00:00Before we begin our video, a short note. We'll be glad if you like,
00:04comment, and share our content. We are the largest left-wing civic association in Slovakia,
00:10and we want to keep growing. New videos are published Fridays.
00:14If you like what we do, you can support us financially and become our members.
00:19More information is available on our website, and most importantly,
00:23don't forget to subscribe to our channel.
00:25Where does the divide between the left and the right come from?
00:30Terms left and right did not originate as ideological labels,
00:35but as purely practical designations around 230 years ago.
00:40They emerged at the end of the 18th century during the French Revolution,
00:44when the French National Assembly was debating a new constitution and the powers of the king.
00:50Members of parliament, who defended the monarch's unlimited right of veto,
00:54sat to the right of the presiding officer. Those who wanted to limit the king's power sat to the left.
01:00From this spatial arrangement, which may seem accidental, but in fact was not accidental at all,
01:06as will be clear later, one of the most important political concepts of modern history gradually emerged.
01:14Since then, the left has been associated with the progressive ideas of the Enlightenment,
01:19the right, by contrast, became associated with conservatism, an emphasis on order, stability, and continuity.
01:31Put simply, the left looks forward and comes up with new ideas and solutions.
01:37The right looks backward, cautiously, with respect for the past.
01:42During the French Revolution, the famous left-wing slogan, liberty, equality, fraternity,
01:48also emerged, closely associated with the radical left, the Jacobins.
01:53The slogan is often attributed to Maximilien Robespierre.
01:58At that time, however, neither socialism nor capitalism existed as concepts.
02:04These terms would only appear decades later.
02:07Despite this, left-wing thinking is today often deliberately reduced,
02:12in capitalist propaganda and mainstream media, to Stalinist communism.
02:17This is just as absurd as claiming that the right is equivalent to fascism.
02:21A more objective view shows that both the left and the right are broad intellectual mosaics,
02:28in which communism and fascism are merely small, extreme fragments, not their essence.
02:35What is considered progressive or conservative in one historical period constantly changes.
02:41Imagine a politician today advocating an unlimited royal veto.
02:46Such a position would be unacceptable even to most conservatives.
02:51Society evolves continuously, and with it, the meaning of political concepts.
02:57See, for example, how quickly attitudes can change in society.
03:02In this case, the data show a radical shift in support for same-sex marriage within a single generation.
03:10In the early 1990s, political scientist Joseph Overton observed that political discourse is constantly shifting.
03:18What was considered radical yesterday can become a norm that no one questions today.
03:24The world moves, and we move with it.
03:28At the same time, we now know that political attitudes are not merely the result of rational deliberation.
03:35Research shows that approximately 50% of political attitudes are linked to individual personality,
03:41which is itself influenced by biological factors and genetics.
03:46Left-wing attitudes are often associated with the personality trait of openness to new experiences,
03:52while right-wing attitudes correlate with a stronger need for stability, predictability, and order.
03:58In other words, the differences between the left and the right are not merely ideological.
04:04They are deeply human.
04:06They are expressions of human evolution, and at an even deeper level, of the evolution of life on the planet.
04:13All the tensions we experience are manifestations of an evolutionary tension between change toward the new and the defense of what has worked in the past.
04:23These differences even have a neurobiological dimension.
04:27The evolution of the brain was shaped both by pressure to learn new things and by pressure to preserve what already worked.
04:34It is therefore no coincidence that language centers in most people are located in the left hemisphere of the brain,
04:41which evolved as a tool for grasping, naming, and reshaping reality.
04:46The dominance of the right hand, which emerged roughly two million years ago, is closely related to this development.
04:54The right hemisphere of the brain, by contrast, works more with context, holes, uncertainty, and what cannot be precisely named.
05:02It is no coincidence that humility, awareness of one's own limitations, and sensitivity to a broader context appear more frequently in left-wing thinking.
05:13It is important to note here that evolution slightly favored the right hemisphere, which is about one to two percent larger.
05:21This suggests that left-oriented tendencies and the drive to learn new things may, evolutionarily speaking, have had the upper hand.
05:29Awe, humility, and an understanding of the context in which we live, have therefore been part of left-wing thinking for hundreds of thousands of years.
05:39And this is precisely why it is measurable that Western civilization has long and systematically suppressed these qualities.
05:47We collectively prioritize performance, control, dominance, and growth—an extreme right-wing orientation in both neurological and cultural terms.
05:58The result can be seen, for example, in the European Parliament, where for everyone left-wing representative, there are almost two right-wing ones.
06:07That is a 100 percent numerical advantage, both of the political right and, symbolically, of the left hemisphere of the brain.
06:15The brain creates culture, and culture in turn feeds back into the brain.
06:20When these tendencies reinforce each other over centuries, culture becomes so radically shifted to the right that most people no longer even notice it.
06:30Where this leads is clear.
06:33The largest ecological crisis in the history of humanity.
06:36An explosion of inequality, hatred, and exhausted societies that are literally colliding with the limits of reality and edging toward self-destruction.
06:46That is why today, we need a radical reconstruction of society.
06:50Not a return to the past, but a return to left-wing values, cooperation, sharing, and responsibility toward the whole.
06:59The sooner we stop worshipping the illusion of endless control and growth, the sooner we have a chance to function and survive.
07:06Not as masters of the world, but as part of it.
07:09Before we end our video, a short note.
07:15We'll be glad if you like, comment, and share our content.
07:19We are the largest left-wing civic association in Slovakia, and we want to keep growing.
07:25New videos are published Fridays.
07:27If you like what we do, you can support us financially and become our members.
07:32More information is available on our website.
07:35And most importantly, don't forget to subscribe to our channel.
07:39Thanks for watching.
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