every time you try it.

One that stuck with me from the NPR series is "I believe in BBQ"

Give it a try!

PowerElectronix

5 days ago

>Politicians

I have yet to see one that isn't in it for personal gain without regard for the voters.

For the rest of the text, agree completely.

fifilura

5 days ago

Did you engage in local politics?

googaar

5 days ago

Someone explain how we’re getting out of this poor situation we’ve created.

There’s a non zero chance we create AGI, it catches up on the latest news, and genuinely believes the solution to save Earth is to subjugate humanity to some degree to prevent humanity from nuking itself.

Of course super low chance, but the AI bubble has somehow started right around when 3 major wars popped up, globalism/immigration problems peaking, and the post-WW2 world order crumbling all within 3-5 years.

GMoromisato

6 days ago

I believe countries and civilizations die when they stop believing this.

gizajob

5 days ago

I believe much of it or want to believe much of it. But the section:

> I believe that almost all politicians are honest ... there are hundreds of politicians, low paid or not paid at all, doing their level best without thanks or glory to make our system work. If this were not true we would never have gotten past the 13 colonies.

I just cannot believe this is even remotely true any more. We seem to have descended into widespread corruption and hypocrisy since his time and that rot is apparent at the very top of the political ladder and seems to inhere downwards. Can’t see how it is going to improve now that it’s been legitimised and the political process completely gutted.

GMoromisato

5 days ago

I don't think the next generation of Democrats is as corrupt as Trump. Jeffries seems like a pretty standard politician, and even progressives like AOC, Mamdani, Sanders, etc. do not seem venally corrupt.

And even Trump's corruption is not the problem. If that were his only sin the US would be fine.

Our political disfunction is caused not by personal failings (although those abound) but by genuine disagreement on which direction the US should take.

krunck

5 days ago

I believe USAers are the most effectively propagandized people on the planet and the good nature of many has been sullied by that bullshit.