Ideological conservatives of all stripes, political or cultural, are either ignoring or badly misinterpreting the lessons of history and biology. Conservatives try to hold on to the patterns of both today and of the past, claiming that those patterns will serve us humans best. But, that is not what either history or biology teaches us.

The facts of biological evolution teach us that species that survive are those which change in a changing environment. Those which produce random mutations better suited to the current environment continue, Those which do not, go out of existence. That is what biology teaches us.

The choice is not conscious – biology does it on its own. We humans cannot choose to change our DNA, but we have the intellectual capacity to choose to change our behavior, our cultural patterns and social patterns. that can give us a distinct advantage over other biological species. But conservatives say that the old ways of doing things is “what brung us here” and will best serve us in the future. The problem is that it just “ain’t necessarily so”.

What history also teaches us is that the cultures and civilizations that survive the longest are those change to fit changing conditions, both physical and social. They do make choices wisely, carefully scrutinizing the patterns of thought and behavior that are worth retaining and scrapping those which will actually constitute a threat to us in the future.

Those are the reasons why our social, cultural, and political patterns should always be a bit left of center, if we want to survive as a species. As a whole, conservatism serves privilege and wealth, but not the entire species. That is because conservatism delays and deters needed changes which a shifting environment requires for survival. Given the state of our physical environment today, we cannot afford such deterrents. That is why I respectfully oppose conservatism