On what neuroscience tells us about liberal thinking....

[crashtech]

M: I am actually not interested much in ideologies...

...The conservative lurch to the right that we here in the US have been experiencing for quite some number of years happens to present a cogent example of the irrationality such phenomena take.

It looks to me like ideology interests you more than you state. I disagree with this portion of your assessment at the least; just as you know not all liberalism is irrational, not all "lurches" to the right are based purely on irrationality, either. Would that we would lurch away from authoritarianism, but it seems to have a pull not unlike the force of gravity.

In my view, aspects of both philosophies have a place in governance, yet my preference runs toward having as little as possible of either. In a perfect world, each individual would receive a tailor-made amount of governance suited to their individual needs and temperament instead of the constant tug-of-war over the scope of the one-size-fits-all rule we have today. Some, like me, require virtually no supervision or care at all, nor do I wish for any, aside from basic functions, such as defense of personal freedom from those who would infringe upon it. Others are far more dependent, and perhaps it is not for me to judge them.

 

[Moonbeam]

crashtech: It looks to me like ideology interests you more than you state. I disagree with this portion of your assessment at the least;

M: Ideology does interest me, it is the ideologies themselves that do not. They are. I believe, forms of ego attachment I see as dangerous.

c: just as you know not all liberalism is irrational, not all "lurches" to the right are based purely on irrationality, either.

M: But what does that even mean? Most things aren't purely this or that. I find that the extremism of the right's belief in their moral superiority has resulted in the demonization of liberals to the extent they will not even negotiate and will even shut the government down rather than do so. I find this kind of partisanship to be very extreme and an actual danger to our system that functions best with compromise.

c: Would that we would lurch away from authoritarianism, but it seems to have a pull not unlike the force of gravity.

M: As I have explained, the demands for authoritarianism are based on ancient natural traditions, respect for authority, for age, for the wisdom of age, and the experience that comes from living, for group cohesion, loyal to ones group and other positive things. You may reject authority but it is a valuable part of living.

Where it becomes a danger is when the authorities are wrong and there is no counter to their holding the One Ring. The left and the right have contributions to make as to what and when things are wrong.

c: In my view, aspects of both philosophies have a place in governance, yet my preference runs toward having as little as possible of either. In a perfect world, each individual would receive a tailor-made amount of governance suited to their individual needs and temperament instead of the constant tug-of-war over the scope of the one-size-fits-all rule we have today.

M: In a perfect world there is only love.

c: Some, like me, require virtually no supervision or care at all, nor do I wish for any, aside from basic functions, such as defense of personal freedom from those who would infringe upon it. Others are far more dependent, and perhaps it is not for me to judge them.

M: These I see as ideological positions based on assumptions you may or may not be aware you make. I can't imagine how such a view would be applies in real world actions.

My focus here was limited to the notion that liberals can't understand conservatives or deal with them if they don't understand the nature of their moral precepts and how those play out in the positions they take.

As I said, liberals are blinded by reason or as Haidt says: "Liberals don’t understand conservative values. And they can’t recognize this failing, because they’re so convinced of their rationality, open-mindedness and enlightenment."

You can see from this thread what a big interest I've gotten from liberals for that. Hehe.

 

[crashtech]

...M: These I see as ideological positions based on assumptions you may or may not be aware you make. I can't imagine how such a view would be applies in real world actions.

My focus here was limited to the notion that liberals can't understand conservatives or deal with them if they don't understand the nature of their moral precepts and how those play out in the positions they take.

As I said, liberals are blinded by reason or as Haidt says: "Liberals don’t understand conservative values. And they can’t recognize this failing, because they’re so convinced of their rationality, open-mindedness and enlightenment."

You can see from this thread what a big interest I've gotten from liberals for that. Hehe.

It is notable that you seem to identify a position that is rather value-neutral as ideological, dismiss it with some insinuation that it is based on flawed reasoning, then admit your failure of imagination as to what it actually means. Examining one's own hidden assumptions before finding them so easily in others is a challenge worthy of the highest intellect. The latter is child's play, the former, a mark of the enlightened.

Your focus on understanding conservatives can't begin to succeed if conservative ideas are dismissed without even examining them dispassionately and without prejudice. But if you are continuing with the notion that believing in certain ideologies is due to a mental disability (an assertion I find odious, by the way) you should just stop now, or better yet, I should just stop now.

Finally, the operative phrase in the Haidt quote to my eye is "they're so convinced." This could indicate not necessarily being blinded by reason, but by hubris.

 

[Moonbeam]

It is notable that you seem to identify a position that is rather value-neutral as ideological, dismiss it with some insinuation that it is based on flawed reasoning, then admit your failure of imagination as to what it actually means. Examining one's own hidden assumptions before finding them so easily in others is a challenge worthy of the highest intellect. The latter is child's play, the former, a mark of the enlightened.

Your focus on understanding conservatives can't begin to succeed if conservative ideas are dismissed without even examining them dispassionately and without prejudice. But if you are continuing with the notion that believing in certain ideologies is due to a mental disability (an assertion I find odious, by the way) you should just stop now, or better yet, I should just stop now.

Finally, the operative phrase in the Haidt quote to my eye is "they're so convinced." This could indicate not necessarily being blinded by reason, but by hubris.

Sorry, my careful reply to this was lost by hitting some key accidentally and I don't like doing them over again.

 

[crashtech]

I hate when that happens. :\

Once upon a time when I took this kind of stuff way too seriously, I composed my posts in a text editor instead of online just because my fat fingers would occasionally invoke some arcane, destructive browser command...

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

Sorry, my careful reply to this was lost by hitting some key accidentally and I don't like doing them over again.

A shame. I was looking forward to your response.

 

[OverVolt]

One discovery is that conservatives are moral in many ways that liberals are not and do not understand. This leads to the situation that conservatives understand morality better than liberals do, and furthermore, that they understand liberals better than liberals understand them.

Because my intent is to address liberals , I will not try to prove this here because the liberal mind is supposed to be amenable to scientific reasoning and the research is out there. Anybody who has doubts about this can check out the work of Jonathan Haidt.

His work shows that Republicans win elections, not because they appeal to rubs who are easily manipulated, but because they appeal to moral convictions instinctively that liberals don't understand. People vote conservative because conservative moral values are human and natural.

And conservatives can reason, they just do so like a lawyer in defense of their values which can include the following: care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority and sanctity as well as divinity, community, hierarchy, tradition, sin and degradation.

As Haidt points out, "Liberals don’t understand conservative values. And they can’t recognize this failing, because they’re so convinced of their rationality, open-mindedness and enlightenment."

This the above, is what I call the liberal brain defect, the focus solely on the injustice and inequality that conservative moral values will tolerate to support their other moral ideals, that reason and rational argument can bring them to concede when their actual reaction is that liberals, unable to appreciate the moral valuse being defended, are evil.

I recently described the LBD vs the CBD as taking a hammer to your thumb.

Now what you get when you try to pursuade people to abandon some moral belief, say by making some form of moral action illegal, take abortion as one case, is the sense of persecution.

In another thread recently I suggested to a conservative, who was rationalizing in favor of his moral belief, that he would not be able to see the irrationality of his thinking unless he let go and died. Now I had already and have often in the past, used this idea of spiritual awakening as the product of ego death, but this person had his ego aroused and needed and therefore wanted to see my words literally, that he was of such importance or such a threat to me that I would wish him harm, and this after a rather extensive explanation that I had the best wishes for him.

Having slept of this event an image arose in my mind that we have a real world analogy of the CBD in action in primates, the fact that you can capture monkeys by putting food in a bottle, which when they take hold of it they can't remove their hand. No amount of reasoning in the world will convince that monkey to let go, to die to appetite sufficiently so he can live.

What liberals need to do, then, in my opinion, is to focus more on how to relax the conservative hand, because the assault of reason on the moral beliefs of conservatives by liberals just makes their grip tighten and their minds fabricate a greater level of threat.

If we are so smart, maybe we can turn our attention to that.

How can Sambo turn tigers into butter?

Yes we already know you are liberal biased and no you couldn't make it anymore obvious. Its not like you first started going off on LBD instead of the other way around!

 

[Moonbeam]

Yes we already know you are liberal biased and no you couldn't make it anymore obvious. Its not like you first started going off on LBD instead of the other way around!

M: Think of it this way. We already know that you are a low level thinker who is interested only in his opinion and not in scientific facts. This allows you great latitude in your motivated lack of capacity to think. My awareness of how you have acted in the past tells me there is no hope that showing you the flaws in your reasoning could possibly take. My attempt to do so would be equivalent to acting out a LBD. This, again, is because you are a low level thinker.

But in the interest of demonstration, and with the cards on the table, that any effort to bring you to reason is a waste of time, I will show you where you have practiced low level thinking here, but with the understanding that as far as you understanding what I will say, it's a complete waste of time, so here we go:

In the first place you attach a great deal of importance to yourself that you do not have. You take umbrage and feel affronted. That mean old Moonbeam has accused you of being a low level thinker. But you are a low level thinker so I have only stated a fact and it is the fact and the messenger you react to. It requires low level thinking to assume that facts are negative or that denial can change them.

So let's look at your post:

OV: Yes we already know you are liberal biased and no you couldn't make it anymore obvious.

As soon as we see the words obvious applied to some putative truth, we know we are dealing with assumptions that are imbedded and fixed. There is immediately no doubt and no question as to the truth of your belief, even though you haven't the slightest idea what you are talking about. Secondly, the words liberal bias have mental and emotional content for you that is unique only to you with the rider that it is also obviously pejorative. For somebody else, a liberal bias isn't a liberal bias but common sense and the only moral position that has any real value. So essentially, you are describing a world you have created inside a paper bag. You are full of inculcated assumptions, the holding of which determines the nature of what you call obvious truth.

Ah but you say I picked CBD and not LBD to focus on and that proves my bias, when I have made it clear over and over again that it is the conservative denial of reason and scientific fact and the demonization of all who believe in them that is the enemy of the nation. I have gone from the scientific evidence that conservatives practice rationalization rather than reason to defend their feel good positions more that liberals do, and the implication of the denial of scientific thinking in education, energy policy, and a host of other things, as factually dangerous for the nation. Practically any liberal and many conservatives can see this. And that is the reason that I am biased. Science tells me that conservatives can't be reached by reason and their fixation on the creation of alternative reality that substitute for scientific evidence equates to being led by morons rather than thinkers, to the liberal mind. I have tired also to point out to liberals that this is not the result of low IQ. That conservatives are not morons, and can't have information carefully explained to them no matter how dumbed down or patient one is. Their ignorance is willful and unconsciously motivated.

I have also explained, that no matter how absurd a liberal may be, the chances are better he can be brought to reason by logical argument. Liberals, more so than conservatives, according to the science, are not so hopeless in this regard.

Therefore, anybody who functions under the assumption that the nation is in danger from deranged conservative altered reality thinking, isn't biased in searching for a solution to that, but engaged in and addressing a real threat the nation faces. Conservatives don't like knowing they are shitting in their own nest, however, you included.



OV: Its not like you first started going off on LBD instead of the other way around.

M: And now you know it's not bias but the application of logical priorities, a connection your low level reasoning allows you to improperly link because you reject basic information and the capacity to think about it logically.
======

So where has this gotten us? Nowhere of course, because a fool convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. You can see that Shakespeare had a LBD. He also thought that having a CBD makes you a fool.

The actual facts are that you value conservative thinking more than you do truth because it fits your sense of morality. It makes you feel right rather than wrong.

In my younger life, for reasons I wish I could fully explain, I questioned my beliefs unmercifully, with the unfortunate result, so I thought at the time, of destroying everything I held sacred. The unfortunate part was that loosing everything I valued was like dying. I didn't know at the time what being defeated by the Nothing would bring. I thought at the time that it would black unending misery. The fact that it's not has given me the impetus to share.

I do have conditions, however. I will share, but be warned. I will do what I can but beyond that I don't care; it's all up to you. Any emotional attachment to your success that I might develop would work against you. I have this cornucopia of riches for you, but you can just fuck off.

 

[crashtech]

This isn't going too well.

*unsubscribes*

 

[Londo_Jowo]

This isn't going too well.

*unsubscribes*

Best action to use in these type threads or similar posts in other threads

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

This isn't going too well.

*unsubscribes*

Please don't. I really appreciate your perspective.

 

[Greenman]

This isn't going too well.

*unsubscribes*

It never does.

 

[Moonbeam]

Hehehehe, I just love all the egomaniacs who just have to announce to everybody their indifference to my thinking and how nobody should post in my threads. One would almost suspect that the wish that others ignore me is very important to some folk. But then it's all part of my magical ability to get the attention I crave.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

Hehehehe, I just love all the egomaniacs who just have to announce to everybody their indifference to my thinking and how nobody should post in my threads. One would almost suspect that the wish that others ignore me is very important to some folk. But then it's all part of my magical ability to get the attention I crave.

I worry for you.

 

[chucky2]

No way Moonie, I want people to respond to you just as much as you want people to respond to you. I was hoping crashtech would stick with it but hopefully someone will be along shortly to keep the back and forth going... :thumbsup:

 

[Moonbeam]

I worry for you.

Do not worry. The universe is consummately just. The truth can't be kept from those who deserve it and can't be given to those who don't. I have exactly that compensation I deserve and my condition can't be other than it is.

 

[Moonbeam]

Doc, here is a song I like by Moby:

We just had to ask
Maybe some one out of Heaven
Would hear us down here

We couldn't bear to stand
How the people leave us waiting
For something up there

Oh, why did you leave?
And why won't you come?
And save us again?

Come back to us spiders
Come uncrush my hand
Let peace and beauty reign
And bring us love again, like you can

We just didn't know
Someone there outside in Heaven
Heard us down here

We couldn't stand it here
How the people leave us longing
For something up there

Oh, why did you leave?
And why won't you come?
And save us again?

Come back to us spiders
Come uncrush my hands
Let peace and beauty reign
And bring us love again, like you can

Come back to us spiders
Come uncrush my hands
Let peace and beauty reign
And bring us love again, like you can

So much time, we need to ask everything
How did it go
You need it I got it

Come back to us spiders
Come uncrush my hands
Let peace and beauty reign
And bring us love again, like you can

Come back to us spiders
Come uncrush my hands
Let peace and beauty reign
And bring us love again, like you can
Like you can

 

[OverVolt]

Noooo... you lean liberal. Just the fact it seemed to bother you so you typed alot means my assumption was correct.

A nice little trick :0)

You aren't the only one who knows how to psychology!

 

[Moonbeam]

Noooo... you lean liberal. Just the fact it seemed to bother you so you typed alot means my assumption was correct.

A nice little trick :0)

You aren't the only one who knows how to psychology!

You are a low level thinker. That is a successful adaptive strategy. You react quickly without any paralysis that can come from the complexities of deep analytical thinking. That is why, when offered a deeper explanation of assumptions you so facilely make as demonstrations of your condition, you see such charitable effort to expand your understanding as defensive.

Your problem then is that because you ability to respond without thinking is an adaption which you look on with shame, as if it made you sound intellectually incapable, you deny the presence of your own strength. You don't like or appreciate who you are. And my simply telling you all this makes you feel it.

The lesson I wanted to give you isn't that I don't lean liberal, that's not important to me, but that you have false assumptions about what leaning liberal may mean. Liberals may be slower on the draw but much better at hitting targets long range because they have the desire to identify if a target is real.

I don't think I'm a liberal by nature. I'm not interested in novelty or change. I see the world as perfect and always has been just as it is. I have no ideology or political objectives. All that to me is insane. But I'm not a conservative either. I don't support parties. I have no interest in groups, I don't see us and them.

Liberals and conservatives have places they want to go, things they want to conserve or change. They want to do things. They want to move forward or backward in time. I see delusion in all of that. If you are conflicted internally, it makes the universe ugly, and if you are at peace within, what you see is the Kingdom of Heaven. I think you should take a look. But I can't make you. But then, I don't think I'm going to get too upset if you think I lean liberal.

To live in a universe of riches beyond your wildest dreams, and to go peck peck peck, what is that if not a brain defect.

 

[michal1980]

You are a low level thinker. That is a successful adaptive strategy. You react quickly without any paralysis that can come from the complexities of deep analytical thinking. That is why, when offered a deeper explanation of assumptions you so facilely make as demonstrations of your condition, you see such charitable effort to expand your understanding as defensive.

Your problem then is that because you ability to respond without thinking is an adaption which you look on with shame, as if it made you sound intellectually incapable, you deny the presence of your own strength. You don't like or appreciate who you are. And my simply telling you all this makes you feel it.

The lesson I wanted to give you isn't that I don't lean liberal, that's not important to me, but that you have false assumptions about what leaning liberal may mean. Liberals may be slower on the draw but much better at hitting targets long range because they have the desire to identify if a target is real.

I don't think I'm a liberal by nature. I'm not interested in novelty or change. I see the world as perfect and always has been just as it is. I have no ideology or political objectives. All that to me is insane. But I'm not a conservative either. I don't support parties. I have no interest in groups, I don't see us and them.

Liberals and conservatives have places they want to go, things they want to conserve or change. They want to do things. They want to move forward or backward in time. I see delusion in all of that. If you are conflicted internally, it makes the universe ugly, and if you are at peace within, what you see is the Kingdom of Heaven. I think you should take a look. But I can't make you. But then, I don't think I'm going to get too upset if you think I lean liberal.

To live in a universe of riches beyond your wildest dreams, and to go peck peck peck, what is that if not a brain defect.

what you consider deep though is just brain vomit.

There is zero thought in what you post. just pure utter crap.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

I don't think I'm a liberal by nature. I'm not interested in novelty or change. I see the world as perfect and always has been just as it is. I have no ideology or political objectives. All that to me is insane. But I'm not a conservative either. I don't support parties. I have no interest in groups, I don't see us and them.

Perhaps that's why you and I get on so well. When we see a thing we don't ask which group it belongs to before we make an attempt to understand. Staying with the party, unwilling to look beyond the status quo, unwilling to question, to me this is conservative thinking. In the end a thing may be worth keeping or modifying or need discarding altogether, but the world isn't fixed. The best things may not always be so. To me it's best to attempt to remove the tags and see what a thing is, what it means in a full sense, and only then reason about a proper perspective. Being human I may fail, but the effort, I think, is as important in some ways as the result. But to really understand requires that stripping away of correctness by association with unnecessary labels.

 

[michal1980]

I don't think I'm a liberal by nature. I'm not interested in novelty or change. I see the world as perfect and always has been just as it is. I have no ideology or political objectives. All that to me is insane. But I'm not a conservative either. I don't support parties. I have no interest in groups, I don't see us and them.

Perhaps that's why you and I get on so well. When we see a thing we don't ask which group it belongs to before we make an attempt to understand. Staying with the party, unwilling to look beyond the status quo, unwilling to question, to me this is conservative thinking. In the end a thing may be worth keeping or modifying or need discarding altogether, but the world isn't fixed. The best things may not always be so. To me it's best to attempt to remove the tags and see what a thing is, what it means in a full sense, and only then reason about a proper perspective. Being human I may fail, but the effort, I think, is as important in some ways as the result. But to really understand requires that stripping away of correctness by association with unnecessary labels.

do you not read moonfucks posts?

The guy has a rabid fixation on dehumanizing conservatives, he self created a disorder that all conservatives have, and must be cured of.

Your stuck on the same stupid as all liberals, that conservatives have no ideas.

But that's just your inner bias showing.

What ideas do progressives have that are progressive?

More welfare? wow that's new.
More government spending? wow that's new.

just because the left says they are progressive doesn't mean they have any progressive ideas.

 

[Moonbeam]

michal1980: do you not read moonfucks posts?

M: That's no way to begin. In the first place it's childish and amateurish and rude and sets you up instantly as somebody with an ax to grind, filled with bias generated somewhere previously and in need of taking a dump. Most people are offended by such things, which, of course, is why you began that way. Right off the bat you want to taint the person you are about to demonize. Myself, I don't mind. You have already told me enough to know your opinion, what ever it will be, isn't worth anything.

m: The guy has a rabid fixation on dehumanizing conservatives, he self created a disorder that all conservatives have, and must be cured of.

M: You forgot to say, in your opinion. Mine is that I have the same professional dedication as a physician when he performs to heal the sick with the added bonus that I am willing to try to fix those who don't even know they are afflicted, like yourself, hence this post. I have simply taken the information collected by neuroscience on the conservative brain and labeled the symptoms expressed as a mental defect. That is because factually, your lack of capacity for analysis, your blind belief that what you feel is what is right, if very dangerous, and history is littered with millions of deaths that have been caused by those who act with their demented but heartfelt good intentions.

m: Your stuck on the same stupid as all liberals, that conservatives have no ideas.

M: If that was meant for me I have to disagree. I believe that conservatives have lots of ideas and a small percent of them are even good.

m: But that's just your inner bias showing.

M: Sadly I find you to be such a programmed reactionary that any talk of bias in others coming from you has a terribly hollow ring.

m: What ideas do progressives have that are progressive?

More welfare? wow that's new.
More government spending? wow that's new.

M: You know the story of the full tea cup that must be emptied before new tea can be drunk. You are asking a question with a just such a cup.

You ask questions you already think you've answered. Not a good way to learn or hear anything. In my opinion a progressive is somebody who sees that government can help people who will help themselves and that we truly value only what we earn. For that reason any welfare program I would hope to design would be one in which some contribution must be made. It is not merely sustenance that must be provided but the will, capacity, and experience of standing on ones own. Some small percent of people may be so disabled they can't contribute much and it will have to be us that receives the psychological benefits for caring for them.

m: just because the left says they are progressive doesn't mean they have any progressive ideas.

M: Just as it also doesn't mean they don't.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

do you not read moonfucks posts?

The guy has a rabid fixation on dehumanizing conservatives, he self created a disorder that all conservatives have, and must be cured of.

Your stuck on the same stupid as all liberals, that conservatives have no ideas.

But that's just your inner bias showing.

What ideas do progressives have that are progressive?

More welfare? wow that's new.
More government spending? wow that's new.

just because the left says they are progressive doesn't mean they have any progressive ideas.

So what am I to you, a Liberal, a Conservative, a Progressive? Many on the left peg me as a Conservative. Many on the Right a Liberal. To others more of a radical. What do you say? There's much about so called whatevers I strongly dislike, but that's because of more than stated ideology and party. That would include a great many Progressives and Liberals as well as Conservatives, and I've pointed out issues before. But then I'm using a different definition of Conservative and Liberal. I'm not picking ideologies, but modes of thought. To accept predetermined, laid out thinking unchallenged is conservative thinking. To think that Obama or the Democrats are the only way is conservative thinking just as much as the Republicans and Conservatives in this ideological sense, but whether they are R or D if they accept what has come before as the only right way, if they justify a wrong thing because "their side" is correct, if they don't examine and question and tear apart what is presented or how it's being done, to me those are conservative minds. Inflexible and unimaginative thinkers are just that. A more liberal mind (and get off of politics here) thinks and reasons and evaluates. It questions authority, not with pure obstructionism but out of a self imposed responsibility to understand what those who have the power to change our lives actually mean and what they do will mean beyond the immediate subject. So, yes, I believe that Conservatives can be conservative minds, and frankly I believe that many Liberals of my acquaintance are not liberal thinkers, but are in fact conservatives with a small "c".

I do not presume to speak for Moonbeam and the reason for his poking and prodding, however while I have been opposed to Liberal plans and show a great contempt for some who call themselves Liberals, he's not once given me cause for grief. And if you think I'm partial to him, well we do have a history which goes back a ways and is more personal than I care to go into, but I have always found it a good relationship. Do he and I always agree? I should hope not! FYI as far as favoritism goes there was a time when I was an administrator here and something happened which I felt compelled out of principle to institute a ban. I felt compelled to do so because of my position and the circumstance. Yes, I did get grief from others for doing it, but you know who was supportive of my decision? Moonbeam. He understood my reasoning (whether he agreed or not never even came up), and urged me to do what I felt was right. The time came and passed and never, ever, once was that a bone of contention, and indeed this is the first time I believe I have ever mentioned this on the forums. He's a different person than me. He approaches things differently than I would, but he's always treated me with more kindness and attempted to understand my meanings more than Conservatives or Liberals here, and that matters to me more than his reasons for prodding and poking those who respond.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

So what am I to you, a Liberal, a Conservative, a Progressive?

I have you pegged for a Progressive Conservative Liberal Pharmacist with Libertarian leanings.........:biggrin: