If the social incentives for holding their beliefs were changed, many would come around eventually. At the moment, holding and expressing certain left-leaning, or even more importantly anti-conservative viewpoints can be beneficial or even necessary to fit into certain groups.
Most of the major media companies and educational institutions in this country, along with social media companies promote these views while attacking a caricature of opposing political views. This provides one group with social power, an ability to reward the like-minded while punishing dissenters.
If this social power, and especially social reinforcement of far left beliefs were somehow removed, many would change. Not that doing such a thing is necessarily easy.
As long as some people have power, they will use that power to push political perspectives and a system of social virtue that rewards followers and punishes dissenters. And the followers of that system will continue to provide those people with power as they try to fit into the social system created.
But it's not impossible either. If the power of some at the top began to crumble, we could eventually see a domino effect as there was no longer any fuel for the social power contained in these systems.
While some people are certainly in too deep to ever change their views, most people just go along with what's convenient. The good thing is that I do believe that it's possible for people's views to be changed. The bad thing is that they would still be very fickle people, just temporarily on the "correct side," so to speak.
If the social incentives were entirely reversed, it would not even be surprising for people to head straight through to other extreme views. Kind of like how you sometimes see people bounce back and forth between militant atheism and sanctimonious "holier than thou" displays of religiosity, some of the biggest supporters of "social justice" would likely become some of the most outspoken and vitriolic racists you've ever seen as soon as it was in their interest to do so.
Edit: It's important to remember that there are some people on the right who will also try to use political and social groups for their own social-elevation, even if it's more important on the left at this moment. If the right gains social power, that type of person will inevitably flock here as well, and they have the potential to poison whatever they are a part of.
If the social incentives for holding their beliefs were changed, many would come around eventually. At the moment, holding and expressing certain left-leaning, or even more importantly anti-conservative viewpoints can be beneficial or even necessary to fit into certain groups.
Most of the major media companies and educational institutions in this country, along with social media companies promote these views while attacking a caricature of opposing political views. This provides one group with social power, an ability to reward the like-minded while punishing dissenters.
If this social power, and especially social reinforcement of far left beliefs were somehow removed, many would change. Not that doing such a thing is necessarily easy.
As long as some people have power, they will use that power to push political perspectives and a system of social virtue that rewards followers and punishes dissenters. And the followers of that system will continue to provide those people with power as they try to fit into the social system created.
But it's not impossible either. If the power of some at the top began to crumble, we could eventually see a domino effect as there was no longer any fuel for the social power contained in these systems.
While some people are certainly in too deep to ever change their views, most people just go along with what's convenient. The good thing is that I do believe that it's possible for people's views to be changed. The bad thing is that they would still be very fickle people, just temporarily on the "correct side," so to speak.
If the social incentives were entirely reversed, it would not even be surprising for people to head straight through to other extreme views. Kind of like how you sometimes see people bounce back and forth between militant atheism and sanctimonious "holier than thou" displays of religiosity, some of the biggest supporters of "social justice" would likely become some of the most outspoken and vitriolic racists you've ever seen as soon as it was in their interest to do so.
Edit: It's important to remember that there are some people on the right who will also try to use political and social groups for their own social-elevation, even if it's more important on the left at this moment. If the right gains social power, that type of person will inevitably flock here as well, and they have the potential to poison whatever they are a part of.