Vox had a post describing how our economic growth since 1980 has just been a debt-fueled illusion (which implies as our ability to shoulder ever-increasing debt diminishes, so will the happy reality produced by the illusion). One of the commenters made a reference to how during the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929, we heard of stock brokers jumping out of windows, in large numbers.
I just want to point out the amygdala-based mechanism behind that. Individuals who experience regular hardship see their amygdala adjust to that hardship. As challenge after challenge is presented to them, they gradually develop neural pathways in the amygdala which clearly flag the most important part of the challenge, and then send impulses to the rest of the brain which provoke behaviors that attend to the challenge, and vanquish it. Such an individual is like a highly trained, combat-hardened veteran, when the bullets start to fly. They hear the cracks, and immediately identify cover, take cover, assess threat, plan response, execute, and repeat.
In 1929 however, the roaring twenties had never presented stock brokers with a significant adverse stimulus. You got money from people, invested it, and it grew, and each day you came in, you measured how much more money you had, compared to the day before, and you felt good about your success.
Suddenly, the crash happened, and everyone’s amygdala was stimulated. Unfortunately, these people’s amygdalae had not developed any pathways designed to deal with the threat, by assessing its exact nature, finding a strategy to deal with it, and executing. Had these brokers been sent to a boot camp, of sorts, where they were put through a procedure to follow in just such an eventuality, and drilled until executing the strategy was second nature, everything would have been different. The moment they identified the conditions as appropriate to their strategy, and decided to execute, their amygdala would have focused on the execution of the strategy, and not the conditions.
In a way, this is what hypnotists do. Something is screwed up, you are seeing it, and you are so focused on it you can’t sleep. The hypnotist tells you, focus on your tense muscles. Feel each one, contract it, and then focus on how it feels when you relax it. Visualize a small brook, flowing down a hill towards you, filling a small pool. Little fish in the pool are schooling around, darting in and out of the aquatic plants in the pool. See the glints of sunlight off the water, smell the fresh air, feel a gentle breeze. Suddenly, you aren’t even aware of what was bothering you, because your amygdala is absorbed with something else.
Of course, the brokers didn’t have any strategy to focus on executing, or anything to distract them. They were in the midst of an amygdala hijack, where there was panic, the panic kept them from being able to figure out how to act, and that produced more panic. The cycle repeated, until the only way they saw to shut off their amygdala was literally to jump out of a building, and kill themselves. So they did it.
That is what we want to do to Liberals in debate. We need to understand their amygdala, figure out what it is flagging as significant, and then present panicking stimuli to them in such a way that it is flagged for significance, and focused upon.
Of course, if you read Vox’s article, and the comments, you get the impression that very soon, we may not have to do anything ourselves, to see Liberal amygdalae stimulated, and Liberals unable to get out of their amygdala hijacks.
What’s your take on Vox’s post (and the linked piece) on why the rabbits can’t think straight?
Welcome, Stilicho.
One of the main components of Rabbitism is all about avoiding consequence. In the r-environment, this is adaptive. I walk into your field of grass, you tell me, “Get out of my field, or I’ll beat your ass!,” and I run to avoid the consequence.” I land in another field of grass, since resources are everywhere, and I get my food, and avoid the risk of getting injured while fighting you. I actually get rewarded for avoiding consequences.
So long as things are “r,” and avoiding consequences yields amygdala relief, consequence-avoidant behavior can become conditioning. You see a consequence, your amygdala makes you uncomfortable, you avoid it, you get relief. In the future, the sight of any consequence (conflict, aggression, implied violence), precipitates avoidance to get an expected relief, and eventually the Liberal joins the perpetually smiling, glassy-eye’d Heaven’s Gate Cultists on ABC’s Good Morning America.
The problem arises as things turn K, and consequences can’t be avoided, under any circumstances, (which is also the only cure for this). Liberals are not designed to see a consequence and be unable to avoid/deny it. When a consequence presents itself, and they feel like they can’t flee, it is like a programming bug in their head. Their amygdala fires, and makes them want to flee even more, they can’t, their amygdala get’s more active, they panic more, and want to flee more, they can’t, and so on. It is a panic death spiral.
When consequences can’t be avoided (like the angry Conservative who is going to firebomb your house in the middle of the night, and then shoot you as you run out the front door), then those who are adaptable will at some point reach a place where their level of amygdala stimulation while trying to avoid an unavoidable consequence is high enough while avoiding, that simply confronting the consequence, and adapting to it (like, by not supporting so much government oppression) will actually produce a relief that is preferable than continuing the freak-out death-spiral of amygdala panic. Suddenly, the Conservative isn’t coming to kill you, and your amygdala shuts off, and you have been retrained.
Diehard, irredeemable Liberals however, may never reach that point, and as their amygdala drives them crazy, they will do anything, and resort to any false reality to shut it off. That can be suicide, it can be creating death camps, it can be anything.
From the quote in Vox’s article: “Thus, in modern intellectual life, honesty is punished and dishonesty is rewarded; honest brain pathways decay, dishonest brain pathways enlarge.”
That will only happen so long as Conservatives are not pulling triggers, which will only occur so long as things are “r.” If resources snap back, and people begin dying, r-selection ends, and you better get your shit together fast. If scarcity makes Conservative tempers grow as short as those of our Founders, to the point blood starts to spill, lying will have a consequence Liberals will be motivated to avoid, and suddenly, they will be cured of their reality-avoidant brain mechanisms, by a reality which can not be avoided, and which will punish them in some form for each time they try to avoid it. (I just saw an article on solar activity which said one government study concluded that if the electronic organization behind food distribution went down, like from a massive coronal mass ejection taking down the power grid, 90% of the population would be dead within a year. The survivors wouldn’t be politically-correct, reality-avoidant, deluded Liberal cult members.)
What Vox has begun to see is the false reality of the Narcissist, which I discussed in the post on the fractured amygdala, and which I maintain is a part of the Liberal’s fundamental malady. If your amygdala/ACC is really fucked up, there will be a point where just an uncomfortable truth (like your own innate cowardice, weakness, disloyalty, and patheity) can be so panicking/horrifying, that you will actually construct an entire fantasy world in which any assertion of it is ridiculous, and this fantasy will give you relief from the panic.
I never realized the extent to which this would happen, until after two events. A Narc basically told me something I watched him do the previous day never happened, and he clearly believed himself. And second, I thought a guy had a stroke while I was amygdala hijacking him, only to discover it wasn’t a stroke, but rather just a portion of his brain had fired so aggressively as he freaked out, that it shut part of his brain down, due to what I assume was an uncontrollable over-consumption of oxygen or glucose. I mean, this guy couldn’t see, he couldn’t walk straight, and I thought he was going to die before we got to the hospital. A day in the hospital, he was recovered, and his doctor pronounced it an unsolvable mystery. Believe me, some people who are outwardly normal are so mis-wired inside it is amazing.
If you are normal, is is tough to imagine, unless you look very closely at the people around you. You also must have the ability to visualize an intolerable level of panic, fear, stress, horror, and physical manifestations of such responses as able to be expressed many times as strongly as you could possibly feel them, and imagine them able to be turned on by stuff which wouldn’t turn it on in you.
But Bruce Charlton is right. Libs are being conditioned to this, just as society is seeing Narcissism rise. The final piece of the puzzle is that it is resource availability which sets the stage for this conditioning. Pull the resources, and reality will return, bringing sanity with it out of necessity. History indicates resources will always be pulled at some point, and the longer they have been free, the hairy’er it will get after they are pulled.
[I should add, I use the term amygdala liberally here, on this blog, because it is what people know, and a lot of Cognitive Neurosci says the amygdala is what does this panic response. However technically, there is significant evidence that the amygdala is triggering the ACC’s production of panic/aversive stimulus.]
I wonder if this has started (e.g. Senior London bankers committing suicide recently).
That is scary. It does seem as if some rabbits tend to freak out at the beginning of K-selection, and suddenly the only way to quiet the amygdala is to cash out. Greece saw a similar effect among the populace during theri financial crisis. I would imagine if your whole world is finance, it is all you think about, and it is all going to pot, the effects would be much greater.