Friends, In-groups, and Oxytocin

I noticed Texas Arcane over at Vault-co is doing an Indiegogo campaign for his new fantasy roleplayer Grimoire : Heralds of the Winged Exemplar.

I love going to Vault-Co. Tex is an old school, plain spoken, K-selected Competitor. We live in a world, where all somebody has to do is speak the truth, and it is riotously funny. In addition, he often has interesting articles you don’t hear about, because the thought crime they accidentally discuss gets them pulled before anybody sees them, kind of like this one he just posted recently.

Lately I’ve been thinking about how opposite Liberals are to Conservatives, in this sense. I go to Vault-Co, after a read through the day’s news, and it is like a relaxing vacation. All of the irritation at Liberal crap which builds up in my amygdala while reading the news, just releases, and I am once again confident that when the collapse comes, human civilization will be just fine. Tex isn’t PC, he doesn’t do lovey-dovey, hippie fantasies to make everyone feel happy, and he hates oppression. I am designed, on a very primal level, to find a world full of his kind very comforting and welcoming. It feels like home.

Liberals, by contrast probably get physically ill reading his site. To a Liberal, there would be nothing worse than a world filled with aggressive people like him, speaking their mind freely, calling it like they see it, and judging degenerates degenerate. To a Liberal, a world of phoney degenerates, spouting pretty lies, is a definite necessity.

It’s funny to me, because one would assume evolution would program us to just recognize resource availability, and either feel comfortable in a world of free resources or feel comfortable in one where work yields reward. But we also seem designed to innately recognize our environment by those we encounter in it. If I were walking out of an overpopulated territory, where clans were warring viciously but everyone was like Tex, and I walked into a land filled with Hippies like Bill Maher and Steven Colbert, I’d turn around, and walk right back into the battle, happily. Just as I am sure they would see Tex a mile away, and immediately begin fleeing even further out into the frontier.

I suspect this situation exists for a specific reason. A while back a Freeper named SVD freep-mailed me, saying I should look at a peptide named oxytocin, because he thought it was important. I realize now, just how right he was. Oxytocin is an interesting neuropeptide which quiets the amygdala. It is often called the trust peptide or trust molecule, because we appear to release it in response to perceptions of closeness with others, and it appears to be involved in morals, such as aversions to lying, and stealing. If we take a dose of it, we will trust others more in tests of trusting behavior, and be more willing to endure risk for social bonds, such as occurs in following a moral code.

Interestingly, mothers who invest heavily in offspring release a lot of oxytocin as part of the bonding process, as do their offspring, and when it comes time for their daughters to rear children, these daughters do as well. Mothers who bond poorly to their offspring don’t release as much oxytocin, and offspring with less oxytocin activity during early developmental periods follow this pattern as well. It is not known if this is genetic, or conditioned, passed from mother to daughter behaviorally. I would guess it is both, to varying degrees.

Stress can also diminish oxytocin levels, so just as stress reactivity and adoption of r-rearing patterns has been linked, stress is also known to diminish levels of a hormone which produces rearing investment.

If oxytocin quiets the amygdala, it is interesting to think about. r-type parental investment involves low levels of a neuropeptide which is involved in producing loyalty to in-group. Liberals show less loyalty to in-group, and think single mom’s are just oh-so-hip and trendy. You go girl! There are linkages revealed by the work on this site which pop up everywhere you look.

For example, dopamine and oxytocin are said to be closely related, especially in bonding behaviors. Dopamine is said to bring people together, while it is oxytocin which keeps them together, since dopamine stimulates the release of oxytocin. Notice, take away your dopamine function (such as by providing a defective, long form receptor, and then making you a loser, who experiences victory rarely), and you will not exercise your oxytocin system. As it atrophies (or never develops in the first place), this will make it less possible to bond to others emotionally, at a neurochemical level. Yes, Jost speaks of Liberals showing reduced loyalty to in-group, and here is a mechanism.

Of course, as one experiences the r-selecting environment of free resource availability, one’s constant exposure to dopamine will gradually desensitize their receptors, by down-regulating their production. Just as an addict’s dopamine bender inevitably ends in a panicked, blindly selfish search for one last dopamine high, to stave off the agony of withdrawal, so too does the r-selecting environment produce a more individualistically selfish, less group oriented Darwinian strategy. This is advantageous, as it minimizes unnecessary sacrifice (for a group), in favor of driving a more selfish strategy focused upon out-reproducing peers. But given our K-selected natures, this comes with a cost.

Lots of research indicates friends are important to health, and to well-being. I know from my life, when I regularly rolled with friends who I could trust with my life, and who would always have my back, life was enjoyable, and there was no challenge I wouldn’t take on with pleasure. Stress was an unimaginable abstraction. But travel to a heavily curved Biochemistry I class, where every student’s grade depended on the misfortune of their peers (and most every student acted accordingly). No matter how well I did, it really had none of the fun, and a lot of irritation and stress. I think many Alt-right bloggers, end up burning out because in this realm, we are all kind of islands on our own, and we just weren’t designed for this. As a result, we don’t have those close, oxytocin producing bonds which would relax us, were we in a clan laying waste to Liberal idiocy together, with glee and merriment. We prefer the face to face, and the team effort.

We all like to see our amygdala quieted. I suspect if you have the type of psychology programmed for loyalty, you have a well developed ability to release oxytocin, probably in part due to your rearing, and in part due to your moderated history of dopamine receptor activity. You seek out friends, and in their presence, no reality can stimulate your amygdala to the point of breaking you. You will face any reality, and deal with it gladly.

If you lack that loyal psychology however, perhaps due to having been reared in a way which didn’t develop your ability to release oxytocin, or due to deficient dopamine function impairing your ability to release oxytocin, then you will have to quiet your amygdala some other way. If you are enough of a loser in your youth, eventually you will have to develop the ability to ignore that reality which triggers your amygdala, and from there, it is one short jump off to becoming a Liberal. Denial becomes your oxytocin – it’s how you quiet that wild amydala.

Whenever I think of Liberals, I think of Bob, alone on that playground, strapped in a restricitive orthopedic device, surrounded by other kids, all trying to kick him from behind. Bob probably had no dopamine within his synapses at those moments. As a result, he had also stopped producing oxytocin in those terrorized moments when everyone had turned upon him. From those days forward, he had a hair trigger amygdala, just waiting to melt his brain down.

At this site, there was a Narcissist in the comments, who wrote something which perfectly described the psychology Bob carried, and hid, both from others, and even from himself.

“I am a vengeful narcissist and I stick my middle finger to the world and say F#CK YOU ALL. I celebrate myself because I survived YOU.”

Bear in mind, met face to face, I’m certain this character would have smiled warmly, and spoken glowingly, at length, of the virtues of loyalty and selflessness. That is who the Narcissist is. Everyone is an enemy to them, even if they have been conditioned by their youth to hide that fact beneath a facade of honor, loyalty, and selflessness.

People who stumble on this site, and who don’t fully understand Liberalism may wonder how so many on the right can be so partisan. Once your eyes are opened to what the Liberal movement really is, at it’s core, you can never look back. In it’s purest form, there is no loyalty, there is no compassion, there is no real empathy. The entirety of the ideology is about portraying themselves as members of the in-group, as they set about trying to get others to control, and steal from, the very individuals within their in-group who made it great – the very individuals who have worked, and just want to enjoy life in peace. It is a contemptible ideology.

The “help the poor,” and “let’s all get along” themes are just attempts to candy-coat a willingness to steal from their betters, (but only if they can make someone else (government) do it for them), and a cowardice and disloyalty which fears standing up and enduring personal risk for an in-group they should be willing to give anything for.

It is a psychology which is fundamentally unacceptable to our K-selected species, and as the research continues to roll in, I have no doubt this will all be shown to be provable, logically and scientifically, all the way from the neurochemical level, up through the neurostructural level, and into the ecological level. I have been able to assemble this site, just in my spare time. I have no doubt, as this research matures, and full time researchers begin to devote their entire labs to the study of it, it will be the ultimate amygdala hijack.

Liberals , will of course, do anything to prevent it. Unfortunately for them, this entire work is a one way ticket to reality. Nobody who sees this concept goes forth and forgets about it, or denies it, unless they were already an unsalvagable Liberal. Once exposed, each individual is like an infected carrier, spreading an untreatable strain of truth, to everyone they happen across who is able to perceive reality without overwhelming their amygdala. Because of this, I am confident, the truth will breakout. It’s just a matter of time.