First off, there was something I'd meant to say in my last post reviewing the two books about Canadian soldiers fighting in Afghanistan. It was that in both of them soldiers mentioned how they wanted to go to war because that's what they were always training for. They wanted to see how they'd hold-up in combat. They wanted to see if they were effective soldiers. Now, this is understandable on some level but it's also evidence of how dangerous a militarized culture can be. Imagine a foreign policy built on the desires of people champing at the bit to go and shoot at people!
But, anyway, ... onwards!
Lately I've been thinking about the consequences of "conservatives" supposedly being more fearful, with larger amygdalas. Reports on these studies sorta came and went with a little jeering about how right-wing chest-thumpers are actually wussies and that was that. But maybe we should think more about this. Now, it's possible that people are simply born with big amygdalas. In which case, they're just more fearful, end of story. But the brain has been found to be a constantly developing organism. Maybe it's the case that people subjected to trauma (especially childhood traumas) would develop larger fear responders than they ordinarily would have. Maybe you're born with a large amygdala and on top of it, an abusive childhood makes you even more fearful.
In which case, many of the "conservatives" shrieking about dangerous Muslims, scary Black people, scary changes to their world, etc., are the victims of childhood trauma. Isn't it ironic that "conservatives" are so opposed to social welfare programs that would reduce childhood poverty, stressful homelives, etc., that would all go to mitigating the factors that made them such fearful creatures?
I guess this is because "conservatives" fixate more on negative things. From that first link in the second paragraph:
In a 2012 study, liberal and conservative participants were shown collages of both negative and positive images on a computer screen while their eye movements were recorded. While liberals were quicker to look at pleasant images, like a happy child or a cute bunny rabbit, conservatives tended to behave oppositely. They’d first inspect threatening and disturbing pictures—things like car wrecks, spiders on faces, and open wounds crawling with maggots—and would also tend to dwell on them for longer. This is what psychologists call a “negativity bias”. If you think about it, this makes a lot of sense. When attention is biased toward the negative, the result is an overly threat-conscious appraisal of one’s surroundings. Essentially, to many conservatives the world looks like a much scarier place. This would seem to explain why so many major conservative viewpoints tend to be rooted in irrational fears—like fear of the president, immigrants, Muslims, vaccinations, etc.
This being the case, "conservatives" will fixate more on people abusing the system, thereby cheating them, than they do on the very real benefits that such programs bring (this cynicism and paranoia extending even to programs that would benefit them personally).
Anyway, the thing that progressives should do is to continue to fight for policies that reduce trauma in society. (That is, the opposite of the neo-liberal/austerity nightmare we're presently in.)
There's more that could be said about this but I want to move on to my next point.
Humanity is doomed because, on average, we are focused mainly on our own immediate social circles and the practical realities of our everyday lives. A terrifyingly large number of us really are incapable of caring about people outside of our networks of family, friends and other intimates. We are incapable of empathizing with people from far away who act slightly different from us. Just think about all the people you know who have zero clue about what's going on in the world. The people who never think about the poverty that exists in the city they walk through. And here I'm not talking about "conservatives" who believe that refugee applicants at the US -border are all drug-mules/"reconquistadors' or that poor people are all scammers and criminal drug-addicts. I'm talking about people who don't even notice the sufferings of others nearby and have no interest in finding out about events going on beyond their immediate line of sight. (Although it is the case that many "conservatives" demonstrate an inability to care about something unless it affects them personally. Like a finance minister who allocates funds for a particular disease because his one of his own children has it.)
So they lack empathy. And they lack curiosity in the wider world. They are focused. I believe they have very vigorous and robust production of serotonin. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter thingamabobby that does a lot of things but one thing it does is block-out stimuli that your brain has decided is unimportant for you to be able to function. Serotonin deficiency is a factor in depression, energy, etc..
What I'm getting at is that many human beings are simply wired to care only about themselves and their immediate family and friends. And their focus in life is on how to best SUCCEED in obtaining the resources to provide a life for themselves and their immediate loved ones. So, those seemingly happy people working at some uninteresting job, driving their nice cars to their nice homes without a care in the world? That's who I'm talking about. They've figured out how to personally succeed and they are completely incapable and uninterested in understanding the big picture. They can't maintain an interest in people starving in Africa, or First Nations' children committing suicide, or refugees fleeing wars and calamities in South America or the Middle East, because they're not wired to.
Now, all of these people I'm talking about; Can they still be "good people"? The person who was traumatized as a child and who is hard-wired to view most things as a threat; the airhead who works in marketing and finance buying a monster home out in the suburbs and commutes to work in a SUV; ... are they "good" people still?
That's why I've always tended to shy away from the words "good" and "evil." There are things that we like and things that we don't like. That's it. So, for the most part, some fearful "conservatives" ... (I don't know why I'm putting that word in quotes. I think I started this with the notion that an actual conservative has a developed body of ideas whereas they people I'm talking about have visceral responses to their environments.) .... can be quite friendly to people of their own kind, and even to "others" who have proven themselves to be non-threatening over a longer period of time. (Like a Black person or a Muslim who they work with and have decided that they're not a threat.)
Few of these types of people will actively seek the destruction of strangers or passers-by. So, by that indicator, they're "good" people and not "bad" people. And, to the extent that they have no control over their ideas and actions, to their fear, selfishness, insularity, etc., etc., ... can they really be accused of being "bad"?
But here's the thing: This is a big reason why nothing changes. Something from one-quarter to one-third of our society is comprised of people who self-identify as "conservative." They're afraid of terrorism. They're afraid of deviations from traditional moral values. They desire an authoritarian father-figure to protect them. They're afraid of crime. They're afraid of change. We can't do anything about changing these people other than to try to figure out how to keep them from getting angry while still advancing our own progressive agenda.
I have no speculation about the numbers of the second group of people; the healthy, seemingly happy, focused, prosperous ignoramuses. But I'm pretty sure it's vast. They're successful members of the species. They know how to play the game and survive. But if the rules change, they might be put-out. Sure, they'll be better at pushing others out of the way to get the emergency rations. They'll adapt (if they're intelligent enough) with greater relative success to the new rules in the crumbling of civilization than will progressives who are not as focused and selfish.
But it's the blissful ignorance and complacency that makes society's downfall so inevitable. We have one-third of the population convinced that Global Warming is a commie-hoax designed to enslave them and another large group (one-third to sixty percent of the population) that hardly thinks about it and contributes to the problem through their excessive consumption of resources.
We were designed to obtain food and shelter and to procreate. We became quite successful as a species at doing so. But in so doing, we've created an ecological monstrosity. And it is my belief that, as a species, we're simply not equipped to recognize the problem and respond to it in time. In short; Humanity is DOOMED.
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