Posted on 01/19/2013 6:13:45 AM PST by AnonymousConservative
I was emailing with a reader, who has noticed the same things about Liberal debating tactics that I have. His perception was that every interaction must have a component which will shame the Liberal. It must have some aspect which the Liberal will not want anyone else to see. Of course the reason that such a component would be shameful, is due to the fact that if it became widely known, the Liberal would be out-grouped. It is the threat of being out-grouped which motivates the Liberal to abandon Liberalism. However, there may be more to it, and there may be subtleties that we may want to examine.
Of course, from an evolutionary, and r/K standpoint, shame will only carry Darwinian consequence in a K-selective environment. Only in such a resource-limited environment will one need to belong to a group. If conditions are r-selecting and resources are everywhere, then being ejected from a group will have less consequence on survival, and may even be advantageous, since you will no longer be sacrificing for the good of the group. Under r-selection, shamelessness may be highly adaptive, even as it will get you killed in a K-selective environment.
As the reader and I compared notes, and I reviewed his arguments and mine, one thing I noticed was the most effective shaming tactics may incorporate an opening with a subtle intimation that we are in a violent, K-selective environment. The opening may even personalize the threat this poses to the Liberal. This may be a necessary foundation which greatly enhances the effect of the subsequent out-grouping. If the Liberal has a slight frame in their head that they are threatened, and could get hurt, it may lead the Liberal to feel that they need a group to hide behind, if they are to survive. Because let’s face it, none of these characters would last a minute in a K-selective state of nature.
This introducing a threat frame prior to your argument may be important, given how we seem programmed to respond to these cues subconsciously. If threats are not everywhere, and violence is not seen as real, people may not be shamed as easily over their shameful behavior, since they may not care if they are part of a group or not. I think this is why a civilized, highly productive society will be afflicted with Liberalism to begin with. Under these conditions, being out-grouped may actually be advantageous evolutionarily, and they may embrace it. Just look at how shameless our society is today. I suspect if violence returns in the coming collapse, shame will as well.
This observation of the effectiveness of providing a threat frame, before making your case is supported by scientific research, as well.
John Jost noted that when examining adherence to ideological opinions,
Situational variables—including system threat and mortality salience… affect the degree to which an individual is drawn to liberal versus conservative leaders, parties, and opinions.
Much as the Great Depression precipitated rightward shifts in Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Japan, and other nations, heightened perceptions of uncertainty and threat in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, generally increased the appeal of conservative leaders and opinions
Since the publication of our meta-analysis, several additional studies have demonstrated that reminders of death and terrorism increase the attractiveness of conservative leaders and opinions.
Landau et al. (2004) demonstrated that subliminal and supraliminal 9/11 and death primes led college students (a relatively liberal population) to show increased support for President Bush and his counterterrorism policies and decreased support for the liberal challenger John Kerry. These effects were replicated by Cohen et al. (2005) immediately prior to the Bush–Kerry election in 2004. A Spanish study found that in the aftermath of the Madrid terrorist attacks of March 11, 2004, survey respondents scored higher on measures of authoritarianism and prejudice and were more likely to endorse conservative values and less likely to endorse liberal values, compared with baseline levels calculated prior to the attacks (Echebarria & Ferna´ndez, 2006).
An experimental study by Jost, Fitzsimons, and Kay (2004) demonstrated that priming people with images evoking death (e.g., images of a funeral hearse, a “Dead End” street sign, and a chalk outline of a human body) led liberals and moderates as well as conservatives to more strongly endorse politically conservative opinions on issues such as taxation, same-sex marriage, and stem cell research, compared with a standard control condition in which participants were primed with images evoking pain (e.g., a dentist’s chair, a bandaged arm, and a bee sting removal). This finding is particularly important because it demonstrates that death reminders increase support for conservative opinions as well as leaders and therefore rules out charismatic leadership as an alternative explanation for the results (see Cohen et al., 2005).
A recently conducted study of the political attitudes of World Trade Center survivors provides further support for the notion that threat precipitates “conservative shift” even among people who were not initially conservative (Bonanno & Jost, in press).
Thus, if presented fearful/threatening “mortal salience stimuli,” individuals reflexively became more Conservative on subsequent questionnaires, and they do so across all measures of Conservatism. Perhaps he was presenting what should be a foundational structure of an out-grouping attack, and noting an openness to Conservatism motivated by a reflexive desire to avoid out-grouping.
It is important to note, this isn’t a threatening presentation, which the Liberal could use to out-group you as violent and unstable. It is not telling the Liberal you are going to kill him. That only works if you are able to, and about to swiftly follow-up on it (in which case, the Liberal will immediately agree with you). Rather what I am describing here is merely a wholly unemotional aside, pointing out impartially, that the environment that everyone inhabits is violent and dangerous, and the Liberal may have to face that danger, like everyone else.
Of course, I immediately see Colonel Connell when he began his brilliant out-grouping attack on Mike Wallace by saying,
“Two days later they (the reporters – Jennings and Wallace) are both walking off my hilltop and they’re 200 yards away, and they get ambushed and they’re lying there wounded. And they’re going to expect I’m going to send Marines out there to get them.”
You can’t create a perception of a K-selective environment much better than by creating an image of dead and dying Liberals, strewn across a battlefield, desperately screaming and begging for their lives, like the pathetic pansies they are – their only chance for survival being the group of K-selected Warriors they have just pissed off.
This was doubly beautiful, since it combined this violent threat frame with a Diminution of Stature attack, portraying the Liberal to the crowd as weak, helpless, and pathetic.
Is the presentation of violent imagery a necessary foundational opening to an out-grouping attack? I think the science and evidence says it is, and we will explore its use further in future posts as we continue this journey.
If I am correct in what I have observed, it is not only about feeling good about themselves, but it is also about winning the argument, not by logic, but by socially out-grouping you as mean.
In the link on dopamine, they looked at people’s brains as they completed tasks. High dopamine function was task oriented, as in using logic to search for truth. Low dopamine function was active in much different areas, areas associated with perceiving self, and maneuvering socially.
The Liberal portrays you as mean, to make others ally with them, against you. If you actively seek to ally others with you, against them, and they detect this, they back down, rather than get out-grouped.
I agree! The first thing I do when speaking with a lib whether one-on-one or in front of other people is to restate their argument in a simple, obviously silly way, that subtly requires an embarrasing response. Such as, “I absolutely agree. Have you posted your ‘gun free zone’ poster on your house yet?” Or, “You couldn’t be more correct! The government should provide a minimum annual salary, pay for all your medical care, provide free day care, and put cash barrels on every street corner. I forgot, what was your college major?”
Ridicule of liberal ideas should be unrelenting, incessant. Never let them go without embarrassment or the fear of being embarrassed for lack of common sense. Remember, the fear of embarrassment is a fear that one is not intelligent. That fear is very powerful. Always think of ways to make libs fear the feeling of being unintelligent. That fear can quickly make them change their opinions.
The book is solely about how the ideologies evolved, and is rock solid scientifically. The arguing stuff is somewhat speculative (even though what little evidence there is supports it), hence it being firewalled form the book.
Click the r/K link in the header of my site, or go here for the simple version. Or check this graphic.
Yep. Dead on.
That would explain why they loved to “gang up” on me at work. It would also explain why they tended to back down if even one person was on my side or even if they merely acknowledged that I had a valid point.
I am reading your r/K link.
This is all very interesting. Conservatives should learn to use this information effectively. Instead, our elected “conservatives” suck up to the perceived in-group and vote with them in order to be seen as “nice.”
Maybe we need to (among other things) hammer on the idea that liberals are being “mean” and “judgmental” when they try to attach those labels to us!
Honestly, I’m not entirely sure myself. Evidence shows individuals go Conservative on questionaires, when shown images of threat. I suspect they are adapting their thought process to be more Conservative reflexively, since Conservatism is more adaptive under such conditions. But I can’t rule out they are just taking cover, and hoping not to get hurt in the coming melee. Maybe some are one and some are the other. My feeling is, either way, it means less Liberalism, so why look too closely?
“And what exactly *shames* a liberal???”
Anything which poses a threat ot their social standing in the group. In the video with Mike Wallace linked at the page which is linked in the piece above, Wallace goes on and on about the Liberal’s right to help enemy troops ambush US troops, so as to be able to report on how the enemy operates. Logic won’t persuade him for fifteen minutes.
Then a Marine castigates him as a helpless traitor, ignoring all the moral bull, and Wallace is suddenly a crushed man, and cedes that the Marine has a perfectly valid point. The argument was over. You have to see the video, to see his change in mood, and mental state. I mean, he was done.
When you ignore logic, and outcomes, and focus your argument just on how the Liberal is contemptible by standards of human decency, the Liberal experiences a panic response called an amygdala hijack, and withdraws from the debate.
I have seen it done, and done it myself.
I totally agree.
Thank you. I have been working on all of this for a long time, it is nice to see some people enjoy it.
Regarding r/K. It is interesting that typical liberal behavior is to reproduce like rabbits, favoring promiscuity and single parenting and the “rights” of welfare recipients to have as many children as possible, yet they are the ones preaching doom and gloom about the carrying capacity of the earth. On the other hand, liberal “elites” often have few children and behave much more like K-types. And the stereotypical “bitter clinger” has a large family.
I think you can look at “reproduction” in another way, too, not just as physically reproducing. Think about reproduction as “converting” someone to your view, i.e., changing a liberal into a conservative or vice versa. Do we use the careful high investment nurturing method while they are using the scattershot promiscuous method? I think so. They get to use the schools and the media while we carefully raise our children and logically debate points with those we think have a hope of seeing the truth.
... still reading ...
My opinion only.
In a conversation with one of my brothers just yesterday we touched on this very topic. In the course of the discussion I used the old saw that begins, “You can lead a horse...” as a prelude to a long held belief - that post-modern leftists don’t (can’t?) argue using reason - they rely on emotion.
When you couple that with another phenomena peculiar to the left - the complete and utter lack of shame - you have people that you can neither reason with nor appeal to their sense of honor.
That leaves me with but one alternative - fear of consequence. “Get away from me or I’ll kill you” Perhaps an oversimplification but the principles at play are accurate.
The direct answer to you question is “merely shut them up”. They are welcome to think (feeeeeeeeel) any cockeyed notion they want - as long as they keep it to themselves. Make them contemplative of the fact that if they choose to act out there will be painful consequences for them.
IMHO
You are dead on. Although I will add one thing. Ideology seems to be associated with a brain structure called the amygdala, which develops in response to threat. Basically, as you experience danger, and learn how to cope with it, your amygdala develops, and if the MRI studies are any measure, you become more Conservative.
In some ways, Liberals may deny reality as a way of shielding the amygdala, by avoiding risk. Threat stimuli, like the article describes, may say risk can no longer be ignored, and thus one has no choice but to prepare oneself to deal with it, mentally. Once neurologically prepared to confront risk, Conservatism may be more acceptable to you.
I know what you are saying.
Exactly. I think if we can learn to argue emotionally, and out-group the Liberal in debate, they will back down. As it stands now, we argue facts, and I think the Liberal marvels at our stupidity, as they then argue to amass support behind them. In their opinion, what use is our being right, if they have the support to make the decision?
We need to argue for that popular support, and go shot for shot with the Lib.
“yet they are the ones preaching doom and gloom about the carrying capacity of the earth.”
If you look at r/K, the Malthusian scenario, where resources run out, and people fight for what is left, is K-selection, and it would quickly result in a lot of dead Liberals. I think they see that instinctively, and that is why we have to all consume less, and make sure there is enough for everyone. The second there is not enough grass for all the bunny rabbits, Liberals will become much less common, and the very thought of having to fight for resources terrifies them.
“On the other hand, liberal “elites” often have few children and behave much more like K-types.”
If you combine a conscientious r-selected’s low desire to rear, with birth control and abortion (Both about as low-investment a rearing strategy as you get) you get a single mom with no kids, or the modern Liberal female today.
“And the stereotypical “bitter clinger” has a large family.”
Large by what standards? If there were no birth control, as in the primitive scenario where this evolved, and everyone had promiscuous sex all the time, women could have twenty or thirty kids, or more. Six or eight is small, by those standards.
A lot of this has to be looked at in the primitive environment where it came from, as opposed to today. Some of the urges, though perfect for the natural environment, are highly maladaptive when combined with modern technology. Give us a few thousand years, and we will adapt, but for now, birth control is a new selective pressure actively culling intelligent Liberals, and leaving behind large swaths of indigent idiots who turn out kids as fast as they can.
Eventually, we will adapt, but until then, this all has to be seen in the context of the more primitive environment it came from.
“Think about reproduction as “converting” someone to your view, i.e., changing a liberal into a conservative or vice versa.”
Interesting. I have never thought about that. Maybe flooding the cities with welfare floods the poor with dopamine, which foments Liberalism and entitlement.
I like to think of that as the ultimate application of evolutionary psychology! Just Kidding, Mods.
Mark my words, if ever we came to the brink of Revolutioanry War II, it would not take much real fighting, before most Liberals fell into Stockholm Syndrome, and abandoned the fight. I would not be surprised to see them become ardent Conservatives overnight.
TC, brother.
In argumentation nothing beats common sense and white-hot Truth.
This behaviorist claptrap is a thinly veiled call to mafia type extortion and bullying. We have civilization in the first place in order to lessen chronic high threat scenarios. This may be hard to take for a lot of right wing adrenaline junkies, but the human mind actually functions more inventively in a low threat, high freedom environment. Compare the standard of living in the Soviet Union vs. the West. Thanks, but I think I’ll pass on the goose stepping goonery of K threat as a rhetorical device. Pavlovian stimulus-response training may be good for circus animal acts, but it’s utter hell on one’s self-image as a free, sentient, sovereign individual. You want survival advantage, make yourself smarter, make your kids smarter, make your government representatives smarter.
This behaviorist claptrap is a thinly veiled call to mafia type extortion and bullying. We have civilization in the first place in order to lessen chronic high threat scenarios. This may be hard to take for a lot of right wing adrenaline junkies, but the human mind actually functions more inventively in a low threat, high freedom environment. Compare the standard of living in the Soviet Union vs. the West. Thanks, but I think I’ll pass on the goose stepping goonery of K threat as a rhetorical device. Pavlovian stimulus-response training may be good for circus animal acts, but it’s utter hell on one’s self-image as a free, sentient, sovereign individual created in God’s image. You want survival advantage, make yourself smarter, make your kids smarter, make your government representatives smarter.
If I want to convince you, specifically, in debate, that is what I would use.
But bear in mind, you have people who think the answer to a mass murderer killing children is to establish a gun free zone around a school, and make the penalty a misdemeanor. How much do you think logic and white hot truth will affect those idiots? Liberals think differently. fMRI’s show their brains are lighting up differently. Psychological tests show different cognitive characteristics. Even MRIs of their brains show structural differences.
I suspect that the difference between us is, I ran into a gross defective, and saw just how differently another person can think. It can almost be like they are a different species, detached from logic. Once that happens, all the logic and white hot truth won’t do a thing. You need to know what hurts them, and how to apply it.
Just out of curiosity, do you have a really smart sibling?
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