Wednesday, June 08, 2005

"Thinking" vs. "Feeling"

Arnold Kling, in n a recent Tech Central Station column, posits a correlation between libertarianism and the "thinking" aspect of personality:
In my experience, libertarians and collectivists often talk past one another. Libertarians believe that collectivists are not thinking, while collectivists believe that libertarians are not feeling.
There's a lot to that. But a post by Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution reminds me of my "feeling" side:
Here is a new interview with Milton Friedman. I liked this from the introduction:

San Francisco seems an unlikely home for the man who in 1962 first proposed the privatization of Social Security.

Asked why he dwells in liberalism's den, Milton Friedman, 92, the Nobel laureate economist and father of modern conservatism, didn't skip a beat.

"Not much competition here," he quipped.

How does that remind me of my "feeling" side? Friedman's quip is obviously just that, a quip. Friedman probably could live anywhere he wants to live. Why San Francisco, then? Why not? It has more than Lefties; it has "culture" -- universities, museums, and the arts (of all kinds).

In fact, one tends to find "culture" where one finds a lot of Lefties. Moreover, many Lefties are actually nice people, as long as they can avoid talking about George W. Bush, a topic that seems to bring out the worst in their natures.

So, when I want to be a "feeling" person I hang out with Lefties and engage in pursuits that are more typical of Lefties than Righties. To tell the truth, with a few exceptions I avoid the company of Righties because I don't share their tastes in music (the Nashville sound), sports (NASCAR), and media personalities (Limbaugh, O'Reilly, and Hannity), among other things.

Well, that's enough "feeling" for today.