[Paleopsych] demons

Mon Nov 1 01:00:57 UTC 2004

Hi Lynn,

>What is it about the Left that makes them so hateful?  

Here's the beginning (draft) of a piece I'm writing called "An Evolutionary Mind." At present it's 20+ pages and needs much editing...and I've edited it for this message as well... But I think it tries to get at some of what you're wondering about...

(Also, another answer which seems fairly obvious--though not that fabulous--is that they're the underdogs. When you're losing or defeated you can be angry (masculine version ) or depressed (feminine version). Both feelings motivate people toward action...

Etc...)

Cheers,

Alice

An Evolutionary Mind

Of Two Minds 

Not that long ago, for about a year, I dated a cute, left-wing economist off-and-on (though mostly off). We found each other attractive and exotic and perhaps even fascinating, but we didn't get along or get each other one bit. It was a frustrating and futile experiment in the chemistry and mathematics of pairing with someone so different in every way-even our horoscopes said we were disastrous for each other. (That a pretty smart girl like me would even mention the word horoscope in a piece for public consumption would probably make him cringe and clear his throat a few times.) But in the process of going toward something so foreign and at once attractive and repellant, I solidified my worldview that there really are two different kinds of minds. 

Recently, the New York Times ran an article titled "The Political Brain." The piece suggested that the liberal mind and the conservative mind are quite different and that this difference is related to the differences in the way their limbic systems (in particular, the amygdala) respond to particular stimuli-particularly suffering and violence. The author made clear to point out that it was difficult to parse if liberals were born with more sensitive/reactive amygdalae or if their experiences, etc., shaped the patterns of response; and that indeed it was probably a little of both, as these things often are.

Of course, in the game 'the nature/nurture debate,' where anyone over the age of 13 knows the answer is: "it's both," you are really being asked To which side do you lean or, perhaps which side do you defend? And in this game my answer is nature. (Though I consider myself an interactionist; and am informed by an epigenetic adaptionist model.)

I will defend an innatist position though (while maintaining that the environment has shaped adaptations and hardwiring and that we're influenced by the environment). Why? Because I feel it is true-that much is innate in us-and because others feel it is true, and because there is some scientific evidence that it is true (e.g., behavioral genetics). Perhaps I'm an innate underdoggist with a sensitive amygdale! Because, although being on the nature side these days may seem fashionable to some, in fact, it hasn't been fashionable for most of my reading, thinking, and writing years. 

The economist on the other hand (or brain) is a social constructionist-big on Freud (and Marx) and early childhood experiences as forming personality traits and very big on the narrative- he attributed my sympathy with innatist/essentialist models to a rebellion against my parents. Yet, I'm an older sibling, and there's empirical evidence to suggest that older siblings tend to conform, somewhat, to their parents' beliefs. That was the case with me. It felt awful to feel 'the truth' and to go 'against' their social constructionist view of things. It took a very long time to individuate. A much better explanation (to me) is that I have a kind of brain that pushes me in that direction. There's no question to me that the male/female; left brain/right brain; western/eastern dichotomy is a valuable one for trying to understand our differences. It may even be better than scanning amygdalae. 

Here's the thing: It's a phenomenological certainty that the economist and I can't see any other way but the way we do; and indeed, our explanations for things have everything to do with our cognitive style. You see, I can't help think the way I do because of something deep and essential and real-my brain. And this thought in itself I believe comes from my essential nature/brain. I literally cannot get out of it. And he cannot get out of the way he sees the way he does, due to his brain/nature. I am right-brain dominant, female and lean towards an Eastern/collectivist worldview. I think I'm also old-brainy and he's new- brainy. (We can call it the Dionysian mind.) This all seems obvious to me. But he'd probably call it a story, a tall-tale or fiction. He'd say, nice narrative, Alice! when perhaps this difference lies in our blood and brains. Or genes. Or souls. Or maybe I just have access to something that he doesn't always have; or doesn't want to have. It's hard to know. 

The economist is a neophile. His mind, plastic and flexible, is attracted to new things-even shiny things-from his need to see the latest hippest film, to his postmodern apartment and trendy metrosexual style. Me on the other hand, I'm attracted to old things. My house is old and so are the things I put it in it. I liked vintage clothes 20 years ago and now I wear retro-versions since such clothes exist now, I'm a grown-up, and they fit better. When he goes back in time to understand the world and humans, he goes back hundreds and thousands of years and studies men and systems; whereas when I search for answers I go back 30, 000 to 300 million years, and study our distant primate relatives and even microbes.

How does a new, left-brain dominant mind work? (We can call it the Apollinian mind.) The culture at this very moment in time says that (for a female) having a bit of a tummy (as opposed to very flat or muscley) is nice, and so this is what he likes now. But when it didn't-just a few summers ago-he didn't. There are some men who have a hair-trigger sensitivity to culture's ebbs and flows and laws and fashions-while some men listen to something much more deep and primal; who listen to the 'nature' within. (Again, I'm not sure if it's a question of listening to the depth within, or a question of having it there to listen to or not.)

In social psychology there is something called attribution theory-dispositional attribution versus situational attribution. A dispositional attribution (inference) is when a person identifies or attributes someone's behavior to the person's disposition, nature, personality. A situational attribution (inference) is when a person identifies or attributes someone's behavior to the person's situation/environment. The tendency for people to attribute a particular behavior or trait to one's essential nature and not to the situation, more often, and therefore, more often erroneously, is what is known as "correspondence bias" and more specifically "the fundamental attribution error" (Ross, 1977). Most thinking people are aware of the fundamental attribution error. The right-wing typically is identified with this kind of less reasoned, more automatic attribution; the left typically with more reasoned and fairer situational attributions. There is no social psychological term (as of yet, and probably there never will be) for the tendency for folks who are hyper-sensitive to the fundamental attribution error or who have a tendency to make situational attributions more often than dispositional ones; their number are so few. (One again wonders if this dichotomy, this difference in attribution style can be located somewhere.in the brains or genes.Actually, I wonder. My economist wouldn't.)

When I think about it, my mind is oodles and oodles more fluid and boundary-less, and uncontrolling and feminine and eastern, and artistic and nonjudgmental and non-labely, and okay, a little bit more nutty than Mr. economist's. When I think of the people I know who are social constructionists, these are people who are very masculine, logical, judgmental, critical, controlling, rigid, etc. Why is this so? It doesn't make sense! Especially since the EP (evolutionary psychology) model is innatist and positivist and male, whereas the social constructionist model is relational and female. Maybe there is something to his thing about rebellion! Maybe we adopt these views as reaction formations? 

Evolutionary Defense

A reaction formation is a kind of defense mechanism which protects one's self-concept. The classic example is of the homophobe who is a latent homosexual. Although Tom feels Id-y homosexual longing and desire (having something to do with nature and nurture, no doubt, though probably more to do with nature), he also feels a strong Super-ego-y injunction against homosexual behavior (having something to do with nature and nurture, no doubt, though probably more to do with nurture).  So how does Tom, with his strong moral judge/Super-ego defend himself from acting on these Id-y impulses that do not jibe with his self-concept? He reacts against them most fiercely. And he does so because he knows about the foot-in-the-door phenomenon. He knows that once you open the door a little to something, you are just a few more steps from acting on something. So the door must be completely shut; the smallest opening, the barest light shining through, and it's all over. He would love and get in a bed with a man; Tom would be a gay man. 

I suggest the same thing happens with fierce social constructionists. So, the question is, does the economist cling to his social constructionist view because his real view frightens him? He is very decent and has a highly developed moral sense and conscience. Perhaps he doesn't like what or the way he thinks naturally, and so he pushes it away and goes in the complete opposite direction because he doesn't feel comfortable with himself and he doesn't like the real, implicit, deep-down views he holds because they flow from the way his male, left brain works: judging, labeling, boxing in, always truly committing the fundamental attribution error at an automatic, unconscious level. I, on the other hand, don't do this by nature. I feel open to stuff, and don't generally feel the need to cover up how I feel about people, etc. I feel comfortable with myself and my true feelings and views about people, etc. And so I feel free and easy to be open to all kinds of information.

Information that suggests things are innate or hardwired is very threatening to people whose minds naturally have heuristics and algorithms which are male and compartmentalized. My openness to knowledge-and often what is considered 'dangerous knowledge' is treated by aggressive male social constructionists as, indeed, dangerous. But it's as if the ideas really don't matter that much, but that what matters is their (the social constructionists') domination in the ideology war. 

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. 
  To: The new improved paleopsych list 
  Sent: Sunday, October 31, 2004 5:37 PM
  Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] demons

  These comments betray a misunderstanding of the subjects.
  Fundamentalists - what ever that means - appear to be the demonic side of liberals. Onto them - and onto 'conservatives' - are projected unacceptable aspects of the self. So liberals accuse conservatives of all their own sins, and the conservatives become the scapegoats, onto which the community sins are placed. (E. g., Kerry, a profligate liar, accuses Bush of lying.)

  In his book, _Radical Son_, David Horowitz recounts being amazed at the acceptance that conservatives had for his own failings (the failed marriages, for example), whereas his former radical colleagues showed all the hate and rejection that Horowitz had always projected onto the Right. He says he realized that the rules that conservatives propose are not there so that no one will break them. They are there because they _will_ be broken, but having the rules reduces the likelihood that people will break them, and, says Horowitz, because life works better when you obey them. 

  I found that Radical Son explained the paradox I had often puzzled at. My conservative friends are the most accepting/tolerant of contrasting opinions, whereas my liberal friends are the most rigid and rejecting of opinions that contrast their own. What is it about the Left that makes them so hateful?  
  Lynn Johnson

  Steve Hovland wrote:

Sounds like conservatives :-)

Steve Hovland
www.stevehovland.net

-----Original Message-----
From:	Michael Christopher [SMTP:anonymous_animus at yahoo.com]
Sent:	Sunday, October 31, 2004 11:11 AM
To:	paleopsych at paleopsych.org
Subject:	[Paleopsych] demons

  Borderline personality disorder is a disorder 
      characterized by an overuse of a defense mechanism
called 'splitting.' In splitting, a person is unable
to hold or reconcile two opposing ideas in their mind
at the same time, so they use black-and-white thinking
to protect themselves from contradictory
feelings, gray areas and ambiguities.<<

--Sounds like fundamentalism. Are demons split-off
aspects of the self that the self cannot integrate and
cannot ignore?

Michael

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  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Lynn D. Johnson, Ph.D. 
  To: The new improved paleopsych list 
  Sent: Sunday, October 31, 2004 5:37 PM
  Subject: Re: [Paleopsych] demons

  These comments betray a misunderstanding of the subjects.
  Fundamentalists - what ever that means - appear to be the demonic side of liberals. Onto them - and onto 'conservatives' - are projected unacceptable aspects of the self. So liberals accuse conservatives of all their own sins, and the conservatives become the scapegoats, onto which the community sins are placed. (E. g., Kerry, a profligate liar, accuses Bush of lying.)

  In his book, _Radical Son_, David Horowitz recounts being amazed at the acceptance that conservatives had for his own failings (the failed marriages, for example), whereas his former radical colleagues showed all the hate and rejection that Horowitz had always projected onto the Right. He says he realized that the rules that conservatives propose are not there so that no one will break them. They are there because they _will_ be broken, but having the rules reduces the likelihood that people will break them, and, says Horowitz, because life works better when you obey them. 

  I found that Radical Son explained the paradox I had often puzzled at. My conservative friends are the most accepting/tolerant of contrasting opinions, whereas my liberal friends are the most rigid and rejecting of opinions that contrast their own. What is it about the Left that makes them so hateful?  
  Lynn Johnson

  Steve Hovland wrote:

Sounds like conservatives :-)

Steve Hovland
www.stevehovland.net

-----Original Message-----
From:	Michael Christopher [SMTP:anonymous_animus at yahoo.com]
Sent:	Sunday, October 31, 2004 11:11 AM
To:	paleopsych at paleopsych.org
Subject:	[Paleopsych] demons

  Borderline personality disorder is a disorder 
      characterized by an overuse of a defense mechanism
called 'splitting.' In splitting, a person is unable
to hold or reconcile two opposing ideas in their mind
at the same time, so they use black-and-white thinking
to protect themselves from contradictory
feelings, gray areas and ambiguities.<<

--Sounds like fundamentalism. Are demons split-off
aspects of the self that the self cannot integrate and
cannot ignore?

Michael

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail 
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paleopsych at paleopsych.org
http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych
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