Liberal Responses to the Concept of Ideology as r and K-selected Reproductive Strategies

In the comments section of Neurological Correlates of Political Ideology and Homosexuality – The Extreme r-Hypothesis of Homosexuality, JS says:

“This post is ridiculous.

LOL at the cluelessness of the author.”

JS’s response is notable, in that I have found this type of argument fairly typical of the ardent Liberal’s immediate reaction to the work on this website. We will review his argument here, both to highlight how innately desperate Liberals are to avoid being labeled with the r-label, as well as to show those newer to the theory how easily these argument can be dismissed, and how little weight is to be accorded to them.

First of all, the author needs to avoid conflating variables. Don’t use geography when you mean ideology. If all the democrats in Red States divorce, and only half of those in blue states do, you have a meaningless statistic. And that assumes the statistic in question is honest to begin with, which obviously the Red State/Blue State one wasn’t. (As we maintain here, Liberals argue to create consensus, regardless of reality or truth, and these types of amazingly misleading soundbites (as the link shows) are just one example of this honor-less strategy).

Although I don’t know the statistics on blended families vs ideologies, I would guess that just as divorce (as well as the infidelity which often precedes it) and the single parenting which arises from all of it are Liberal traits, the blended families which arise from them probably are as well. Again, r and K are Liberal and Conservative, because both define the worlds they seek to implement by the exact same metrics. Every other dividing line you can conjure and apply to r and K is different, and will divide the population imperfectly by comparison to ideology.

Second, like it or not, that 28 year old Liberal chick has ridden the trademarked “Heartiste Carousel” beginning before age 18, and has only married as she sensed she wasn’t getting any younger, and her nightly lineup of suitors were becoming disturbingly less Alpha. Of course, the only reason she didn’t enter the marriage with a mile long train of rugrats in tow is because she made copious use of contraceptives along her numerous journey’s into the locker-rooms of the various sports teams at her college, and the bars of her neighborhood. The reason she gets a surgical procedure to sterilize herself is that she doesn’t want any more kids, and is willing to get cut to see to it that happens. That, combined with an urge towards promiscuity, is the psychological foundation of a low-investment rearing drive, which along with promiscuity is the foundation of an r-strategy.

Moving on, this concept of Liberals as K-strategists and Conservatives as r-strategists is actually a not-uncommon misconception when Liberals examine reproductive strategies in humans today. It is espoused by Brack over at Neuropolitics, and I have seen it on Jayman’s blog, though neither seems to have caught on widely, probably due to how ascribing K-qualities to r-urges (and vice versa) reduces the intuitive appeal of the thoery.

This misconception among Liberals arises from trying to look at how reproductive strategies work today. Today, Liberals do reproduce at a lower rate, and since r represents maximal reproductive rate, Liberalism is not maximizing r, as would be expected of an r-strategy.

However at this website, we are not looking at how strategies play out today, but rather, where they came from. Understanding how Liberalism arose, and the enironment it is created for, is vital to understanding the purpose it is designed to serve. But to do that, you can’t look at Liberalism as it relates to our environment today. You have to look at the more primitive environment Liberalism evolved within, and adapted to. Only there can you see the purposes it’s behaviors evolved to serve.

In humans today however, recently developed technologies such as birth control, abortion, and other practices designed to avert conception, all allow one to exhibit a massive sex drive, but with no concomitant increase in offspring produced. This is in stark contrast to our primitive environment, where sex produced babies, and more sex produced more babies.

Indeed, if Liberalism is an r-strategy, it will entail a reduced desire to rear offspring, which today, given the entirely voluntary nature of conception, will diminish offspring produced. In primitive times, the lack of a desire to rear offspring would combine with a high sex drive and copious offspring. Together they would maximize offspring production, while minimizing offspring investment. When intellect and birth control enter the picture however, a low desire to rear offspring will result in actions to forestall offspring, and you will get a lower reproductive rate, regardless of sexual drive.

For this reason, we look at the urges underlying the r-strategy in a state of nature, rather than their effects today. To that end, do Liberals engage in the behaviors which would maximize r in a state of nature? Are Liberals more promiscuous, do they have more partners, and do they remain in relationships for a shorter period of time?

For a very clear picture of this, we will look at a Neuropolitics sex survey here, where it says,

“As seen above, the Conservative males were substantially elevated in the number of children desired, and have correspondingly longer relationships to support it. The Conservative females were also elevated in both variables. The Conservative females reported the fewest number of sex partners, as their sexual behavior has a distinctively reproductive orientation.

On the other hand, the Liberals had lower desires for children, shorter relationships, more sex partners, and a lower self-rating of heterosexuality. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the highest rate of heterosexuality, the Conservatives in both genders reported the highest level of heterosexuality, while the Liberals in both genders reported the lowest. We have noted this same asymmetry in Sexual and Political Preference.”

Notice, Brack notes that Conservatives have fewer partners,and then says this is r, because the fewer times they have sex, then are often trying to reproduce. By contrast, he views Liberal promiscuity as K, because Liberals use birth control, and don’t reproduce when having sex (a situation wholly unique within the natural world). He also notes Liberals have less pair bonding, but says this is K, because Liberals are avoiding conflict within their in-group, by sharing sexual partners freely amongst each other, and even having homosexual sex. But what strategies did these behaviors produce prior to the spread of birth control in the 60’s? Brack doesn’t touch upon that, for obvious reasons. That would have been an r-strategy.

Notice also, in the table at the site, as you go from Very Conservative to Very Liberal, you see more promiscuity and shorter lasting relationships, as well as diminished desire for offspring, and the responsibilities they entail.

I admit, I actually find the fewer sexual partners statistic surprising, since as the study discussed here found, Conservatives tend to be fitter, and more competitive. You would expect greater opportunity for mating due to this “Conservative Jock” syndrome, however as Heartiste has shown, attitudes are everything. Even despite the Conservative’s awesomeness, Liberals still have more partners (though I’m guessing the partners are drunken feminist 2’s, 3’s, and 4’s).

So Liberals are more promiscuous and less prone to find themselves in a long lasting relationship. What about competitiveness? We will look at Neuropolitics here, where Brack found Liberals were less competitive, and Conservatives were more competitive.

Again, the mark of a K-selective environment is the need to compete for limited resources. By contrast, the mark of an r-selected environment is free resource abundance, which renders a drive to fight for resources an unnecessary risk that Darwin actually punishes. Those who are competitive have adapted to the competitive, K-selective environment, while those who have adapted to not compete have adapted to an environment of free resource availability. Even the Liberal’s reduced loyalty to in-group (noted by Jost) is a result of their diminished adaptation to an environment of group competition for limited resources.

On the subject of examining political strategies as they function today, I am firmly of the opinion that Liberalism is temporarily maladaptive to the presence of birth control and abortion, and it’s present form will eventually find itself culled from the species. You cannot have a reduced desire to rear offspring combined with a simple mechanism by which to forestall conception.

As a result, I think it is a stretch to try and label Liberalism, as it exists today, as a reproductive strategy. Indeed, it is probably better categorized as an extinction strategy.

If one looks at how the Liberal ideology may adapt to birth control and abortion, I would expect to see anticompetitive, entitled, selfish females who want babies, and anticompetitive, entitled, selfish individuals who don’t want babies, but who exhibit such low conscientiousness that they cannot make use of birth control effectively. The ever fewer Liberals left will get worse, and more noxiously stupid.

JS’s reply was interesting for another reason, however. So far, numerous Conservatives who have read this have e-mailed me and messaged me in the various forums where I have promoted it. Every one of them, on seeing the work, has known innately that it just makes sense, and explains so much about our political divide. I cannot remember how many times they have used the word “brilliant” specifically. One just said that reviewing all of this information was like walking into a dark room and turning on light after light.

And yet, JS’s response is typical of the response Liberals tend to have on seeing this analysis. Deep down, almost every Liberal I have encountered is viscerally aghast at the thought of being portrayed as an r-strategist. Even Liberals who know nothing of r/K Selection Theory very quickly see the potential adoption of this work as an incredible threat to them personally, due to the potential of this information to out-group them within the populace.

It triggers their amygdala on a very primal level, and they push back on it hard, almost reflexively. There was even a move at Wikipedia a while back by Liberals to edit the Wiki page on r/K to state the theory had been debunked. It was, of course quickly met with incredulity on the talk page by professors who were, at that very moment, still teaching it in their classes.

To the Liberal, truth means nothing. Everything is about portraying themselves as a member of the in-group, and the Conservative as an out-group member who everyone should ally against. If the Liberal can get away with it, they will portray promiscuity as cool, and the Conservative as some out of touch “square,” who the group needs to rally against.

But introduce r/K and it pulls the Liberal back to reality, where they are a pathetic, selfish r-strategist, who exists at the mercy of a more adaptive, competitive, K-selected specimen – a specimen who holds values our entire species is programmed to ally with, and recognize as good. This is a potent amygdala stimulant.

Liberals as a group support promiscuity, not because of some deluded intellectual superiority, but because they are programmed to not care how fit their offspring are. They are programmed to eschew loyal, long-lasting pair-bonds in favor of a more selfish promiscuity, simply due to being r-selected psychologies in a K-selected species. Deep down the Liberal recognizes that this makes them inferiors, who the majority of the population will revile, if it is presented to them in such a fashion.

Liberals are not some future evolution of mankind, but rather they are a temporary evolutionary detour that every species takes during times of plenty. They divert our species from the evolutionary advancement that is only produced by a competitive selection within populations that terrifies Liberals – and which is ultimately unavoidable.

Very shortly, competition will inevitably return to remove the Liberal from our populations. The K-type humans who persist two hundred years hence, will look back on the Liberals of this time with a mixture of scorn and bewilderment, just as we marvel at the stupidity of the Romans at the end of their Empire. All of that is an especially potent amygdala stimulant to the Liberals forced to confront it.

Even worse is the danger that this work, by an impartial, scientific metric, throws the Liberal into a deviant out-group which our population is likely to be repulsed by, and want to defeat. It shows just how they are programmed, exactly like r-selected populations in nature, to collapse their own ecosystem, and destroy our civilizations through promotion of an unsustainable r-strategy among the poor – a strategy which they have the gall to demand everyone else pay for.

This work draws the line not between Republican and Democrat, or Black American and White American, or Northerner and Southerner, but between r and K, and plants the Liberal firmly in the r-camp of the enemy. Worse, it makes every American want to ally with K, leaving the Liberal wholly alone, on the outside looking in at our K-type nation – out-grouped by the very beliefs which define their r-selected ideology.

Even JS, with his limited knowledge of the subject of r/K Theory, sees that innately, and immediately feels the need to try and refute the theory in defense.

Have no doubt, if this theory ever becomes widely accepted among Conservatives, it will mark a huge blow to Liberalism. I am trying, but I suspect only the readers here who are posting this material around the web can really send it viral.

This work will most likely precipitate a mass wave of depression and anxiety throughout the left which even our strongest antidepressants will not be able to alleviate. The Liberal is not psychologically designed to be out-grouped on such a level, or forced to confront their own inadequacy, and if there is anything this theory does, it is out-group the Liberal in the most vicious style possible, by expressly highlighting their deviancy and pathiety. All of that offers another direct hit to an amygdala which the Liberal cannot stand seeing activated.

Here, you even see JS trying to make Liberals out to be the ideology of chastity, family, and monogamy, as he portrays those evil Conservatives as being the individuals who can’t stay married, and don’t care about how all of their kids are raised. That is how desperate Liberals will be.

Given I feel quite certain this theory is correct, and I am confident in the ability of science to find it’s way towards truth, I find myself looking most optimistically towards the future, since this work will eventually define the study of political science. How soon it does it is only up to the readers of this site.

Addendum : Readers should also note that the section of this post above the asterisks is written technically, in a fashion not designed explicitly to provoke amygdala activation in Liberals, while the section written below the asterisks is written emotionally, and is designed expressly to activate the amygdalae of those Liberals who read it, through the presentation of an out-grouping stimulus. I suspect Conservatives will prefer the top section, but they should note the bottom section is a more effective way to engage the Liberal brain, and leave them less well than you found them.