Posted on 10/17/2020 8:43:33 PM PDT by CheshireTheCat
It is NOT TRUE that the partisan divide is a struggle between similar people who happen to vote differently. It IS TRUE that it is between different kinds of people. The implications of this are enormous.
The primary factor that differentiates the two kinds of people is cognitive style – operating system, if you will, of social cognition – evident across nearly all of human history, as described by Arthur Herman in his book The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization.
The two predominant cognitive styles are WEIRD Platonic Idealism on the left and Holistic Aristotelian empiricism on the right, both of which bear striking similarities to descriptions of left and right offered by multiple other researchers.
The secondary factor that differentiates the two kinds of people follows from the first. It is the moral matrix.
A moral matrix is the particular blend and prioritization of six* evolved psychological mechanisms of subconscious social cognition called moral foundations.
Moral foundations are products of natural selection. They are pattern recognition modules of social cognition, constantly operating outside of our awareness like tiny subconscious social radars, perpetually scanning the social environment for patterns of thought and behavior that represented threats and opportunities to our genetic ancestors. When patterns are detected the mechanisms send signals to us in the form of instincts and intuitions of like/dislike, approach/avoid, and fight/flee we experience in response to the things we see in the social world around us.
The moral foundations are care/harm, fairness/cheating, autonomy/oppression, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and purity/degradation.
The moral matrix of the left rests almost entirely on the first two foundations. The moral matrix of the right rests on all six equally. These findings hold true on every continent....
(Excerpt) Read more at theindependentwhig.com ...
My way of describing it is that conservatives are the adults and liberals are the children. We understand them pretty well, actually, because we were children once too. But they cannot understand us.
The way I have described it to others is thus: Imagine a little boy finds a puppy and brings it home. It's a beautiful puppy, and the child desperately wants to keep it. The father, with a sinking heart, tries to explain, "We can't keep it. We live in a two bedroom apartment, the landlord has a no-pets clause, your mom and I both work all day and you and your sister are in school, there's no one to take care of it during the day, your sister is allergic, and we are in dire financial straits right now..."
But no matter what the father says, the boy tries to come up with solutions that are fairly untenable. Let's move! Mom can quit and stay home! Sister can take medication! It won't cost that much!
The father understands how the child feels, but the child can't understand the father's concerns and is now angry and crying, thinking daddy is mean.
There are two kinds of people; those who understand humans exist on a continuum of ideology and motivation and those who don’t.
I have been talking to more liberals than ever before since Trump. I can’t help it. They jump out of the woodwork at you to tell you how wrong you are.
It seems to me the real problem is, liberals are very damaged people. So damaged, they cannot expend any time to research ANYTHING that other people might be right on - if an issue ticks their emotions. It usually starts out from something in their past - a family thing. They come from a broken family or out of a bad divorce and never had a dad at home. That is why I think so many leftists are screaming white women. They are still acting out their traumas in life.
They cannot argue with you rationally. They cannot search out issues based on facts. They only look for “facts” that confirm their boo-boos. This is why they will say to you, flat out, almost every time, “I only read the NYT, CNN, NBC” etc. They will NEVER deviate and read outside to really try to understand a situation, like conservatives do. They can’t risk it.
If the facts start to confirm they are wrong, and their worldview starts to slip, the namecalling and hysteria starts. Because they really ARE too fragile, emotionally, to deal with a world where it doesn’t work the way they envision. If they scream, it will all go away. They are still three years old, politically. They seek out only their own type company to confirm their bias, and others mustn’t be allowed to even speak.
As a liberal said to me this weekend, “You have an answer for everything”. And the things he was saying to me were such propaganda - so easily debunked - things we all know were complete media lies. He really just didn’t want to know the truth. He wants his worldview. He doesn’t care it is all a lie, because he is too weak to deal with truth. And BTW, I am completely convinced that is why the pot issue is so important - they must be medicated to deal with their anxiety, to make all their lies work for them.
All humans are damaged.
But liberals celebrate that damage as victims of life instead of realizing that the objective is to overcome it and thereby develop a kind of maturity (i.e. wisdom) as result.
Liberals (a misnomer BTW) don't want to grow up. They are developmentally challenged by choice.
The reason liberalism cannot win is that life/reality itself is against it...and liberals are against life/reality.
Very good reading. Well written and powerfully insightful.
Excellent book.
The left confuses Platonic idealism with Seismic Stability.
The woman I started dating two and a half years ago WAS a liberal.
On our third date she asked me point blank if I voted for President Trump. I responded yes. She asked why. I responded "it's simple: when people are working and taking care of their families, they don't argue. They're too busy making money and doing the right things for their family."
Her response almost floored me when she said I was the first Trump voter she's met and dated who could succinctly tell her why they voted for him in an answer that made sense to her.
In the last two and a half years I've taught her how to shoot pistol, rifle and shotgun. She no longer fears guns. She now owns one. We go to the range together. Our families eat dinner together on Sundays. Her family adores me and my family adores her.
She's no longer a liberal. We built our relationship on truth. She told me at the beginning of our relationship she voted for Hillary. I asked her why. She said she initially thought Hillary was more qualified than President Trump and began to doubt that shortly after President Trump took office as she watched the economy take off.
Fast forward to last night when she asked me if I was voting for President Trump again. I said yes I was. She said she was also. I asked her why. Her response: when people are working and taking care of their families, they're not fighting with each other. She then added she's never seen our government work so fast to fix problems as it has under President Trump. She still gets annoyed by his behavior and how he speaks, she likes the RESULTS he gets and that's why she, a former liberal is voting for President Trump this time around.
My experience is there are MANY like her. BTW her daughter who now lives in Berea, Ohio and works for a large medical diagnostics lab is voting for Trump this year too after voting for Hillary in 2016 for the same reasons. It's amazing how President Trump's ACTIONS have swayed people who HATED him in 2016 to his side in 2020.
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