Well we were able to overcome the othering of people in the 1970's, but I'm not so sure about now. I more tend to blame the internet and the atomization of media. In some ways it's great that people have so many options to choose from. What that seems to have generally led to however is people only reading what they agree with and conservatives in particular have retreated into an ever more extreme media bubble.
I'm consistently amazed by the insane things that some conservatives say on here and I'm very confident that they are smart, rational people in other aspects of their lives. I don't mean points of policy where two people can reasonably disagree, I mean pants-on-head, delusional conspiracy theories.
Look, this is an uncomfortable subject for me to deal with. I believe I can explain it but it is the same explanation I have been giving for almost 20 years, the same explanation I have said as many times as I have said it also that nobody wants to hear it and that they don't want to know they don't want to hear it. It's not exactly fun for me either. It reminds me of the story of when the scorpion was asked why we never see him in winter and replied, is my reception so great in summer that I'd want to be seen in the winter too. If I am pricked, will I not bleed? That reminds me of the story of the fox that was found near a pond covered in blood sucking flies that some generous soul decided to rescue by brushing them away, only to have the fox plead they be left in place because all of them were full of blood and would be replaced by ones still hungry.
Where was I.
Yes, OK. I was going to tell you about being in group therapy and watching people relive childhood traumatic events, stuff like falling back on the floor and writhing around on the ground trying to protect themselves from imaginary blows their parents had delivered years ago in the past, or watching somebody experience a real psychotic break and go quite crazy, an event that I would describe as a massive acceleration in associative thinking driven by terror.
Fear causes the brain to associate madly, skipping from one idea that connects somehow to the next always downward into some negative feeling, You can start anywhere and go straight to hell. It is like a bad drug trip, as that is more or less the same thing with a different accelerant.
Well, fear is actually the attempt not to feel anything, it is the fear of feeling and it is feeling that makes us alive, so fear is a little death, a desire to freeze and not feel anything. Fear is thought, the process of association energized and accelerated by the panic state.
Now we come to what we are exposed to on a daily basis via the media, a steady diet of things about which we can associate, a barrage of scary scenarios courtesy of the media. Look at this terrible disaster and feel good by buying a Fiat. We are built to detect danger in the environment and we are easily magnetized by it.
We live is a state of constant stress and my theory is that it affects the size as in exercise lever of the amygdala. I believe that people exposed to constant stress and fear are turned into conservatives by constant stimulation of that part of the brain. I think it's also why meditation and enlightenment seem to be related.
So we have a constant reminder of danger all around us via the media that leads to obsessive thinking that leads to the threat of connecting to our original learning of fear, the terror of the withdrawal of love and support as children because we only worth loving if we behave and abide by the norms.
The more worthless we were made to feel, the greater life is threatening and the more extreme we become in protecting ourselves.
As I believe these thing I describe here, I do not find conservatives to be amazingly insane. I just find them to be less aware of how insane WE ALL ARE than I am. And when I say I am more aware I mean that in an abstract sense, that what I describe makes perfect logical sense. I do not mean that I do not suffer from the same condition. Knowing how you are doesn't change how you are, but it can change how to react to those facts. What, for example, is the value in denying you feel worthless, if you actually know that you do? Knowing you are an alcoholic, seems to be to be a better place to be than being one and being in denial. I don't have much to offer other than that, I think.
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