Sam J writes in the comments:
Maybe this explains why societal changes happen so fast. A small group steadfastly sticks to a position until they reach a certain trigger point then all the r’s switch to what they see as the winning side. These deep shifts could be thought of as “r” selected shifts. Not just a change in information that people suddenly see as true. A stampede.
It would seem to make this shift happen the best way to push it, given the irrationality of the “r’s” is for whatever side wants to win to make AS MUCH NOISE AS POSSIBLE. So all the people saying that Klan, KKK. Nazis, Anti-Semites and other assorted loud noisy people are doing harm is inaccurate. The fighting in Charlottesville was super eye candy to the r’s. They’re necessary for the noise. This would also explain how with all the corruption and dishonesty in the US State they can continue to hold power as long as the mass media continues to blurt out the State’s side. No matter how irrational, as the recent events in Vegas show. This is starting to break down as no young people watch much of the TV news at all and don’t believe what they’re saying anyways.
I agree with this. There are a large swath of sheep who, even though they don’t know it, have amygdalae which seek calm by subconsciously aligning with the winning side, and often that is the loudest, most scary side. I imagine anything triggering would do it, from unashamed white supremacists to just massive crowds marching to drumbeats, and chanting cadences in perfect unison, like Marines jogging in formation. To align against that would be amygdala-stimulating, and their brain feels that amygdala sensation the same way we feel something is wrong – it bothers them until they adopt what they see as “right.”
This is an important point for the Aspies who like this site to understand. Note that amygdala is a feeling, and it is that feeling which guides your logical analysis, and does it the same way a feeling guides your deeper emotional preferences. If your commitment is to truth, that is an emotional commitment, driven by the same amygdala-pain you feel when your loved one suffers with an illness, or when you see a helpless animal hurt unnecessarily. It is the emotional drive that motivates you to seek the unemotional logic. It is a deep emotional hatred for wrong that motivates us to seek right. It is the illogical that drives us to pursue the logical, especially in a world which is so upside down that the illogical people actually thrive on illogicality. Imagine how much money you could have made under Obama by adopting the left’s bullshit and filing for global warming research grants, or setting up immigrant processing companies. It was your emotion, not your logic holding you back.
Realize that your pursuit of the logical and the correct is driven by the same amygdala that other’s feel in response to insecurity, fear, and lack of pleasure. When SJWs say they feel unsafe and that is wrong, that is the same feeling you get when you feel logically wrong – a nagging cognitive shock produced by the amygdala that you cannot abide by, and which you feel needs rectification.
So when the r-strategist with an easily panicked amygdala sees a nation warming up the ovens, they will quickly conclude the oven operators have a logical point – immigrants are fucking up the nation, Blacks/Mexicans/Muslims/Any-group-in-opposition-to-the-oven-operators are not actually human, and the ovens are a logical step which the decent were forced to by the intransigence of “these enemies of decency.”
I truly believe the extremists in movements, which Eric Hoffer wrote about, are r-selected rabbits with stress-intolerant amygdalae who use extremism as an amygdala-calming technique because they have to. We don’t need that calm, so we can tolerate gray areas and moderate our ideals, and even say we don’t know stuff. Our amygdalae can exist in that state of mild stimulation. Their amygdalae cannot because they need certainty and they need to be in the group firmly and feel they belong, if they are to feel safe. That is why they are so desperate to sell Global Warming as settled science – to include as part of the pitch, that you will be on the winning side and belong if you join them. The fact that such extremism can often send them into leadership positions is just a plus.
I see the turmoil of increasing amygdala today on the left as a sign rabbit amygdalae are feeling pressure from both sides. The turmoil is the tension, as the old ingrained pathways which cannot change without pain, meet an environment which makes it increasingly clear that the old and comfortable and familiar do not meld painlessly with the new world and thus things need to change. The leftist amygdala wants calm, and the only way to get there is to ditch the old, the comfortable, and the familiar. But due to how the amygdala prefers all of those, it will cling to them for some time as stress builds, until the pain of change is matched and then exceeded by the pain of the environment – the pain of shortage, the pain of terrorism, the pain of helplessness in the face of crime, the pain of not belonging to the winning side.
Finally at some point, amygdalae realize that the path to calm is to jettison the old, familiar, and comfortable, and then the shift is sudden, like a dam bursting, as all the amygdalae reset what is old, familiar, and comfortable. The mass of the shift drives even more shift, taking all of those who were precariously balancing on the fence over into the new side, once and for all.
As always, I think brains are seeing something, and the shift is a very well programmed shift we are designed to make when things are about to turn bad. What it is brains are seeing I am not sure, but the brains know things are going down, even as people gleefully go about their days.
To be clear, I know what it is that we on this site are seeing that logically tells us the glut’s days are numbered, but I think the societal emotional shift is subconscious, and I am not sure what it is that the society as a whole is seeing that is triggering their brains to shift. I am pretty sure it is not the logical case, but rather something deeper, like a slight reduction in dopamine, or some slight increase in adrenaline, as shocking things like terrorist attacks happen with increasing frequency.
Whatever it is, I think the societal turmoil may be the best evidence an Apocalypse is approaching. It is like an ancient biological form of artificial intelligence, programed by eons of natural selection that is sending its needle right into the red zone.
ITZ coming.
Spread r/K Theory, because amygdalae need all the pushes we can give
Another form of relief.
“If you’re not ready to admit that the universe is chaos, I’m not sure how far you’re going to go,”
“Just under the surface of American culture, something furious is brewing.”
Season of the Witch
http://archive.is/aRuwK
I wonder if this accounts for people like Jason Kessler, who were Occupy And Obama supporters but now find themselves organizing alt-right rallies.
Indeed. He still has the leftist mode of thinking. We should watch them carefully.
SJW news from Germany:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HAviIqkNUA
Berlin Police appointed a communist woman as head of recruitment. Leaked evidence reveals that new hires are actually criminal migrants for “diversity”. Please listen to the entire (short) video, it is… well, edifying.
This is actually on topic, because the population at large will notice the change.
Oh fug, itz habbening.
It sounds a lot like the description of a “preference cascade.” Glenn Reynolds wrote about this in a February 2016 article describing Trump’s rapid rise in popularity among voters. Reynolds related:
“In his terrific book, Private Truths, Public Lies:The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification, Timur Kuran writes about the phenomenon he calls ‘preference falsification’: People tend to hide unpopular views to avoid ostracism or punishment; they stop hiding them when they feel safe.
“This can produce rapid change: In totalitarian societies like the old Soviet Union, the police and propaganda organizations do their best to enforce preference falsification. Such regimes have little legitimacy, but they spend a lot of effort making sure that citizens don’t realize the extent to which their fellow-citizens dislike the regime. If the secret police and the censors are doing their job, 99% of the populace can hate the regime and be ready to revolt against it — but no revolt will occur because no one realizes that everyone else feels the same way.
“This works until something breaks the spell and the discontented realize that their feelings are widely shared, at which point the collapse of the regime may seem very sudden to outside observers — or even to the citizens themselves. Kuran calls this sudden change a ‘preference cascade,’ and I wonder if that’s not what’s happening here.”
[…] Source link […]
Let me explain how I think that works:
Actually, no “side” will ever win, be it the “left” (rs) or the right (Ks).
Why?
Because they are not allowed to:
The conflict between r+K is nothing new, only the labels we give it and the participants is.
Right+Left are cruder terms and concepts than r+K, but we can roughly know what it means and whom it applies to.
Yes, there are and will be “societal shifts” – but never victory of any one side in this conflict.
Ks+rs both exist because of genetically, instinctively, evolutionary determined desires and feelings, they have a different, usually opposing worldview and therefore opposing political goals.
There is a spectrum, with extremes on both sides, and a more temperate kind of people in-between.
I propose:
The real upper class (UC) (you may call it “deep state”, elites, ruling class etc.) plays the old and powerful game of “divide et impera” in many forms (women vs. man, worker vs. employer, poor vs. rich, old vs. young etc.) to rule fundamentally and fundamentally, with the Ks and rs:
They will never allow one side of this conflict to win. As soon as any one side, by ability or mere chance, is about to win over the other side, the UC stealthily intervenes, and weakens the side about to win and strengthens the side about to lose.
The employed tools to this end are, for example, changed media coverage and tone (condemn or praise either side), change in laws and their enforcement, increasing or stopping private and government funding to r- or K-organizations,
sabotaging or helping the respective side with the kind of resources intelligence agencies can provide (research COINTELPRO), offering pre-fabricated (from the think tanks of the UC) political arguments and even pre-fabricated ready-to-use political slogans and ideas (BLM, as a possible contemporary example).
Because left and right hate each other so much, especially at the extreme ends of that spectrum,
their intense feelings are easily exploited and manipulated and anticipated, making it rather easy to turn such people into tools of the UC, into marionettes.
Why? To stabilize and ensure the ruling of the UC over society.
Consider what happened about 2008: The Great Depression struck, its effects are still felt today. People suddenly became poorer, crime exploded, the drug problem exploded, unemployment exploded, misery exploded – frustration-driven anger and hate built in society, and those intense, aggressive emotions needed a release. The “rich” would be an obvious and easy target, because their life, as opposed to the masses, was still safe and comfortable. They kept to rule and live well, while dozens of millions of people suddenly needed food stamps, froze and starved, became homeless and were in despair and fear. Aggression potential mounted in the masses.
Do you remember the instructively short-lived “Occupy Wallstreet” movement, the 99%ers? It attacked the rich, and, indirectly, threatened the rule of the UC. Remember how fast it was sabotaged and effectively destroyed, appearingly from within?
Suddenly and seemingly out of nothing, then, we got the SJW and and “Alt-right” and BLM movements and a vast intensification of right vs. left, r vs. K social fighting – the “rich”, more specifically the UC, was quickly forgotten as a political target or at least reduced in priority as a political opponent of the masses, and instead there was – and is – intense fighting of, basically, poor vs. poor, or, more to the point, non-UC against non-UC, therefore deflecting aggression away from the “rich” or UC, allowing them to keep ruling from obscurity, while the masses clobbered each other, neutralizing themselves, weakening each other, so that only the UC was left as a strong power player and therefore kept on ruling.
I am German, and therefore less directly knowledgeable as Americans what happens in the US;
but I see the very same patterns on both sides of the Atlantic, in Europe as well as the USA.
Let me give you a German example of that mechanism:
In the 1960s/70s there was leftwing/r-violence in Germany, the “68er movement” and associated terrorism (RAF, Red Army Faction) – those leftists robbed banks, planted bombs, assassinated and abducted rich people (threatened UC!) and members of the ruling class (example: conservative politicians, top bankers etc.), even whole airplanes. The whole country was in crisis, leftwing terrorism was a substantial threat to the UC, especially because the whole affair was secretly supported by the communist countries, the Soviet Union.
What did the UC do? They obviously tried to fight and weaken the left/rs – but they also immediately and powerfully strengthened the right/Ks – to the point of, effectively, secretly supporting Neonazis with government and intelligence resources to better fight the left/r. You may google GLADIO – the government basically put immense resources, weapons, explosives, training, funding – into extreme right/K-groups to act as a weapon against the strengthened and grown-dangerously leftwingers/rs.
By supporting the then weaker side (“Neonazis”, kind of Ks) they neutralized the “imbalance” between r+K, until the rs were reduced again to weakness, and, in effect, irrelevance.
Today, the UC in Germany (actually most of Western Europe) applies the generally same, but specifically inverse, technique:
Because the UdSSR and communism are dead and no threat anymore,
and because Ks resist the contemporarily politically desired (by UC) mass-immigration,
while the rs greatly desire it – the UC sabotages and weakens the Ks, while strengthening and supporting the rs with the whole spectrum of overt and covert tools they have in their arsenal.
So, you see that the UC exploits the r-K conflict, eternalizes it, shifting support and sabotage to either side according current needs of the UC to keep up their rule. Left and Right, r+K are never allowed to finally win over the other side, because their fight is too useful for UC to exploit as a ruling tool by “divide and conquer”.
Not only is this a powerful method to enforce the political, ruling, goals of the UC as needed;
it is also a very valuable distraction tool against the masses, distracting them from the schemes of the UC, distracting them from their misery, distracting them from the “rich”, specifically the UC at all.
The fight of r vs. K, by the manipulations of the UC, has become effectively just another form of mass entertainment, another circus, just like sports or celebrity gossip.
Not only does it distract and neutralize the masses; because of the emotional investment in the UC-manufactured outrage of the manipulated and synthetically perpetuated, eternalized r/K-conflict that most people feel, it is financially exploitable – not only celebrity gossip, sports and regular entertainment tantalizes the masses – and sells newspapers and online-ads – the fight of non-UC r vs. K is also turned into a great and profitable entertainment spectacle that not only makes for easier ruling of the UC, but brings it, conveniently, profit streams.
UC can not only shift attention of the masses at will by exploiting the r/K conflict;
it also serves as yet another source of riches for the UC from the fact that attention control – advertisement, “clicks”, web page impressions – are a multi-billion dollar business – manufactured and eternalized outrage not only is politically powerful, but also immensely profitable: Political and financial power again converge – the rule of the UC is solidified.
This is a very interesting comment. Thanks. So the solution is to destabilize them as much as possible. Find ways to corrupt their tools so it gets harder and harder (and/or more expensive) for them to use the same old tactics.
Give them as little money as possible, sabotage their efforts as much as possible. Get as many people on the same page as possible.
“stress-intolerant amygdalae who use extremism as an amygdala-calming”
heh, I know them.
The collapse of all the leftist institutions is getting to them. “Everything is a lie” was always hip. Not so happy to be proven correct.
I spent years in the Bahston area. wackos
People capitulate and accept to live with a political fact, if that fact can not be removed over a designated period of approx. 1 year. That means, if a dedicated group of hard-headed men shouts something, and the media, academia and authorities can not intimidate or shame them into abandoning their beliefs, then their beliefs become a social and political fact and their adversaries just thrown in the towel. You just have to actively wait them out and wear them out.
E.g. the existence of the alt-right is now an established political fact. They know it won’t go away, because their efforts to make it go away failed. It’s like a rock that landed in your path and you have to organize your life to walk around it.
A beautiful analogy.