A long time ago, I use to think liberals were more selfish, hedonistic and antiauthoritarian than conservatives.
Over the years I’ve realized they can be every bit as eager to sacrifice themselves, their fun, freedom (of expression) and democracy for the greater good, so long as it’s a liberal politician or talking head, humanities professor or technocrat giving them the order.
You know me: “We’ll need a context please.”
How about one from you here. In other words, in regard to a political conflict that most of us are likely to be familiar with, explain in more detail the sort of behaviors that you think would be displayed by “someone eager to sacrifice themselves, their fun, freedom (of expression) and democracy for the greater good”.
How do you yourself choose to behave when this issue becomes a part of your interactions with others? Such that no one would ever accuse you here of siding with “the greater good”.
Also, do you believe in one or another rendition of “right makes might”? That, in other words, if someone thinks through their own behaviors rationally they can in fact completely avoid any sacrifices at all? If so, a few examples please. If not, on what basis would you distinguish reasonable from unreasonable behavior? God? political ideology? assessments of “natural” behavior?
Or, as others suggest, might it be necessary to acknowledge that reasonable arguments can be proposed from intelligent people up and down the political spectrum; and thus that the “best of all possible worlds” might be reflected more in the willingness of both liberals and conservatives to moderate their points view and then through negotiation and compromise, enact legislation in which no side wins everything but in which no side loses everything either.
Something analogous to, “you’re right from your side and I’m right from mine”. This can even work when the conflict is between two objectivist points of view. As long as both sides agree to respect democracy and the rule of law. Settling conflicts through elections.
But, again, most importantly, in regard to political prejudices relating to an issue that is of particular importance to you.
I would have said the opposite, though it did depend on the context. I saw liberals and lefties as more likely to be restrained by guilt (in relation to those with less priviledge, in relation to US foreign policy, in spending or having money. I saw conservatives as more likely to be guided by and likely to dish out shame. There was the right way to stand, walk, be a man or woman, be patriotic, be religious (if they were religious conservatives.
Both these patterns interfered with hedonism, or even just relaxing with what one is or has.
Though truth be told any power broker from either side of the fence would imply guilt or shame, but seemed to feel neither. The values were for the masses.
The authorities for each were different.
But this to me means, apart from larger world implications, that we are bombarded by shame and guilt and the tangible and practical threats (related to jobs, safety walking down streets, a life free from condemnation, schooling and more).
And there are parts of ourselves that want to be respected and accepted, must as our egos may feel independent, assured, unaffected…underneath the memes traveling at us through movies and other media, telling us how we should be IS having affects.
Rock and a hard place.
I know Gloominary you are here more focused on what happens in society and I am looking at the psychic war. But they have parallels. Conservations throwing away their money and children and other people’s children on wars, for example.
Good points.
Both conservatives and liberals are moral in different ways.
Conservatives have shame morality whereas liberals have guilt morality.
Shame morality is about ensuring you’ll rarely, if ever be in a physical, mental, emotional or financial position where you’ll have to ask someone for help.
Guilt morality: if you happen to find yourself in a position where you’re able to help someone who needs it, help them.
Additionally conservatives are ingroup oriented and liberals outgroup.
Neither morality is objectively better than the other and I think a person and a society is more complete if it has some measure of both.
While some UHNWIs are decent people, we both agree that the deep state is largely made of sociopaths or at least empaths who regard the masses as subhuman, and so not as worthy of their empathy as the elite.
The deep state wears different masks, conservative, libertarian and nationalist, progressive, like a hunter wears different skins of the animals he means to prey on.
He appeals to their shame or guilt only when it benefits him.
Like socialism for UHNWIs and capitalism for everyone else.
He mixes different herds together and keeps them squabbling over scraps of wealth, power and freedom.
He creates crises and offers his own empowerment and enrichment as the solution.
Yet another observation: calmatters.org/health/2020/04/d … nclusions/
[b]'The doctors should never have assumed that the patients they tested — who came for walk-in COVID-19 tests or who sought urgent care for symptoms they experienced in the middle of a pandemic — are representative of the general population, said Dr. Carl Bergstrom, a University of Washington biologist who specializes in infectious disease modeling. He likened their extrapolations to “estimating the average height of Americans from the players on an NBA court.” And most credible studies of COVID-19 death rates in reality are far higher than the ones the doctors presented.
“They’ve used methods that are ludicrous to get results that are completely implausible,” Bergstrom said. ’
'In a rare statement late today, the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Academy of Emergency Medicine declared they “emphatically condemn the recent opinions released by Dr. Daniel Erickson and Dr. Artin Messihi. These reckless and untested musings do not speak for medical societies and are inconsistent with current science and epidemiology regarding COVID-19. As owners of local urgent care clinics, it appears these two individuals are releasing biased, non-peer reviewed data to advance their personal financial interests without regard for the public’s health.”[/b]
Then my point:
[b]‘“This pandemic has been so severely politicized in this country that evidence, no matter how poor, gets amplified enormously if it benefits one side or another,” said Bergstrom, who also was one of the first experts to critique the doctors’ study on Twitter. “We always hoped this crisis wouldn’t come, but that if it did we’d all be in this together. That’s been a huge surprise for all of us doing infectious disease epidemiology. It’s amazing to have to deal with this misinformation that’s being spread around for political purposes and the ways that interferes with adequate public health response.”’
‘But already the Bakersfield doctors — who tout their support of President Donald Trump and refuse to wear masks in public — had become heroes on social platforms and conservative media outlets, with some commenters calling them “brave.”’ [/b]
I’ve been mulling over the idea of thinking of this as institutionalization or institutional syndrome.
and also the counterpart on the right.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_syndrome
Also from other sources…
I saw this in one of my parents in the late stages of his life when I took him from a rehab to come live with me. He had dementia, but he also had become institutionalized and would ask me if he could go to the bathroom and the like. I have also encountered this with others who spend varying amounts of time in prisons or mental health facilities, where they are used to a bureaucratic powerlessness, where they have been treated for a long time precisely as not free agents. It affects the thinking, obviously and affect.
Given that most people attend some kind of schooling WHILE their personalities, brains, souls, minds are forming, and that schools are insitutions - and of course parenting also includes elements of unnecessary control mixed in with necessary control (unless there is neglect) - and then adult life often entails conforming to corporate or employer institutions (along with the social world being made of people who have been what I am now saying is also institutionalization) we have adults who have been trained to be phobic of their own emotions, of thinking outside the box (the boxes defined by their culture, specific subculture) or even feeling the box.
In the case of people who have not been in prisons, mental health facilities, old age homes, etc., the authority can be things like men
s and women’s magazines, presentation of ‘truth’ in various sorts of media, but especially indirect presentations (what a man or woman should be as implicit in films, for example), by what ideas are utterly marginalized (by omission or suppression or by generalized mocking or shunning). IOW in a prison one literally will face violence for making certain choices. Out here, supposedlly not institutionalized, we can make choices to think, allow real feelings, and act in ways one cannot in prison - except often at work. But we have already been raised in institutions, that is, insitutionalized.
Outside the threats are more social, except at work. But we are social mammals and these threats are very powerful to social mammals. You don’t want to be suddenly labelled evil by large number of people. Or crazy, for that matter, either.
Lack of spontaneity is endemic. Phobic responses to emotions, especially the so called negative ones, is endemic.
HOWEVER one’s political party and subculture will give approved targets for negative emotions (and positive emotions: all political parties have their own version of virtue signaling). IOW given that everyone is institutionalized they are suppressed creatures and when given an approved by authority way to aim their rage or fear, they leap at it.
These latter quotes taken from…
aspe.hhs.gov/basic-report/psych … adjustment
Of course there are degrees and nuances and individual differences. Friends, parents, one’s own effects, experiences where one sees that ‘consensus’ even expert or scientific ‘consensus’ can be wrong, and other factors can lead one to question and undermine the institutionalization.
I am not sure how much I am using this idea as a metaphor or a literal, but I am tending toward the latter.
All great points.
Yea institutionalization, that’s a good word/concept to remember when thinking about this phenomenon.
We could use more independent thinking, feeling and valuing.
I don’t have much more to add at this time, I think I’m running out of steam.