Triggers, Twig-Breaking Stimuli, And A Fear Of The Mob

A Reader emailed a quote from Touching The Raw Amygdala, followed by a thought:

“The rise of the mob. I suspect aggressive Narcissism will often accompany a fear of the mob turning upon the individual. It is possible that the childhood stress which creates Narcissism often requires a mob, in order for it to be severe enough and inevitable enough to fracture the individual’s reality. Or maybe children who become Narcissists have something detectably aberrant in their childhood manner which other children pick up on, causing mobs to frequently turn upon the child Narcissist. I don’t know. But in my experience, r-type Liberals will be r-type Liberals, right up until the perception creeps in of the mob turning upon them, at which point they will retreat frantically. Think of the Brooks Brother’s Riot, and imagine what would happen if we cared.”

They’re already portraying Trump supporters as a mob, even though they aren’t very mob like.

Do we want to encourage this perception, perhaps? I guess you wouldn’t want to do it overtly, but there must be some way to encourage the idea that they might really be a mob.

Trump supporters could chant, stomp feet in organized, rhythmic fashion, use aggressive rhetoric for the cameras, flail arms while talking to turn on amygdalae, present violent imagery in dialog, and emphasize that America is increasingly a war between us and them, and you are either with us or against us.

In fact, if Trump ever utters those words – “Either you are with us or against us,” liberals will freak out – epically. I would recommend using it on election night when he declares victory, for maximal, head exploding effect.

This is the thing. Liberals see a different world. We look at the world, and see it in its raw form, in its totality. Trump supporters are not mob-like, and our perception of reality reflects that. They are hard working patriotic Americans, who support law enforcement, respect rules, and epitomize the love of freedom. To us, these are good Americans who would be good neighbors.

Liberals view the world through a filter in their amygdala, that scans everything as it passes by for “twig-breaking” stimuli. Where their amygdala sees anything which might be a breaking-twig, the liberal amygdala freaks out, flags it, and blows it out of proportion within the mind – and interrupts logical processing to focus them on the “threat” it has perceived.

The liberal mind sees Trump’s followers as a mob because their amygdala is so sensitized to mob-like stimuli, that it flags anything which remotely looks like it maybe, might, could be a mob. The brain, seeing the amygdala flag, and the salience the amygdala ascribes to it, looks closer, and since the amygdala is so sensitive, it begins flagging anything else it notices remotely looking like a mob-like stimulus.

Even patriotism is flagged in the liberal brain as a dangerous mob-like psychology. It has people, who support a group against outsiders, and they tend to be aggressive, competitive, and dangerous. Patriots are a mob.

Now, where Trump’s “law and order” followers support causes which liberals don’t like, the liberal amygdala simply sees a mob which doesn’t like them. Where they support America, they support a dangerous aggressive group. The mob includes jock-like Cops and Military, with physical fitness, who use violence, and could hurt them, just like a childhood mob. The mob is led by a flamboyant guy who makes everyone laugh – and a guy who makes fun of weak and cowardly liberals as they are forcibly ejected from his mob-gatherings. The mob, as well as its leader, say things which trigger liberals, and bring them pain. This is a hurtful mob, they are on the outside of it, and their amygdala sees just enough danger to complain, but not yet enough to try to ingratiate themselves with it.

Because the amygdala ascribes salience to stimuli, and they have seen so many clear mob-like stimuli, Trump supporters as a mob is cognitively amplified until Trump supporters are a dangerous mob who will kill somebody at some point. Liberals know this because of how emotionally repulsed their amygdalae are by Trump supporters.

Of course if that ever came to pass, we know they would join that mob, Stockholm style. However that is because their amygdala enters such a heightened state so easily. Their amygdala, looking at this mob-stimuli, feels like our’s would, looking at a biker gang terrorizing our town. Their amygdalae seeing that biker gang, would so overwhelm them that they would feel no choice but to buckle under. It would be like us facing an utter terror so immense it broke our will in one fell swoop, and once broken, we told ourselves we broke because of morality and wanting to do right.

Now imagine if you took that hyper-sensitive amygdala, and gave it a real reason to actually see an angry conservative mob. Even a not-dangerous conservative mob triggered immediate capitulation. Imagine a real angry conservative mob, beating on doors, yelling, stomping the ground, chanting aggressively, and carrying with it the possibility of a violent orgy of bloodshed should the thin barriers between us and them break down. Imagine what the liberal amygdala would do to the liberal brain, and the degree of panic they would feel.

Trump actually issues twig-breaking stimuli, sometimes accidently, and sometimes seemingly to amuse himself. The Second Amendment comment recently was one, as was his expression of a desire to punch protestors in the face. Making fun of protestors as they are ejected, and his emphasis on his own success and net worth are also such examples. This is in contrast to the Cuckservative elites, who seem to understand these stimuli as well as liberals, and who will bend over backward to not expose liberals to them, as if they understand the pain they engender.

I’ve been trying to describe something I have seen for some time, and I think the best description I could use is “twig-breaking” stimuli. You will see the phrase often here now that I have a term to describe it.

These are short, contained pattern/images that the amygdala sees as they flash by within the broader data/logic stream and which stop the brain to focus on them, because the amygdala has seen them before, and has associated them with trauma. They are identified outside the realm of conscious, logical thought, they overpower logic and reason when registered, they mold perceptions, and they guide both liberal behavior and perception of reality, if their effect is strong enough. They can also tell you a lot about the liberal’s childhood environment, or more accurately how the liberal saw their childhood environment, where these triggers were burned in.

You see twig-breaking stimuli in liberal conversation. Liberals, conversing among themselves, are often just trying to tell each other there are no twig-breaking stimuli, or the twig-breaking stimuli they see are inconsequential, and thus their amygdalae can ignore them. Liberals conversing with conservatives will try to focus conservatives on the same twig breaking stimuli which would terrify them if they were conservative, while looking for reasons to deny or minimize twig-breaking stimuli they see.

Often, as they do this, the conservative is talking at them about some logical train of thought that leads to a conservative conclusion. The liberal amygdala, agitated and on alert, is merely scanning that white noise, looking for some twig-breaking stimuli that flashes by as the train of thought is followed, or some piece of it which could be presented to the conservative as a twig-break that would trigger them.

One good example of the latter recently would be the attacks on Donald Trump over his criticism of the Kahn family, which liberals saw as an ability to out-group Donald from the military, and military supporters. Liberals don’t care about the military, the logical/moral argument meant nothing to them. Their amygdala flagged the image of Trump on the outside of the mob, which is why that story got so much press. Most frustratingly for the liberal, Donald did not seem to care, nor did his followers, and the story has now died.

So does this explain why we can be so clearly right, but liberals will never listen to logic? I believe so. To a conservative, they may have just presented a flawless argument to a liberal that clearly refutes the left’s position, and it seems to sink in, but the liberal doesn’t become conservative. Instead, maybe they back down but stay liberal, maybe they branch off into another subject, or maybe they transition to ad hominem.

The liberal does not see the argument. They don’t care about the logic. Truth isn’t something that their amygdala is flagging – it is too busy looking for twig-breaks. If the argument is irrefutable, the only thing they see is the pattern image of them looking stupid to the crowd, and maybe being made fun of. That is it – it fills their brain and is, for that moment, the whole world to them. You may think they see the logic, and agree, but no. They just see a childhood trigger they want to get away from, so they drop the subject. And they stay liberal.

This is also why you can present a logical argument, and the liberal will hone in on some stupid aspect they think makes you look stupid, and then try to amplify it and throw it in your face, even though your factual analysis is flawless. Their amygdala is just programmed to only focus on those twig-breaks. Then you will get irritated, and they see another twig-break that would savage them, because you look like the little kid being teased by the crowd, and things take off from there.

If you want to see this weaponized daily, you could just follow Vox Day on Twitter, where logical refutations of liberals quickly turn to presentations of triggers, followed by fleeing liberals. The only way to really debate liberals is to understand how to trigger them, and when they try to move into that rhetoric, you meet them with it, while ignoring their triggers. Because their amygdalae are weaker than ours, this will crush them long before it will crush us.

I think this is partly why the still-face works so well on them. One twig-break they look for to use against you is your agitation, and when you totally deny them that, they begin to see a twig-break involving them being the loser in your encounter.

In a way, they are just programmed robots. I suppose when your thought-process is amygdala-centric, it is difficult to follow a chain of logic, and your amygdala isn’t flagging truth anyway, because it is too focused on scanning for the threats you were programmed to see as a child. As a result, you never advance toward truth, because it is not on your radar. You are too busy trying to scan for triggers indicating that the horrors of your childhood are imminent, while also trying to present triggers to your opponents that will frighten their amygdalae.

Given the amygdala insufficiency among our leadership, you can see why Western Civilization is in such disarray of late.