QA问答：为什么随着年龄的增长，人们会变得越来越保守？

Balaji Viswanathan
When you are younger you have more liberty to talk about wealth redistribution, because you have not built any. As you get older, you realise the wealth distribution talked about is your wealth (unless you are an academic and have not built much wealth). Then you get more protective.
Again when you are young, you can be iconoclastic. You didn’t make the rules and you feel constrained by the system. As you get older, you realise you are the system. And that means you have a natural propensity to conserve the system.

当你年轻的时候，你可以自由的谈论财富再分配，因为你还没有建立起可以被再分配的财富。随着年龄的增长，你会意识到所谈论的要被再分配的财富，就是你的财富（除非你是一名学者，没有积累多少财富）。然后你会想得到更多的保护。
当你年轻的时候，你也可以是一个反传统的人。你不能制定规则，你觉得自己受到了制度的约束。随着年龄的增长，你会意识到自己已经是既有系统的一部分。这意味着你有一种保护系统的自然倾向。

When you are young, you might feel religion as bondage. As you grow older, you might still not found have your God, but realise that religion is more than just God. It brings structure, connections and stability to your life.
When you are young, you move around the world and feel the borders as stupid. As you grow older you settle down and feel that unrestricted movement of people for settlement is not as romantic as you thought it would be.

当你年轻的时候，你可能会觉得宗教是一种束缚。随着年龄的增长，你可能仍然没有找到你的上帝，但会意识到宗教不仅仅是上帝。它为你的生活带来了结构、联系和稳定性。
当你年轻的时候，你周游世界，觉得边界是愚蠢的。随着年龄的增长，你会安定下来，并觉得不受限制的移民并不像你想象的那样浪漫。

When you are young, you think of family as a chain that holds you. You try to break free. As you grow old, you cling to that chain as things start to get more lonely.
Over time, as you move from teenage to middle age your attitude towards wealth, religion, nation, social customs, family values all tend to go more conservative (Ceteris paribus). At really old age some of them tend to go back to being liberal when you are in the second childhood.
In my experience the age group with most conservatives tend to be in 30s-60s. The one exception seems to be those in or around academic circles as they interact with younger people on a daily basis and can thus contract some of the younger values from them.

当你年轻的时候，你认为家庭是一条束缚你的链条。你试图挣脱束缚。随着年龄的增长，你会紧紧抓住这条链条，因为世界开始变得更加孤独。
随着时间的推移，从十几岁到中年，你对财富、宗教、民族、社会习俗、家庭价值观的态度都将趋于保守。到了真正的老年，他们中的一些人往往会在他们的第二个童年时回到自由主义。
根据我的经验，大多数保守派的年龄段往往在30到60岁之间。一个例外似乎是学术界或学术界周围的人，因为他们每天都与年轻人互动，因此可以从他们身上感染一些年轻的价值观。

Jacob Chen
Imagine a line that represents the Left / Right continuum (purely on social issues):< -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 >
Let’s say you’re 30 years old, and right now, you’re at -2, a liberal. Not super progressive -5 liberal, but still a liberal. In today’s society, at -2, you probably support gay marriage, but not polygamy or incest. You support legalized marijuana, but draw the line there. You’re fine with people being vegan and vegetarian, but you also think they’re pretentious and wish they would leave you alone.
Now let’s fast track 30 years into the future.

想象有一条线，它代表着社会上的左/右：< -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 >
假设你30岁了，现在你是-2 的自由主义者。不是超级进步自由派——-5，但仍然是自由派。在当今社会，在-2时，你可能支持同性婚姻，但不支持一夫多妻或乱伦。你支持合法的大麻，但要划定界限。你对吃素和吃素的人很满意，但你也认为他们很自命不凡，希望他们不要管你。
现在让我们快进到30年后的未来。

Imagine if the line … shifts<-10 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 >
But you .. don’t. You’re still against polygamy and incest. You still support marijuana only. You still love steak. You’re now 60 years old.
The people who grew up in the last 30 years though … they have different opinions. They cheered Jon-Dany and are totes okay with incest. Especially because of advances in genetic engineering that have made it possible for incestuous couples to “fix” dangerous recessive genes.
There's a ton of new drugs out there, and the young people now believe in legalizing all recreational drugs. And the … new liberals are now fiercely opposed to eating meat for both humanitarian and environmental reasons and it’s seen as inhumane to consume any meat. The majority of 30 year olds these now are -7 or -8 … and you, who used to be a “liberal” have become a conservative.
Not because you changed your viewpoints.

想象一下，如果这条线随着时间的推移，发生了改变：<-10 -9 -8 -7 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 >
但你……没有改变。你还是-2，你仍然反对一夫多妻和乱伦。你仍然只支持大麻。你仍然喜欢牛排。你现在60岁了。
然而，在过去30年中长大的人们……他们有不同的看法。他们为乔恩·丹妮欢呼，并对乱伦表示欢迎。尤其是由于基因工程的进步，使得乱伦夫妇有可能“修复”危险的隐性基因。
现在有很多新毒品，年轻人现在相信所有娱乐性毒品都应该合法化。而……新自由主义者现在出于人道主义和环境原因强烈反对吃肉，而且吃肉被认为是不人道的。现在大多数30岁的人都是-7或-8……而你，曾经是一个“自由主义者”，现在变成了一个保守主义者。
不是因为你改变了观点。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

It’s actually just the opposite. It’s because you didn’t change your viewpoints.
There are people who are 60 today who 30 years ago held pretty “mainstream” views. Tolerating gays so long as they stay in the closet for example might have been liberal at one point in American history. Our line has almost certainly shifted significantly leftwards over the last several decades. On social issues anyway.
Of course some people's viewpoints do change with age and they continue moving to the left over time. But if half the people stay the same 1/4 move left, and 1/4 move right, then in general, 3/4 of people move to the right relatively to the population as a whole over time. Even though only 1/4 actually move to the right relative to that specific population.

事实恰恰相反。这是因为你没有改变你的观点。
今天60岁的人，在30年前持有相当“主流”的观点。例如，在美国历史上的某个时刻，可以容忍同性恋者，只要他们待在壁橱里就可以了。在过去几十年中，我们的路线几乎可以肯定地向左转。无论如何，在社会问题上是如此。
当然，有些人的观点确实会随着年龄的增长而改变，随着时间的推移，他们会继续向左移动。但如果一半的人保持不变，1/4向左移动，1/4向右移动，那么一般来说，随着时间的推移，3/4的人相对于整个人口向右移动。尽管相对于特定人口，只有1/4的人实际上向右移动。

Prottay M. Adhikari
I reject the premise of the question.
I think that the statement - ‘people on average get progressively more conservative as they get older’- is untrue.
Pranav is sixty, and he lives in an Indian city. Most of us will identify him as a conservative. He is married to his wife- a corporate executive- for 30 years , and has raised a son and a daughter together.

我拒绝这个问题的前提。
我认为这种说法——“随着年龄的增长，人们会变得越来越保守”——是不对的。
普拉纳夫今年60岁，住在印度的一个城市。我们大多数人都认为他是保守派。他与妻子（一名企业高管）结婚30年，共同抚养了一个儿子和一个女儿。

In 1989 when he married a young ambitious woman from corporate world, Pranav was 30 years old. The society around him lost their sh*t. Why couldn’t he marry a nice domestic girl ? Doesn’t he know the advantages of having a home-maker mom when raising a kid ?
Everyone gawked at his extremely liberal life-decision to get married to a professional woman.
He was painted as a bleeding-heart liberal by his friends, family and acquaintances .

1989年，普拉纳夫和一位来自企业界的雄心勃勃的年轻女性结婚了，当时他30岁。他周围的人对他议论纷纷。为什么他不娶一个漂亮的居家女孩？他不知道在抚养孩子时，有一个家庭主妇的好处吗？
每个人都对他与职业女性结婚这一极其自由的人生决定瞠目结舌。
他的朋友、家人和熟人把他描绘成一个冷血的自由主义者。

Cut to 2019.
Pranav’s daughter is a successful Engineer today. Pranav and his wife raised her to be a strong independent individual. She is 27 years old. Yesterday, she introduced Pranav to her girlfriend.
Pranav is shattered ! He is not okay with his daughter’s sexual orientation. It is extremely difficult for him to accept her entire humanity.
2019-liberals look at Pranav and paint him as ‘just another old conservative’.

截止到2019年。
普拉纳夫的女儿今天是一名成功的工程师。普拉纳夫和他的妻子把她培养成一个坚强的独立个体。她27岁。昨天，她把普拉纳夫介绍给了她的女朋友。
普拉纳夫崩溃了！他对女儿的性取向不满意。他很难接受她的全部人性。
2019年的自由主义者将普拉纳夫视为“一个老保守派”。
原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

Has Pranav changed ? Has he become conservative from liberal ?
No !
He still thinks women can join any profession as men, just like he believed in 1989.
He thinks women should marry men (only), just like he believed in 1989. He was unaware and ignorant of same-sex relationships back then, he still is.
He hasn’t changed a bit. Something else changed.

普拉纳夫变了吗？他从自由派变成保守派了吗？
不！
他仍然认为女性可以像男性一样加入任何职业，就像他在1989年所相信的那样。
他认为女人应该（只）嫁给男人，就像他在1989年所相信的那样。他那时对同性关系一无所知，现在仍然如此。
他一点也没变。而其他事情发生了变化。

The gauge to measure liberalism has changed considerably.
The answer to the question ‘how liberal is liberal enough ?’- has transformed in last three decades.
Hence, the same person with exactly same social viewpoints- who was a raging liberal in a 1980s’ point of view, is perceived as a conservative in a 2010s’ point of view.
People do not change, at least not significantly.
The scale used to measure their socio-political leanings, do change with time, significantly.
That is why it feels like- people get progressively more conservative as they grow older, while the reality is - both the definitions of conservatism and liberalism have changed in their lifetime. They, as human beings, haven’t changed.

衡量自由主义的标准发生了很大变化。
“自由主义程度如何？”这个问题的答案，在过去的三十年里发生了变化。
因此，同一个拥有完全相同社会观点的人——从20世纪80年代的观点来看，他是一个激进的自由主义者——从2010年的观点看，他被认为是一个保守主义者。
人们不会改变，至少不会发生显著的改变。
用来衡量他们的社会政治倾向的尺度，确实会随着时间而发生显著变化。
这就是为什么人们感觉随着年龄的增长越来越保守，而现实是，保守主义和自由主义的定义在他们的一生的时间中发生了变化。作为人，他们没有改变。

David Tufte
I’ve taught macroeconomics to university students for 30 years. And I’ve lived in a small city for 18 years, where I get to see a lot of those students grow into middle age. (And, I personally also started liberal and got more conservative).
I have 3 insights about this that I hope others find helpful:

我教大学生宏观经济学已经30年了。我在一个小城市生活了18年，在那里我看到很多学生纷纷步入中年。（而且，我个人也开始从自由主义，变得更加保守）。
我对此有三点见解，希望对其他人有所帮助：

They young tend to see the world in black and white, rather than shades of gray.
The young tend to judge the actions of others more on the basis of motivations rather than consequences.
The young have insufficient exposure to the reality that you have to let others live the way they choose.
Here’s how the passage of time works on those.

1、他们年轻时，倾向于用黑色和白色来看待世界，而不是灰色。
2、年轻人倾向于根据动机而非后果，来判断他人的行为。
3、年轻人没有充分明白“你必须让别人按照他们选择的方式生活”的现实。
这是时间的流逝对它们的影响。

When you view the world as black and white, there’s a tendency to see an injustice, and presume that it exists because previous ways of approaching were incorrect and need to be changed. So there’s an appeal to liberalism when it presents itself as addressing outstanding problems. More life experience clues us in to the fact that a lot of outstanding problems have been addressed many times in the past, and they’re just tough nuts to crack. The conservative view is to not rock that boat too much when it isn’t clear that it will work.

1、当你将世界视为黑白时，你最先看到的总是不公正的地方，你会认为现在的社会是不正确的，需要改变。因此，对于解决突出问题，自由主义有它的吸引力。更多的生活经验告诉我们，很多现在依然突出的问题，在过去已经解决了很多次，而它们仍然是难以破解的难题。保守的观点是，在不清楚这个解决方案是否会起作用的情况下，不能过于激进和冲动。

It’s part of adulting to realize that good motivations do not always lead to good consequences, and that good consequences can sometimes be produced from bad motivations. There’s an aphorism that conservatives think liberals have bad ideas, and liberals think conservatives are bad people. If you’re young and focused on motivations, it’s a lot easier to hold that second viewpoint.

2、随着年岁渐长，人们意识到，好的动机并不总是带来好的结果，而坏的动机有时也会产生好的结果。有一句格言，保守派认为自由派有坏主意，而自由派认为保守派是坏人。如果你年轻，你专注于动机，那么持有第二种观点会容易得多。

The young are coming from an environment (family and school) where they are steered hard to behave in certain ways. As teenagers they react to this, and realize that others can’t make them into something they don’t want to be. Fair enough. But, for most of the young, while they’ve internalized that message, they still have an asymmetry in presuming that other people can still be steered or changed. This feeds straight into the liberal mindest of managing peoples’ more troubling impulses through policy and programs. A lot of people get the limitations of that in a therapeutic sense: you can’t help people who don’t want to help themselves. Growing older and life experience leads many to the view that you have to extend that mindset to the policies and programs themselves: it’s unfortunate that people get into some of these situations, but sometimes you just have to let them live the life they choose.

3、年轻人处于一个环境中（家庭和学校），在那里他们很难以某种方式行事。作为青少年，他们会对此做出反应，并意识到：其他人没有权利塑造他们，他们不想那样。这有点道理，却不全对。但是，大多数年轻人在内化了这一点的同时，却又感觉其他人是可以被引导或者改变的。这直接注入了自由主义思想，即通过政策和计划来管理人们更麻烦的冲动。
很多人都具有这种心理治疗领域的局限性：你无法帮助那些不想帮助自己的人。随着年龄的增长和生活经验的积累，许多人认为，你必须将这种心态扩展到政策和计划本身：很不幸，人们会陷入一些困境，但有时你只能让他们过自己选择的生活。

Jon Bogdanove
I am 61. I have seen many people in my generation, and the baby boomers before me, ossify into conservatives as they got old. It doesn’t happen to everyone, but it happened to enough idealistic kids of the 1960s to cause a perilous shift in American politics starting in the 1980s.

我今年61岁。我见过我这一代人中的许多人，以及我之前的婴儿潮的那一代，随着年龄的增长，他们变得保守。这并不是发生在每个人身上，但它发生在20世纪60年代足够多的理想主义的孩子身上，导致了从20世纪80年代开始的美国政治的危险转变。

I think there are several factors that cause people to get progressively more conservative as they get older—some of which are biological. I think when we are young, our perceptions are more fresh and our feelings and experiences are more intense. It may be hormones, or other aspects of brain chemistry not fully understood yet—but we humans do seem to get more mentally inflexible and increasingly fearful as we age.

我认为有几个因素会导致人们随着年龄的增长而变得越来越保守，其中一些是生物因素。我认为，当我们年轻的时候，我们的感知更加新鲜，我们的感受和体验更加强烈。这可能是荷尔蒙的原因，或者大脑化学的其他方面的原因，这点尚未完全了解，但随着年龄的增长，我们人类的精神似乎变得更加僵化，越来越多的感觉到恐惧。

Since fearfulness is the root of all anger, and anger is at the core of right wing reactionism, it may be that we are biologically programmed with a tendency to get more conservative as we get old.
It seems like a worthy scientific question: What physiological changes occur in human brains and bodies as we age that contribute to changes in cognition and mental flexibility as those may relate to empathy, sympathy, compassion etc?
It’s well established that human brains tend to become less flexible and agile as we age. We tend to gain greater mastery over whatever we’ve specialized in the longer we practice it, but our ability to learn and incorporate new information, skills and attitudes actually diminishes after our teens. It is possible that our ability to empathize and sympathize also diminishes due to these changes in our brains as we age?

由于恐惧是所有愤怒的根源，而愤怒是右翼反动主义的核心，这可能就是我们在生物学上有一种随着年龄增长而变得更加保守的倾向的原因。
这似乎是一个很有价值的科学问题：随着年龄的增长，人类大脑和身体发生了哪些生理变化，从而导致了认知和心理灵活性的变化，这些变化可能与移情、同理心、同情等有关？
众所周知，随着年龄的增长，人类的大脑往往变得不那么灵活和敏捷。随着我们练习的时间的延长，我们往往会对我们所擅长的东西有更大的掌握，但我们学习和融入新信息、技能和态度的能力，实际上在我们十几岁之后就减弱了。随着年龄的增长，我们的移情和共情能力也可能会因为大脑的这些变化而减弱？

Mark Harder
Just turned 72 today. The older I get, the more leftish I become. That’s partly because I remember the time after WWII when unxs were strong, many New Deal economic policies were still in effect, the minimum wage was adequate, the financial sector spent its capital on lending to businesses, small businesses were plentiful and downtowns were full of them, the US produced all sorts of goods for export, civil rights of all kinds were just beginning to be honored (except for McCarthyism), wages followed the growth of productivity, and the country was prospering. The right wing today would have us believe that our economic policies will ruin us, despite the lesson of history. I think that what happens when we age is that we can remember a time when, at least in some ways, things were better. Those who become more conservative with age and those who become more ‘liberal’ just interpret those things differently.

今天刚满72岁。我年纪越大，就越左倾。这在一定程度上是因为我记得二战后的那段时间，当时工会很强大，许多新政经济政策仍然有效，最低工资足够，金融部门将其资本用于向企业放贷，小企业数量充足，市中心到处都是小企业，美国生产各种出口商品，各种公民权利刚刚开始得到尊重（麦卡锡主义除外），工资随着生产力的增长而增长，国家正在繁荣。今天的右翼会让我们相信，我们的经济政策将摧毁我们，有历史的教训。我认为，当我们变老的时候，我们会记得，至少在某些方面，事情会变得更好。那些随着年龄的增长而变得更加保守的人和那些变得更加“自由”的人对这些事情的理解不同。

Susanna Viljanen
On my own personal experience, no. I have stayed true to the ideals of my youth. It is the society around me which has slid more and more right-wing when I have grown older.
What I was when I was young, cocky and uppity (and horribly immature INTJ) was considered very much right-wing decades ago. In today’s Europe, it is now mainstream. So my own thought has become mainstream - and that is what terrifies me. Either I was precociously correct on my thoughts when I was young - or the society has become just as cocky, uppity and immature what I was decades ago.

根据我个人的经验，不是如此。我一直忠于我年轻时的理想。随着年龄的增长，我周围的社会越来越右倾。
几十年前，我年轻、自负、傲慢（是个极不成熟的INTJ）时的样子被认为是非常右翼的。在今天的欧洲，它已成为主流。因此，我自己的思想已经成为主流，这正是让我感到恐惧的：这到底是当年年轻的我过于早熟得到了正确的思想，还是这个社会变成了几十年前的我，变得傲慢、自负、不成熟。

Brian Blose
Society tends to become liberal more quickly than individual members of the population.
Take Bob. Growing up in the 1960’s, Bob’s parents raised him to believe that interracial couples were just about the worst thing ever. Then as he grew into adulthood, Bob made friends with more liberal-minded people. He even became friends with a black man who was married to a white woman. After some introspection, he realized he didn’t really believe the ideology he had been raised on and shifted his viewpoint to be more inclusive.

社会变得开明（自由）的速度，比个人变得开明（自由）的速度更快。
拿鲍勃来说。鲍勃在20世纪60年代长大，他的父母让他相信，跨种族婚姻是有史以来最糟糕的事情。然后，当他长大成人后，鲍勃结交了更多思想自由的人。他甚至和一个与白人女人结婚的黑人男子成为了朋友。经过一番反省后，他意识到自己并没有真正相信自己被培养出来的意识形态，并将自己的观点转变为更具包容性。

Many years later, Bob raised his own children to be accepting of interracial relationships. However, he made sure to teach them that it was completely immoral for homosexual couples to get married. As his kids grew into adulthood, they made friends with more liberal-minded people — even a gay couple. His kids decided that they didn’t buy into Bob’s morals regarding gay marriage.
Now, did Bob become more conservative as he aged? Compared to the social definition of the times, he was liberal when he was younger. Today he qualifies as a conservative even though he believes all the same things he did back when he was 20. So if you use a relative measure (which is what this is), then people get more conservative over time because they aren’t keeping pace with society as a whole.

多年后，鲍勃把自己的孩子抚养成人，接受了跨种族关系。然而，他一定要告诉他们，同性伴侣结婚是完全不道德的。随着他的孩子长大成人，他们结交了思想更自由的人——甚至是一对同性恋夫妇。他的孩子们决定，他们不相信鲍勃关于同性恋婚姻的道德观。
鲍勃是不是随着年龄的增长变得更加保守了？与时代的社会定义相比，他年轻时是开明（自由）的。今天，他有资格成为一名保守派，尽管他相信自己20岁时所做的一切。所以，如果你用一个相对的衡量标准（这就是事实），那么随着时间的推移，人们会变得更加保守，因为他们没有跟上整个社会的步伐。