Category Archives: conservatism

Neurophysiology and Political Beliefs

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Several times in recent days I have addressed the subject of purity and the problems it poses when it becomes an obsession. These obsessional purists eventually live in a bubble and seek to obliterate anyone who would deign to think or behave differently than they do. I have received some very interesting responses from this blog post, some of which provided further grist for my mill. One suggested a neurological dimension to the conservative mindset (see “neuro notes” on wordpress) which led to even further google exploration on my own. I am going to share with you an article from Mother Jones magazine which suggests that conservatism is not a function of reason as much as it is underlying neurophysiology. Now in fairness, by extension the same can be applied to a “liberal” mindset or any other mindset. Our “thinking” is not autonomous and “objective”. There is always an underlying neurological substrate that influences our thinking, our reasoning. This is related to an observation I have shared several times from a source I cannot recall, “Our thinking is the belated rationalization of conclusions to which we have already been led by our desires.”

Now, I know the terror that this strikes in some hearts. I know because I once lived there and recoiled when notions of this sort were proposed. These notions always brought to my mind the arch enemy of my conservative mind, “RELATIVISM!!!!” And relevant to this demonic buzzword, there was the fear that “nothing is real.”

I do not see it that way now. Yes, things are much more relative than I used to think and much more relative than they appear to most people, especially conservative extremists. But I do believe in an Ultimate and do so with great passion. I just don’t have as much confidence anymore in my ability, or the ability of any human, to grasp and understand and control that Ultimate with his/her mind. When we allow our spiritual exploration to take us beyond that neurological substrate, and beyond any other underpinnings that science might posit, we find a primordial emptiness (or Nothingness) and that is where faith is required, faith in the sense of hope. This emptiness is expressed in the Christian tradition as “kenosis” or “self-emptying.” This requires an humility which the ego finds repulsive.

This leaves us seeing our beautiful world “unreal” in ultimate terms. But it is the only reality we know (as in consciously “know”) and is very important as it is the means by which the Ultimate can begin its/His unfolding. This hidden world gives the “seen” world meaning and therefore allows Essential Beauty to become manifest.

I’m going to share some of the wisdom of Lao Tzu before I conclude with the Mother Jones article by Chris Mooney:

Thirty spokes are made one by holes in a hub,
By vacancies joining them for a wheel’s use;
The use of clay in moulding pitchers
Comes from the hollow of its absence;
Doors, windows, in a house,
Are used for their emptiness:
�Thus we are helped by what is not
To use what is

MOTHER JONES ARTICLE

The past two weeks have seen not one but two studies published in scientific journals on the biological underpinnings of political ideology. And these studies go straight at the role of genes and the brain in shaping our views, and even our votes.

First, in the American Journal of Political Science [1], a team of researchers including Peter Hatemi of Penn State University and Rose McDermott of Brown University studied the relationship between our deep-seated tendencies to experience fear—tendencies that vary from person to person, partly for reasons that seem rooted in our genes—and our political beliefs. What they found is that people who have more fearful disposition also tend to be more politically conservative, and less tolerant of immigrants and people of races different from their own. As McDermott carefully emphasizes, that does not mean that every conservative has a high fear disposition. “It’s not that conservative people are more fearful, it’s that fearful people are more conservative,” as she puts it [2].

I interviewed the paper’s lead author, Peter Hatemi, about his research for my 2012 book The Republican Brain. Hatemi is both a political scientist and also a microbiologist, and as he stressed to me, “nothing is all genes, or all environment.” These forces combine to make us who we are, in incredibly intricate ways.

And if Hatemi’s and McDermott’s research blows your mind, get this [3]: Darren Schreiber, a political neuroscientist at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, first performed brain scans on 82 people participating in a risky gambling task, one in which holding out for more money increases your possible rewards, but also your possible losses. Later, cross-referencing the findings with the participants’ publicly available political party registration information, Schreiber noticed something astonishing: Republicans, when they took the same gambling risk, were activating a different part of the brain than Democrats.

Republicans were using the right amygdala, the center of the brain’s threat response system. Democrats, in contrast, were using the insula, involved in internal monitoring of one’s feelings. Amazingly, Schreiber and his colleagues write that this test predicted 82.9 percent of the study subjects’ political party choices—considerably better, they note, than a simple model that predicts your political party affiliation based on the affiliation of your parents.

I also interviewed Schreiber for The Republican Brain. He’s a scientist who was once quite cautious about the relevance of brain studies to people’s politics. As he put it to me: “If you had called me four years ago and said, ‘What is your view on whether Republicans and Democrats have different brains?’ I would have said no.” Now, his own published research suggests otherwise.

The current research suggests not only that having a particular brain influences your political views, but also that having a particular political view influences your brain.

One again, though, there’s a critical nuance here. Schreiber thinks the current research suggests not only that having a particular brain influences your political views, but also that having a particular political view influences and changes your brain. The causal arrow seems likely to run in both directions—which would make sense in light of what we know about the plasticity of the brain. Simply by living our lives, we change our brains. Our political affiliations, and the lifestyles that go along with them, probably condition many such changes.

The two new studies described here are likely connected: It is hard not to infer that fear of outsiders or those different from you—along with greater fear dispositions in general—may be related to the role of amygdala, a brain structure that has been dubbed the “heart and soul of the fear system [4].” The amygdala has been repeatedly implicated in politics. Indeed, Schreiber’s research builds on prior brain studies: In a group of University College of London students, for instance, conservatives showed more gray matter [5] in the right amygdala.

So what’s the upshot? How about this: We need a much broader and more thoughtful discussion about what it means if political ideology turns out to be nothing like what we actually thought it was. Scientists working in this new field tend towards the conclusion that the new research should make us more tolerant, not less, of political difference—not to mention a whole lot more humble about our own deeply held beliefs.

(For additional information of the neuroscience of political belief systems, please google Jonathan Haidt for several very interesting and provocative You Tube lectures. Also, please check out this You Tube post by Neuro Notes: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFnAN0Tb-Nc)

The Danger of “Purity”

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Several days ago I blogged about the TV series “Breaking Bad” and segued into human culture and its tendency to not allow this kind of self-criticism, which is especially so with hyper-conservative cultures. One reader posed the question about my particular culture (the United States), “How could purity be such an issue in a land of such conspicuous free speech?”

The answer lies in the human heart and its deep-seated and dark need to isolate in a particular mindset, to “know” the truth, to be ensconced in an autistic shell; and when anyone “knows” the truth in this way, then he/she must convince others of this same truth, even at the point of the sword! And that is the reason that in a land of free press an individual or group of individuals will not be content with his/her little universe that American freedom has granted him/her. The poison of his/her interiority is so pervasive, so rigorous, so lethal that it cannot be stopped and it must proselytize. It must spread like cancer.

Of course, this “knowledge” does not employ honest use of human reason. It is a fragile heart that has grasped at the Kierkegaardian “flotsam and jetsam” when overwhelmed by the vortex of meaninglessness….or, to be more precise, when unconsciously threatened by that vortex. This mindset never knows (consciously) the vortex and seeks to destroy any inkling of its existence, not just in its own heart but in the hearts of others also. Thus the demand for “purity”, “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

Some of my readers are from other cultures and may not follow American politics. But if you happen to do so, you know that this “purity” motif is really pronounced right now in the right-wing base of the conservative Republican party. This movement has coalesced in what is known as the “Tea Party” movement within the Republican Party and it is really posing a threat to that party and also to our government. Though it is relatively small, this party screams loudly and have managed to cower the leadership of the Republican party and to influence a broad spectrum of that party.

Related to the “purity” issue is the fear of having been “penetrated.” This fear of violation was most clearly articulated last year when Michelle Bachman (who I like to describe as “Michelle ‘Deep Penetration’ Bachman) raised the hackles even of her Republican party by arguing that Islamist extremist had “penetrated deeply” into our government. In this purity obsessed mindset, always rife with paranoia, any incursion of “difference” is seen as a threat, a threat that must be deterred and even obliterated. For if their purity is violated, it will shatter…in their estimation…like a fragile vase. I argue, on the other hand, that mature purity can withstand threats and survive with the ensuing ambivalence, not giving in to the temptations of impurity

This purity obsession is compensatory. It is a defense mechanism designed to block the ravaging impurity which lurks in the human heart and is feared by these extremists to be seeping out and threatening to overwhelm them. Karl Jung said, on the other hand, such impurity (which he called the shadow) is to be acknowledged, embraced even, and thus deprived of its power. And “embracing” this dark energy does not mean succumbing to it. Those who are most likely to succumb to it are those who resist it the most. As Jung put it, “What we resist, persists.”

 

“Breaking Bad” and our Collective Shadow

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I have recently been watching the first four seasons of Breaking Bad, finally relenting to the pressure of a good friend who insisted it was television at its finest. He was right. It is the most compelling television presentation I’ve ever seen. The story-line, the plot, the character-development, the acting, the directing, the cinematography is absolutely magnificent. I don’t watch a lot of popular television but once I started viewing this series, I could not stop and even now have embarked on the recently available season five.

BUT, this show is intensely disturbing and dark. Usually with a description like this I would refer to grisly violence and sexual perversion; and there is some violence but the real disturbing violence is psychological, emotional, and ultimately spiritual.

The story is about a benign…even lame…high school science teacher who learns he is dying of cancer and is going to leave his family nothing. He happens to be suddenly exposed to the world of methamphetamine manufacturing by his DEA brother-in-law and decides, “Hey, I can do that.” And he does. And he does it well.

From episode to episode he is lured down the dark path of drug culture though he always avoids use of the meth himself. But relentlessly he makes poor decisions which lead to other poor decisions which brings him to a point where he has gone over to the dark side…he has “broke bad”…even though he continues to have the façade of a middle class citizen who is recovering from cancer.

But Breaking Bad is not about the drug culture, nor is it a “made for tv” morality story. It is about human ugliness and the way in which good, upright people can suddenly find themselves in the middle of this “shadow side” of life through a series of unfortunate events, compounded by the willingness to forego moral principles. Early in the series I found myself asking, “Why am I watching this?” It was so disturbing, creating unrest in my heart that I usually find only with violence in movies.

As I paid attention to my reactions as I watched the series, I could not help but observe that many world cultures would not permit this kind of social analysis and criticism. The Taliban, for example, would never allow self-reflection of this sort to take place. In fact, ultra-conservative ideologies of all stripes would not allow such self-reflection and would radically extirpate the first hint of such a tendency. In fact, in all ultra-conservative extremency there is always a theme of “purity” which serves the purpose of keeping out this “shadow side” which our culture permits in shows like this and in the arts in general. (Anthropologist Mary Douglas and psychologist Julia Kristeva are two people who have addressed the problematic nature of this “purity” obsession.)

And, for all the problems that our culture does have, I feel that ultimately to own this “ugly” dimension of our experience, to articulate it through various forms of art, is to give vent to it. Otherwise, we always project it onto others, that ubiquitous “them” out there, that “barbarian horde” which is always threatening our perimeter. We fail to own up to the wisdom of Charlie Brown, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

 

Epistomology and Confirmation Bias

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The recent controversy in the United States over Chuck Hagel’s nomination by President Obama for Defense Secretary has given rise to the usual right-wing hysteria and obstructionism. Last week these conservatives seized upon a humorous note made by a New York newspaper columnist who facetiously suggested that Hagel had opined in Islamist radical newspapers, taking that columnist’s satirical quips as being factual.

This illustrated the problem with interpretation for all of us, conservative or liberal. We must remember to utilize the Shakespearean “pauser reason” when we hear or read something, recognizing that it is human nature to seize upon data that satisfies our agenda. Another example was Michelle “Deep Penetration” Bachman about a year ago when she sonorously intoned re the presence of sharia law in two United States communities, presenting the preposterous allegation as casual fact. Shortly thereafter someone pointed out that this was not true and that one of the cities had not existed in decades. Bachman had come across this juicy tidbit and must have had childish delight as she thought, “Oh, wait until I get to announce this!” Well, if she would have employed this “pauser reason”….recognizing that she was about to posit something that was very sensational…she could have had her handlers verify the report. But the information was just too much a “tasty morsel” and she had to pass it on, knowing that her paranoid base would go for it, much like pigs after slop.

But, I reiterate, “This childish naivety is not just a conservative problem. It is a human problem.” We always have our preconceptions and then seek information that confirms this bias, a phenomena known as “confirmation bias” or “epistemic closure.” Yes, even “LiteraryLew”, is susceptible and guilty of this human frailty…cursed be the thought! If we recognize this truth, it can humble us a bit and make us less apt to be too smug and arrogant about our “lofty” ideas and our “gospel” truth. Our ideas might have “lofty” qualities and our truth might have “gospel” qualities but probably not as much as we would like to think. Those “other guys”, that ubiquitous “them”, might just have validity in their perspective and have something to offer us.

 

My Periodic Rant about Paranoia

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It is good to know that paranoia is not the exclusive property of our conservative elements. The Russian meteor strike brought to the fore that country’s doomsday fears and even included one politician who attributed the matter to the United States. It made me think of other countries in the world who blame the U.S. anytime so much as a burp takes place in their country.

All humans are so ready to blame. All of us. When calamity befalls us…and even minor mishap or misstep in our day-to-day life—it is easier to attribute blame than to consider happenstance or, cursed be the thought, that we have made a series of poor decisions. And, yes at times there is inexplicable tragedy for which there is no explanation.

One of my favorite paranoid frothings was the Lubbock, Texas judge last fall, Tom Head, who warned that the U.S. was facing a Civil War if Obama was re-elected. He also voiced fears that Obama would use the United Nations to intrude in our country and force its will on us. This is an age-old fear—some big and powerful “other” is going to intrude on our private little world and stomp us into oblivion.

And then I love “penetration phobia.” Last year Michelle “Deep Penetration” Bachman, a representative from Minnesota, warned of an Islamic infiltration of our government which had already succeeded in “penetrating deeply” into our governmental operations. In my youth, it was the “Communists” who lurked around every corner and were threatening us from within, bound and determined to take over our country.

The “slippery slope” argument is again being utilized. This argument asserts that a line must be drawn on particular issues because if that line is crossed by the government…or whoever “them” happens to be…one thing will lead to another and devastation will follow. The gun issue and second amendment matter is catching the brunt of this logical fallacy. “If we increase regulation of guns,” they argue, “that is a violation of the 2nd amendment and that will be only the start! Then they will go after the rest of the Bill of Rights.”

But, underlying the paranoia is fear and all of us are fearful little creatures. At times fear can be overwhelming and it is so easy to just cave in and allow despair to overwhelm us. And the far-right in our country includes an extreme base who can best be described as “dispossessed” and their alienation leaves them feeling powerless…and scared! But the axe I really would like to grind…once again…is with the media who exploits this non-sense, knowing that intimating some crazy paranoid suspicion is like throwing slop to pigs.

And I close with the observation of Aeschylus from thousands of years ago, “The gods create disaster so that mankind will have something to talk about.”

 

The Hobgoblin of Little Minds

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Two days after the Obama reelection in November, the Fox News reporter, Sean Hannity announced on-air that his view of immigration had “evolved” and he was willing to take a more lenient position. And since then many Republicans are taking a similar stance, deciding that on that issue in particular they have to adjust their views if they are going to have any chance of winning more Latino voters.

There are some members of the Republicans, however, who are digging their heels in and castigating those of their party who are equivocating on this and other issues. They feel that compromise against bedrock principles of their party…and all of their principles seem to be “bedrock” to them…is completely verboten. The Republican hysteria about “compromise” was so severe last summer that John Boehner in one TV interview refused to even use the word “compromise” when cornered on the matter.

But, Hannity and his ilk can equivocate on this and other matters and still be conservative Republicans. Changing your mind on issues does not mean that you have sold your soul to anyone, certainly not the “liberals” or Obama. The ability to change your mind is a sign of mental health and emotional maturity. Ralph Waldo Emerson said 150 years ago, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Being consistent for the sake of consistency is lame, to put it mildly.

But True Believers have a hard time changing their mind because in the depths of their heart that would mean to them, “Oh no. I have been wrong!” Well, welcome to the world! Who hasn’t and who will not continue to be from time to time? All of us are short-sighted and need to have our eyes checked occasionally or perhaps clean our glasses.

(True Believers was a book by Eric Hoffer about fanaticism which is worthy of a reading evn in modern times.)

Oscar Wilde “Playing” with Reality

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I am currently reading Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey. I have seen the movie years ago and loved it; but the novel itself has so much more to offer. Wilde has an as astute grasp of human culture in the 19th century and could eloquently convey which way the winds were blowing. He, and other astute individuals, certainly had some insight into what was going to unfold in the 20th century.

For example, modern science was toying with human culture at the time and leaving it in the throes of relativism, ambivalence, and uncertainty. Truth, and even reality itself, came to be seen as paradoxical, leading Wilde to declare in this novel, “The way of paradoxes is the way of Truth. To test reality, we must see it on the tight rope. When the verities become acrobats, we can judge them.” T. S. Eliot would later echo this perspective on truth, declaring that to know truth, or reality, we must “live in the breakage, in the collapse of what was believed in as most certain, and therefore the fittest for renunciation.” (The Four Quartets)

So, today, a century plus from Wilde’s death, we live in the tumult of what he, “modern” science of his day, and literary license would produce. We wrestle with the question of, “What is real and what is unreal?” In my country (the United States) I feel that this is the essential issue that divides the country, that is wreaking havoc on our political system, and even spreading confusion within the erstwhile hermetically sealed “safe” confines of the Republican party.

And, ultimately I feel we must discover that “Real” is apprehended only by faith and once apprehended, we have to realize that we don’t actually “apprehend” it at all. We only intuit it, “faith” it, and hope for it. But, that does not diminish the power of its Presence. It merely humbles us, reminding us of the wisdom of the Apostle Paul, “We see through a glass darkly.” But this Presence is with us, and in us, each day as we seek to “work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.”

 

The Essense of Religion

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In the following poem, Hafiz offers true wisdom into the essence of religion. And it is not about lofty theology, or philosophy, or powerful mega-churches. There is so much egotism in spirituality–such a great desire to have “great” visions of God, or attend “great” churches, or be a “great” Christian.  (Hafiz was a 14th century Persian poet!)

Becoming Human

by Hafiz

Once a man came to me and spoke for hours about
“His great visions of God” he felt he was having.

He asked me for confirmation, saying,
“Are these wondrous dreams true?”

I replied, “How many goats do you have?”

He looked surprised and said,
“I am speaking of sublime visions
And you ask
About goats!”

And I spoke again saying,
“Yes, brother – how many do you have?”

“Well, Hafiz, I have sixty-two.”

“And how many wives?”

Again he looked surprised, then said,
“Four.”

“How many rose bushes in your garden,
How many children,
Are your parents still alive,
Do you feed the birds in winter?”

And to all he answered.

Then I said,

“You asked me if I thought your visions were true,
I would say that they were if they make you become
More human,

More kind to every creature and plant
That you know.”

The Absolute Truth about the Gun Issue!

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There are two observations about the recent gun-violence issue that I would like to recommend. The first is by Neil Donald Walsch in the Huffington Post (See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/neale-donald-walsch/its-beliefs-not-behaviors_b_2348379.html) and the second is by Rebecca Hamilton in Patheos.com. See (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/publiccatholic/2012/12/affixing-blame/ )

Walsch can best be described as a New Age spiritual teacher and Hamilton is an Oklahoma legislator who has a strong Catholic faith. Each of these individuals emphasize the importance of addressing the underlying issues in the current controversy.

But the “underlying issues” are not easily addressed for they are not seen by the naked eye. They dwell in the realm of the spirit and that dimension of life is not really recognized by our culture any more. Yes, millions profess to be “Christian”…and therefore they are, I certainly don’t doubt that…but I suggest that their real god is often consumerism just as it is with the rest of our culture. We like stuff. Our real values are with stuff. We glibly profess “Jesus as our Savior” but if we look closely Jesus is merely another item in the category of our “stuff.” He is merely another accoutrement to our persona, something we have donned to convince ourself and others that we are “Christian.” And this is not the fault of Jesus or teachings about him!

And this emphasis on “stuff” belies what C. S. Lewis called the sin of “misplaced concreteness”, a taking for real what is only ephemeral. And being guilty of this sin, being immersed in this “misplaced concreteness”, our heart hungers for Reality and so we have to have “stuff” to assuage that gnawing hunger.

 

(Now re the title, please remember I love irony!)

Now the gun-fetish is only one of the many examples of impoverished identities glomming onto “stuff.” And most of the gun owners, even those who really like their guns, continue to have a life (which is to say an identity) and don’t hold-forth gun ownership as the essense of who it is to be a man or an American. A gun is merely an object and like any object it can elicit a fetishistic attachment. The best example of this was during the 2008 Democratic Primary debate when a question was posed to the candidates via You Tube in which a young man asked the candidates what they were going to do to protect “My baby”, proferring then an assault rifle. I think Joe Biden at that moment put things in perspective when he chided the young man for deigning to call a gun “my baby.” But the young man revealed an emotional attachment to guns which I really think is often part of the problem.

Now sure, it is important to like “stuff” and to do so means some degree of emotional attachment takes place. But with some gun owners, this attachment often goes way over the top and it becomes the primary element in their identity. And at that point a paranoid element is floating about in our country re an “intrusive government” who is going to “take our guns away.” That gets the rabid gun owners panties in a wad immediately, especially when right-wing media is egging them on.

Let me conclude on a facetious note, playing again with cause-effect: A recent survey revealed that gun-enthusiasts were two-to-one more likely to be Republicans. Being a loyal and pig-headed Democrat, perhaps we should ban all firearms and then everyone would be a Democrat! This is relevant to David Letterman’s famous quip, “Mobile home parks cause tornadoes.”

Addiction and Grace

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I recently posited the notion of addiction as an ersatz religion and alluded to the same in my last posting. But religion itself can easily be an addiction, a means of avoiding the very God that one purports to believe in so strongly. Or to speak more precisely, it is a way of avoiding the experience of God that one believes in so strongly. These people who immersed in the “letter of the law” rather than the “spirit of the law” and, of course, “the letter killeth, but the spirit maketh alive.”

These people are ideologues and ideologues of any stripe are dangerous. And by that I mean hyper-conservative ideologues and hyper-liberal ideologues as they are cut from the same bolt of cloth. They believe in their ideas so much that they can’t understand the simple fact that the word (or idea) is not the thing, that words are merely pointers, or to borrow from the Buddhist wisdom, “The finger pointing to the moon is not the moon.”

These spiritual ideologues often have memorized tons of scripture and are well versed in theological intricacies. And, of course, there is nothing wrong with “tons of scripture” or “theological intricacies.” The problem becomes when the whole of the individual’s life is a mechanical regurgitation of words and phrases, dogma if you please. It is to be immersed in the Christian variety of what Conrad Aiken described the “glib speech of habit, of well-worn words and ready phrases that build comfortable walls against the wilderness.” The bible is an excellent way of avoiding the Bible, god is an excellent way of avoiding God. And we must remember the biblical admonishment against “having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof.”

And I close with a relevant thought from Gerald May about the pervasiveness of the addictive process:

I am not being flippant when I say that all of us suffer from addiction. Nor am I reducing the meaning of addiction. I mean in all truth that the psychological, neurological, and spiritual dynamics of full-fledged addiction are actively at work within every human being. The same processes that are responsible for addiction to alcohol and narcotics are also responsible for addiction to ideas, work, relationships, power, moods, fantasies, and an endless variety of other things. We are all addicts in every sense of the word. Moreover, our addictions are our own worst enemies. They enslave us with chains that are of our own making and yet that, paradoxically, are virtually beyond our control. Addiction also makes idolators of us all, because it forces us to worship these objects of attachment, thereby preventing us from truly, freely loving God and one another. (Gerald May, Addiction and Grace)