The “loony Left” and the psychology of Socialism/Leftism
The “loony Left” and the psychology of Socialism/Leftism
I’m currently reading a book on the differences between the way people at opposite ends of the political spectrum see things. Also, looking at the comments on the “Democracy vs Socialism” thread, I can’t help wondering what it is that makes us so different.
Why is “the Left” called “loony”? Why is “left” considered as somehow “not right”? And what makes us so defensive when discussing opposite views? Why do we sometimes simultaneously reserve the right to be different while also expecting others to be like us? Is it always just different political views or are there more fundamental psychological differences that make those views appealing to us in the first place?
I’m currently reading a book on the differences between the way people at opposite ends of the political spectrum see things. Also, looking at the comments on the “Democracy vs Socialism” thread, I can’t help wondering what it is that makes us so different.
Why is “the Left” called “loony”? Why is “left” considered as somehow “not right”? And what makes us so defensive when discussing opposite views? Why do we sometimes simultaneously reserve the right to be different while also expecting others to be like us? Is it always just different political views or are there more fundamental psychological differences that make those views appealing to us in the first place?
Comments (381)
Quoting Apollodorus
:chin:
Just one of those mysteries I guess.
Which political wing most supports environmental conservation?
'Conservation' is just a gloss for the right. It's about individual's rights to take from common resources, but that doesn't sell well.
The differing psychologies might be an interesting topic, but political slogans are not psychology.
My old boss used to say this too.
The issue with political positions is that most people assume theirs is rational or common sense and the other side is evil or barking.
That might be true, but do you think it actually matters? Are there situations in which you think either side remain unaware of the arguments of the other, despite the mudslinging. It seems unlikely to me that if one were to ask a right wing political science graduate or economist what the arguments of their left wing counterparts are, they would be unable to answer. Most are quite conversant with the arguments of the other.
This was a hook used by Thatcherites. It was meant to help shift attitudes toward acceptance of privatization and the abandonment of protection for labor.
Not to mention alliteration appeals to the lizard brain in us. A lowest common denominator thing. In place of, I dunno, substance.
However, the way "left-handedness" is perceived seems to have deeper cultural and historical roots that seem to suggest a more fundamental difference to "right-handedness". It used to be regarded as some sort of "handicap" but nowadays some associate it with "better verbal skills" and the like.
At last, the benefits of being left-handed are confirmed - The Guardian
They may, but it seems likely, given their purpose, that the psychology they point to is more that of the closest socially acceptable narrative, rather than the underlying motives. That's why I gave the example of wildlife conservation. Rarely do we see the right wing get agitated over the extinction of a species of invertebrate. Why not? If the underlying psychology were one of preservation, of not making rapid change for fear of unpredictable consequences, then wildlife conservation should be top of the agenda. But it isn't, because wildlife conservation interferes with the individual's ability to commandeer communal resources from things like surrounding ecosystems.
As I said, I think the underlying psychology is interesting, but we'd need to isolate some behavioural commitments from each side which give us a flavour of their beliefs and motives, rather than use the labels they apply to themselves in the public arena.
That too.
By the way, if anyone is interested in the state of research on this, Darren Schreiber has published a retrospective, only a few years out of date
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/politics-and-the-life-sciences/article/abs/neuropolitics-twenty-years-later/51C39AA6539B1979FEA6D36C44E216BF
I don't disagree with any of that. However, the point the book seems to be making is that both the Left and the Right tend to describe each other in psychological terms, perhaps the Left more so.
"Leftist social scientists sought to show that conservative values are psychologically abnormal" p. 5
"Even the conservative Right [as opposed to the far Right] is generally described in psychological terms as 'regressive' and 'repressive'" p. 7
The term "right" seems to be acquiring a similar connotation to the way "left" was used in the past.
In any case, psychological analysis including "psychohistory" (I didn't know such a thing existed) seems to be increasingly applied to these issues. What is the explanation for this development? Despite all the talk of "unity", is society really becoming more and more pollarized?
Obviously, I've only just started reading the book but I must say it's very interesting and thought-provoking so far.
Oh, thanks for the link!
That's a very good point actually. It reminds me of the article "Marx, Revolution and the Legacy of Utopian Socialism: A Critical Outline" on wordpress. It describes how Marx who seemed to have an adaptability issue rebelled first against his father, then against religion, then against philosophy and eventually developed a "critique of everything". So, psychology does seem to have something to do with the idea of "change at all costs".
If so, then the author is correct. It looks like his thesis is endorsed by Prof Kevin MacDonald of the Department of Psychology, California State University, and others.
I'm not sure I'd describe it as 'the point' of the book, but I wouldn't deny that there's been a growth in interest, and perhaps leaning more toward psychologising right, rather than left wing views.
I think the trend (small though it is), is partly about the way psychology is practiced. The interest is partly in getting behind the surface-level analysis, so one is less likely to get hits from "left wing voters vote for social policy because they care about social policy" than "right wing voters vote for less regulation because they're greedy". I'm exaggerating, of course, but the point is individual gain (at the expense of others), is a motive, yet not a socially acceptable one, so there's more deception and therefore more to discover.
You may disapprove even of that narrative, but ask yourself how many classic folk heroes would have voted for Thatcher. Robin Hood? Aragorn? King Arthur? Can you see any as poster boys for Thatcherism? The cultural moral narrative is simply not in favour of the kind of individual gain right wing politics strives to support, hence the deception, hence the interest of psychologists.
I think there'll be more interest in left wing politics now we have social media creating viral causes and strong polemical groups, and the move of the left wing away from economic equality toward identity politics. There's now a greater incentive to be deceptive about motives with left wing activism too (not that there wasn't before, but more so).
Quoting Apollodorus
No problem. If you want any more resources just ask, I've got tons.
Am I right in assuming that you've read the book then?
I'm not sure the "poster boy for Thatcherism" analogy is quite as simple as that. If we look at the UK experience, left-of-center parties aren't currently doing very well and the Queen/Royal Family is still enjoying popular support - though the opposite may be the case in the USA.
You sound like a well-read kind of person. Could it be that deep down we're all conservatives but at the same time we wish to introduce changes we hope will be of benefit to us personally but that ultimately may turn out to achieve the opposite? This seems to be suggested by the Russian and other revolutions where the old social order is overthrown only for a new one to be imposed that is potentially even more repressive than the original one.
Trying to do good by doing evil is one of those terrible paradoxes that typify the worst parts of human history.
I'm guessing cognitive dissonance in some (or most) cases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
I think that both political sides have their own share of what could be referred as "loony".
You can find their actions well documented by the media supporting the opposite side.
It seems as though you have not been at this very long.
Politics, whether state or office, is about controlling the superficial, the appearance, the common sense narrative.
At base, it's the mechanics of primate socialization. The top monkey is the hub, emanating order (apparently it's a female among bononos, so don't get Petersoneque about it).
There's no need for conflict as long as that hub is working. When it breaks down (maybe due to stagflation?) then the monsters come out to play.
I'm all into the shift from post WW2 embedded liberalism to 80s neoliberalism. 70s stagflation was a critical ingredient.
Hope you're doing well. Springtime in Finland?
Lol. :lol:
Yes, inflation is coming. And the correct term would be stagflation.
What's the worst that could happen?
That we all will be millionaires. The few billionaires now quadrillionaires then.
And then the monsters come out to play.
Quoting frank
Springtime in Finland.
Calling "the left" or Liberalism loony or something along those lines is an old tactic of those of "the right" (I won't say "Conservatives" as I think they've gone into hiding, and rightly so, though they indulged in this tactic as well). They perceive themselves as hard-headed realists, and those of the left as utopian at best. That self-perception is laughable now, of course. Mr. Bolton seems something of a loon himself.
I'll speak for the US. Different political parties have always insulted each other. It's bad rhetoric, although I guess it works sometimes. There has always been political conflict, but the parties and branches of government generally kept things moving. Passed legislation, kept the government open, avoided impeachment if possible. In the last 30 years I've watched things change dramatically. You've heard about it - polarization. Fox News, MSNBC. Everything is a fight to the death now. Why, I'll talk about that more below.
In that kind of a situation, things move toward the extremes - conflicts and parties. Every argument, dollar spent, and bill is a matter of life or death, not because the contents are particularly important, but because the goal has become winning, hurting the other party, as opposed to governing. When I was young, there were liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats. Both parties had the so called "big tent," although the Democrat's tent was always bigger. As Will Rogers said, "I'm not a member of any organized political party, I'm a Democrat." In the early 70s, the Republican vice president, Nelson Rockefeller, was a liberal Republican.
I think you might find pretty wide agreement with what I've laid out before. I wanted to get that out of the way before I got to the controversial part. Why did it happen - it's the Republican's fault. I won't go into my reasons for saying that. I'll let this article from 2012 speak for me. It was taken from a well-known book by Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lets-just-say-it-the-republicans-are-the-problem/2012/04/27/gIQAxCVUlT_story.html
Since Trump is now the face of conservatism in the US let's look at what he intends to conserve or preserve. Certainly not traditional conservatism. Not the environment. And not diplomatic relations with our allies. Not what is derisively referred to as the administrative state.
He is obsequious to the religious right and promotes the interests of his cronies in gas, oil, and coal. The only thing it is evident that he preserves is his own self-interest. And the rest of the Republican Party, which considers itself equivalent to conservatism falls in line lock-step to preserve their own interests.
...we need more moderate's in both our political and religious institutions... .
Oh, well that's just great.
I was just thinking that in the old days people used to fight over water, food or women. Later they fought over religion and now it seems we're fighting over "ideology". So, can we really call this "progress" or are we just fooling ourselves?
And, if there are two basic camps - the camp of "change" or "left" and the camp of "preservation" or "right" - who is right or wrong?
Otherwise put, what is more important, permanence or change?
Obviously, permanence comes first as all change, even in psychological terms, can only take place against the background of permanence. In fact, we wouldn't even perceive change except with reference to some form of permanence.
So, we may say that the "Right", the camp of permanence, might be afraid of and therefore resistant to the idea of change which is perhaps a natural instinct within us.
But what about the "Left", the camp of change? What can we say about it? I doubt that we can say it is "afraid of permanence" or that it "hates permanence". It may hate the status quo, which is why it wants change, but once the change is in place I'm sure the left wants it to be permanent.
It follows that the element of permanence, of conservatism, is dominant in both camps and this seems to suggest that permanence or conservatism comes first as a fundamental predisposition of all human beings and of life in general.
In any case, my guess would be that, as @3017amen said, we need more moderates in our society. But that seems to be hard to achieve when conflicting ideologies are allowed to take over.
Such bivalence is far too simplistic. If the Republicans want to make America great again they are advocating for change. If the Democrats want to protect abortion rights and environmental regulation then they are advocating for preservation.
Quoting Apollodorus
Permanence is slow change. Nothing is unchanging.
Quoting Apollodorus
I don't think this is correct. Politics, left and right, is social experiment. If a favored policy reveals its shortcomings then the intelligent thing to do is address it and make changes. The American Founders put in place the ability to amend the Constitution.
Quoting Apollodorus
It does not then follow that self-identified "conservatives" seek to conserve all human beings an life in general. What they seek to conserve is their own orthodoxies. As a group they cannot agree on what those are.
But the same applies to the opposite camp, does it not? Marxists have changed little since Marx and there are many strands of "leftism".
Are you saying that the Left are conservatives because they too seek to conserve their own orthodoxies? But since conservative orthodoxies can change with the wind, deficit spending for example, that would mean they are also leftists.
This was meant tongue in cheek, but positions do sometimes reverse, as in the case of attitudes toward free speech.
You're definitely right about free speech, it's fast becoming a rare commodity - as well-argued by Piers Morgan in his book "Wake Up". The minute you say something deemed in any way "wrong" by any person or group you get cancelled out of existence. Very worrying and frightening development. Again, can we call this "progress"? Hardly.
Well, the book has absolutely nothing about Odin or anything of the kind, from what I can see at least. And no, I'm not into "Odinism", are you?
Quoting Apollodorus
This is a very old and very common refrain. That is not to say it is not a problem, but it is not one that is best addressed by claiming the sky is falling. Free speech has also been tenuous. We are simply struggling to find its boundaries once again in a changing world.
I agree. The world is indeed changing very fast and the boundaries of free speech appear to be getting narrower by the day - or by the minute in some cases.
Nonsense. Some people are more open to new experiences and change than others. Don't we all experience this ourselves? I have a brother who's two years my senior and who I grew up with. He was always resistant to new experiences and change, and is very much conservative. I'm the opposite.
Quoting Apollodorus
Obviously, they're both important.
Being "more open to change" is one thing. Insisting on change at all costs and no matter what is quite another thing.
Not only that, but those who insist on change often are the first to resist change when it goes against their own personal agendas.
Right, that's what being liberal is all about. Don't let anyone ever let you think otherwise!
First if all, we need a flat out rejection of nazi bullshit from you.
Quoting Fooloso4
What is this?
Perhaps older siblings tend to be more resistant to change. This would tend to support what I was saying.
In any case, the book I'm reading has absolutely nothing in it about "Nazism", "Odinism" or "anti-semitism". What the author does in his spare time is his business. Maybe he acquired new interests after writing the book. I don't think that's a reason to ban it or try to suppress philosophical debate on a discussion forum. If anything, any such attempts can only serve to confirm the point he's making, i.e. that spurious "scientific" analysis is being used to suppress political opposition.
I like grey up to a point. A little green and blue is nice, though
No, are you?
Do you reject his bullshit or not?
What you were saying is nonsensical but even if it were not I have another brother who is 10 years my senior and is very much progressive liberal, and at least as open to new experience and change as I am.
Quoting Apollodorus
Honestly, I thought the book was comedy until I looked it up, which confirmed that it's comedy.
It's really simple to reject Nazism. Just do it!
I fail to see your logic. Just because you're a Marxist that doesn't make the rest of us "Nazis", "Odinists" and "anti-semites"
The book has nothing of that sort in it at all. IMO, you're talking conspiracy theory there, my friend.
Have you rejected Marxist terrorism and genocide yet? If not, why not???
So you're definitely not an anti-semite and you whole heatedly reject Nazism in all its forms.
I knew it!
Belonging to a certain political orientation is tied with one thinks is correct or proper or on the right track so far as society and the world should go. Inevitably deep issues related to ethics, behavior and society are involved which are pretty important in terms of scope.
A certain amount of identity is tied into the beliefs we may have associated with politics, thus if someone holds an opposite view on an issue of importance, it can be taken as a kind of insult to the types of things you may hold dear. We also need to - for our sake - simplify the world to some extent, if we did not, there would be too much information to make sense of.
The thing is, when you speak in general terms to people of very different political views, we tend to find lots of areas of agreement: we want good education, good healthcare, more fair taxes, etc. When it gets down to how to get there, issues become very thorny.
There's a lot of stuff to go over in the "left" vs. "right" debate. In the US this divide as is presented in the mainstream is pretty narrow, I think. Europe is better in this specific regard, but barely.
You bring a book to our attention and the author turns out to be a Nazi schizo. We're entitled to hear you say you're not a freaking nazi sympathizer, and you're not, so great!
Oh boy, Apollodorus...
Of course Wikipedia might be part of the character assassination, but hmm...
I think part of the problem is that people tend to invest a lot of emotional energy into things they often don't really know or understand.
By definition, politics is about power and politicians will do anything to acquire as much power for themselves as possible, including manipulating the public.
So, it looks like modern society is going in the wrong direction and we need to return to more civility and respect for each other.
And take a more philosophical approach to things instead of jumping headlong into political activism.
Oh, well that's just great!
Yep, Frank, what quacks like a duck...
But let's have an open mind with Apollodorus. He or she wasn't promoting the book, or?
He's from New Zealand, so he may not know that WW2 ended.
Well, I didn't know that and you can't really blame it on me, can you? Anyway, conspiracy theories aside, what in the book are you objecting to?
Or are you just upset that I started a discussion that's inconvenient to some people on the far left?
And I'm glad you aren't a communist terrorist although these days one can never know.
Absolutely! Civility and politeness and being nice to others is fundamental. Otherwise we get nowhere.
I agree in part with what you say. I do think that people get invested in things they don't know. On the other hand, I think that a big part of the general resentment, hatred and bigotry surfacing now are related to concern that people understand in the sense that, wages have been stagnant or declining for decades, jobs are less available and the super rich are gaining more and more power. People sense this and see it and are angry.
But they funnel such anger in the wrong direction: minorities, the vulnerable, "foreigners", etc., instead of concentrated power structures such as concentrated wealth and unaccountable bureaucracies.
They lost too. You've got a lot of history to catch up on.
Quick google searches are easy to do and then you can know where people come from.
Quoting Apollodorus
I hope such questions could be discussed. But I think the Site guidelines ought to be noted:
So no espousing... :up:
I haven't seen any "Nazi" views in the book and I wasn't discussing the book.
So, I don't see what your point is. It was YOU who brought up Nazism not me.
Frank is a Green Party terrorist and pelts people with fruits and vegetables, out of the psychotic belief that they need more fiber.
It's a good thing Heidegger isn't a poster, then. Chortle. I'm incorrigible.
Wasn't it , immediately at the first reply on this thread?
Sorry, but if a book would be let's say about evolution, perhaps it would be good to know the author is a staunch creationist and a biblical literalist? Just saying...
Oh yes. Wonder how would Nietzsche do here.
Regular bowel movements are essential to a healthy world.
I understand that these are in the site guidelines but vehemently disagree that people should be banned for espousing them. Understanding how people like this think is critical to an overall understanding of any society.
Free speech [s]was[/s] is a constitutional right that has been given more thought and is held in the standing it is for many reasons, paramount among them being that those who hold questionable views can be exposed to others. Otherwise, these folks become more and more isolated in their views and often more radicalized in their actions.
The idea is to help other people where you can, not isolate them in the hope that they will somehow disappear. The best hope we can have is to encourage discourse so such an individual may come to reconsider their position. A free and open society must allow freedom of speech for this and many other reasons.
If a book is in a regular bookstore, it's on political psychology and has endorsements from psychology professors on the back cover, why the hell would you google the author?
And if you knew about the author why didn't you say something from the start?
You've only come up with it now because you didn't know what else to do to suppress the discussion. And you call others "Nazis"?
Anyway, I couldn't care less if they banned me!
Oh to be young and innocent.
Yeah, just like yourself. Have you come out of your closet yet or do you still spy "Nazis" under the bed?
How could he see them under the bed if he was in the closet?
Imagination fueled by paranoia, that's how.
Not sure why you're carrying on with this. You've already denied nazi sympathy. That's it. You're fine. Don't go back to 8chan. All is good.
The author may not be specific but I cannot see how someone who promotes Nazism and "occult fascism" could write a book on people, society, and politics and not have those things influence what he says. I doubt that one would need to be a trained in hermeneutics to see that influence, especially once one knows the authors background.
Don't tell me what to do. I'm not taking orders from Stalinists and far-left Fascists.
You can't come up with any reasoned arguments that's why you're inventing this "Nazi" conspiracy theory to suppress discussion. On a forum, too!
You guys are delusional.
I see. You haven't seen the book, haven't read it, don't have a clue, but still talking and accusing people. Sounds about right, doesn't it? "Loony Left" is just a joke, for sure.
I do not need to see the book to find out who the author is. I am not accusing you of anything. I am simply pointing to what has been said about him.
I’m far less paranoid since Trump was resoundingly rejected by the American people.
Oh to be young and innocent.
To be clear, any attempt to psychologically map out an explanation for why and how conservatives and liberals or whatever political appellation believe what they believe is nonsense. It's about as vague as astrology and just as predictive.
Brilliant idea. Next election we'll let the fascists and Neo-liberals use psychology to target advertising to directly appeal to their core supporters and the left can use astrology. I'm sure it'll work out just fine, what with them both being equally vague and non-predictive. What nonsense. There are positions on the scale between uncontrovertible fact and complete guesswork, matters needn't be one or the other.
Ah, well, that's cleared that up. 25 years of wondering whether I and my colleagues were morons and I could have just asked...
I doubt that. But hell, I'm paid an awful lot of money for my moronic guesswork so at least I've got something to cushion the blow... it's a wonder there's not more astrology consultants in the courts, corporations and civil service, they too could benefit from whatever mass deception I've inadvertently manged to weave.
There are highly paid economists too, so... :wink:
Indeed. And Astrologers no doubt. wasn't treating the matter as a serious discussion.
Though one wonders whom it is we should be consulting in matters of economics, psychology, or sociology. Roll dice presumably...
I'm beginning to think that consulting the Communist Manifesto would be the default procedure around here ...
Well, you are accusing me by implication: the author is a "Nazi", his book must be promoting "Nazism" (as well as "Odinism" and "anti-semitism"), therefore I must be a "Nazi" for reading the book or for daring to mention it. Guilt by association, in other words. Wasn't that what the Nazis (and the Stalinists) did?
If the author was a far-left Marxist or Stalinist, would your argument be the same? Or is far-left extremism OK to you?
And look at other comments on here, like "anyone who looks to psychology to explain politics is a moron".
Political psychology is an established academic field, so there must be lots of "morons" around.
Plus, psychology aims to understand human behavior in all kinds of situations, so why should politics be any different? Is it because some people are afraid of having their political thoughts and behavior scrutinized? Is that why they are trying to suppress discussion by attacking people and calling them names???
Not at all. It may be vague in general outline but less so once you've looked into the more detailed facts of it. Most scientific theories start off about "as vague as astrology and just as predictive". If we dismissed everything before even considering or discussing it there would be no science.
Trial, error, modification, refining, certainty, that's how thought and knowledge progresses. But it often starts with a "vague" suggestion or proposition.
The only name calling was my reference to Bolton. I said he was a schizo. You seem to be taking that personally.
He's also a rotten koala turd.
That in itself is a psychological reaction. So now all you have to is to statistically correlate it with voting habits, donation receipts, and riot-partaking, and bang, you can establish on this alone about 26 different kinds of political profiles that have predictive value and sharp delineation.
It's worth noting that all sorts of things have been tradition at some point or another. Female genital mutilation, human sacrifice, animal sacrifice, inter cousin marriage, prescribed royal incest, etc. Sometimes going against the flow and being loony for they times isn't a bad idea.
I basically hate this approach: it doesn't take into account just how different let's say Western social democrats are from Western marxists and how those are different from Chinese marxists or the supporters of the leftist populist Maduro (and earlier Chavez) in Venezuela. The left isn't just Marxism-Leninism or Maoism.
Perhaps here the obvious error is that a similar psycho-history could be made about "the right", and very likely you would get similar results. It's basically scientism is used as a veil for a rant against the political movement you hate.
A thing which actual has been done already, actually.
A fitting example would be Theodor Adorno's "The Authoritarian Personality". There the member of the Frankfurt School (yes, that Frankfurt School) makes a "F scale", for pre-fascist personality, and goes on to measure traits like conventionalism, authoritarian submission, authoritarian aggression, anti-intraception, superstition and stereotypy, power and "toughness", destructiveness and cynicism, projectivity, and exaggerated concerns over sex.
And of course, Adorno downplayed his Marxist roots and if we believe Apollodorus, Bolton doesn't either openly write about his influences either (which would be logical).
In the end I simply do not find this useful. Psychohistory doesn't work when your just looking for what are considered character flaws or negative traits.
In a rare occasion I would agree with here. Done with a different attitude, using psychology can perhaps be useful.
That was exactly my original assumption and I still believe this to be the case. Unfortunately, emotions and political activism tend to intervene and before you know it the discussion gets dragged into the gutter.
By the way, my topic was not Bolton but the fact that something like a political "left" and "right" exists along with the ever-rising tension between them.
Personally, I tend to believe that society must urgently depoliticize itself and start taking a more holistic view of itself and of its problems. The interests of the whole, not of political factions or special interest groups must be made the primary concern.
Why have alternative governments of the right and left, each trying to cancel what their predecessor implemented, when a single, consensus-based government might do the same job with less friction and without wasting billions on elections, etc. ?
By the same token, some traditions may be worth keeping. By definition, when you introduce a change, you can't predict its impact in all its ramifications. You may yet come to regret the change you've made. And the way things are currently going, changes - some intended, others less so - are happening at a speed and to an extent that they threaten to get out of control, like a vehicle travelling at increasingly higher velocity along uncharted ways and with the rising likelihood of ending in a crash. Civilizations come and go and sometimes the cause is self-inflicted. There can be no harm in taking a step back and doing some thinking before it's too late.
Not at all. I believe you when you say that you did not know about him. My point is that he is a questionable source. It may not be overt, but I strongly suspect that he would not write a book on people, culture, society, and politics without those views shaping what he says.
Yes.
That just describes other lucrative, but bullshit industries such as economics, evolutionary psychology, neuromarketing, etc. How much do you think Larry Summer gets paid despite constantly being wrong? Either way, what's the problem? You get paid good money from clueless individuals or corporations to produce nonsense. I think that's great.
Quoting Apollodorus
Political psychology is not new.
Everyone is conservative about what he knows best. If you read the Saint-Simonians one could come away thinking socialism was entirely reactionary.
He'd be banned for excessive use of exclamation points. Well, I'd ban him for that, anyway.
Judging from those quotes, the stance is also old, and tired. Nothing new there.
Touché. I was really fishing to see how far our friend Apollo has gone down the rabbit hole, if he’s a Big Lie subscriber.
Quoting StreetlightX
Studying the mind to help explain behavior sounds reasonable to this (me) moron.
Well the promise of political psychology is more complex than that. What the OP and the book in question is describing here is a trait-based framework where personal traits such as "authoritarian" or "cooperation" or "openness to change" or "cosmopolitanism", "introversion-extroversion", "agreeableness", "curiosity" and a potpourri of other traits (and in the case of the book in question, narcissism) can explain or predict a person's political orientation, attitudes, or policy preferences. This is bunk.
You can study the mind to explain behavior but you can't study the mind to explain the ends to which that behavior will be put ('behaviour' here being a weasel word meant to capture apparently literally any action at any scale in any circumstance, presumably). Politics is an ecological phenomenon first and foremost, and the idea that it is built up of units of psychologies - as it were - is to completely misunderstand both the mind and politics. Psychology acts as a constraint on how politics plays out (one can speak of crowd phenomena or susceptibility to attention-capture say), but it sure as hell has no determining role in what kind of politics comes into play. Not to speak of anything as crude as 'left' and 'right'. Americans don't even know what the fuck 'left' means, to even begin with. Anyone who thinks they can wring 'hates refugees' or 'wants more social security' out of studying phenomena at the scale of the mind is, I repeat, a moron. If you can get paid for it, more power to you.
I would think if anyone would realize this, you would. Postmodern psychologies study the ‘mind’, that is , the psychologically embodied , ecologically embedded mind, inseparably from environment. As you know, Protevi , borrowing from Deleuze , calls it the bio-political mind. But I think calling behavior ecological isn’t enough. One has to recognize a certain normative autonomy of organism-environment functioning that doesn’t just treat political action as arising out of an anonymous plural’we’.
Sure, but it's environments all the way down. Even the organism is an environment. If there's autonomy - and I agree there is - it's an environment with different thresholds and with different relative speeds in constant loopy feedbacks and feedforwards with other environments across membranes at different scales.
Let me see if I understand this. Are you making a distinction between being aware of the other side’s argument,and understanding that argument in the way that they intend it? Or are you assuming that to parrot back to the other their talking posts is equivalent to sharing thr other’s interpretation of the meaning of the political stance? Are opposite sides in today’s polarized political scene misreading each other, or reading each other accurately and disagreeing about other issues (namely moral stance and motivation) ?
AFAIK open-ness has some discriminatory power regarding conservative political opinion (eg here), but that's a far cry from an individualist causal reading (trait open-ness and personality psych -> political belief).
It seems to me you're reacting against the latter, individualistic "mental traits determine political activity/ belief/affiliation" belief, and not necessarily the idea that political ideologies and psychometric quantities can covary.
By Lisa J Cohen, Psychology Today
“The extensive media coverage of politicians' lives provides ample opportunity for clinicians to make inferences about politicians' psychological traits. Notably, the conclusions that different clinicians draw are quite similar. One of the most common traits that clinicians talk about is that of narcissism […] Interestingly, attitudes toward the 5 categories of moral concerns[1] may also influence political beliefs. In other words, political conservatives and liberals may emphasize different categories of moral instincts from one another […] This study helps us understand why people with equally strong moral convictions may vehemently disagree on political issues such as abortion, capital punishment and flag burning.
1. Harm/care, Ingroup/loyalty, Authority/respect, Purity/sanctity, and Fairness/reciprocity.
So, politics does have something to do with psychology after all, But it takes a "philosophy forum" to deny it ...
Here's another interesting piece from Live Science;
Firstborn Siblings Are More Conservative, New Study Finds
And, of course, we all know how the media has been branding its political opponent Donald Trump as suffering from some "narcissistic personality disorder".
Quoting StreetlightX
As I said, I wasn't discussing the matter seriously. It's like trying to have a serious discussion with a child about the virtues of bedtime. I get it, you hate reductionist and evolutionary psychology - what's not to hate. The idea that us poor psychologists are too anal (ref), to think about their models in terms of the ecologies and environmental networks within which they're embedded would be naive if it wasn't in this case rather just a cliched Danish Gambit.
Something of a strawman given that I think only Apollodorus takes that book seriously.
I was previously unaware (until fdrake's post above) that studies in openness correlating to progressive/conservative have been somewhat debunked, or rather that evidence shows one does not precede the other, and they may develop in tandem. I first learned of the correlation via Moral Foundations theory, which I find compelling.
I don't really think either apply. It's pretty clear that the arguments put forward by either side are moves in the rhetorical game, so I think if one were to 'understand' their intentions the only understanding to be had would be of the expected impact the argument would have, rather than anything much relating to deeper intentions. There's understanding how the other side functions, and how their belief systems evolve, and then there's the arguments they put forth. I don't see any reason to believe the two are the same.
But let's assume they are for a second. What would it take for you to feel content that side A had 'understood' side B? As I (and the rest of my profession) have but recently learnt from reading Streelight's post, side B's 'understanding' would only ever be a state of their network, it's not like it could ever be some kind of photograph of side A's True Position.
Behavior to distinguish between feeling or thought and action. For instance, abortion 'feels' wrong to me yet in behavior I support it. Or conversely, I might go to the auto mall intent on buying a safe family car, whatever that might be and because that best suites family needs, and pull into the driveway later with a sports car and various rationalizations for the purchase.
I disagree.
You cannot depoliticize the society. People simply disagree. That is human nature. Yet even if we disagree, we can make things together.
In a republic, politics has to function, democracy has to work. A representative system is the only way when the society is comprised of million of people. If you had the near perfect society, lot of people would disagree with the idea that it is perfect and have different opinions how to make it better. At the community level or in a mini-state, direct democracy can work.
When we simply accept that a) totally sane and intelligent people can have totally opposite views to what we consider sane and intelligent and that in the end b) voters are informed and intelligent enough for elections to guide the representative system, democracy will prevail. If we think that people can "vote wrong" or worse, that a large part of our fellow citizens represent a danger to the society, then we are in perilous waters.
Both leftist and right-wing populism tries to create a juxtaposition between "us" and "them" and seek basically to dehumanize the other side as the culprit of all problems in the society. Things don't deteriorate because nobody does anything and people let problems to grow bigger: the idea is that some people are on purpose creating the problems. With classic Marxism it's obvious with talking about the class-enemy, but the far right is totally on board with similar rhetoric, just with different culprits and scapegoats. It is the political extremes who see politics literally as a battlefield where the other side is the enemy.
Funny enough, it looks like it's others who keep talking about it.
Why create something new, when the old still works?
Just wait for a new generation to come around, and then repeat the old dogmas. They are new ideas again, because nothing ever happened before me!
You can find this type of reasoning in a plethora of books, from reactionaries to liberals. The article that @fdrake supplied "raises concerns about a core/critical assumption in the literature" vis-a-vis "personality causally preceding political ideology", so this isn't my own pet qualm or strawman. To @StreetlightX's point, the reduction of political ideology and attitudes to innate personality traits appeals to non-revolutionary types (i.e. non-Leftists/Socialists etc.) because existing political structures become justified based on "innate traits" and act as a barrier to structural change.
Quoting fdrake
Quoting praxis
This doesn't seem to be any more interesting, causal, or explanatory than any other preferences or attitudes that develop/form over time, such as personality and music preference, personality and hobby preference, political attitudes and literature preferences, or whatever other combinations.
The extremes inspire, influence or manipulate and mobilize the mainstream. And political parties do conduct their election campaigns like military operations on an ideological battlefield, not just the extremist factions within them.
Don't forget that political parties started off as small (radical) groups that overtime won the support of large sections of society through propaganda of all shades, etc.
This brings us to the other thing which is that the polarization started with the left who rose in opposition to the status quo. Without the left's opposition, there'd have been no polarization. So, the issue of how the polarization came into being is another aspect to the problem that needs looking into.
That’s one of the frightening aspects of identity politics: the corresponding reactionary identity politics that is almost certainly to follow. Neither side can prevail until the other is vanquished.
No it isn't. That's not the definition of permanence.
Correct. Politics is about accumulating as much power as possible just like others accumulate wealth. Once one side has become dominant there is nothing to prevent it from exterminating the opposition. It's happened many times throughout history and we shouldn't pretend otherwise.
I can easily imagine this to be real but haven't seen it myself. In any case, it would be designed for a particular audience, an audience that is inclined to maintain the status quo, some because it's beneficial to them personally and others out of mere loyalty to the tribe.
Can you give me an example of something that never undergoes any change?
By the way, the larger context of my comment is in reference to Heraclitus and flux. Some here may have picked up on it, obviously you have not.
Well perhaps @Isaac could clue us in as to who signs his paycheck
Well, your context must have been so large as to have no bearing on the permanence I was referring to in the topic. The normal meaning of permanent is "lasting (for a long time)". It doesn't need to be everlasting in the absolute sense. That's why we've got phrases like "permanent ink", "permanent scar", etc. It isn't eternity we're talking about here.
But Marxists are always right, so you can relax.
If you go back to my earlier comments you will see that I already addressed this. For example, the Constitution and amendments. It does not last unchanged.
Quoting Apollodorus
I am not a Marxist. Far from it. How about focusing on what I and others actually say rather than labeling us and attacking the label?
That's exactly what I'm saying. It wasn't me who started the labeling. And the topic wasn't about Heraclitus, though you may have missed that point in your zeal.
And why are you upset for being called a Marxist? Surely that ought to be a compliment?
More than this too: is allows liberals and others to ignore any substantive engagement with issues. Why take seriously questions of poverty or corruption or tax when "oh you believe X because of personality trait Y". It's claptrap that personalizes the political and bypasses questions of coalition building, consensus, material conditions, or systemic analysis. It takes the political out of politics. Which is a wonderful relief for these people who now have to no longer think about any of this stuff and they can leave it to medical journals to ask about why the poor are complaining so much about wage theft or some such. The psycologization of politics is a cancer.
I am not interested in your petty bickering.
Did I give any indication that I am upset by being called a Marxist? It is simply that your insult ("But Marxists are always right, so you can relax.") missed the mark.
If you have anything substantive to discuss I will respond but I will no longer abide the petulant attacks on me. And before responding that I have done the same, read through my posts and separate them from what others may have said.
As I said, I didn't mean to upset you. I've only been on here a few days not many years like yourself. I thought you were part of the hit squad that was labeling, attacking, and trying to ban me from the forum for starting the discussion. And I don't think "Marxist" is an insult. On the contrary, as Marxists are knowledgeable people like Marx, Lenin and Mao, I was trying to pay you a compliment. I didn't know much about Marxism before joining this forum but now I'm learning quite a lot. I quite like the impeccable and skillful manner in which you're presenting your arguments and I thought I must learn something from you while I can
We are not going ban you just for mentioning a book by a fascist scumbag. I expect it was unintentional. I’ve removed the name and title from the OP. The topic of discussion is fine. Try to steer clear of neo-nazi resources in future though as you might be misinterpreted.
That was exactly my point. Society is being politicized and politics is being psychologized. If it carries on like this we'll end up with a society in which half the population are "paranoid schizophrenics" or "psychopaths" and the other half psychiatrists, a bit like in the Soviet Union.
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Isaac
I agree that side A can never have a ‘true picture’ of side B. But I begin from the belief that , at least in the U.S., side A and B inhabit different universes of thought. don’t think there is a single rhetorical game, but different games played in parallel universes.
Furthermore, these universes tie together and inform a multitude of specific political positions: gun control , climate change , views about covid danger and mask wearing , abortion, death penalty , immigration , terrorism, identity and gender politics, patriotism, economics, religion. A traditional worldview can justify the seeming paradox of protecting the newborn but favoring gun ownership and the death penalty, of not tolerating any ambiguity or complexity in one’s sciences.
So what can ‘understanding’ accomplish if not a fusion of outlook between A and B? It can allow side A to see
the logic of side B’s positron from their vantage even when side A continues to prefer their own viewpoint.
To succeed at this means to no longer have to delegitimize B’s thinking. What fuels today’s polarizing political scene is not simply that the opponents see the world differently , it’s that they cannot fathom how one could in good conscience hold the views of the opposing side. This leaves only delegitimizing explanations for the
other’s behavior. For instance, their reasoning can be faulted. The are all crazy, or looney, as the OP said. The other option is to impute their values. The dont really believe that what they are doing is is the best interest of everyone, this is just an excuse to cover up nefarious motives, like greed and lust for power.
To understand the other side in their terms is to recognize not only the legitimate moral righteousness that informs it l, but to be prepared for the possibility that they will be unable to recognize your own position in such morally neutral terms.
Thus, this kind of understanding of the other doesn’t have as its goal the aim of persuading them to adopt your position, knowing that they may see this as a betrayal of their values. Its advantage is to protect you from reacting violently, punitively, condemningly, toward the other.
Great minds think alike!
Quoting StreetlightX
Out of your categories it would fit as part of 'systemic analysis', I believe, assuming that minds are part of the system.
“The Psychology of Politics: How does psychology make sense of the madness of politics?” It's from Psychology Today.
By Lisa J Cohen, Psychology Today
“The extensive media coverage of politicians' lives provides ample opportunity for clinicians to make inferences about politicians' psychological traits. Notably, the conclusions that different clinicians draw are quite similar. One of the most common traits that clinicians talk about is that of narcissism […] Interestingly, attitudes toward the 5 categories of moral concerns[1] may also influence political beliefs. In other words, political conservatives and liberals may emphasize different categories of moral instincts from one another […] This study helps us understand why people with equally strong moral convictions may vehemently disagree on political issues such as abortion, capital punishment and flag burning.
1. Harm/care, Ingroup/loyalty, Authority/respect, Purity/sanctity, and Fairness/reciprocity.
So, politics does have something to do with psychology after all, But it takes a "philosophy forum" to deny it ...
Here's another interesting piece from Live Science;
Firstborn Siblings Are More Conservative, New Study Finds
And, of course, we all know how the media has been branding its political opponent Donald Trump as suffering from some "narcissistic personality disorder".
What is described to be "psychological" is always anchored by a philosophical and/or religious ground. For example, what it means in William James is not the same as the ground in Freud, nor the recognized diagnoses used in current Clinical Psychology.
You might be interested in George Lakoff, a cognitive linguist who focuses on how different metaphors build up different views of the world and influence our preferences therein. He focuses on the language of nurturing versus the talk of people needing the rod to be good citizens.
While that is an interesting line of inquiry, it does not displace the central role of politics which is giving more power to some at the expense of others. People with privileges want to keep them. Those deprived of them want more equality.
The scale of these differences is not proportional to the sense of responsibility for the common good. There are those who understand we have to take stewardship for the world as it is thrust upon us and those driven by pure self interest alone. I have found many examples of both from one end of the political scale to the other.
Yea, but would you agree that the extreme political
polarization between right and left in the U.S. is not a function of power, but worldview? That is to say , explanations of who wields power, who the victims are and the reason for the inequality are entirely different depending on which side of the partisan divide you lie on.
The extreme polarization comes from not sharing a common source of information about what is happening. It is difficult to discuss causes when such large groups start from very different sets of facts.
The right wing in the US went from trying to be the "adults" in the room to full on conspiracy addicts who could never be disabused of their mistakes.
I accept that all political rhetoric is the best gloss upon an idea but Q anon is starting to be represented in Congress.
What can one say to bridge hallucination to reality?
I’ve only skimmed your posts, and from what I’ve read seem to be all over the place in a futile attempt to promote some ideology rather than seek the truth of the matter. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
The article appears to reference moral foundations theory, judging by the snippet you posted. That theory doesn’t support anything I’ve read from you.
Let me provide a very simple example as to why psychological analysis is a poor explanatory model for political attitudes. Here is an article from Ezra Klein, a liberal political analyst, that attempts to explain, through a political psychological lens, why conservatives are far less concerned with Covid than liberals. (To be clear, this is a stupid article).
Klein writes in the article's prolegomenon that, "Put simply, conservatives are psychologically tuned to see threat, and so they fear change. Liberals are tuned to prize change, and so they downplay threat." He subsequently justifies this with several quotes from political scientists and social psychologists, including Jonathan Haidt. I will quote and emphasis:
Well that's weird, Klein realizes...because it's clearly American conservatives who are downplaying the virus to the point of denying it's very existence. It's completely antithetical to the statements above which emphasis, if not outright insist, on the "rooted stability" or the "fundamentality" of how reaction to threat molds political attitudes. "This is the opposite of what a straightforward read of decades of political psychology research would predict," writes Klein.
So, he asks half-a-dozen political psychologists directly to explain and they came up with three theories.
The first is that conservatives are "denying and repressing fear" and displacing directly bodily and health-related threats through fear of economic recession and instability. "For all we know," says on respondent, "Americans who are explicitly denying the problem are experiencing (even) more stress and anxiety than those who are not.” For all we know!
The second is that this is occurring because of hyper-partisanship messaging. Trump and other conservative politicians and conservative pundits are downplaying the coronavirus for political reasons. Haidt responds that Trump's message "overwhelms the small average difference in disgust sensitivity which would, ceteris paribus, have Republicans more concerned about contagion." "Small average difference"? Above he was quoted as saying that conservatives "react more strongly" to germs and contamination than liberals. Well which is it? Likewise, Christopher Federico, a political psychologist who above stated that "Liberalism and conservatism were rooted in stable individual differences" in regards to threat, responds to Klein saying "Chronic sensitivity to threat, disgust, and disease is one factor.... [but] it is not the only one. Partisanship itself is perhaps the most important factor in shaping how people respond to issues or public concerns.” So now we move from political attitudes being" rooted in stable" psychological differences to oh actually this is really all explained by Trump's political hegemony with conservatives and political propaganda.
The third explanation basically connects the two, arguing that conservatives are threatened through xenophobia by Trump's anti-China messaging.
As you can (hopefully) see, what these political scientists and social psychologists are doing is providing half-baked supplementary hypotheses as to why, in their own words, their foundational theories and essential predictions are being contradicted by real-world conditions. And when they do provide a more accurate non-psychological explanation for why conservatives are minimizing the virus threat, viz. that they are digesting a wide apparatus of conservative messaging, including propaganda from the President, that is downplaying the virus for political reasons, their "rooted" and "fundamental" theories suddenly turn into gossamer.
So does Ezra Klein also come to the similar realization that political psychology is just bunk science? No, in order to retain the authenticity of the profession he offers a bland metaphor about how political psychology is like soil. Haidt suggests it's like the foundations of a house. If all you can do to is offer metaphor to defend an ostensible scientific theory then, buddy, you don't have an actual scientific theory.
But holy shit people take this voodoo seriously smh.
It's crystal healing for political dilettantes.
Beating up a “stupid” article, what is it kill the scarecrow day where you live?
The article is worthless. I’m not just saying that because I find foundation theory compelling and given that you also find it worthless there’s no point in bothering to explain.
Pretty evident that I find it stupid, but not worthless, however if you just wanted to get a quick hit-in-run dig to make you feel a little better about yourself I'd understand.
I was referring to the expression of belief when I talked about rhetorical games, the reason why we think the two sides are different is largely the expression of their belief, not the belief itself (as in 'a tendency to act as if...').
Quoting Joshs
I don't think they do. Certain beliefs act as membership badges for social groups, they're simply tokens to identify you as a member, I don't see any reason to think they cohere, nor that they were even derived from 'first principles' in any way. Most people when interrogated about their beliefs can't provide coherent arguments form some mythical foundational principle - conservatism, libertarianism, compassion, whatever. The beliefs appear more like off-the-shelf position statements, often about situations they'll never even face, nor have to change their behaviour to comply with in any way. The justifications are post hoc, themes like conservatism or libertarianism are there as narrative prompts to reach for when required, off which a good story can built to explain that particular belief's place in the system.
Quoting Joshs
As I said, I really don't see any reason to think that Side A or B have any kind of 'logic' to their respective worldviews at all, so there's nothing to see in that respect. There are collections of positions which are generally mutually exclusive sets (though some overlap) that are adopted out of habit, conformity, personal narrative building...
Quoting Joshs
Yes, I agree, though obviously for different reasons. But delegitimising is itself a tool to shore up the boundaries of one's own group membership. If the other views seemed like other tins on the shelf at the supermarket then one's own collection would seem ad hoc and the social boundary looks vague and insecure. We need to see the other's beliefs as not-even-options, "how could one even think that?" to make the boundary of our social group seem more secure. I'm not even sure it would be a good idea to 'understand' the political choices of one's opponents in any given struggle. As you say...
Quoting Joshs
...which seems to me to be a disadvantage. Where groups are oppressed and have been serially so for decades - the poor, minorities, modern day colonies of TNCs...what's needed is more violence and condemnation. We're not going to sit round a table and resolve this.
No, @Maw's got a point. I'm personally giving up work and retraining as a philosopher - I can't believe some people in my profession say things which are wrong. What with this example, and @StreetlightX's indirect reference to that classic paper "People fight poverty because they're Sagittarians" which we all studied at university as if it was gospel. I thought every single one of them was 100% correct all the time and never showed any political bias...damn. Oh well, moving over to philosophy now where I don't expect to find any ridiculous ideas at all, otherwise we'd have to abandon that entire method of analysis too...
Yes, we'll keep it on topic.
What are you talking about? Are you an expert in the psychology of politics?
This entire sub-topic has already had more serious consideration than it deserved, I'm not going add the deconstruction of a sarcastic rejoinder to that trend.
Maw showed us an article from political psychology that made politically motivated post hoc rationalisation in place of good theory. From that we're supposed to conclude the entire field of study is nonsense. It's an argument too stupid to even consider, let alone respond to seriously.
If anyone's interested in discussing the flaws of the many, many, wrongheaded theories in political psychology I think that'd be very interesting, but interest is not the intention here.
So your point is that a single failure doesn't indicate that the whole endeavor has failed.
I think the reason that attempting to describe the left psychologically is bound to create false conclusions is that the left, wherever it appears, represents a fusion if diverse agendas arising out of contemporary circumstances.
I think this is what Street was referring to as the environmental aspect of it.
So you haven't read the article or my posts. Just what I thought.
I never said it's just the left that should be described or analyzed psychologically.
However, by definition, the left represents opposition to the status quo. That's how it got its name, from the opposition sitting on the left in the French parliament.
And opposition means fusion of opposing forces and conflict that historically manifests itself as revolutionary movements.
I don't think so. Leftism
Yes. If by 'point' you mean much the same as the 'point' that trousers go on button-frontwards, or the 'point' that one shouldn't piss upwind, then yes, my 'point' is that some people are sometimes wrong.
Quoting frank
Why would the environmental embeddedness render any conclusions false? I can see why it would render conclusions which failed to account for it false, but not simply all conclusions tout court.
Streetlight's point was little more than a derogatory assumption that psychologists were incapable of contextualising their models. As if such fields were exhaustive. Ecologists are not expected to know the biology of the individual species to any lesser extent just because their models are of the networks rather than the nodes.
Could you go into a little more detail here? I'm not quite sure what your point is.
Quoting Isaac
Well, let's put it this way: to psychologize a political movement, we'd need to first show that the people in the group have similar psyches. Do they?
In politics, the term Left derives from the French Revolution as the political groups opposed to the royal veto privilege (Montagnard and Jacobin deputies from the Third Estate) generally sat to the left of the presiding member's chair in parliament while the ones in favour of the royal veto privilege sat on its right.
Wikipedia, Left-wing politics
The Left Opposition was a faction within the Russian Communist Party (b) from 1923 to 1927 headed de facto by Leon Trotsky. The Left Opposition formed as part of the power struggle within the party leadership that began with the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin 's illness and intensified with his death in January 1924.
Wikipedia, Left opposition
I said ecologists are not expected to know the biology of the individual species to any lesser extent. Clumsy wording.
One cannot study the ecology of owls, voles and shrews without knowing some facts about the biology of each (specifically in this case, I believe, that owl's digestive systems extract fewer nutrients from shrews). Biology and ecology are not exclusive of each other, it would be ludicrous to suggest they had a relationship characterised by mutual irrelevancy.
That's exactly what highlights the problem of political power and its impact on society
I could, but I fear I'd run out of hair, there's precious little left as it is.
Quoting frank
Why? Saltpeter, charcoal and sulphur are dissimilar yet we can model the resultant mixture as a system containing all three.
Quoting frank
That's the point of the study. Of course we could always just guess.
In any case, I'm not here to argue metaphors. I'm sorry to see you on the side of Nazi sympathizers who babble shit like 'the left is characterized by high degrees of narcissism' just because you get paid for your shamanism.
If a field of study committed one to all the output of that field we'd both be Nazis.
You're giving me contradictory answers.
Leftism is not defined as an opposition to the status quo. I'm not going to repeat that.
Am I? One says that psyches needn't be same, the other that some methodical study might be the best way to find out if they are or not.
The same would be true of field's sins, no? Reductionism is not a flaw limited political psychology, nor is it a flaw which exhausts political psychology.
The term "left" derives from opposition groups in the French Revolution and has been historically used to designate opposition movements. See Wikipedia articles above.
If you believe this to be the "wrong" definition, what is the "right" one? Why is that so difficult to answer?
By 'psychology' you mean modeling similar to climate models or models of the earth's em field, or the Yellowstone Caldera.
The OP is obviously not using the word that way.
Maybe you're misunderstanding what I'm specifically I'm targeting here. I'm talking about political psychology that says liberals are liberals and conservatives are conservatives because of they have X Y Z behavioral or personality traits. This is in response with the claims of the opening post and subsequent claims from the original poster. Your original, response to me, however, seems to be about political advertising targeting those who have specific political priors. That is not what I'm referring to.
You must be talking about yourself given that this is a thread that I started.
By the way the "claims" you're talking about are not mine, they are from Psychology Today and other scientific publications. See the URL links I posted.
Is it possible that there are some personality traits that are statistically more commonly shared by liberals than conservatives and others more common to conservatives? If so, is there any value in identifying them?
The problem with that definition is that to a greater or lesser degree the status quo is the result of the work of the left, and so, to that extent opposing the status quo would mean opposing themselves.
You changed to liberal/conservative. That's not the same as left/right, is it?
The psychological analysis of political thought and behavior is a legitimate line of inquiry. It may be inconvenient to some for political reasons but that's their problem.
Maybe. I wasn't really responding to the OP by then (which turns out to be just a thinly disguised repetition of the all-to-common neo-liberal whinging about not being taken seriously).
I assume you're referring the use of 'psychology' to mean a person's personality traits, yes? I mean, it's still the case that methodical study is the best way to answer the question, it's just that in that case the study's been done already and the answer is no.
I don't personaly hold that there even are such things as personality traits. I think any 'traits' we identify are socially mediated constructions, not features of the psyche that can be 'discovered' by any experimental set-up. So the premise is flawed from the start, but this has been at issue for over twenty years, so the likes of Klein and Haidt are just being disingenuous pretending otherwise. But then they're flailing, so will clutch at anything.
Sure, but these are just spurious correlations, therefore, no, there is no meaningful value in identifying them.
Well, some leftists believe in "permanent revolution" so opposing what they stood for previously wouldn't be out of character.
Plus, @frank's definition isn't any better, in so far as he has one at all which I haven't seen yet.
I know. You seemed to be agreeing with the OP when your real feeling is that she's wrong because we're all p-zombies.
To know you is to love you, man.
The change was not intentional. I do not think there are hard and fast definitions of these terms. There may be a useful distinction between liberal and left or conservative and right, but I did not have one in mind.
I have not done or read about what those correlations might be, but I would think it worth identifying them before declaring them spurious.
Conservative/liberal tends to signify an American context. But yes, as long as we pick a framework and stick to it, we're good.
Yes, that is true but I that does not describe most who consider themselves on the left. Some on the right/conservatives/Republicans will label them "leftists", but that is a rhetorical ploy.
Quoting Fooloso4
I've never heard one say that. American conservatives actually are 21st Century liberals, though.
It’s been awhile since I read Righteous Minds but I seem to recall the ‘foundations’ being regarded as social constructs. Constructs that are based on moral intuitions that we all possess. You’re against this intuitionism?
Yes, there was a discussion of this on this or another thread a few days ago.
So you really did hear a Republican claim leftism? Could you fill in the details?
Laziness and self-indulgence are two of my worst traits.
It wasn't so much a misunderstanding as a declining of your opening gambit.
Quoting Maw
Indeed. As I said to Frank above, I don't even hold that there are such things as 'personality traits' in the sense of something one 'discovers' of oneself, so the entire question is meaningless, but such questions do not exhaust political psychology, at least half of which (in England anyway) is about disproving such nonsense.
Now we could do so by just blowing raspberries at it, but I prefer a more methodical approach.
The preferred terms these days are radical left, socialist (Trump throws in radical before socialist for good measure) and Marxist, and occasionally progressive, but progressive has positive connotations so is used less frequently.
According to Peter Beinart:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/democratic-party-moves-left/573946/
Interesting.
Quoting Maw
Not sure how my original post varies from what I've subsequently been saying, but whatever.
I'm not talking about "rhetorical ploys".
Historically, liberals were opposed to the ruling conservatives, and socialists to the ruling liberals or conservatives. That's why in historical terms the left stands for opposition to the established order. This is confirmed by the Wikipedia articles quoted above.
Wikipedia, Left-wing politics
"The Left Opposition was a faction within the Russian Communist Party (b) from 1923 to 1927 headed de facto by Leon Trotsky. The Left Opposition formed as part of the power struggle within the party leadership that began with the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin 's illness and intensified with his death in January 1924."
Wikipedia, Left opposition
This is also a psychological explanation, albeit one not rooted in personality traits but social conditioning , the idea that individuals unthinkingly introject and internalize ‘conservative messaging’.
This shouldnt be surprising. The divide between
paychological theory and philosophy is an arbitrary one(Freud vs Nietzsche, Sartre vs embodied cogntition , Gergen vs Foucault, Heidegger vs Gendlin). If psychology is just a conventionalized form of philosophy, then so is political theory. Between psychology and polic theory I would argue that most philosophers of the past 200 years have been more closely tied to psychology and politics. Nietzsche called himself a psychologist. Husserl heaped praise on intentional psychology.
Tell me a little about your political philosophy and I’ll match it up with a parallel psychological model. I promise it will be more to your liking than Haidt.
Quoting praxis
I'm guessing that you're not comfortable with the term 'trait' because it may imply inborn and immutable qualities rather than something like ingrained habits or socially mediated conditioning? We each have particular conditioning or ingrained habits. I can't see how that's disputable.
Also, there are studies on moral intuition that experiment with babies, such as the following.
Going back to the stupid article that Maw referenced, it appeared to intentionally stress a flawed premise to try proving that the whole enterprise is weak in its explanatory or predictive power. From my understanding of it that premise is not stressed or pivotal to the theory.
If we are talking about politics then we must talk about rhetorical ploys. It is important to see how much political rhetoric informs our views of politics.
Quoting Apollodorus
Historically, these terms are not fixed. The center shifts and with it those who are on either side. Depending on the issue conservatives may be just as determined to change the established order as the liberals.
The center doesn't shift of its own accord. It shifts further and further to the left under pressure from the left.
When conservatives are determined to "change the established order", the established order tends to be an order established either under pressure from the left opposition or under the rule of the left. In which case, the conservatives more often than not see change as a reversal of leftist policies and a return to the more conservative status quo ante.
The change aimed at by the conservatives is not the same as the change pursued by the left, though the two may partially overlap at times. This is an important distinction to make if you want to understand what my original question meant.
I think it's the other way around. Rhetoric is an expression of political thought. Rhetoric may well inform our views of politics but it doesn't originate in our views. Therefore we need to look at its place of origin which is politics and politics is at least partly rooted in psychology.
Sure, I'll admit to getting lazy by virtue of how other people are responding. Such as the quote below:
Quoting praxis
The importance of the premise re: threat and conservative worldview was explicitly provided by the social psychologists and political scientists themselves. I took the time to emphasis those remarks and reexamine them after contradictory phenomenon was provided to the authors, so that they couldn't be avoided by commentators here, but congrats, you're attempting to do so anyway.
Depends on the question you have in mind.
You can see perhaps differences in the personality traits among people who have as pets cats opposite to dogs or then have rabbits, but likely people will just draw stupid stereotypes from the information. A lot of people in PF had cats as pets. Hmmm...
In politics more important might be the actual politics, the implemented policies and so on.
I'm only familiar with MFT so my comments are limited to that theory. You re-quoted this from The Righteous Mind:
This is pivotal to MFT?
I like the way Klein casually mentions "A virus isn’t just any threat, some researchers say. It is the threat at the root of these psychological cleavages." What researchers and how did they did they arrive at that conclusion?
My takeaway from MFT is that what separates us politically is mere social constructs and not particular traits or moral intuitions. Isn't everyone afraid of disease and death? Doesn't everyone value loyalty and fairness? Does being a member of tree-hugger clan mean that you have to think and act in a particular way? Sure, to be in good standing, but circumstances change and what it means to be a tree-hugger may change with it.
Is MFT even considered part of political psychology?
And art is an anti-philosophy and anti-psychology, as is music, literature , poetry and every other mode of human creativity. Each is the anti of the others and that is their greatness. Any attempt or privilege or denigrate
any of these modes with respect to the others leads to silly biases like Heidegger’s elevating of poetry to the ultimate expression of being, or Nietzsche doing the same with art , or Rorty telling us we should chuck our philosophy books in favor of novels, or claiming that politics is ‘even more’ anti psychology than philosophy.
When powerful new ways of understanding ourselves come upon the scene , they can be expressed in any of the above modes. All I know is the most exciting and insightful discourses of being in the world I have found are from a small group of philosophers and clinical psychologists. It seems to me that political theory is lagging behind. Deleuze, Foucault and Marx don’t do it for me.
So what is your opinion? If a person prizes a free market above the availability of healthcare, is there a personality trait in that?
The meaning of the transcendental , as well as the psychologistic, has undergone substantial
change since Kant. Psychologists who follow Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology embrace a form of transcendentalism that stands as a critique of Kantian transcendental subjectivity, by recognizing the irreducible reciprocal dependency of subjectivity and objectivity in the apprehension of the world.These authors jettison Kant’s solipsist idealist transcendental in favor of radical self-world interaction.
One finds this a priori in psychologists like Gendlin and Kelly, as well as Evan Thompson.
Of course , an entire generation of neo-Kantian psychologists implicitly based their models on Kantian idealism. So it wasn’t that they didntt admit of a transcendental perspective, but that they took it for granted.
Oh I'm well aware. The best working to purge it ever more of any residual psychologism. Considering psychology is largely a garbage science anyway, one has to admire the foresight of philosophers in ditching it early on.
It shifts in both directions. For example, many of Reagan's policies are now regarded as liberal.
Quoting Apollodorus
Right. The pendulum swings in both directions.
Quoting Apollodorus
It is not one way or the other. Influence flows in both directions.
That may be the way you regard it, but there have been many prominent philosophers both past and present who do not agree with you.
I will surely bet that those that are either for or against universal healthcare differ in their personal traits. The views that they hold on universal healthcare most likely depends on their own experiences of the system and the government/private sector.
If system works, people usually are OK with that. If the system doesn't work, they likely are unhappy with it. Hence them being for or against a system doesn't depend on their individual personal traits, but on the performance of the system.
As I said, owning as a pet a cat or a dog might say something about you, but it doesn't say much about your stance on health policies. But someone might make a nonsense investigation and come to the conclusion that if you have a rabbit as a pet, you likely vote X.
I’m aware of your influences: Cavell, Zizek, Wittgenstein, Connolly, Deleuze. Every one of them has waxed enthusiastic about certain psychologists.
I think Deleuze was fond of Guattari, Witt admired James, Connolly quotes Freud up the wazoo, etc.
Correct.
I agree. This is why I said in another post:
I would think it worth identifying them before declaring them spurious.
...Quoting ssu
But those policies and practices are put in place by people. People vote. People protest. Money and power are great equalizers but what else motivates people to promote one policy rather than another? Back one candidate rather than another? Become a candidate? Run on a particular platform? Are there differences that divide along party lines?
Quoting Isaac
Quoting Isaac
I’m not sure I understand how one can authorize violence and condemnation against an other while at the same
time considering their perspective and actions to be legitimate. As Ken Gergen wrote “ those we excoriate are but living also within traditions that are, for them, suffused with a sense of ethical primacy.”
I can understand how one group might accept an other group’s politics as not at all subject to moral condemnation , and yet find it necessary to protect one’s own community from them. One can defend oneself against a wild animal without condemning them , because we see their behavior as legitimate and natural.
Quoting Isaac
I think this gets to the heart of it. For you the idea of a legitimate perspective , an internal logic to a worldview , is incoherent There are only fragmented and arbitrary bits of conditioned habits, so a ‘tough love’ is justified to change the reinforcement contingencies , habits, propositional narratives.
It may well do. What matters is which direction is the main one and where the original source lies.
However, if that someone has the statistics to back up his conclusion then his investigation can hardly be dismissed as "nonsense". It's all a matter of evidence, nobody cares about spurious conclusions. But you do sound a bit like a rabbit person, for sure.
You must have spent a lot of time making that drawing and you have my respect and admiration for your effort. However, I doubt very much that anyone would ever think of linking shark attacks and ice cream sales. Did my comment upset you? Or are you a cat person?
Perhaps sharks are attracted to ice cream lovers for some as yet inexplicable reason. We just don't know. Someone needs to do a study.
Maybe they smell sweeter due to the ice cream's sugar content that reminds sharks (at least the more clever among them) of blood? So you are a cat person after all. Unless you prefer rabbits.
Are you suggesting an alternative arrangement?
Would not any sort of change require political power?
I don't understand the distinction you are making between politics and society.
Or perhaps beachgoers all jacked-up on ice cream swim more erratically and farther out to sea and the sharks don't sense the added sweeteners at all. Again, someone must do a study.
I don't know what the critter thing is about. You can safely drop me into the general 'animal lover' category though, though I'm not crazy about sharks.
Defensive: many reasons. One is because it’s an important issue. Like closing the boarder when there is a pandemic. Another is when your fundamental beliefs disappear it’s like letting go of the boat that keeps you afloat. People don’t like that. You end up in chaos then.
Far left are loonies and far rights are loonies. Normal left are loonies because they are the creative types. They are eccentric. They want change. And they have many ideas (most ideas are stupid) they are ofc not loonies but can be seen as such.
The far left has gone too far. Wanting everything the be equal is not gonna work. It’s a foolish idea. No way can you have equal amounts of people of different “types” for lack of a better word in any system.
No point talking about far right (we know where that goes)
Far left also think that western society is patriarchal (it is) but not the way they think. They think everything is based on power. Which is ofc not true. Most hierarchies in the west are based on competence. It’s not the brute destructive programmer that rises too the top. It’s usually the most competent.
Why the different part: well we mostly like our kin. People who think and act like us. You have your own group. It’s weird for a philosophy group to take a day out with the practical types and do practical things and vice versa.
And society is a tyrannical force (not only) it makes you conform. You have to be a cog in the machine. It deletes part of you that might be beneficial for all and also deletes part of you that won’t. It also gives you everything that society has given you. And creative (open) people are more original (they like to be different) They feel that more strongly when things get “tyrannical” and low open people feel it more when things generate into chaos. Both need a balance ofc. Thats why we need free speech and talk to the other side. Sometimes conservatives are right and sometimes liberals are.
You generally vote you personality. not because you have "great" ideas
And all cats are girls, yes I agree
Now with a shiny veneer of pseudo-science to make it seem legitimate!
No pseudo-science. Have you even read how they got to the conclusion? Probably not. You dismiss so quickly with your arrogance. Good luck with that. The arrogance of the intellect is shining here
How dare you, I am a proud Gemini
Yes I've watched 2 out of 3 winners of the Big Five: It Happened One Night and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Both are fantastic. Haven't seen The Silence of the Lambs though.
Yes. I'm not quite sure my full critique of Haidt's position is quite appropriate here, but in summary, I think he's right to invoke the factors he has in playing into political decisions (though that's pretty self-evident), but he's wrong to treat them as foundational.
The problem is that we're already interpreting behaviours (and self-report) from within a cultural context, so to say "X behaviour is innate" is to identify behaviour x as an instance of X (where x is the instance and X is the model of instances). That very identification is culturally mediated. So when you say
Quoting praxis
I don't really agree. We have instances of specific behaviours, but identifying them as examples of trait X depends on our model of X which itself is formed by our language and cultural upbringing.
Haidt's 'moral tastes' are an attempt to classify behaviours (and self-reports) as if such a classification could be done outside of the history and speech acts that each of those terms have attached to them. For 'harm and 'care' to have any meaning (to take his fist axis as an example), they have to already accept the identification of those terms with behaviours. They don't come empty first for us to then say "I wonder what might fit in these categories".
So rather than some set of tastes existing as natural kinds which then inevitably lead someone to some behaviour exemplary of a particular political persuasion, I'd say that a person's political position will dictate how they interpret the behaviours an assign them to motivating morals according to publicly available narratives. I can't find a free copy, I'm afraid, but if you have any institutional access, you might be interested in Stephen Reicher's paper rejuvenating Moscovician social representation model for political psychology.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2011.00834.x
Because contextual legitimacy doesn't mean that resolution is reachable. Just because I can see how someone might have arrived at a position, it doesn't have any bearing on the methods by which I'd have to bring about a change. I can understand how a psychopath ended up that way if I see a lesion in the vm prefrontal cortex, that doesn't mean I can now diffuse his rage with talking.
Quoting Joshs
Indeed, but that's because the condemnation would have no effect on an animal. We're a social species, ostracisation is our main tool for setting group rules, so condemnation works. Look at how riled neo-liberals on this site are that we don't take their arguments seriously, they shouldn't care to debate with such obvious moral reprobates, but they do, because they want to be in the beard-stroking intellectuals gang.
Quoting Joshs
Yeah, that's not far off.
Well, if replication is an issue for you, what's your alternative?
If I'm supporting an argument for mitigating circumstances to reduce the sentence of a young offender the crown want to make an example of, on the ground that his behavioural choices were affected by his social environment, what exactly do you think I should bring to bear in that? Žižek? You think the judge is going to give a shit what some random polemicist thinks? What about government policy, risk analysis, charitable intervention strategies...
What exactly is your brilliant non-psychological solution to the questions which inevitably hinge on how people are likely to react to their social and environmental circumstances? Guess? Use our brilliant 'gut feelings' (which mysteriously vary depending on how much power we wield)? Trust to philosophers who we, for some reason, assume immune to bias and just 'tell it how it is'?
All these digs at the old linear models you and Maw think are these fantastic coup de grâce are thirty years out of date. Even the standard textbooks warn against them, let alone any serious researcher.
Just because our models have to be non-linear, stochastic, and break down completely at higher levels of integration, doesn't mean we throw them away. Models of weather and climate are likewise non-linear stochastic and break down at higher levels of integration. The weather forecast for next week is little better than guesswork. It's influenced by too many factors that cannot be included in the model, but if I'm climbing a mountain tomorrow I'd be an idiot not to take it into account.
Well communism obviously. But barring that, literally anything else but psychology. Seriously. Want people to live good lives? Give 'em good public transport and social services. Design cities with well integrated zoning. Fund schools and public housing, tax the fuck out of the rich and out of cooperations, greenify all public space, and dincentivize, to the point of strangulation, carbon emissions. Rethink the monetary system. Do the utmost to ignore psychology because all of this ought to be indifferent to it. Or maybe use a bit of psychology to pick out the right colors for public infrastructure or something. Maybe for some interpersonal problems we can use a few of you. But most of the funds ought to go to psychiatrists, and you all ought to get whatever is leftover. Maybe. But only once the public parks are fully funded and maintained. You can have some input on how they are designed, but your opinion comes in last, after the children, who will be taken far more seriously. You get final say between picking either pirate ship or fire truck design. Otherwise, rigorously ignore psychology, or better, actively exclude psychologists from any and all consideration of any good life, ever.
Otherwise we can replace all psychologists with a coin flip machine considering you guys can replicate only about half of what happens in that 'science' anyway. Would be cheaper too.
And you think you will have a great life if all is given too you. You will destroy it so quickly just too make something different happen. Nobody takes pleasure in unearned “status” let’s say. It’s something creepy about it.
And communism killed more people than the nazi’s.
Seems that we have to use statistics to get the attention of Apollodorus.
Better yet, let's use regression analysis. It's even more scientific!
There's really nothing wrong with using psychology in looking at politics if we have a broader understanding about what effects politics and how politics works. Hence the better researchers are quite subtle and tactful on just what implications can you drive from let's say evolutionary political psychology, the field concerned with the application of evolutionary psychology to the study of politics. Psychology can say something, but it doesn't explain everything. People can easily accept that, but especially when they are ignorant of the subject at hand, this fact can be forgotten easily. At worst, the dubious researcher will make broad claims, which then catch the public eye.
You can get an insight using social psychology on how some segment of the voting population behaves. Yet their voting behavior will be influenced far more by the economy: if either the economy is roaring and people are better off than before or if the economy is collapsing and everyone feels it can explain more the behavior in the voting booth than personal traits of the voters. The real misuse happens when one forgets or sidelines other factors (like the economy) or basically forgets history itself, everything that has happened before. This typically happens when the broader context isn't so familiar to the researchers themselves and when complex developments are explained by simple causes.
A well known example of this the "Great stirrup controversy", where a historian called Townsend White argued in his book from 1962 "Medieval Technology and Social Change" that feudalism took hold because of the spread of the stirrup in the cavalry. The argument went that the stirrup enabled heavy cavalry and shock combat, the cavalrymen could fight better from the saddle with stirrups, which in turn prompted the Carolingian dynasty of the 8th and 9th centuries to organize its territory into a vassalage system, rewarding mounted warriors with land grants for their service.
It's a quite eccentric claim, starting from the fact that there had been armoured heavy cavalry in Antiquity (Romans called them aptly oven men) and "shock combat" wasn't anything new. I think the reason why the argument came so popular was because few historians ride horses and even fewer understand that stirrups aren't so essential as Townsend White argues. Likely the Princeton professor wasn't an avid horseman himself, but appears to have made a bunch of surprising claims. Yet here you can see that minor details can capture the eye and the imagination of the public.
It wasn't my methodology. It was a line of inquiry suggested by Psychology Today and other publications. If it turns out to be wrong, so be it. I don't care. As I said, you carry on, don't let me interrupt your conversation.
Correct. Unfortunately, as can be seen here, the left uses "psychology" and "science" to demonize the right but they scream blue murder the minute the same methods are applied to themselves.
This and female hysteria, absolutely.
Thanks, Isaac, that’s helpful.
Your little personality traits theory isn't psychology.
And presumably you're the new C G Jung?
I understand that you don’t see political perspectives and moral systems this way, but just as a hypothetical , what if instead of connecting such complex ways of thinking with reductive causes like lesions in the brain, or reinforcement contingencies, we saw them as akin to scientific theories? That is, if we saw every social-political-ethics stance as the manifestation of an underlying ‘scientific’ theory that was constructed by the person on the basis of the evidence as they interpreted it? Would you then agree that coercion, condemnation, peer pressure and violence would not be particularly effective in changing their theoretical view? Can such methods change the theories of good scientists?
Again, I know the idea of an integrated gestalt-based personal foundation for social understandings conflicts with your conditioning-based approach, but I just want to suggest that it explains why countries under the weight of sanctions and international
condemnation can dig i. their heels rather than succumb to the ‘shaping’ effect of internetional pressure.
Quoting Isaac
Group rules and ostracization only work when those being ostracized have enough overlap of their thinking with the dominant group. It has the opposite effect when the two parties have profoundly different worldviews.
Conservatives and liberals interact online all the time in the U.S. on comment sections and blogs, but studies have show that rather than causing them to come closer to the other’s point of view, it simply reinforces their differences.
It is impossible for someone to be successfully cajoled or threatened to some behavioral goal if that form
of behavior is based on a certain complex underlying understanding the the person has not arrived at. All you will end up with, at best, is a clever soul who learns how to ape the superficial aspects of your ways of acting in order to keep out of trouble. But in the meantime that person will strategize how to gain power in order to overthrow what they never bought into to begin with. And in terms of that person’s day to day intimate behavior with friends and family , they will implicitly continue to behave in the ways that intrinsically make sense to them. Even pigeons have been known to outfox reinforcement contingencies.
That was exactly one of the points I was making. Being confronted with opposite views does tend to make you more aware of your own and reinforce them when you start defending them. And it seems that psychology, innate or acquired, does play a role in it.
Besides, in a society that aims to enforce diversity, the tensions that arise between groups holding different views tend to be more and more accentuated.
This is not a helpful observation; it provides almost no insight. Firstly - was it a competition? Secondly, Communism lasted decades, Nazism just over one decade.
I hold to a different approach to psychology that one that sees behavior as innate or acquired. One could say that it is both at the same time, or neither. I hold with psychologist George Kelly that a person’s psychological
processes are channelized by the way that they anticipate events. And the way we anticipate
events is organized as a functionally integral system of anticipations that is our worldview. The relative stability of this system , rather than ‘traits’, makes us resistant to coercion and conditioning from outside forces, but it is not a frozen template. If events don’t validate our hypotheses, our system can crumble if we don’t reconstrue. What is validating to the left is not validating to the right , because the underlying worldviews are so different.
On the other hand, Jim Crow laws, for example, didn't seem to ease the tensions in race relations very well. Perhaps those Southern Democrats weren't up to date on the latest political psychology journals.
Well, "traits" is perhaps not the most useful term to use in this context. But how is this system built, supported and maintained, and what role do "traits" play in any of this? Do "traits" exist or not and if yes how do they relate to this system of anticipations?
Quite possibly. What I had in mind was diversity of political or cultural views. Diversity seems to be incompatible with unity. There was less disunity and conflict before the introduction of political parties.
The system is built from experience. No event ever duplicates a previous event , so the system is always adapting and accommodating itself to the novelties it encounters by creating new categories and subcategories to make sense of events. if there must be some recognizable aspect or feature of an event , some similarity between it and a subordinate category of the system in order for it to be seen. Emotional crises are the result of the encounter with experience that the e system cannot assimilate on the basis of likeness and similarity on any level.
We see this clearly in today’s polarized political environment. Neither side can subsume the other’s thinking enough to see its validity for the other side.
What people think of as ‘ traits’ may correspond to variations from one person to the next in styles of organizing events, but in most cases , the concept of trait is used incorrectly to explain behavior that is the result of the content of one’s system. ‘ Emotionality’ of various sorts is a function of how comprehensively and assimilatively one’s system can cope with events. That’s a function of what one understands, the content of ones system , not some stylistic feature of engaging with the world.
Birth order, proneness to anger , shyness, extroversion can be studied in any culture, but have no direct bearing on the content of one’s outlook. and thus of one’s politics. If you want to know why someone believes a certain way, you’re better off asking them than assuming f secret traits. They will most likely be able to tell you why they think the way they do.
But people may choose to hide the reasons behind their views, depending on the culture. Brits might be less open that Americans, and Scandinavians might not even talk to you. Or, they may simply not know those reasons. Views are often inculcated through upbringing and education. Once they've become part of the system, of the psychological makeup, it may be difficult for somebody to consciously isolate, identify, and analyze them in any meaningful way. And what if subconscious memories from previous lives, or genetic factors, play a role?
It's good to be in the small coalition of power in an autocracy but the people always do better in a democracy, I understand.
Norms are inculcated , but every one of us interprets those norms in slightly different ways in relation to our own outlook. We never simply , blindly internalize ideas
from the culture. We are not vacuum
cleaners , we are interpreters. We make use of the informational resources of our culture , and that limits us , but we can only select from those resources what is consonant with our own system of understanding, even when it seems at a distance like an entire community is in lockstep with each other.
It’s true we are not always very good at articulating in words what we believe and why we believe it , but there are ways of helping someone to express what they think by having them put it in contrastive terms with positions they oppose. What I can say is that if someone has a conviction that is important to them, then there are ways to allow them to articulate it and show what makes it different from alternatives. It’s also possible that their political alignments are not very important to them and they are happy to just follow others.
Unconscious memories of course will influence belief, but only in the way that all aspects of our history do. But memory is always filtered though and reinterpreted in accordance with our current thinking. So we are never simply slaves to our past. The past that you recall is always a reconstruction. You never have direct access to what you experienced in an earlier time. Your past in some sense is always ahead of you.
No. I have no doubt that there's a 'theory-building' element to one's political worldview, and if you still think I'm a reductionist about these matters then you haven't been reading what I've written. But the problem is that theories are massively underdetermined by the data, more so the more complex the data set. So I don't see much being resolvable by this process.
Quoting Joshs
The effect is either to re-integrate or to eliminate, so I think it works still.
Quoting Joshs
Indeed. That's the point of the interaction. To cement who is in who's group. We polemicise precisely to more firmly define the boundaries of our groups when they seem too permeable. No-one wants to find the middle ground of agreement because there's too much competition there to maintain one's own utility in that group.
Quoting Joshs
And if we've learnt anything from the success of CBT, that will not be an insignificant win.
Quoting Joshs
Everyone will do this anyway, the trick is to give them that power via egalitarian social structures, but there's little enthusiasm for that in such a complex social environment, it's just too risky for most.
Quoting Joshs
Indeed, but it depends heavily on the circumstances, it's not like reinforcement just fails, it's like almost everything else in psychology - it's just more complicated than a simple rule can capture.
But some aspects of culture are internalized "blindly" without our being aware of it.
And people do speak of things like "national character" and "psychological/personality traits". Are they just in our imagination? Even children and young animals may be observed to be placid, boisterous, domineering or aggressive almost from the start. Where do these "traits" ultimately come from and how do they influence our view of the world and the way we interact with it?
Something that people should be reminded when their views of Marxism-Leninism become too rosy, I should add.
How much is it about culture, how much about past events? Things what we look as "our culture" are quite positive things. So why political differences can lead to violence in some places where in others the issues are handled cordially. History plays a crucial part.
Let's think about this from the viewpoint of attempts in political secession in the case of UK and Spain.
In the UK the secessionist movement in Scotland has been peaceful, where the secessionist movement in Northern Ireland had a long and very violent past, even if the UK government has very smartly depicted basically an insurgency as "the Time of Troubles". In Spain the secessionist Catalan movement was put down with violence and the secessionist politicians ended up in jail whereas in the UK the former IRA terrorists with much blood on their hands live still as free men when the justice system didn't find enough evidence to prosecute them.
Why the bloody history in Northern Ireland, whereas Scotland everything has been civilized? In my view the real difference here is that the wars between Scotland and England are ancient history and the idea of both being British was quite successful, while the Irish never did get used to being British and still the Irish war of independence was something quite current and very relatable. In Scotland the opposite sides "stay" or "independence", never were depicted as the side of the English and the side of the Scots. And that is crucial. In Northern Ireland, the situation is different even with religious differences. And so are the way to obtain independence. The Provisional IRA, even if with quite different political ideologies from the "old" Irish Republican Army, still has roots in the IRA of the Irish war of Independence, the organization that then basically morphed into the current Óglaigh na hÉireann, the Irish Defence Forces, even if the "Provos" had little to do with the Irish Defence Forces.
When Catalonia tried to gain independence from Spain, the attempt lead to violence. Here I think again the memories of the Spanish Civil War and it's aftermath, the dictatorship of Franco, had a part to play.
And if we compare this to worst current European tragedy, the break up of Yugoslavia with over 100 000 killed in the bloody civil war, the trauma from the past is even more evident. In Tito's Yugoslavia what happened during WW2 wasn't dealt with and the past came to haunt the present in the worst way possible.
Those rosy views must have acquired a rather deep red hue by now. But you better be careful how you talk about Marxism-Leninism these days or else you'll be heading for that reeducation camp in Xinjiang before you even know it. After posting one or two threads on Marxism my spam folder is now full of messages in Mandarin with pics of a dead bat in them. And I've been given to understand in no uncertain terms that I'll be next on the list.
I agree. But as we’ve seen from the thread Democracy v Socialism (that actually inspired this one), “democracy” seems to be a nebulous concept. Was the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) a democracy? Even the US Democratic Party is seen by some as not entirely democratic due to the Marxist factions within it.
And were people fundamentally unhappy before the introduction of political parties?
I really doubt that. Especially as this forum isn't so popular, actually. Only few people read this.
According to selectorate theory particular forms of governance can be irrelevant. It has to do with concentrations of power.
Quoting Apollodorus
Odd question because it assumes people are fundamentally unhappy with political parties and it's unclear what 'fundamentally unhappy' even means in this context. I imagine that many are happy that the party system can be so divisive because they benefit from its divisiveness.
I think we also need to consider the close links between the Irish nationalist movement and the London Fabian Society and its front the Labour Party. Fabian leaders Sidney and Beatrice Webb went to Ireland to preach Fabian Socialism back in 1892 and the whole movement was soon infiltrated by the Fabians and their more radical allies. The Fabians, incidentally, were also close to other revolutionary groups in Russia and elsewhere through the Socialist International and other socialist organizations. Nehru and Gandhi were also members.
That's a perfectly reasonable imagination you've got there. I for one couldn't dispute that even if I tried. As I said before, it looks like the division started with the liberals and then it extended its grip on society with the democrats, the socialists and the communists. Then we got Islamic State and now China. Where will it all end?
Well, the cyber activities of the Chinese Communist Party division called "United Front Work Department" are well known. Ask the CIA and MI6. But I don't need to tell you.
Reminded of what specifically? That some prefer Nazism to Communism based on that childish nugget? Or that Communism kills people? Surely this is the most obnoxious cliché people reach for when discussing this subject and is rarely not reached for by some 'incisive' thinker....
Well, the Chinese aren't alone in that field...
If this was a top discussion board I guess then it would be different, but PF is backwater.
Yes, but would it be less left-wing? That is the question.
I agree that people shouldn't engage in trading insults. However, we can't keep going on and on about "Nazism" when in fact it no longer exists as a political force whereas communism is still very much alive and kicking if you look at China and other totalitarian regimes.
Why is it so hard to admit that communism isn't any better? Why can't we just reject all forms of totalitarianism? Where exactly is the problem? And what is the explanation, psychological or whatever?
Huh? Sounds like I missed an exciting debate on here about totalitarianism. I looked, vainly trying to find what you were referring to but it seems to have gone. Oh, there was some Jordan Peterson neophyte making a Peterson comment on this earlier but no one except me took issue.
My question was "And what makes us so defensive when discussing opposite views?"
You're saying "some prefer Nazism to Communism" and "Communism kills people is the most obnoxious cliché".
However, all totalitarian systems kill people, don't they? Therefore, all should be opposed equally. If Communism is a totalitarian system similar to Nazism, why is condemning Communism a "cliché"? It's just a question.
Your whole paragraph is typed in bold - this is not 'just a question' for you. You are VERY preoccupied by totalitarianism. Why is that?
By us I assume you include yourself. Start with that. What makes you so defensive? If you say that it is because others are, you are not being honest with yourself.
I'm not "VERY preoccupied" at all. I believe in democracy and freedom and that's why I'm against totalitarianism. I don't see what's so hard to understand.
You sound pretty defensive yourself, that's why you joined the discussion isn't it? And since you've been on here for years it's only proper for you to explain your defensiveness first. Plus, you sound much older than me. So, after you.
You are projecting. I attempt to defend my position, but I do not get emotionally wrapped up in it. It makes no difference at all to me whether you agree or disagree with me.
I joined the discussion because I have an abiding interest in political philosophy. My interests are largely theoretical. It is clear that you take this all too personally. I think you would do well to ask yourself why. You may take this as a personal attack but it is not.
How very gracious. However, you have been on this forum for much longer than myself, have you not? And since presumably you're older, more knowledgeable, more experienced, wiser and know this forum and its members much better than I do, you really should help me steer the discussion in a direction that is satisfactory to all or most of us instead of trying to sow distrust and division and drive the thread into the gutter and then blame it on me.
I think that you just assume that this site is leftist. That's the typical stereotype of a "Philosophy Forum". Sure, there are some who would call themselves Marxists, but they aren't the majority. Yet with stereotypes you go only that far.
Don't underestimate the people you are talking to.
I'm sure there are some who are Marxists even if they don't call themselves that. But it's good to know that they aren't the majority. I was beginning to wonder ... : )
Indeed. And I suppose it would also depend on how big the true part is. But we shouldn't speculate on that because who knows what conclusions it might lead to.
Don’t forget the post -Marxists. That would
include fans of William James, Sartre, Derrida, Heidegger, social constructionism , deconstruction , phenomenology, Freudianiam and neo-Freudianism, post-structuralism and post-modernism, just to name some figures and movements. If you want to escape the influence of Marx in rigorous philosophy, you generally have to find philosophers born before 1840.
Quoting ssu
I don’t know anyone who is post-everything, but I do see intellectualideas in developmental terms , so any particular philosophy can be placedas pre something and post something else.
A more important question is how many believe that everything cutting edge in science has already been produced by people that have been dead for ages.
I would say almost none. And yet they think there can be this disparity between scientific advancement and innovation in philosophy.
I wouldn’t worry. In 50 years today’s left wing will be the moderate center.
I think that many believe that it's only the small details that are open questions now. They assume that the big questions have been already answered and now it's only for the fine print to be accurately written. Few understand that there are large questions to be answered out there. That for starters we have little idea what infinity is, just to give one example. Starting from "simple" things as that in mathematics, our logical system does still have holes that some aren't ready to admit. Then there's the problem of subjectivity in science that tries to be objective. Again a logical puzzle that we have not been able to go around. Or some view as a hostile attack against the scientific method altogether.
I wasn't worrying. Just stating a fact.
Quoting Apollodorus
Quoting Apollodorus
Oh. Sounded like a worry.
And things usually go depending on what's true in the present.
One of the most important movements in political philosophy was ushered in mid-twentieth century by the work of Leo Strauss. He is not easy to understand but very easily misunderstood. For this reason opinions about him are all over the place. He is deceptively simple. His language is jargon free. He returns to the works of Plato and Aristotle, but as a corrective rather than a viable alternative. He is critical of political science and value free social sciences in general, favoring instead political philosophy and the recognition of irreconcilable tensions of political life.
Marx and "rigorous philosophy"?
You mean like this bit from "The German Ideology"?
“... in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner …”
More like utopian idealism IMO
What "innovations"? Utopian socialism? Communism? Atheism? Class war? Revolution? Economic theories? All borrowed from others!
Quoting Apollodorus
Do you know of a philosopher who didn’t borrow from others?
You were just involved in thread where you justified linking psychological research with politics. Give me a short list of your favorite psychologists ( would Piaget, William James, Freud or Vygotsky be on that list?) and I’ll try and link them with Marx.
Sure. But Marx borrowed copiously. Even the Communist Manifesto (1848) was largely based on the Manifesto of Democracy in the 19th Century (1847) by Victor Considerant and the Communist Credo (1846) by Moses Hess.
What I'm saying is Marx is far less original than some people think.
The ‘some people’ that I respect are among the the most notable philosophers ( and psychologists) of the past 100 years, and they find Marx to be a seminal thinker. So you would have to go down that long list and explain why those thinkers should also be de-valued.
btw, can you give me the names of a few favorite
psychologists of yours?
However, there is an extensive literature on the inconsistencies of Marxist theories and concepts and in my experience objective academics tend to acknowledge them when they are informed of their existence.
See for example:
Richard Adamiack, ‘The “Withering Away” of the State: A Reconsideration’
Frederic L. Bender, “The Ambiguities of Marx’s concepts of ‘proletarian dictatorship’ and ‘transition to communism’”
See also the Wikipedia article on the subject.
Criticism of Marxism
I've addressed this on the other thread, "Marxism - philosophy or hoax?" and there is no point repeating myself here.
with wide ranging interests, including ethics , aesthetics and psychology. Freud is thought of here only in terms of a clinical approach , whereas in Europe Freudianiam means much more than that.
They had good ideas just what the scientific method was about. 200 years ago, that is.
No need for a post-modern approach on that.
The characterization of postmodern left-wing philosophy and Critical Theory as being somehow lunatic actually, as a form of expropriation, makes a lot of strategic sense.
Alan Sokal's Fashionable Nonsense is often cited as evidence of charlatanism on the part of left-wing academics, to varying degrees of applicability. I, myself, began to find fault with a lot of what I had read after reflecting upon Francois Laurelle's A Critical Introduction to Non-Philosophy, which did admittedly read as if it had been written as the pure production of text. The focal point of Sokal's work is Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus, which I had been extraordinarily influenced by. Though I do now think that their text was kind of irresponsible, I do not think that it is just simply nonsense.
Both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations in Israel, Mossad, have incorporated A Thousand Plateaus within their respective operational strategies. It seems extraordinarily doubtful to me that either of those two parties can have been all that taken what Sokal alleges are mere left-wing trends. The characterization of such works as being written by "lunatics", therefore, is a way for think-tanks and Intelligence agencies to expropriate them from the Left. They're basically putting their theories to use, all the while characterizing anyone who would be willing to invoke them in a critique of their various machinations as "insane".
While it seems that the Right is just simply lacking in a respect for difference, among those who are fairly intelligent, and they do exist, a rather complex strategic machination is actually underway.
Well, I think "strategic machination" is employed by the Left as much as by the Right. Marx did borrow a lot from his rivals while at the same time criticizing and attacking them for allegedly being "ignorant" or "insane". Lenin borrowed his "state capitalism" from capitalists like Taylor and Ford, etc.
I don't think the charge of "lunacy" was motivated by the Right's desire to expropriate ideas from the Left. I think the main reason why the Left was called "lunatic" was that leftist policies sounded like "lunacy" to ordinary people, including sometimes to leftists themselves. For example, not everyone on the left bought into the Marxist idea of abolishing private property and this remains the case to this day.
And, come to think of it, there is no evidence that Marx took his own ideas seriously. His real intention seems to have been to inspire others to start a revolution after which he could present himself as its ideological father and possibly as political leader - or at least as advisor to the revolutionary government. This appears to have been his intention in his 1850 Address to the Communist League of which he was a leader.
Well, conceivably, he did believe some of it. However, there is no evidence that he believed everything. Certainly, most people didn't seem to be convinced.
If you wrote something like this, would you believe it?
“… in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner …” - The German Ideology
Or like this
“Hence, in the value equation, in which the coat is the equivalent of the linen, the coat officiates as the value of linen. The value of the commodity linen is expressed by the bodily form of the commodity coat, the value of one by the use-value of the other. As a use-value, the linen is something palpably different from the coat; as value, it is identical with the coat, and therefore looks like the coat. Thus the linen acquires a value-form different from its natural form. Its existence as a value is manifested in its equality with the coat, just as the sheep-like nature of the Christian is shown in his resemblance to the lamb of God”
Capital Vol. I p. 60
Obviously, I might be wrong but it seems hard to believe.
Quoting Maw
And if a fiction writer wrote thousands and thousands of pages over the course of 40 or more years, that would be evidence that he actually believed every single word of it. That's why we all believe fiction writers.
The Left is guilty of kind of a lot of strategic machinations, but I don't think that appropriating relatively obscure right-wing philosophy is one of them. Perhaps, among some Nihilists?
Marx was a gifted polemicists, and, so, everyone ought to take some of his words with a grain of salt. His ideas often changed, but he did hold fast to them at any given point in time.
Not a bad comparison. But I was thinking more of science fiction. More like Jules Verne or H G Wells. With an economic twist.
Well, I have no doubt that he was a gifted polemicist. He learned all the tricks of the trade as a journalist and his father was a lawyer.
However, he couldn't have been that good since very few people took him seriously. His Communist Manifesto was a flop and hardly anyone read Capital. And he had to close down the International because it was being taken over by Anarchists.
Plus, Bakunin and others who knew him well thought that he was a charlatan. After all, he did live off other people's money for many years, so we can't rule out the possibility.
Fuck that's absolutely :100:
Marx was a gifted theorist and even though I disagree with him, particularly finding fault with The German Ideology, which you have cited, which does serve as evidence of that he did have kind of a habit of deploying incendiary sophistry to a point of excess, as it includes a polemical onslaught against "Saint Max", i.e. Max Stirner, that is longer than Max Stirner's seminal work, The Ego and Its Own, I am willing to admit that.
Your assumption that Communism has never been popular because Communists have never been voted into office, I think, is only so much to the point. The Communist Manifesto had a clear and decisive influence over the general course of human history and it is not as if the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party were the only people to have ever been influenced by it.
He did not shut down the International Workingman's Association that was formerly headed by a man whom I am loathe to defend, as he was a virulent anti-Semite; he levelled a series of political attacks against one, Mikhail Bakunin, and took it over.
When it comes to the various historical reenactments that comprise of the series of debates between the early Communists, Socialists, and Anarchists, I, myself, side with the former prince of the Rurik Dynasty, Peter Kropotkin.
Correct. Scholars like Kolakowski have long pointed out that Marx was using ambiguous and suggestive language. Obviously, this was done on purpose as Marx had studied law and philosophy and knew the difference between precise and imprecise language all too well.
To be honest, I've never felt particularly attracted to Anarchism but I must say that I have far more respect for Anarchists like Bakunin than for Marx who was a rather slippery character whose main interest was to be always right even when he obviously wasn't and all he wanted was to dominate and bully which is why he had very few friends.
He was also clearly afraid of Bakunin who was quite an influential personality in his own right and much of Marx's polemics was intended to confuse the Anarchists and impose his own version of socialism without much success however which is why in the end he had to close down the London International and sent it packing to New York out of the reach of the likes of Bakunin.
The Communist Manifesto became more influential in the 1900s but it had zero impact on the 1848-49 revolution as admitted by Engels in his Introduction. It was printed in London but the French version came out too late to influence the movement in France and the German-language copies were seized by the police at the border so very few people got a chance to ever see it even if they had wanted to. Marx's Communist League had a few hundred members, was split into rival factions and was shut down soon after. That's why he gave up and retired to London to do research for his Capital in the reading room at the British Museum. That's the facts, the rest is mythology spun out by Engels and other socialist propagandists.
That has been exactly my experience, though obviously not for that length of time. Very few have actually read Marx and even fewer have objectively analyzed Marxist concepts and theories. I've found that this applies even more to Fabianism. 99% of university students don't have a clue and even professors are surprised when I mention Fabians and their influence on the Left. But after checking the sources they all end up thanking me for bringing it to their attention.
In general, 'let's redistribute wealth and get rid of oligarchs' is what leftism boils down to. It is an emotion-based knee-jerk reaction just as in the case of race, gender or environmental issues and that's where psychological manipulation by various self-interested activist groups tends to come into it. And it has also become a profitable business as the more vocal and persistent you are in such causes the more you get the attention of corporate donors keen on publicizing their progressive credentials.
:100: :cheer:
The biggest, richest, most powerful industry in the world will point at the opposition science and say "You can't trust their science! It's all about the money! Their scientists are bought with a money agenda!"
They should take a fucking seat. Jeesh.
Just because it's intuitive to many doesn't mean it's wrong. From a democratic perspective, there is majority support for wealth distribution almost everywhere. And if you don't want to listen to the rabble, there are plenty economists who agree. Almost noone would argue that the cleptocratic post-soviet russian oligarchy for example represents superior economic policy to swedish social democracy.
Wealth distribution maybe, but certainly not abolition of private property.
Both the Russian cleptocrats and the Swedish technocrats operate in close collaboration with business interests. The Swedish living standards may be higher than the Russian ones but in terms of democracy both systems are very similar.
Why are you bringing up the abolition of private property? I was responding to your claim that "wealth redistribution is an emotion-based knee-jerk reaction". You didn't say "wanting to abolish private property is an emotion-based knee-jerk reaction".
Quoting Apollodorus
That's a weasely statement. You can always make up your own definitions in order to justify calling two "systems" "very similar" "in terms of democracy".
But anyways I was talking about economic policy. Clearly the policies in terms of wealth redistribution are very different. Russia has a proportional (!) income tax of 13%.
How can you possibly make this claim?
Sweeden is listed as the world's seventh most happy country on The World Happiness Report, behind a number of other Nordic countries, I might add, and the Russian Federation is now the defining example of a defunct democracy corrupted by both their mob and former apparat. It's like Italy with Marxist-Leninists.
However, I wasn't talking about "happiness". I was talking about democracy.
My encounters with Marxists, which have, granted, been mostly online, has actually been quite different. In the way back when RevLeft was still operative, nearly every conversation seemed to require a rather lengthy set of deliberations and references from marxists.org. I remember getting into a conversation with a Hoxhasit, I think, Marxist-Leninist, and Soviet apologist about Leon Trotsky's alleged Fascist collaboration. I had pointed out that, by that Trotsky had written "Fascism: What Is It and How to Fight It" and, to my albeit limited knowledge of the details of his life, he had never collaborated with the Nazi Party, it seemed unlikely for this to be the case. This poster then, in, perhaps, a near traumatic revelation that I had regarding the power of ideology, proffered "proof" of his collaboration, being this document from what has come to be called "The Moscow Show Trials".
The claim may be valid despite the great difference in average happiness. That's because living standards are not measured by happiness. They are measured by height and how fast they can run. (A "standard" in English also means a lamp-pole or telephone pole. A long pole sticking out of the ground.)
Do you have proof? Have you measured Telephone Poles in both Russia and Sweden?
(C.f.: Who was the world's first telephone Pole? Answer: Alexander Graham Bellski.)
I know I am going waaaay wide off on a tangent. Maybe someone should ask the mods to delete my posts in this thread. I could, but I ran out of energy, thinking up my jokes.
I assume for the World Happiness Report to be fairly reflective of a person's general livelihood and of their relative freedom and meaningful participation within a democratic process. Though you are correct that my assessment is not statistically accurate, I think that this is a safe assumption to make.
No worries, we understand.
Okay, I call myself a philosopher, so I have a response.
Meaningful participation in the democratic process... the target task is done by elected representatives. So the laws we need to abide have been made by a very few, who may think entirely differently from their elector base. In Russia the same way as in Sweden and in the USA.
General livelihood... is not a cause of happiness, beyond a certain level. If you are seeing your children perish due to malnutrition and lack of medical aid, because you can't afford food and medicine for them while others around you can, yes, earning power is a source of happiness, by staving off unhappiness. But whether you JUST bought a Jaguar car or a Bentley, or you JUST bought a Zhiguli, you are equally happy, as long as in your social circles everyone drives the same car that you just bought.
Relative freedom... the biggest hoax the West has fed to its free people. They believe they are freer than a Russian dude, and this goes back to communist times, is that the Westerns believe the lies in their news while the Esterns knew they were lies.
I think the freedom is an important factor between the West (including Russia) and highly religious countries (Vatikan, Iran, UAE, SA,...) and it absolutely does not guarantee happiness. A lot, and I mean a lot, of people are happy with freer speech and thought, but a lot of other people (and i won't put a number or proportion on either of these two camps) are extremely happy in stability, in social stability, in their status, in their routine, in what they got.
Some psychologist described happiness as a reaction to returns on investment much higher than expected. This means not only the stock market. If you get an A in physics, whereas you expected a C-; if your English composition in school gets to be read up to the entire class; if your doctor says your wife's condition turned and she has many more years to live, these are things that give you extreme joy. IN the rest of the time, what makes you tick is that you know precisely what you get for doing what; and that requires social stability, and that's precisely less free regimes provide.
That is interesting. I think when theory and history get combined in this way discussions become labyrinthine and speculative and too much of a pissing competition for those involved. It's just about point scoring and skewing history, this was or that. I generally avoid politics on line as it usually breaks down into internecine tribalism with a slender evidence base. Boring.
While an excellent assessment of what is off about the social ecology of the Anarchist movement, I don't think that you have considered well enough as to what I mean about Marxist-Leninist ideology. Your average sociological study in Titoism, Hoxhaism, Brezhnevism, Inkpinism that you'd find on RevLeft, the various tendencies to support this or that relatively obscure vaguely Marxist-Leninist personage, was not at all uninformed of Marxist orthodoxy. They did read Marx and could, perhaps, recite lengthy passages from certain texts from memory. Contrary to what you experience with you average activist lacking in political philosophic rigor, they had an extraordinary knowledge, if you will, or their respective political theories. It was kind of through this appeal to an odd sort of bureaucratic authority that I suspect for Marxism-Leninism to have been able to have been maintained as what was, particularly under Josef Stalin, a totalitarian ideology. People in the Soviet Union were not uniformed; they were merely misinformed. The Soviet Union actually had one of the highest literacy rates in the world, which has carried over into the Russian Federation today. It's not that people were lacking in knowledge; it's that they were indoctrinated within this or that ideological tendency.
That may well be true. I have no doubt that there are and were people who explore Marxist ideology with the fanatical determination of a scholastic theologian and can creatively connect it to a range of situations. I have known a number of defectors/refugees from Soviet countries and discussed this kind of thing with them at length.
That's a good way of putting it, I think. Among radicals, I think that people do often get swept up within political slogans or incendiary phrases with little to no understanding of their theoretical basis. Among the true believers in any ideological tendency, though, it is an excess of theory, often through the invocation of ideological purity, which I, myself, have even been guilty of in the past, that is what gives rise to the various collective delusions that I generally term "cult pathology".
Bangarang!
Let the record show that Sweeden is a great country and that, should, at the level of a totality, there not occur a global nonviolent revolution and establishment of a loosely affiliated set of freely associated Anarchist communes, only an unrepentant, unabashed, and unreserved faith in the Nordic Model can liberate the so-called "masses" from the yoke of the partisan deadlock generated by the ascendency of Neo-Liberalism.
Provided that the model they send from the North to liberate the masses is leggy, has platinum blonde hair and is tall and sporty-slim.
There's something to be said for High Fantasy, y'know?
Okay, so, the Nordic countries have always had certain things going for them, namely that they're fairly wealthy, which offers them a certain advantage when it comes to things like their ranking within the World Happiness Report.
Being said, by that whatever international bodies there are that put forth such reports consistently report them at the top, I do think that it is safe to assume that their general governance has been overall effective. What effects a person's quality of life more than the socio-political and cultural climate that they live in? There are plenty of countries with considerable wealth in the world, but only those who have adopted the Nordic Model rank at the top of these charts time and time again.
Okay, I get you. I only have one question: what is the phenomenon you call the Nordic Model? There must be some attributes that you can use to describe for us (me) what being the Nordic Model entails.
What exactly are the attributes of the Nordic Model? Believe me, I haven't heard it before, so I am ignorant. I may want to Google it, too, but not right now. If you would please care to describe it.
I say I am skeptical, because Hungary is the central-Europe model, and it has the highest suicide rate in the world, competing with Finland, which is also on the shores of the Baltic. Although their historical roots may have been joined with those of Hungary, the two nations are different by blood lines by now, due to the intermarriages with neighbouring countries: Finland with the Norsemen, Hungarians with the Germans, Slavs, and Roman remnants (which makes up the population of Rumania).
Canada, I don't know how well the population scores on the happiness scale, but by some other metrics, in annual surveys of "The Best Country to Live In" Canada ranks consistently 1st or 2nd.
The Nordic Model is a syncretic form of Social Democracy and laissez-faire Liberalism. You effectively have things like free universal healthcare and free access to higher education, a generally socially liberal society, along with a rather highly specified form of an only so regulated market. It is claimed that it is falling out of favor in the Nordic countries, which I don't necessarily believe. I don't think that the situation there is too comparable to Hungary, though.
I live in the United States and, among certain right-wing intellectual circles, there seems to be kind of a tendency to be overly-critical of the Nordic countries, which is something that I've never understood. I just figure that it's sort of like the general attitude towards the French intelligensia that exists here, but one that, in this case, doesn't even pass as somehow warranted.
I know that a lot of people moved to Canada in order to dodge the draft in the 1960s. Now that there isn't quite conscription in the United States like there was, while I'm sure that it's probably a nice place to live, I don't see too much of a reason to move to Canada anymore. I've always been kind of fascinated by Quebec, though.
I don't know if it is de rigueur to resurrect such old threads, but I was quite interested in your thought process here prior to being knocked out of action these past months.
Anyway...
Quoting StreetlightX
...isn't quite what I wanted to know about. When I asked what you would replace psychology with I didn't mean psychology as a political system (god knows what dystopia you had in mind if you thought that), I meant psychology as a means of estimating how people might respond to some action or circumstance. Presumably you don't go about acting toward others as if their responses are random and unrelated to your actions? Nor do I assume you advocate something like communism out of idle aesthetic preference. Rather, in both cases, you have some model in mind of how people are likely to respond to both your actions and to the circumstances of their environment that leads you to choose actions and advocate political systems.
I want to know how you think you've developed this model. I presume by experience (not yet excluding the possibly you think we're just born with it, but I'm going to at least put that possibility as unlikely). Your experience, however, is obviously that of a your particular culture, upbringing and disposition - a filtered, biased and confounded view.
Psychology, is an attempt to reach the same types of model, but via methods which minimise the biases of one's culture, limited personal experience and confounding factors (the latter being the easiest to tackle, but the former two, arguably most important).
I could see a very strong argument being made that psychology had failed manifestly in removing these problematic modelling factors, but I struggle to see how you might arrive at the conclusion that it shouldn't even try, that it's actually better to have those models based in the ad hoc reckoning of highly specific individual experiences. That's the part I'd like you to explain, if you've the inclination. Do you really imagine that despite the strong influence of our varying (and at times quite unpleasant) cultures, we all nonetheless arrive a a pretty accurate model of how other people respond, including all the various neuro-diverse people we may never have even met. Seem monumentally unlikely to me.
Quoting StreetlightX
I'm sure I don't need to tell someone as well-read as you that this does not make any statistical sense. A 50% replicability rate means that 50% of experiment results can be replicated (ie have a particular measure of robustness), the others lack such a measure (although they may be robust in other ways). It doesn't measure the probability of any particular model being right. Notwithstanding, my main point here is that you are using a model right now. Just in deciding if and how to respond to me you are using a model of human behaviour. You system has 0% replicability, so I fail to see how 50% isn't a massive improvement.
(On a side note, 50% is also about the replicability rate of the pharmaceutical and medical sciences - I don't think this is really the political environment in which to be claiming that we might as well disregard any results arising from fields of research with 50% replicability)
I think a version of this is probably the case. We evolved from animals that survived well using group cooperation and during extreme environments animals that fended for them selves well. I'm suggesting altruism might be more appealing to certain people relative to the environment at any given time.
You could be right. Maybe there is a tension there between individual struggle for survival and increased security with attendant chances of survival within a group. Or egoism vs. altruism. And even altruism may in some ways be motivated by egoism. Human psychology can be quite complex. But I tend to believe that, irrespective of its evolutionary roots, psychology does play some role in politics.
I wonder if it's related to how left-wing, erm, eccentrics, are called "moonbats", while their right-wing equivalent are instead "wingnuts"
I think I quite like the sound of "moonbats". It seems so have a certain resonance with "loony" (< Luna, Latin for "moon"), though I must admit "wingnut" is quite funny, too. :grin:
BTW, which of them would you say are more disruptive and annoying than the others?
Yeah, that’s why I thought they might be related.
Quoting Apollodorus
Definitely wingnuts. While there are certain a fair share of anti-science woo peddlers on the left too, they don’t have any significant political representation, meanwhile actual right-wing congresspeople are rambling about space laser and whatnot.
kinda like feminists getting government to pass wage gap legislation even though wage gap is a myth hah
I agree. I think what tends to happen is that extremists start with some idea (like the Communist Manifesto) that sounds good on paper and that appeals to them emotionally, after which they get carried away and can no longer think rationally. And that's where "revolution", "jihad", or other forms of violence take over.
So, it seems that it all starts with emotions or some other psychological factors.
Is that a joke or do you really mean that wage gap is a myth?
This is the problem with idealists and radicals.
Philosophers (or the philosophical types) are often idealists. They get carried so away with the ideology as they put on these ideological glasses on that blend everything to show how great their ideology is and hides the view any negative aspects. And anyone looking at the issues without those glasses and even remotely making a remark about the negative aspects will be seen as the enemy of the wonderful ideology, who then should be attacked.
There are those especially in the intelligentsia who do fall for the "Let's change the World totally"-argument that radical ideologies offer. As these usually have been among the smartest guys or gals around the block, they think that it's their calling, their chance to change the World. They have found their cause (at least for a while, that is). And as they are so smart, that change they are hoping for has to be important, radical, huge. Off with the old futile ideas! And this fits the progressive leftist as well as the right wing libertarian anarcho-capitalist.
You don't get it.
Everybody else is racist and sexist. Everybody else is stupid or brainwashed and chooses to believe in religious fairy tales over material reality. Only people like me are strong enough to face reality in its true form and understand that the people must actively take power from our powerful oppressors and in turn reclaim control our own destiny. If we need to break a few eggs to make the omelette then so be it - that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make to my own mental health if it means a better future for humanity.
wage gap basically just proves that men work longer and harder
main reason for this is because women prefer foamily over work
which means most women want the wage gap to exist.
trying to eliminate it would be very stupid
I'm not sure if there's any sarcasm in what you say.
Well, off you go to the barricades...
The gender wage gap differs by age group and geographic location. For instance, in the UK there is no gender wage gap for full-time workers under 30 years old, while there's a huge wage gap in the US.
Child-rearing does contribute to the onset of a wage gap over 30, since most women still take several years out and this hits their careers hard. One recent push to even this out in the UK was to allow women to share their parental leave with their partners but, when it came to it, women declined. Hopefully over time, as paternity leave becomes more normalised, maternal gatekeeping will wane some and we'll see a more even spread of the personal cost of having children. However, while equality of outcome seems to be a rallying point for feminists and working women over 30, it's probably not top of the agenda for new parents trying to navigate their own lives.
Anyhow, this kinda-equity has been reached with great effort. Until a few years ago, there was a systematic wage gap that could not be put down to post-natal decisions. Women of all ages earned less than their male counterparts in the same role, and had hugely less access to the highest-paid roles. Equal opportunities legislation among other measures made that difference, which makes your statement:
Quoting MikeListeral
very stupid.
free market capitalism doesn't care what gender or color you are, it only cares about money
if its paying someone less its because that person is earning less for that company
equality of outcome is nothing but a fancy word for socialism
its not my job to pay for other peoples kids. that's theft.
socialism is theft
every dollar you give away to a woman you first have to steal from a man
We are PROCHOICE, be there should be a maximum time limit (make up your mind before it’s basically a viable human - approx 1st trimester)
The 3rd axis agrees that without a border, you don’t have a country
Utter nonsense. Doubling the employee pool was a boon for employers. It still needed to be forced to do it. If there's a way it can get away with paying any demographic less, it'll do it. It'd help if you stopped talking in propagandic cliche.
you get what you pay for
the more you play an employee the more they work
and the more they work is the more you should pay
free market takes care of itself. no need for government intervention
and definitely no need for more feminists with victim mentality
if women are strong why dont they go out and prove it instead of always trying to get men to give them more handouts
*carries on speaking in propagandist cliche*
I picture you typing this in foetal position, sucking your thumb, rocking a little, whispering "Everything's okay. Everything's okay."