In the spirit of deconstructing (heh) feminist and manboob psychology, here’s my stab at doing the same for the underlying psychologies of liberals and conservatives. I’m working under the premise that political ideology is at least partly genetic in origin, which evidence is beginning to suggest may be the case. Whether it’s one gene or thousands of genes that contribute is irrelevant to the larger picture.
Liberals are naive novelty seekers, and this manifests as, for instance, a (claimed) love of open borders and diversity, and a penchant for risk and undue optimism in the face of evidence to the contrary. Conservatives are commonsensical guardians, and that manifests as a wariness of untested outsiders and a respect for the tried and true. Neither ideology, if restrained from its worst excesses, is necessarily “bad”; logically, if liberalism or conservatism were really bad and fitness-reducing, they would have been selected out of the human gene pool by now. No, it’s probably fairer to say that in an environment of low level threats and approximate mental, emotional and psychological equality between men, (such as might be seen in an isolated, small hunter-gatherer tribe), liberalism (i.e., “foragerism”) is the more “fit” ideology; whereas in a threatening, unstable environment where human traits, both positive and negative, between people and races are unequally distributed, conservatism (i.e., “farmerism”) is the more “fit” ideology to hold.
Now… did you all notice my reframe in the above definitions? See how easy it really is to throw a snarky leftist back on his heels, in the defensive crouch? Open-minded? How about naive. Adventurous? Careless. Tolerant? Undiscerning. You can do the same with women by reframing their objections. That is a core concept of game.
A reader adds:
Liberals do indeed score a lot higher on the personality trait Openness to Experience. However, conservatives score significantly higher on the personality trait Conscientiousness. Which means conservatives tend to fuck things, including their own lives, up a lot less.
Anyway, if you haven’t you should read up on the work of Jonathan Haidt. Very worthwhile.
I’m in a generous mood, so I’ll say this about that: a wholly conservative society will probably stagnate into dullness, albeit a dullness that pleasantly avoids total dystopia. A wholly liberal society, thrilling as it is, will probably go extinct from being overrun by barbarians, or will implode from a lack of attention to the time-tested details that scaffold civilization. Maybe both ideologies are found in humans because a mix of the two maximizes group fitness. /generosity
Liberalism is ascendent right now (spare me the hand waving about Republican electoral wins, who have been forced leftward for generations just to compete), and we can see from that the whole project beginning to unravel under their Open-minded and Novelty Seeking tutelage. Their power has grown beyond their control, and if it can’t be stopped at the voting booth, the boardroom, or the classroom, it WILL be stopped when the less enlightened hordes bring their pandemonium, whether quickly by arms or slowly by alms, crashing down upon the gated communities.
And, man, when that happens, will that be the most satisfying “I told you so” I ever contemptuously dripped like sun-warmed ice cream outta my mouth.
You need to write political commentary as much as you write about game. Just a suggestion. I would say contact Takimag or VDARE. Those site would at least pay.
Think about it.
Oh, and wake up, white man.
Nope.
I bet The Greatest Blogger in History
Gets Derbed in a nanosec.
If ya ain’t derbed
ya ain’t doin’
it right
Thomas Sowell describes it best. Liberals are concerned with fair outcomes, while conservatives are concerned with fair process. Liberals see humans as essentially good (blank slate) while conservatives see humans as inherently flawed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Conflict_of_Visions
h/t GLP
Sowell has it partially right, but there seem to be three political tendencies, not two: left-liberals, right-liberals/libertarians, and conservatives/traditionalists. Libertarians are actually psychologically closer to left-liberals than they are to conservatives, and it is they, not conservatives, who are most concerned about procedural fairness.
What confuses people in the Anglosphere is that the Republican party, like the British and Canadian Conservative parties, is a fusion of libertarianism and conservatism. At least the Australians call their “right wing” party the Liberals.
While I can agree with the fair outcomes and fair process, the idea that any group views all humans as essentially good or flawed seems unrealistic. People love and hate each other on class, race, and sex lines and your political beliefs will determine which group you must love and hate. There are probably far more exceptions than cases.
For example, modern liberalism often believes that white people are inherently flawed while africans and mexicans aren’t. Guilt for whiteness is one of the main platforms of the democrat party.
Ric Locke has blogged insightfully about the connections between liberalism and hunter-gatherer societies. It is very much in line with what you are saying, but he pushes the analysis in some different directions.
Google “Seekrit Stash” to bring up his three blog posts on the topic.
I have an identical twin brother that is a Marxist. I’m center right on most issues. I’m a middle child. He’s considered the youngest and had all of the pathological personalities attributes of it. Overly competitive, manipulative, promiscuous. He’s possibly borderline personality disorder. Regardless, I’m not saying genes can’t contribute to political stances. However, I think it’s a lot more complex than that.
majorscarlet
I have an identical twin brother that is a Marxist.
Good, at least that means you know where he lives.
I no longer care to waste time discovering nuances of liberals or liberalism. It simply must be toppled and destroyed .
Some shit about fighting monsters and staring into the abyss seems apropos…
Comments n’ shit
Today, are what substitute
for actual fighting and its subsequent achievement.
And Monsters are fantasy.
This is true.
We should take the battle to the HuffPo/NYT/LA Times etc.
However, we should understand what we are destroying. This isn’t to assume that there is some kernel of rationality at the heart of the beast, or that everything is fathomable by the exercise of human reason, but that we must not become the incomprehensible while destroying it.
Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.
There’s no destroying going on – none
Just talk, more talk and writing³
If you want a successful model to follow on how to unconscionably destroy – copy what liberals did to pre-1960 America.
Not THAT is destruction. Guilt-free, no-regrets.
Complete.
The way Victory should feel.
Beliefs suck.
I believe you are right.
Using a very simple model; liberals being more “risk-taking”, and conservatives more “risk-averse”; the only stable “solution”, is making sure the extra upside made possible by liberals risk taking, being balanced by them also having to, themselves, cover the entirety of the corresponding downside.
That is not happening today. Instead, we have a situation where even many “conservatives” don’t have the gumption to simply leave the liberals to deal with the full fallout of their own actions. Which, classic moral hazard, encourages liberals to take even more risk; until society is vastly riskier than evolutionary optimal. Leaving it easy pickings for less out of whack cultures.
And, man, when that happens, will that be the most satisfying “I told you so” I ever contemptuously dripped like sun-warmed ice cream outta my mouth.
You’ll never get the chance to say it. Liberals never acknowledge the mayhem they’ve loosed, and libertarians are even worse…..
Q: How does a libertarian solve a problem created by his ideology?
A: “Problem? What problem?”
Agreed on pretty much your whole post, Heartiste. Very enlightening.
One comment: Using your own excellent criteria, the liberal brain is probably better suited to the “low-level threats” of modern American society, which is uncommonly safe, when viewed against the day-to-day atrocities of most of human history.
However, the conservative brain is much better suited for defending against those very atrocities, and if by chance they don’t exist, it tends to invent wars of all sizes to justify its own natural “wariness” and “guardian[ship]“, as you put it. Cheney would be exhibit A.
Now, what about women? Do they skew liberal (conventional wisdom) or conservative (Reagan landslide)? Or doesn’t it matter — do they just vote for whichever candidate seems the most alpha?
Do they skew liberal (conventional wisdom) or conservative (Reagan landslide)?
Haidt doesn’t bring this up, but women are both more religious and more liberal, which goes against the overall trend.
I think how we reconcile this is to remember that there are two ways to become liberal: one is to have low settings on the moral foundations of loyalty, authority, and purity, the other is to have high settings on the care and fairness setting. Even (somewhat more religious) women tend to have higher settings at least on the care foundation.
[heartiste: that’s interesting. there is a bit of tension between my diagnosis and the male-female ideology gap. if liberalism = naive novelty seeking, then you might expect men, who are the bigger risk takers than women thanks to testosterone, to be more liberal. but then you could argue that women are bigger attention whores than men, which is another way of describing novelty seeking.
of course, the other part of the diagnosis — naivete — pretty much comports well with the gender ideology gap. men are, on the whole, less naive than women, because they have to be.]
It is interesting. Women do seem to have conflicting tendencies that could lead them towards either the left or right, but for whatever reason the left is winning their hearts right now, at least while they’re single.
I’m too am not sure that women like novelty any less than men (they sure do like to travel), but they don’t seem as active in seeking it out.
Givers, takers, helpers, hoarders. Take your pick.
oh more on science science, neophilia, and alleged conservative anti-science bias. The #mca twitter feed is full of “fuck cancer”, well you know what? Fuck treating cancer with a vegan lifestyle and with meditation. Saliva cancer is, treated at an early stage, not fatal. Veganism is terrible for cancer because cancer feasts on the high carbohydrate heavy vegan diet (i.e., there’s not enough high protein vegan dishes). And actually, it turns out that real Buddhist Tibetans aren’t vegetarians, that’s right they eat meat. MCA just got sold a bill of goods that his lefty side couldn’t resist. So, who’s anti-science, the neophiliac who eschews western science for some hocus pocus. And that sucks because, well, the Beastie Boys promised another video in 25 years at the end of Make Some Noise.
And actually, it turns out that real Buddhist Tibetans aren’t vegetarians
Gandhi was riddled with the same kind of hypocrisy. I never stop enjoying to point this out to admirers.
This sounds rIght on first hearing, but then I recall that all the fags and cowering mama’s boys I went to school with ended up left and lefter, and the rascals and miscreants mostly settled into distinctly unadventurous conservatism.
What seemed to drive the lib/lefty identity formation was a whining need for justice/equality/fairness. They identified with the “oppressed” because they felt themselves to be weaker and in need of protection.
On the other hand, around 1800 it would have been at least a little ballsy to be a leftist, e.g. Byron as opposed to some good little man of God. So maybe what we hate about leftists–their ceaseless whining “that’s not fair!”– isnt necessarily an intrinsic left/liberal quality.
a wholly conservative society will probably stagnate into dullness, albeit a dullness that pleasantly avoids total dystopia
You’re kind of describing NE Asia, aren’t you.
Fred Reed comments:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/article/2007/sep/10/00017/
Or rather, a wholly conservative society avoids the cancerous influence of the traitorous, decadent, hedonistic liberals while barbarians gathered outside the gates. The dullness is the females’ distaste of the beta patriarchy instead of hypergamous polyamory they prefer. Why should 80% of men get to procreate instead of a select 15%?
more on crap studies that Jason can misread: http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/298913
Cheap shots from anonymous cowards. Sign your name, like I do, and let’s talk. This alpha reads and writes for a living, and he LOVES a good debate.
Also, try to link to something nonpartisan. You don’t see me directing people to Brookings Institution press releases, do you?
Der? Anonymous coward? It’s the internet. My name’s Georges St. Pierre, yeah, that’s the ticket. I don’t see a link in your profile to your by-line. Just saying…
Let’s rehash, you, Jason, posted to some idiotic article on Salon which had a headline that was blown out of proportion to the findings and scope of the study. That being, the findings were more conclusive that liberal minded folks avoid recognizing danger instead of “close minded” or whatever.
Since your reading and writing for a living doesn’t include reading the sciencey articles you post or that other people post in reply, here’ what my link read that this is a trend among the liberal set:
Consider that one of the more famous studies was conducted by liberal researchers at University of California…Subjects were asked to spot the letters M or W on a screen for a fraction of a second. It turns out that self-described liberals did somewhat better on the test than the conservatives.
What does that mean? Well, according to the researchers, it means: “Liberals are more responsive to informational complexity, ambiguity, and novelty.” Liberals are also “more likely than are conservatives to respond to cues signaling the need to change habitual responses,” NYU says.
….
The data might be correct, but as with Mooney, the conclusions are beyond absurd. …
Huh? The test didn’t measure “informational complexity.” It measured informational simplicity.
That is, liberal’s love of science is a love that exists as long as the science can be manipulated to their own feelings of smug, superiority, and close mindedness.
The differences that I’ve observed about libs and cons is that cons are more open minded to being friendly to libs than vice versa, that conservatives don’t stand around circle jerking it to their mutual hatred of Obama as liberals did and still do with W bush, that most people I know with hard science majors are not liberals, and that their behavior comports with another study that liberal’s who checked off certain behavioral boxes like “eats vegetarian dishes from Whole Foods,” no longer felt the need to do anything else that’s virtuous like donate money to charity or to be honest in their dealings with others.
Quite simply, the over arching liberal mindset I’ve observed is the the tendency to closed minded group think. I also find that talking to a lib is less an exchange of ideas than an exchange of shibboleths, that I can make a point, the point being considered and true, and the lib will nonetheless promptly ignore and forget said point as if the counterargument never happened.
Now, that being said, the difference between you and me is that I am not a smug asshole about it.
Another thing, libs I know love to think that cons are solely the province of rural rednecks who worship snakes and Jayzus. They forget that the DNC’s biggest, strongest voting block are illiterate inner city thugs on welfare. That is, your groupthink’s population is not just a bunch of urban honkies with useless liberal arts degrees and advanced tastes in gourmet vegan foods, there’s a lot of blue collar union types (as Obama said in his book, guy’s whose career it was to push a button over and over to bend sheet metal) and a lot of inner city types in that mix as well. So while Kevin Smith can make a movie about the dangers of the Red State, the real world danger is what happened to Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, or the several Treyvon Martin revenge attacks on whites.
Thanks for the fake name. All I meant was that it would be nice for you to post a handle, since so many people here post anonymously. It’s good to know who I’m talking to. (My real name is Jason, but yes, this is the Internet, so that’s as far as it goes.)
I’ve never heard anybody generalize about liberals’ manipulation of science before. That sounds fairly insane. Especially since, as many have pointed out here, hard sciences are often dominated by conservatives.
I’ve also never heard that liberals don’t like to donate money or be honest with others. I do both, to a fault. Your hedging with your name is hurting your case tremendously here.
And since you generously replied to my provocation, I’ll toss you a bone: groupthink and shibboleth-exchange is found everywhere, in all people, and it’s boring as hell. But if you’ve studied party politics, you’ll know that the Repubs have done a masterful job of harnessing this unfortunate human tendency. The Dems value diversity and are therefore much less efficient in staying on message.
Gotta disagree with you on “how “conservatives don’t stand around jerking it to their mutual hatred of Obama”. Maybe you don’t, but it’s well known that defeating Obama has become a rallying point for conservatives. In fact, the entire congressional Republican faction has quite openly dedicated itself to his failure. Sorry, but that’s the truth.
I’d also suggest that everybody in America refrain from using the word “smug” to describe ideological opposition. It doesn’t mean anything, and it reflects the unbearable feminine inclination to argue tone and body language. Let’s argue facts.
We are living in the most polarized era since the Gilded Age. Thanks for the debate.
“Conservatives resist growth of the state, but that’s not the same thing as resisting change. After all, capitalism is among the most powerful agents of change in human history, and conservatives are the ones defending it. Meanwhile, liberals are downright reactionary about preserving the Great Society and New Deal.”
Yup.
Liberals are less risk-averse???
That is laughable. Now, there is a Liberal élite that is not risk averse,
but that is mainly because the risks (in their perception) fall on others:
their re-engineered-to-their-taste society would (in their perception)
be run by the élite (themselves), no matter what. If the non-élites
(upper middle class through working class) suffer, that is a risk
they are willing to take.
LIberals worry about parts-per-trillion contaminants, global warming,
etc. That is being risk averse?
Of course, some of it more a distinction of WHAT to worry about. Most
conservatives (and LIbertarians by definition) worry about the growth of the state/federal-government. Also, they worry about, union thugs, theft of elections, erosion of obedience to the Constitution etc.
So, who is being risk averse is somewhat a matter of definition, specifically it is about the evaluaterors’ definition of which risks are rational etc.
Thor
Many fiscal conservatives are social liberals. Where do they fit in?
They are fucking idiots. I’m a social conservative not because I care for peoples souls but because I hate big government. A society that indulges it’s most base needs and has no morals is one full of junkies, homeless, bastards etc. all of which cost a fucking fortune, leading to big taxes, ruinous government programs and eventually outright tyranny. Spare me the “just let the bastards starve” nonsense. Anyone thats honest knows such principled stands are impossible under universal suffrage.
These “fiscal conservative” bullshiters are usually blue state, nyt readers that aren’t outright marxists like the rest of their friends and so think themselves right wing reactionaries.
Syd you have it all wrong. Socially liberal for a libertarian means that Government stays out of your personal life. No laws against abortion. No wasted money on worthless drug wars. Go fuck as many women as you want. Watch as much porn as you want. In other words, you can do whatever the hell you want, just don’t expect me to pay for it. This is the only economically sound way to have social liberalism.
Fair enough do whatever you want, I’m all for that, but this behavior inevitably leads to junkies, bastards etc. No problem for me, fuck’em. But you must see that as long as women and manginas can vote they will vote to “fix” these problems with my fucking money! Eagerly encourged by the Ted Kennedy type parasites at the top.
Maybe I don’t get it, but this seems as obvious to me as 1+1=2. Socially liberal and fiscal conservative is an oxymoron. Only a civil war will enable repeal of the 19amd. Seems to me social conservatism, as in pre 60s shaming of sluts, is the only way.
http://neuropolitics.org/
This is an awesome website on political neurobiology.
For instance in the 2010 archives I found posts like these;
Religiosity, Altruism, and Genetic Relatedness
http://neuropolitics.org/defaultjul10.asp
Genetic variation, group selection, and political behavior
http://neuropolitics.org/defaultmar10.asp
The War of Conservatism and Liberalism, 2009
http://neuropolitics.org/defaultjan10.asp
2009 Archives;
Political-Religious Disposition and the Dopamine Reward System
http://neuropolitics.org/defaultdec09.asp
The Politics of the Right Prefontal Cortex
http://neuropolitics.org/defaultmar09.asp
Liberal Method Actors and Conservative Character Actors
http://neuropolitics.org/defaultjan09v5.asp
I suggest you check it out.
Mind you though, a lot of what they write about hasn’t gone through a peer-review process so should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt.
That should be I think, although am not sure, that a lot of what they write about hasn’t gone through a peer-review process.
Don’t forget envy, or the fear of being envied (for the limousine liberals) as the prime motive force of the liberal mind, with generous helpings of hypocrisy presenting as concern for the “underprivileged”. Haidt seems to have overlooked these so very important features of their thinking. Somebody needs to write a book about it.
I would not call NE Asia dull, by any means. They’ve a long history of slaughtering each other intensely. The Taipeng Rebellion killed, in the age of muzzle-loading muskets, somewhere on the order of 30 million people. With Civil War technology.
The kind of violence however is quite different. [Stillwell describes btw an intense personal violence before WWII in China, in Tuchman’s biography.] Most of the time highly dutiful societies have low levels of violence, but when they emerge it is terrible, and mostly they themselves are the victims. Examples: Thirty Years War (33-45% of German speakers killed), English Civil War, US Civil War (40% of Southern men age 14-45 killed). The dutifulness enhances rather than detracts from the violence.
Rwanda could have a spasm of horrific violence, mostly by rock and machete, equaling in 3 months the near-total toll of Auschwitz over nearly 4 years with the most modern killing technology. But then it ends because the killers are not dutiful. Tilly’s, Wallenstein’s, Gustavus Adolphus’s men fought on for years. In terrible conditions. A single hour on the Western Front 1915 would have broken the strongest African warrior.
Rwanda could have a spasm of horrific violence, mostly by rock and machete, equaling in 3 months the near-total toll of Auschwitz over nearly 4 years with the most modern killing technology.
Geez, those Nazis really sucked at killing Jews. It’s like they weren’t even trying.
Rwanda could have a spasm of horrific violence, mostly by rock and machete, equaling in 3 months the near-total toll of Auschwitz over nearly 4 years with the most modern killing technology
That’s because there was no “killing technology” employed at Auschwitz. It was typhus and starvation toward the end of the war caused by indiscriminate Allied bombing that did the Jews in.
Good to see the bizarro-world allegations of what went on in the KZs are being challenged… well-done.
I’m not entirely sure what’s wrong with liberals, I think they are more maternalistic and womanly. Low testosterone.
“The Men in Julia’s Life” (as in the Julia in those new Democrat ads) on PJ Media… off-topic, but bear-with…
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/05/04/the-men-in-julias-life/
Her son, Zachary, ends up taking the Red Pill from all that.
“men in Julia’s Life”
wow, that was the best education for not voting Democrat for president.
Like they say give a fool enough air time and rope and he’ll hang hisself!
thanks for the link!
“…a wholly conservative society will probably stagnate into dullness, albeit a dullness that pleasantly avoids total dystopia.”
This is too true. Think of all the cool/interesting cities in the USA that anyone (young) wants to visit or live in. They are all liberal cities.
American Conservatism = Apple pie, church, Susie homemaker types, golf/country club, early marriage, lame music, etc…in short, “Mitt Romey America” is dull as fuck.
Say what you want about liberalism, but the truth is that without liberalism we would all die of boredom.
[heartiste: yeah, but… you know that old chinese proverb: “may you live in interesting times”. it’s not meant as a blessing.]
You mean the cities that are barely habitable, like Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, etc.?
You got me there – they’re all interesting, and all liberal…. interesting in a “lucky to escape with your life” sort of way.
There all yours – you can have ‘em!
Typical Fox News viewer.
Not all of Los Angeles or Chicago is crappy. Plenty of safe and hip neighborhoods. Detroit…well, you got me on that one, but whites abandoned Detroit years ago. Doesn’t really count.
As for other livable cities, well just take a look at this poster:
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/wsop-poster.jpg
Sorry, but living in podunk Mississippi, where the most interesting thing to happen is the opening of the new Wal-Mart, does not suit most young people.
Now, go back to watching Sean Hannity.
Liberal places are “interesting” if you’re a hipster retard.
Name calling is best left to five year olds, Lacanophile.
Visit some new places — I’ve been to 47 of the 50 states — and you might find yourself more open to different ideas.
Also, please try, for the sake of your readers, to lift up the level of your discourse just a smidge. I can recommend some good books of vocabulary, if you’d like.
I’m not quite a hipster retard but I tend to hang around where they hang around. One thing I notice is the lack of diversity. SWPL shit it is, but it is still a White thing. My fascist talk goes over better and better as the crowd gets older.
Generally, the aggressively hipster types are apolitical and start swinging wildly right after their children start to outnumber their dogs.
Make that hipster doofus.
Nazi Germany was quite conservative and led by a real alpha male. Picked fights it couldn’t win and the country got split in half and couldn’t wave its flag in public for 60 years.
You can have too much of a good thing.
Yeah, the country run by the National Socialist German Workers’ Party was *sarcasm* conservative. If this were true, that a socialist country like nazi germany was *conservative*, then at least it would end the line of thought on this thread that conservatives are boring because Berlin had a rocking nightlife if the movies are to be believed. Srsly tho, fascists were just another flavor of socialist fucks. I don’t know if this misinformation is a result of propaganda or just bad public education. But whatever, since we’re psychoanalyzing libs and conservs here, then this allegation that nazi was a con construct is merely liberals ignoring the sad sad and believing the happy happy lies.
Also, “I’ve SEEN the future. Do you know what it is? It’s a 47-year-old virgin sitting around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake, singing “I’m an Oscar Meyer Wiener”” in a liberal utopia…so shove that “exciting” liberal society thread up your pie hole.
I don’t know which of you is dumber. Hitler was neither a conservative nor a leftist.
explain your work, then, eh? He was a totalitarian, liberals are totalitarians, etc. etc. etc., oh and he was a member/founder (inasmuch as I am not an Adolphaphile) of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. If you mean that modern American political squibbles aren’t applicable to post Weimar German reconstructive politics and Robert Conquest’s reporting of the same, fine, thanks for the political lesson.
Yes he claimed to be a socialist but all the economic benefits that accrued to the German people were there well before the vocal socialist minority of the Party got there way and rammed thru truly socialist legislation. Much of the benefit came from simply throwing off the lecherous, usurious financial overclass and allowing the capitalist industrialists a freer hand which enabled a social safety net to flourish.
Capitalism worked in the 1950s and 60s. It could be made to work again. What Hitler called “socialism” could just as well be called populist capitalism, or participatory capitalism, or national (as opposed to international) capitalism, or productive (as opposed to financial) capitalism. Since “capitalism” was a dirty word in Germany in those days, he called his system “socialism,” but that is a misnomer. Hitler’s “socialism” was really the opposite of predatory finance capitalism.
NSDAP Germany was above the typical left/right dichotomy.
the vocal socialist minority of the Party got there way
Sigh…. got their way