Not at all, and I don't think right-wing people are bad; they just think the status quo is optimum, is a global maxima.
For example, the 'vanilla' right in Brazil in XIX century managed to delay the end of slavery by 6 decades. They thought the country would collapse without slave labor to sustain the agribusiness at the time. Were they inherently bad? Of course not; they thought they couldn't do any better (and of course their opinion was tainted by the fact they owned plantations. It is only human to like the status quo when you are benefited by it. And they were plain wrong, after all. Agribusiness only grew stronger after abolition.)
I classify most 'lefties' here as disguised right-wing people because they also think the public sector is perfect as it is, among other things I don't agree with.
The society needs left/progressive views to go forward, as it needs righties to pay the current bills. But there are much more productive ways to be a lefty. I respect the Green Party here, as well as politicians that have been proposing UBI for 20 years or more, way before it was on vogue.
> they just think the status quo is optimum, is a global maxima.
I don’t think that’s a fair characterization of right wing thought, either in general or specifically in Brazil.
In general the conservative view is to improve the status quo without throwing away the good things that have been achieved. It’s an understanding that it’s much easier to destroy things (even if unintentionally) then it is to build them.
I’ll agree the left sometimes good at identifying problems, but the proposed cures are often worse than the disease, as seen with the recent abolish/defund the police idea that had quickly gained traction in the left.
To give a more concrete example: Brazil is under a right wing government after 16 years of left wing ones. The current administration seems to want to reduce the size of the public sector, which has massively increased in the last decades, and decentralize government structure (one of its campaign slogans was “less Brasilia, more Brazil”, referring to a reduction of the influence of the federal government in state or city issues).
So one can argue that this is a right wing administration that wants to change the status quo built along the current past decades.
On the other hand, a left wing administration would probably try to increase the size of the public sector even more, or at least increase the benefits public workers have over private sector ones, so you could say they wouldn’t be happy with the status quo either.
In either case, no side would seem to ever consider the status quo as a global maxima. Therefore I don’t think this definition is valid or useful to define what is right or left wing.
In fact, you said it yourself, when you mentioned that everyone likes the status quo when it benefits them. It seems to me every one would be happy with at least some aspect of the status quo, and unhappy with others. Is everyone simultaneously right and left wing? If so, isn’t that classification somewhat useless?
I think the status quo issue is more about corporatism than it is about left and right. For example, I know people who describe themselves as right wing/conservatives, but they are public sector workers, and therefore angry at any mention of possible reductions of their privileges.
I will also dispute that progressive views are what makes society go forward. Sometimes they are, sometimes they aren’t. You don’t have to look much further than the issues of cancel culture, online shaming and censorship against people who fail to use the right words or publicly defend the right causes, which are undoubtedly a result of modern left/progressive thought. I think we’re definitely going backwards in this case.
Anyway, sorry if this was too much rambling, it’s a bit late here. Good night :)
For example, the 'vanilla' right in Brazil in XIX century managed to delay the end of slavery by 6 decades. They thought the country would collapse without slave labor to sustain the agribusiness at the time. Were they inherently bad? Of course not; they thought they couldn't do any better (and of course their opinion was tainted by the fact they owned plantations. It is only human to like the status quo when you are benefited by it. And they were plain wrong, after all. Agribusiness only grew stronger after abolition.)
I classify most 'lefties' here as disguised right-wing people because they also think the public sector is perfect as it is, among other things I don't agree with.
The society needs left/progressive views to go forward, as it needs righties to pay the current bills. But there are much more productive ways to be a lefty. I respect the Green Party here, as well as politicians that have been proposing UBI for 20 years or more, way before it was on vogue.