don't read this - it's dense and unclear

Most of my view of the world is conventional. Now, I don't usually put it so plainly, but the part of my world view that is unusual is the conviction that important systems, ideas and cultures never really work - at best, they muddle through and achieve mitigated successes at a tolerable cost (significant but bearable waste, cruelty, etc.). And, therefore, that the ways and means of muddling through are more valuable than the ways and means of vaulting success. Also, therefore, that a knowledge of where, when and how things fail, and a focus on building systems that can fail non-catastrophically, are of very high value. And finally, therefore, that significant acknowledged shortcomings are not a sufficient reason to accept a proposal to do or refrain.

This is an intrinsically moderate position, in this sense:

• a conservative view is that we live in an order that exists underneath all our corrupting troublemaking, and that order would work well if only people would comply with and live out that order;
• a liberal view is that we live in a broken order that warps our fundamentally decent selves, and our decency would shine through if only the order were reformed to allow people to flourish.
  

My position is that what is made bent can never be straight, and that our human world is made of somewhat - but not very - bent stuff: ourselves.

It's also a position with its own peculiar weaknesses. Here's just one: nothing works suggests an idea of high function, and I ambivalently borrow those ideas from conservatives and liberals (I don't mean to polarize thought along political dimensions, but the axis orients this particular explanation nicely). The conservative system that works is a natural order, at bottom. The liberal system that works nourishes expression, at bottom. (Order and fertility are the poles of human effort, but that's another subject.) No human system reliably and sustainably results in either. But these ideals are exterior to my own conception. Muddling through - if you were tendentious and out to show me up - could very well be said to work, as muddling through.

My reply would be that my view of the world is moderate, but my ideals and dreams are liberal and conservative. Nothing works, said by an optimist, is a view that has to borrow it's ideals to function. And that's a weakness.