Why we’re all a little liberal and a little conservative One of
the grandfathers of both conservative and liberal thinking is
the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, David Hume. Hume
believed that people did not have a constant character: rather,
that the self emerged from the bundling of different sensations
and perceptions. Findings from neuroscience in recent decades
have substantiated this: we develop neural networks,
particularly but not exclusively in sensitive periods such as
early childhood and adolescence, which form a multitude of
processes that are stimulated in different environments. In
other words, the unique social experiences we encounter mix with
our genetic profile to form the different dispositions we have
at different points in time. As Professor Bruce Hood shows in
his new book The Self Illusion, it is often the reflected
opinions of others in different social networks which modifies
our behaviour and attitudes. So the self is malleable; our
tastes and views changeable: “In other words, t