CDZ Liberal/Conservative Labels Miss the Point

[jwoodie]

The adoption of Liberal or Conservative positions is based more on personal psychology than it is on political philosophy. It has been said that politics is the religion of the Left, but this observation misses an essential point: One's political affinity is really based on which area of the brain is most activated by this subject area.

If one views politics as a problem solving (right brain) activity, the resulting answers will tend to be more "conservative." If one views politics as a therapeutic (left brain) activity, a more "liberal" orientation will emerge. In other words, Conservatives seek answers, while Liberals seek personal ratification. Thus, "never the twain shall meet."

 

[Pogo]

"Problem solving" = right brain and "therapy" = left brain?

...... Sez who? Not the way I understand it at all.

More like: left brain = detail and right brain = context. Or in short, Left = the tree, Right = the forest
(which have nothing to do with political terms "left" and "right")

This is a great read on that.

 

[Freemason9]

The adoption of Liberal or Conservative positions is based more on personal psychology than it is on political philosophy. It has been said that politics is the religion of the Left, but this observation misses an essential point: One's political affinity is really based on which area of the brain is most activated by this subject area.

If one views politics as a problem solving (right brain) activity, the resulting answers will tend to be more "conservative." If one views politics as a therapeutic (left brain) activity, a more "liberal" orientation will emerge. In other words, Conservatives seek answers, while Liberals seek personal ratification. Thus, "never the twain shall meet."

"personal ratification"

LOL

 

[jwoodie]

"Problem solving" = right brain and "therapy" = left brain?

...... Sez who? Not the way I understand it at all.

More like: left brain = detail and right brain = context. Or in short, Left = the tree, Right = the forest
(which have nothing to do with political terms "left" and "right")

This is a great read on that.

Thanks for the references. My parenthetical use of "right brain" and "left brain" was simply short hand for differing psychological orientations. Conservatives tend to be more egocentric in that they view politics as largely unrelated to their self identities. Liberals tend to view politics as a fulfilling expression of their identities. Thus the former are more concerned with their perceived merits of a position, while the latter are more concerned with their perceived motives of those who hold a particular position.

 

[mamooth]

Your theory appears to be wishful thinking, like fulfilling an expression of your identify. You can't simply claim to be more rational. You have to back up the claim.

For example, I can back up that people get more conservative as they drink more alcohol.

Low-Effort Thought Promotes Political Conservatism

Or that brain studies show conservatives to be more motivated by fear and threats.

Conservatives Big on Fear Brain Study Finds Psychology Today

Scientists Are Beginning to Figure Out Why Conservatives Are Conservative Mother Jones

Such findings seem to support that liberals are more motivated by rationality than conservatives.

 

[NLT]

When I was young and stupid I was a liberal, then I grew up.

 

[Moonglow]

The adoption of Liberal or Conservative positions is based more on personal psychology than it is on political philosophy. It has been said that politics is the religion of the Left, but this observation misses an essential point: One's political affinity is really based on which area of the brain is most activated by this subject area.

If one views politics as a problem solving (right brain) activity, the resulting answers will tend to be more "conservative." If one views politics as a therapeutic (left brain) activity, a more "liberal" orientation will emerge. In other words, Conservatives seek answers, while Liberals seek personal ratification. Thus, "never the twain shall meet."

And when their eloquence escapes you,
Their logic ties you up and rapes you...
The Police - De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da
...

 

[PratchettFan]

The adoption of Liberal or Conservative positions is based more on personal psychology than it is on political philosophy. It has been said that politics is the religion of the Left, but this observation misses an essential point: One's political affinity is really based on which area of the brain is most activated by this subject area.

If one views politics as a problem solving (right brain) activity, the resulting answers will tend to be more "conservative." If one views politics as a therapeutic (left brain) activity, a more "liberal" orientation will emerge. In other words, Conservatives seek answers, while Liberals seek personal ratification. Thus, "never the twain shall meet."

You apply the terms with no meaning. What is a conservative? You have Barry Goldwater, who was extremely rational, and Ted Cruz, about as rational as a three year old on a sugar high.

The use of the labels is mostly just to establish camps. Us vs them.

 

[Ellipsis]

Or that brain studies show conservatives to be more motivated by fear and threats.

Conservatives Big on Fear Brain Study Finds Psychology Today

That would explain why gun ownership is a Conservative issue.

 

[Rikurzhen]

Your theory appears to be wishful thinking, like fulfilling an expression of your identify. You can't simply claim to be more rational. You have to back up the claim.

For example, I can back up that people get more conservative as they drink more alcohol.

Low-Effort Thought Promotes Political Conservatism

Or that brain studies show conservatives to be more motivated by fear and threats.

Conservatives Big on Fear Brain Study Finds Psychology Today

Scientists Are Beginning to Figure Out Why Conservatives Are Conservative Mother Jones

Such findings seem to support that liberals are more motivated by rationality than conservatives.

You should take your act out on the comedy circuit.

The flip-side of conservatives being more perceptive of fear and threats is that liberals are reckless and blind to threats and so are more fearless. Two sides of the same coin. Have you ever seen a one-sided coin?

The engine of liberalism is emotion - they look around and they see inequality and this triggers anger and envy. A conservative sees the same inequality, and can be poor too, but he reasons that inequality is a necessary outcome which arises from a system evolved to produce the greatest good for the greatest number. Liberal emotion versus conservative reason.

The emotions swirling around all manifestations of inequality completely dominate the liberal view of the world. Poor people, minoriites, ugly people, disabled people, shunned people, criminals, you name it, the underdog always gets liberals chanting about unfairness. Soft-hearted liberal judges take pity on the criminal, hard-assed conservatives judges throw the book. Emotion drives the liberal judge, reason drives the conservative. The liberal focuses on the suffering of the criminal, the conservative focuses on the principles of justice and deterrence.

 

[Dogmaphobe]

You apply the terms with no meaning. What is a conservative? You have Barry Goldwater, who was extremely rational, and Ted Cruz, about as rational as a three year old on a sugar high.

The use of the labels is mostly just to establish camps. Us vs them.

....and in establishing camps, all people are doing is displaying a psychological need for tribe. They derive a sense of identity from it. We have been so conditioned by our political process to view these labels as applying to people rather than political philosophies that it too often devolves into little more than a game of cowboys and indians.

 

[PratchettFan]

Your theory appears to be wishful thinking, like fulfilling an expression of your identify. You can't simply claim to be more rational. You have to back up the claim.

For example, I can back up that people get more conservative as they drink more alcohol.

Low-Effort Thought Promotes Political Conservatism

Or that brain studies show conservatives to be more motivated by fear and threats.

Conservatives Big on Fear Brain Study Finds Psychology Today

Scientists Are Beginning to Figure Out Why Conservatives Are Conservative Mother Jones

Such findings seem to support that liberals are more motivated by rationality than conservatives.

You should take your act out on the comedy circuit.

The flip-side of conservatives being more perceptive of fear and threats is that liberals are reckless and blind to threats and so are more fearless. Two sides of the same coin. Have you ever seen a one-sided coin?

The engine of liberalism is emotion - they look around and they see inequality and this triggers anger and envy. A conservative sees the same inequality, and can be poor too, but he reasons that inequality is a necessary outcome which arises from a system evolved to produce the greatest good for the greatest number. Liberal emotion versus conservative reason.

The emotions swirling around all manifestations of inequality completely dominate the liberal view of the world. Poor people, minoriites, ugly people, disabled people, shunned people, criminals, you name it, the underdog always gets liberals chanting about unfairness. Soft-hearted liberal judges take pity on the criminal, hard-assed conservatives judges throw the book. Emotion drives the liberal judge, reason drives the conservative. The liberal focuses on the suffering of the criminal, the conservative focuses on the principles of justice and deterrence.

The engine of all political positions is emotion. The argument that conservatives are driven by reason is absurd.

 

[PratchettFan]

You apply the terms with no meaning. What is a conservative? You have Barry Goldwater, who was extremely rational, and Ted Cruz, about as rational as a three year old on a sugar high.

The use of the labels is mostly just to establish camps. Us vs them.

....and in establishing camps, all people are doing is displaying a psychological need for tribe. They derive a sense of identity from it. We have been so conditioned by our political process to view these labels as applying to people rather than political philosophies that it too often devolves into little more than a game of cowboys and indians.

Exactly. It also makes developing an argument much easier. Hear something you don't like, call it conservative or liberal and you need go no further. It is automatically bad by association. No critical thought required.

 

[Boatswain2PA]

....
The engine of liberalism is emotion - they look around and they see inequality and this triggers anger and envy. A conservative sees the same inequality, and can be poor too, but he reasons that inequality is a necessary outcome which arises from a system evolved to produce the greatest good for the greatest number. Liberal emotion versus conservative reason.

Well said. This is why we had the Cult of Personality mentality when we collectively elected a media star to be our President in 2008. I was just watching a historical documentary last night that had some clips of the huge parades that the Nazi party had in Nuremberg after they conquered Austria and could not help but see the similarities between the adoration of that crowd and the America's adoration of Obama in 2008.

 

[Pogo]

"Problem solving" = right brain and "therapy" = left brain?

...... Sez who? Not the way I understand it at all.

More like: left brain = detail and right brain = context. Or in short, Left = the tree, Right = the forest
(which have nothing to do with political terms "left" and "right")

This is a great read on that.

Thanks for the references. My parenthetical use of "right brain" and "left brain" was simply short hand for differing psychological orientations. Conservatives tend to be more egocentric in that they view politics as largely unrelated to their self identities. Liberals tend to view politics as a fulfilling expression of their identities. Thus the former are more concerned with their perceived merits of a position, while the latter are more concerned with their perceived motives of those who hold a particular position.

Here you started to make sense, with the reference to "self identity" as distinguished from the whole ("ego" as opposed to "context"). But the next section is not the opposite of, or contrast to, that thought. The contrast would be "other identity", which is arguably much more on track to your original point.

I think your logic started out soundly and then shifted bases. We'll need to compare like-to-like.

 

[Boatswain2PA]

Exactly. It also makes developing an argument much easier. Hear something you don't like, call it conservative or liberal and you need go no further. It is automatically bad by association. No critical thought required.

I disagree. How do you study, or even THINK about issues without defining terms. If you were to study dogs and cats, you would have to define what a dog is, and what a cat is. And if someone were to prefer dogs over cats, it doesn't mean that by identifying a subject as a cat means that the researcher wouldn't be able to critically evaluate cats.

In other words, you cannot have critical thought about the political process without definitions that include conservative and liberal.

My problem with these terms is that today's "liberals" are NOT liberal at all. The term liberal is supposed to mean someone who is inclusive, who lets others believe what they want to believe, where everyone is equal. Think 60's hippy's who advocated for peace and love for everyone. Today's "liberals" are not liberal at all, they are illiberal, intolerant, leftists who force their progressive ways on everyone. If someone disagrees with a progressive they will find themselves at the end of a lawsuit (pastors being forced to perform gay wedding ceremonies or Christian bakers sued for not baking a gay wedding cake), regulations (California churches being forced to pay for abortions), or public scorn (the hundreds of moderate or conservative speakers who have been disinvited to give speeches at colleges).

Today's liberals are not liberal at all, but rather illiberal, intolerant leftists.

 

[Pogo]

....
The engine of liberalism is emotion - they look around and they see inequality and this triggers anger and envy. A conservative sees the same inequality, and can be poor too, but he reasons that inequality is a necessary outcome which arises from a system evolved to produce the greatest good for the greatest number. Liberal emotion versus conservative reason.

Well said. This is why we had the Cult of Personality mentality when we collectively elected a media star to be our President in 2008. I was just watching a historical documentary last night that had some clips of the huge parades that the Nazi party had in Nuremberg after they conquered Austria and could not help but see the similarities between the adoration of that crowd and the America's adoration of Obama in 2008.

Newsflash: we elect a Cult of Personality in every major election. That's nothing new. In effect we don't elect a candidate; we buy a product. That product is packaged and sold by marketers through all the powers of media exactly as their opponent is. We don't even look for an executive; we look for Superman. And the Party that pretends it comes in two flavors, red and blue, is happy to package that illusory puppet to sell us, using all the same deceptive angles that sell us cars and fast food and deodorants -- and many more.

 

[Dogmaphobe]

Exactly. It also makes developing an argument much easier. Hear something you don't like, call it conservative or liberal and you need go no further. It is automatically bad by association. No critical thought required.

In general, I would say there are extremely few people who go about the business of developing a political ideology from the ground floor, up -- by examining their values and developing positions from those values. The vast majority seem to just buy a ready-made ideology and then conform to its dictates.

People don't really know what he words liberal and conservative mean other than describing a person, and so you can end up with some pretty ridiculous examples of the labels missing the true philosophy by an enormous margin. When supposed liberals are acting as chief apologists for Islamism, for instance, I often wonder if the entire world has gone mad.

 

[Pogo]

Your theory appears to be wishful thinking, like fulfilling an expression of your identify. You can't simply claim to be more rational. You have to back up the claim.

For example, I can back up that people get more conservative as they drink more alcohol.

Low-Effort Thought Promotes Political Conservatism

Or that brain studies show conservatives to be more motivated by fear and threats.

Conservatives Big on Fear Brain Study Finds Psychology Today

Scientists Are Beginning to Figure Out Why Conservatives Are Conservative Mother Jones

Such findings seem to support that liberals are more motivated by rationality than conservatives.

You should take your act out on the comedy circuit.

The flip-side of conservatives being more perceptive of fear and threats is that liberals are reckless and blind to threats and so are more fearless. Two sides of the same coin. Have you ever seen a one-sided coin?

The engine of liberalism is emotion - they look around and they see inequality and this triggers anger and envy. A conservative sees the same inequality, and can be poor too, but he reasons that inequality is a necessary outcome which arises from a system evolved to produce the greatest good for the greatest number. Liberal emotion versus conservative reason.

The emotions swirling around all manifestations of inequality completely dominate the liberal view of the world. Poor people, minoriites, ugly people, disabled people, shunned people, criminals, you name it, the underdog always gets liberals chanting about unfairness. Soft-hearted liberal judges take pity on the criminal, hard-assed conservatives judges throw the book. Emotion drives the liberal judge, reason drives the conservative. The liberal focuses on the suffering of the criminal, the conservative focuses on the principles of justice and deterrence.

This is probably the worst post yet (but I'm only up to number 10). The idea that party A is more "rational", party B is more "emotional", is absurd. That's a personal trait that's used (or exploited by others) individually. This post is another poison-the-well tactic intended to polarize into two camps.

For its disproof, look no further than Fox Noise, a TV channel that lives and thrives on emotion. That doesn't make conservatives "emotional" or their counterparts "rational" -- it reflects on the purveyor (the TV channel), not the audience. By contrast another outlet could present a series of William F. Buckleys to make the same case coolly and rationally sans emotion. But that wouldn't sell. Again, that's because fear sells -- to everybody.

No, if we're going to attempt a right-left brain analogy to "liberal-conservative" -- which is not an uninteresting proposal --- we need to divorce from this divisive "us and them" dichotomy and start with the premise that such politics depend on one's individual worldview.... which arguably may be related to brain function but almost certainly draws from personal experience. IOW "nurture" more than "nature".

 

[PratchettFan]

Exactly. It also makes developing an argument much easier. Hear something you don't like, call it conservative or liberal and you need go no further. It is automatically bad by association. No critical thought required.

I disagree. How do you study, or even THINK about issues without defining terms. If you were to study dogs and cats, you would have to define what a dog is, and what a cat is. And if someone were to prefer dogs over cats, it doesn't mean that by identifying a subject as a cat means that the researcher wouldn't be able to critically evaluate cats.

In other words, you cannot have critical thought about the political process without definitions that include conservative and liberal.

My problem with these terms is that today's "liberals" are NOT liberal at all. The term liberal is supposed to mean someone who is inclusive, who lets others believe what they want to believe, where everyone is equal. Think 60's hippy's who advocated for peace and love for everyone. Today's "liberals" are not liberal at all, they are illiberal, intolerant, leftists who force their progressive ways on everyone. If someone disagrees with a progressive they will find themselves at the end of a lawsuit (pastors being forced to perform gay wedding ceremonies or Christian bakers sued for not baking a gay wedding cake), regulations (California churches being forced to pay for abortions), or public scorn (the hundreds of moderate or conservative speakers who have been disinvited to give speeches at colleges).

Today's liberals are not liberal at all, but rather illiberal, intolerant leftists.

I will agree you cannot have critical thought about the political process without definitions that include conservative and liberal. However, that is pretty much why most of the political process has no critical thought associated with it. On either side of the aisle.

I also agree today's liberals are not liberal. However, today's conservatives are not conservative. They are reactionaries who are intolerant of anyone not agreeing with them. They would make Bill Buckley vote for a Democrat. And all of this is fanned by politicians who are only interested in power and are willing to tell any lie which will get them elected.