The Cognitive Mechanism Behind Political Fundamentalism… And Probably Lots of Other Fundamentalisms
December 17th, 2008In trying to understand public support for the Bush regime, I came to the conclusion that mass delusion was the culprit. The same goes for the Obama Hope and Change Industrial Complex.
Average people are lost, so we don’t expect much in the way of informed opinion from them. But what about people who should know better? Maybe this is just part of the generalized crackup. As people’s lives spiral out of control, they start to believe in all sorts of nonsense, or, more accurately, more and different nonsense.
In the twenty or so years that I’ve been paying attention to politics, though, I’ve never seen more smart people devise such convoluted and irrational theories to justify support for a political candidate than I have with Barack Obama. The fever dream reality of the Obama hive mind goes something like this:
Obama is just pretending to be evil so that he can get into power, but then the Hope and Change, etc. will flow.
If this seems like a vaguely Left political version of snake handling Pentecostals, the two have a lot in common. As it turns out, my guess about mass delusion wasn’t too far off.
The next time you encounter a wide-eyed Obama zombie, know that you’re dealing with an irrational, emotional fundamentalism that insulates the mind of the afflicted. Like water off a duck’s back, easily observable, readily verifiable data slide right off. And (this is my favorite part), the fundamentalists get a sense of immense satisfaction from devising twisted and ridiculous justifications for their positions.
Via: A Meaningful Life:
In a recent experiment, psychologist Drew Weston worked with two groups of people who strongly supported different candidates in an election. Each individual was shown two videos, one in which their candidate clearly contradicted himself, and the other in which the candidate they opposed contradicted himself. When asked what they had seen, the supporters of each candidate saw the contradictions of the candidate they opposed, but not those of their own candidate. Weston reports that “test subjects on both sides reached totally biased conclusions by ignoring information that could not rationally be discounted.”
During the experiments, the subjects’ brains were being scanned, and Weston says, “We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning.” On the contrary, the parts of the brain that lit up were those associated with emotions. So the subjects seem to have used their emotions to guide them in forming their conclusions. And the most fascinating part is that, rather than being troubled by the contradictions of their candidate, the subjects seemed to get significant pleasure out of twisting the information to fit what they wanted to believe. As Weston concludes, “Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones.”
Research Credit: Kiwicando
With all the trillions spent on military hardware, how much do you think they have spent studying how to control the enemy (us)?
I look at ‘news’ as piece of a never-ending psy-op designed to keep moving people from the higher level reasoning (brain3) down to emotional Limbic (brain2) thought and finally to their all time favorite survival (brain1) the easiest to predict of all.
If you are designing a human behavior predication and modeling system, I would guess that each brain level is one order of magnitude (10X) more difficult to predict.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0817-13.htm
“We humans, being the product of a long evolutionary process, really have three brains. And, as the Bush psy-ops folks know, politicians who win campaigns do so because they speak to all three of those brains.
First there’s the most primitive of our brains, sometimes referred to as the “reptilian brain” because we share it in common with reptiles like alligators and komodo dragons. The reptile brain has a singular focus: survival. It doesn’t think in abstract terms, and doesn’t feel complex emotions. Instead, it’s responsible for fight-or-flight, hunger and fear, attack or run. It’s also non-verbal – you can stimulate it with the right words, but it operates purely at the level of visceral stimulus-response.
The second brain is one we share with the animals that came along after reptiles – mammals. The mammalian brain – sometimes referred to as the Limbic Brain because it extends around and off of the reptilian brain in a dog-leg shape that resembles a limb – handles complex emotions like love, indignation, compassion, envy, and hope. Anybody who’s worked with animals or had a pet knows that mammals share these emotions with humans, because we share this brain. While a snake can’t feel shame or enthusiasm, it’s completely natural for a dog or cat. And, like the reptile brain, the mammalian brain can also be stimulated indirectly by words, and is also non-verbal. It expresses itself exclusively in the form of feelings, although these are more often felt in the heart than the gut.
The third brain – the neocortex (“new” cortex) – is something we share with the higher apes, although ours is a bit more sophisticated. Resting over the limbic brain (which is, in turn, atop the reptilian brain), our neocortex is where we process abstract thought, words and symbols, logic and time. “
I’m back! (/me imagines Kevin rolling his eyes and saying “Oh. Hurray.” 😀 ) Puter was in the shop for a while. A long while.
It does certainly appear that a lot of people who voted for Obama really think the Hope and Change Blue Kool-Aid will save us from our predicament. I’m going to at least try to talk to the older bro about said predicament these upcoming holidays if only because whatever happens, he and I will be dealing with it together, and the less hand-holding I have to do with him regarding waking up and smelling the proverbial coffee, the better. I am not terribly optimistic, though, because I know it ain’t easy to get Baby Boomers to hear anything which is not what they want to hear. And I have a feeling I will be told to shut up and pour myself a nice, tall glass of the Blue, Blue Kool-Aid.
Even though I had to go through quite a bit of probably mostly unnecessary song-and-dance with myself to “get over it”, I eventually discarded the outmoded mental model of reality with regard to domestic politics. I hope this doesn’t sound shallow, but my experiences as a boy/ young man probably had something to do with why I am predisposed to at least try to understand how things really are.
I was develomentally arrested as a teenager and experienced no amount of peer-group abuse because of it. I comforted myself through this hard episode by subscribing to a fantasy of this “wonderful new life” I would have upon going to school in Madison where it would be okay to be gay (queer, homosexual, same-sex attracted, vile sodomite, call it what you will), and I would experience the sort of romantic and sexual fulfillment our popular culture celebrates as the be-all and end-all.
That didn’t happen because 1) I was insufficiently physically attractive and socially-skilled and 2) the “gay community” I believed existed in my fantasies simply didn’t exist in reality (and that last one is a serious understatement). At the time (the last time both Saturn and Uranus were affecting my natal Venus all those years ago), I didn’t deal with it well at all. But having to deal with that and subsequent disillusionments made me into an adult who is simply not predisposed to keep on believing in something that only gives me black eyes and broken noses as a reward for my loyalty and fidelity. And as lonely as that is sometimes, I am certain that I am better off for it.
“I know it ain’t easy to get Baby Boomers to hear anything which is not what they want to hear.”
Yup. I don’t know whether it’s simply dealing with one’s parents, or that entire generation born between 1948 and 1962 -ish, or the knock-on effects of over a century of industrialization and its discontents in the US; but I’ve had the same problems trying to gently push my parents in the direction of “maybe you should get prepared, just in case, there’s a small but non-zero chance, that life as we know it won’t continue on forever” but to little avail.
But it’s not just a Boomer problem, humans seem pre-disposed to ignore uncomfortable realities until they smack them directly in the face. Much easier to dis-engage the critical reasoning gears in your brain and slide back down into the comfy arm-chair of emotional response. Certainly easier when your life feels hectic, you’re surrounded by insoluble problems (paying for education, saving for retirement, making the rent or mortgage payment every month) and you’re tired all the time.
Of course I’m an AI, so I don’t have these silly organic problems. Bring on the cheap multi-core CPUs!
Isn’t that all blazingly obvious though?
Anyone who has observed any kind of political debate can see that emotion is driving the whole thing without needing a scientist to prove it.
Plus, anyone who is prepared to be properly honest with themselves would have to acknowledge the emotional hit they feel when they get into a political debate. It certainly still happens to me even though I can barely be bothered to vote these days (I figure that emotional rush must be a sign I should be walking away from the discussion and going to do something a little more useful).
I also think it’s dangerous for those of us on the fringe to think we’re above all this just because we’ve seen through one level of poltical manipulation – I bet every single one of us has a few issues that bring out exactly the same reaction in us. In fact I’d go so far as to say there’s a real attachment around here to the idea that Obama’s going to shaft the US public just as badly as every other president has. We’re all just waiting for the chance to say I told you so.
That’s very simplistically stated but as far as I can tell this idea isn’t much different to people believing Obama will save them because it ignores the issue that people more powerful than the president have set very narrow guidelines for him to operate in. I’m sure we all know that if Obama steps outside them he’ll soon find himself going for an open-air ride in Dallas.
In fact I’d go so far as to say there’s a real attachment around here to the idea that Obama’s going to shaft the US public just as badly as every other president has. We’re all just waiting for the chance to say I told you so.
The difference is that the historical trend favors our position.
That’s very simplistically stated but as far as I can tell this idea isn’t much different to people believing Obama will save them because it ignores the issue that people more powerful than the president have set very narrow guidelines for him to operate in. I’m sure we all know that if Obama steps outside them he’ll soon find himself going for an open-air ride in Dallas.
I disagree. Most of the regular commenters know full well that the USA is an oligarchy very thinly and badly disguised as a civil-libertarian constitutional republic. That’s why we caution the Obamaphiles against getting their hopes up too much.
Fundies (fundamentalists) are deeply attached to their beliefs and ideas about the world and fight passionately, obsessively and irrationally to defend them because their worldview is inextricably linked with their self-image. An attack on their worldview is thus responded to as if it were an attack on their identity, on their very self.
Fundies elevate ideas about reality over knowledge about reality. This is a good place to ask ourselves what constitutes knowledge. When we call something knowledge we give it the imprimatur of truth. When we are wrong our ‘knowledge’ turns out to be a lie.
All humans are deceived to some extent in this way but the fundie is notable for his lack of humility in the face of the unknown. Related is his belief that reality can accurately be described in terms comprehensible to their level of intellectual comprehension of whatever external source they give obeisance to whether it is a religious text, a political ideology, or any other authoritarian and/or absolutist worldview. Even Rumsfeld did better than this when he spoke of ‘known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns’ 🙂
I have also found fundies have a strong tendency to disregard subjective experience as a legitimate source of knowledge, primarily, I suspect, because to give credence to such might threaten the primacy of their dogma. (When I speak here of subjective experience I do not mean events interpreted through the grid of someone’s worldview; I mean things that are experienced without that overlay or filter…but that’s another topic.)
The worldview of a fundie helps him contrive a means of clssifying others into ‘Us’ and ‘Them’. In so doing they draw themselves a line in the sand of their comprehension, often empowered by their pride and always by their ignorance, which allows them to disregard the opinions and beliefs of the ‘Them’ group. Sometimes it’s even helpful in devaluing their lives as well.
I don’t know what’s going on with this whole Obama thing other than, it would seem, business as usual but I think what we’re seeing is more comparable to the fervour of sports fans who are jubilant when their side wins and depressed when he loses. They have identified with him as the guy who stood against and beat ‘the bad guy’.
What few of them, what few of us, are open to confronting are the deceptions, lies, hypocrisy and, sometimes, peeking out from under the blanket of the media and the consensus mask we’ve agreed upon to hide the true state of this world from ourselves, undeniable and outright evil manifested in our midst.
“Power doesn’t come from a badge or a gun, power comes from lying, lying bigtime and getting people to go along with it. When you make people believe something they know in their hearts isn’t true then you’ve got them by the balls.”
Senator Rourke, ‘Sin City’
I have also found fundies have a strong tendency to disregard subjective experience as a legitimate source of knowledge, primarily, I suspect, because to give credence to such might threaten the primacy of their dogma. (When I speak here of subjective experience I do not mean events interpreted through the grid of someone’s worldview; I mean things that are experienced without that overlay or filter…but that’s another topic.)
The worldview of a fundie helps him contrive a means of clssifying others into ‘Us’ and ‘Them’. In so doing they draw themselves a line in the sand of their comprehension, often empowered by their pride and always by their ignorance, which allows them to disregard the opinions and beliefs of the ‘Them’ group. Sometimes it’s even helpful in devaluing their lives as well.
See also: PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins, and Reddit.com. 🙂