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.
I don’t have time to respond, but I want to comment that your posts have rekindled my interest in FR. At one point the appeal of forums was reason, but that seems to have been superceded by a simulacrum of social commentary increasingly deviod of content.
Thank you. Classical liberalism is not taught, but caught.
I disagree. Rabbits are more likely to try and get wolves to genocide others by fomenting conflicts. Clinton, Weiner, Obama, aren’t going to wade into a battlefield when everyone is going at it. But they will send armed feds to do it for them if they can.
They will try to get others to kill for them, also. Look at democratic politics and you see this strategy - class warfare, race warfare, sex-identity warfare, political ideologue warfare, “workers” vs capitalist warfare, even immigrant vs citizen warfare. If they lived in our nation, they’d get Chinese nationalist PRC people fighting with the tea party. Even the Nazis were just a helpless socialist worker’s party until they happened upon nationalists vs jews/blacks/disabled/non-Aryans.
r and K are the game. That said, it can also be viewed as adaptation to the need to fight, vs adaptation to avoiding the fight. In that case it is amygdala development vs amygdala atrophy, and because we evolved to house rearing/sex/loyalty in the amygdala, development or atrophy of the amygdala ends up dragging in the full suite of r and K by changing all of that too.
To answer your question - What happens when the rabbits have guns? It depends, does everyone else have guns, or have wolves disarmed the populace for them? In that latter case, a rabbit would kill, but they would much rather give the order to whoever is willing to kill for them.
But if everyone is armed, the rabbits won’t do shit. They’ll try to get two groups of wolves shooting at each other and then hide, but if that didn’t work, they will just plain hide.
r/K will be validated when the economy collapses and marriage and family return afterward along with a vigorous tendency to form a group identity and be loyal to the group.
The book on it should be free Monday and Tuesday in ebook form at Castaliahouse.com , if you want to see the sum of the research behind it.
Some examples of using mortal salience with liberals.
Gay tolerance : Point out the CDC data on disease carriage of homosexuals (STDs/AIDS, but things like meningitis, MRSA, Gay Bowel Disease, etc as well), and make the case that homosexual aversion is a rational, evolved trait designed to help one avoid disease exposure. Point out that if a pandemic hits, all those who are homo-tolerant will rapidly be culled from the population, and since a pandemic is unavoidable, homo-intolerance will be normal soon enough. Do it unemotionally, even slightly bemused by it, and Libs will shut up fast.
For guns I like to combine mortal salience (mention of death) with shame over their helplessness, shame over their disloyalty to their loved ones in not wanting to protect them, shame over their own lack of honor, and shame over their own impotence and likeliness to get killed. So I’d comment on how shocked I am that not only are they so disloyal to their own family that they have no desire to be able to protect them from being killed by a thug in a violent encounter, they have the gall to demand that I be remiss in my duty to protect my own family.
Observers, not wanting to be seen as disloyal, cowardly, helpless, weak, and impotent like the liberal, will immediately side with you, giving it a social punch threatening the leftist with social isolation as well.
Leftists argue differently. Facts, logic, truth, being right mean nothing compared to trying to socially out-group the opposition with ridicule, or just mob-alliance against the opposition, often based on the “bad feelings” associated with the opposition position.
But in the liberals head is a switch. Colonel Connell hit the button on Mike Wallace with that interview after a whole swath of people arguing logically could not, which is why I think anyone who argues with liberals needs to watch it.
Google “Touching the Raw Amygdala” if you want more on the technique.
Thank you.
This helps me to understand why my liberal neighbor won’t talk to me any more. I shamed him badly for voting Obama twice and no other neighbors came to his aid.
Almost feel bad...almost.
Much of my experience with amygdala response has been with aberrant individuals, and parallel your anecdotes to some degree. I am of the opinion that the amygdala regulates neural response similarly to the way the hypothalamus regulates hormonal response. I would also categorize narcissists (and perhaps liberals) as having a hyper or overactive amygdala. Psychopaths on the other hand, appear to have a hypo or malformed amygdala .
While your technique may show promise on the hyper amygdala, I wonder about the response of the hypo. I believe many in powerful positions tend toward this side of the spectrum. Do you address this in any of your articles?
I plan on downloading your books, so I’ll hold the rest of my inquiries. Thank you for at least raising the questions. Conservatives tend to believe everyone is driven by logic, and this may be a way to bridge the message gap. I pray it doesn’t take another world war to bring us back to our senses, but as an historian, I fear it may be too late to avert.
I think we are splitting into different directions on the definition of amygdala activity. I think you are seeing amygdala activity as being production of aversive stimulus (which is admittedly a popular view I disagree with). I see amygdala activity as seeking answers to shut off aversive stimulus, which I believe is triggered by the amygdala (and could be triggered mistakenly due to maladaptation in some cases). The panic though, is actually produced by the Anterior Cingulate Cortex.
So my hypothesis based on a lot of readings and personal experience (and I do have formal training in Cognitive Neurosci) is the amygdala encounters threat, triggers the ACC, and the ACC then forces, via panic/brain-pain, an amygdala-driven search of the brain for all possible actions and outcomes, until it hits on a potential act that could shut off the ACC’s panic response somewhat.
The panic then drives the action. In this model, the ACC is the driver using punishment, and the amygdala is the guy whose job is seeing reality honestly and trying to diminish the punishment by finding something to do to the world around you to turn off the punishment. I ignore the studies about anxiety and amygdala size and connectivity, because a narcissist may show no panic, not because he is good with coping with stress, but just because he denies all reality, and even if he didn’t he would lie about feeling panic to his last breath. I also look at liberals, who say Conservatives are panicky because we want guns when passing through a dangerous neighborhood, while the liberal doesn’t panic because they would walk through the neighborhood unarmed. Yet it is conservatives who head off to war, and liberals who would dodge the draft due to panic even as the Nazis were at the gates. Which is maladaptive? Which si panicky?
So conservatives have larger amygdalae, smaller ACCs, and less panic under threat and more comfort with threat (even as they feel panic) - because they have greater amygdala-linkage to the rest of the brain, better logical modeling capability, and a resultant better problem solving capability.
Liberals (and narcissists) have developed to try and shield themselves from panic by somehow hacking their perception of reality upstream of the amygdala, so the stressful reality doesn’t make it into the amygdala to trigger the ACC, instead being replaced by the non-triggering “false reality.”
Given less amygdala triggering, their amygdala looks for solutions less, and they become a problem avoider/denier rather than a problem solver, and panic if a problem makes it into the amygdala. Eventually, they can’t face any problem because they know they can’t solve any amygdala triggering problem, and you get a liberal yelling at you for being mean by “triggering” them with a theme of a manly man who kicks ass in a world that is dangerous, or a world that isn’t equal and safe for everyone.
The inability to cope with aversive stimulus may have a root in an overdevelopment of the ACC, due to genes or environment, and making the punishment it inflicts so strong as to be unbearable.
I agree on Psychopaths, and would only add some research shows an ACC deficit along with an amygdala deficit. Not only is the triggering facility diminished, but so is the panic being triggered.
Since you are interested in Narcissists, I’ll note both the Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics, and How to Deal With Narcissists should be free starting Monday at Castaliahouse.com.
Take care.
I have no specific neurocognitive training beyond extensive observation of treatment and occasional cursory study. While I was once a strong nurture advocate, I now believe that genetics plays a greater role in aberrant behavior, though it can often be exacerbated by environment. I find many practitioners speaking of the amygdala as a vestigial appendage that constantly misfires due to the complexity of modern cognition. I totally disagree with this view, and I find your hypothesis quite plausible. It also accounts for the intractable lying that accompanies both sides of the spectrum (N-P).
Despite the mythical web-of-lies, I have found most narcissists and psychopaths don’t bother—they simply maintain a willful state of cognitive dissonance wherein their lies become reality for them. It is also interesting that most “mental health” workers fall far into the r spectrum, and avoid any inference that that their safe little liberal world is as much a construct as their patients’. The few neuroscientists that I have encountered are almost outcasts in the mental health “profession” because their science is a bit too harsh for most of the community of leftists.
Good work, and good luck with your books.
We’ve seen the same things, and are on the same page.
Thanks for the well-wishes, and good luck out there.
ping
I was trying to figure out how I had a copy of “How to Deal With Narcissists” on my Kindle as I’m almost finished and wondered if it was from FR. Did a site search and yes. It was authored by you! What a great book.
I’ve always wondered about boring people I’ve sometimes gotten stuck with at parties and elsewhere. I would often stand there and think, “What makes this person so boring?” and stick around them, listening, trying to figure it out. Your book provided the answer.
Thanks.
L
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