Here is another graphic supporting the contention that Conservatism is actually a K-selected reproductive strategy, designed to arise under conditions of resource scarcity, and Liberalism is actually an r-selected reproductive strategy, designed to arise under conditions of free resource availability.
A reader pointed to the Economic Misery Index. There is a huge infographic at this link, which will be appended below this post. It points out the relationship between the Economic Misery Index, and violent revolutions such as the Arab Spring. If you increase economic misery (ie. restrict resources), you will get violence, aggression, and demands for freedom and free competition, among other traits. Those are K-selected behavioral traits that confer advantage under conditions of resource shortage, and their emergence under such conditions is no coincidence. Those Conservative psychological traits are designed to emerge when resources are scarce – when a wolf-like competitive K-selected strategy is the best way to survive.
What the Misery Index measures is resource restriction. Since we maintain that the K-strategy and Conservatism are one and the same, we predict the Misery Index should relate to the population’s expression of the K-selected reproductive strategy of Conservatism.
Above we laid a line graph showing the Conservative Policy Mood in the US (from this article at the WaPo’s website), over a bar graph of the Economic Misery Index in the US. On the right is the scale for the Misery Index, and on the left is the scale for the Policy Mood.
There are a few interesting points. First WWII caused a skyrocketing of Conservatism, and this artificial elevation of K-strategy generated a very low Misery Index once the war was over. K-strategists are hard workers, bent on winning. Not many vets came home from the kill or be killed battlefield of that war, looking to slack, craving a government to handle their every need, and wanting a destruction of the traditional family unit. Not coincidentally, they took action and produced copious resources. Notice how the low Misery Index readings rapidly eroded Conservative psychological traits in the populace, and how that raised the Misery Index, as the population adapted to the resource abundance by adopting a more r-psychology, designed to exploit free resources, rather than work hard to produce them.
Early on in the graph, a sudden jump in misery would either stall a decline of Conservatism, or produce a jump in the rate of Conservatism, usually within the space of a year (interestingly, crime (violent competition for resources by those less able to compete otherwise) has also been noted to jump within about one year of sudden rises in the Misery Index).
Vietnam obviously produces a jump in Conservatism, despite relatively low Misery Index readings, as does 9/11, validating war as a K-stimulus. Additionally, the end of the war in Vietnam, the abatement of threat from 9/11, and the end of WWII all served as r-stimuli, indicating that the removal of threat/war stimuli serves to produce increases in r.
Carter sends Misery and Conservatism stratospheric together (quite an accomplishment), only to have Reagan open the debt spigot, and flood free resources into the environment, crushing both Misery and Conservatism. This release of free resources through debt rapidly shifts the population towards the r-selected reproductive strategy of Liberalism, even despite Reagan’s brilliant oratory, political theater, and complete victory in the Cold War. The best leader, with the best arguments, in the most powerful position possible, succeeds in every regard, and yet he is no match for the corrupting effects of free resource availability.
The first Bush term is a bit confusing. The Misery Index rises slightly, and maintains a level which should provoke a K shift, yet the K-shift is somewhat slow in coming. One possible explanation is that just as war can propel the Conservative Policy Mood sky high with a very low resource restriction, a continued rush of borrowed cash flooding the ecosystem could temporarily drive Conservatism lower than it would otherwise go, despite a mildly elevated level of misery.
A second explanation is that the effects of the Misery Index are likely based upon relative levels of Misery. In the graph above, Misery had just dropped significantly under Reagan. If the Misery had been very low during Carter, the populace would have acclimated to that low level of Misery. Once acclimated to low Misery, any sudden rise would tend to provoke a K-shift, even if the rise were less than you saw at the end of Reagan’s term. However, having acclimated to a misery index of the magnitude that Jimmy Carter produced, that same level of Misery would be perceived as quite nice by comparison, and thus release more dopamine, elicit less anger, and be and thus be far less likely to trigger a K-shift.
One must remember, that the Misery Index is, loosely, an inverted measure of societal dopamine activity – dopamine activity similar to the effect of illegal drugs like cocaine. When Misery plummets, societal dopamine release will rise, however when Misery rises, dopamine activity will drop. Just as an addict eventually requires substantial quantities of drugs just to feel normal, it is possible that coming off of Carter’s misery level, the nation as a whole suddenly felt euphoric, even without pushing the Misery index to a significantly low level, and this served to foster an extended r-shift. Deny a family food, and then feed them, and they may change psychology towards r. However, take a well fed and very technology-supplied family, acclimate them to that level of comfort and entertainment, and a mere cable outage might provoke a K-shift, even as they ate heartily. Indeed, many K-shifts occur either concurrently with, or immediately after, sudden spiking of the Misery Index, the main exceptions being conflict stimuli such as Vietnam and 9/11.
If the effects of Misery are indeed relative, I suspect today’s youth, who are from birth acclimated to every comfort, technological accessory, and delicious taste in their freely availble food, are like dopamine addicts whose baseline pleasure requirements are quite high. They need those dopamine highs, just to feel normal. If economic conditions change, and suddenly everyone doesn’t have unlimited data plans, free Apps, social media, unlimited bandwidth, delicious food, free and easy college loans, the ability to acquire healthcare for themselves and their loved ones, and jobs given to anyone (even Womyns Studies majors), they may quickly, from a psychological standpoint, begin to make our most hardened WWII vets from the Pacific look like gay pansies. It wouldn’t surprise me if there was blood.
Also, during that post-Reagan period, a decades-long, constant threat stimulus was eliminated. One moment we were a superpower locked in a never ending struggle with the evil empire of the Soviet Union. The next moment, Communism collapsed, our enemies were gone, and the news was filled with experts pondering how we would now manage as the lone Superpower in the world. That was an enormous threat stimulus suddenly removed. Who were we competing against? A subtle question that I think is enormously important to our human natures and our motivation to compete and produce.
Finally, I think we underestimate how perceptions of political conflict stimulate a K-shift. Had Bush I approached politics more like Tom Delay or Ted Cruz, and constantly demonstrated how leftist policies were destroying the economy, and portrayed Leftism as an enemy to be fought, I think that a K-shift would have begun much sooner. However, being essentially a Northeastern Liberal, Bush I operated as if there was no real fight with the left. Even worse, those Conservatives who were still standing saw their own President ban guns, raise taxes, and fight pointless wars to rescue some Kuwaiti oil princes, or some ungrateful Somalians who would later kill our own military members. At every turn, from lack of loyalty to his own, to support for governmental control and oppression, Bush I fought to weaken Conservatism through wimpy acquiescence to, or embrace of, the left. Judging from the graph, he won, aided by free resources and diminished threat.
There is a lesson to the Political Conservatives in that. Better to take a wimp out by letting him lose in the General Election, than let him infest your movement for four years, erode any K-shift, and drive that curve downward. We probably dodged a real bullet with Romney.
Two years into Clinton’s term, the Misery Index drops suddenly, and the graphs suddenly diverge, with the Misery Index apparently suppressed on a fairly constant basis, even as Conservatism rises aggressively. I suspect that drop is due to the changes in the CPS, which were enacted in 1994, redefining how it measured unemployment, and thus altering what the Misery Index measured. (Overnight, a reading of 1.1 million unemployed was cut by 600,000 (over half), simply due to the change in methodology instituted in 1994).
Still, if you follow the curves after that drop, they do roughly rise and fall together, as would be expected since the index was still a rough measure of relative Misery from year to year. I suspect the rise after September 11th was more due to the attacks than economic misery, but misery probably played a part as well given that the dot-com bubble had just burst.
Of most interest is the growing divergence between the graphs. After the changes in 1994, it seems that Conservatism is now rising faster than the Misery Index is. What changed? There is a possible answer for this at this link. If we are failing to count the unemployed sufficiently, and the number of uncounted unemployed increases over time due to the changes in unemployment measuring implemented in 1994, that might explain some of the increasing disparity between the two curves, starting around 1994. That might also imply that the Conservative Policy Mood could be used, in some fashion, to model general economic conditions, if the government’s numbers prove to be unreliable.
This figure linking ideology to both the Misery Index and warfare, is why this entire blog exists, and why a whole book was written, amassing reams of support for this seemingly strange, obtuse subject. Everything you see utilized tactically in politics today has little to no effect on our political outcomes, by comparison to these r and K-forces. While everyone runs around endlessly debating the same old issues in the same old ways, while Liberals try to infiltrate academia and the media to execute some grandiose plan, while Conservatives debate whether Mitt Romney could have won if something was done differently, they are all ignorant of the real picture. There is a silent, unstoppable force, deep within our species’ psyche, effortlessly moving mountains of our history while we sleep, and it doesn’t really care about any of the things we normally focus on.
It is this force which controls our political destiny – more than any issue, more than any party, more than any political event, and more than any leader or individual – indeed, more than all of that combined. This force is why Ronald Reagan’s debt spending created an onslaught against our gun rights at the end of George H. W. Bush’s only term in office, and why we got an assault weapons ban passed in 1994 that could never pass today. It is actually why Charleton Heston lofted a musket above his head and bellowed, “From my cold, dead, hands!” as well as why that was a brilliant presentation of a conflict stimulus designed to provoke K-mindsets. It is even why that theater signaled the beginning of the end of attacks on our gun rights. It is why we elected a reprobate of uncommon immorality to the highest office in the land in 1992, and it is even why we will almost certainly wage large scale wars in the near future, as that Conservative Policy Mood graph skyrockets under assaults on our healthcare, increasing crime, and an impending economic collapse of unimaginable proportions.
Even more amazing, by the nature of our world, and our own evolutionary history, this force was perfectly designed to be taken by Conservatives, and used as a weapon to enormous effect. Any Conservative leader can introduce aggressive, confrontational, threat stimuli into an environment by being belligerent. However no Liberal, in the face of such stimuli, can remove that stimulus, or reintroduce tranquility, if we don’t want them to. At the end of the day, we call the shots, if only we will choose to.
The real engine which powers this hidden force is actually our world’s reality, so the force is almost useless to Leftists. Until reality can be replaced with fantasy in the real world, Leftists can do no more to stop our wielding of this weapon than they can do to stop gravity. They are helpless before us, and ply their political strategies only with our willing acquiescence to their evil and our passive acceptance of their fantasy.
The day major Conservative strategists grasp the force at work in the graph above, from the macro-level effects down to the effect on dopamine receptor gene transcription within neurons, is the day our battle ends, and our species begins a stratospheric ascent to levels of technological and societal advancement that we can only dream of.
That is why all of this research exists. The moment this becomes widely accepted as truth, is the moment our political battles will become infinitely easier to wage and win.
The Misery Index might have stopped being an accurate statistic in 2009, once the BLS started monkeying with the U-3 unemployment rate under Emperor Barack the Magnificent. Who’s to say they haven’t fudged the U-6 numbers, too? Perhaps the Employment-Population Ratio can be merged with inflation somehow to create a Crapulence Index worth analyzing.
What data goes into that “policy mood” statistic? It sounds a bit squishy and not very quantifiable. It has no units, after all.
Yeah – we are getting lied to pretty consistently now. That alone is really a measure of how bad the situation is going to get. I’ll check the employment population ratio – thanks for that.
I haven’t read Stimson’s book yet, but it appears he takes numerous polls on individual issues, giving each issue a Conservative or Liberal label, and then combines all of the polls together into a sum-total mood based on issue perceptions. I asume he hopes that the volume of data will smooth out any outliers. I think, given it’s rough correlation with Misery early on, it probably has a fair degree of solidity behind it, at least more than the financial numbers we get today.
Chapter two of his book is here. The first three paragraphs, laying out his general idea, speak to me in the context of r/K, but lately I’m seeing that everywhere.
Nearly every time I read your site the movie “Idiocracy” comes to read. And the story, “The Marching Morons,” too.
I see the same thing. What is funny to me is the effort that can be can put into analyzing things, and coming up with some complex concept, only to see a guy like Mike Judge come along and almost as a lark create something awesome, that encapsulates it all into a vector everybody loves.
“The artist is the antennae of the human race.” – Ezra Pound.
“Any Conservative leader can introduce aggressive, confrontational, threat stimuli into an environment by being belligerent. However no Liberal, in the face of such stimuli, can remove that stimulus, or reintroduce tranquility, if we don’t want them to. At the end of the day, we call the shots, if only we will choose to.”
A minor quibble: Liberal politicians do tap into the power of this phenomenon somewhat with their constant refrain of fear “the conservatives are coming to put an end to your gravy train of free resources”. This causes the rabbits to rally around their Liberal tribe if only for long enough to vote for the leader of their warren. Now, I don’t think this is a move towards k-selected traits by the rabbits. Rather it is more of an r-selected defense mechanism to huddle together in the warm, rabbity stench of the warren while they think that the big bad wolf is prowling outside.
I agree with that. I would also make the case that those things may be like a shit test in pickup, though. They do it, but only if they aren’t going to get resistance, or as a test of resistance. I think when the collapse comes, and average Americans can’t feed their own families, the first person to say that sluts need more free birth control and abortions, will be killed violently. I also think that Liberals will tend not to decry anyone diminishing spending on free birth control and abortions at that point.
I think today, if protests began to get violent, and leftists had to fear for their safety at them, a lot of the weirdness would get reigned in fast, and it would happen not through Liberals hiding, so much as many moderates beginning to shift their mindsets towards a more K-mindset. Of course, I don’t view that type of violence as something you call for or plan, but rather as something which will just begin naturally when resources snap back.
That said, if Conservatives did begin demeaning the “sluts and whores,” and making any politician who supported them out to be a degenerate, destroying American greatness and seeking to defile the virtue of our good American women, they might take a temporary hit in the polls as the media piled on, but that conflict, sustained over time, would suppress Liberal zeal immensely, and begin to shift the dial back. Especially as that Conservative Policy Mood line rises with the threat of diminished healthcare and economic problems.
Unfortunately, todays Repubs are rabbits too, who run for the warren at the first sign of conflict, rather than angrily demeaning their Democratic partners on live TV. So we’ll just have to wait for the collapse.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3x3TMdkGdQ
Toxoplasmosis hijacks the brain and turns you into a lieberal.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/canine-corner/201306/do-politics-matter-when-it-comes-loving-cats-or-dogs
Yep. Crazy little organism. Thank you for the links.
“Unfortunately, todays Repubs are rabbits too, who run for the warren at the first sign of conflict, rather than angrily demeaning their Democratic partners on live TV. So we’ll just have to wait for the collapse.”
All too true. Of course, they are doing their part to hasten the collapse, so they’ve got that going for them. Democrat and Republican politicians are like competing carnival barkers at the same circus who get together at the end of the day to compare their respective profits and to laugh at all the rubes they fooled.
Do you consider the high-birth rate of conservatives and the highly religious as k-selection?
After all K-selection is high quality offspring at the expense of quality offspring in contrast to r-selection.
This is discussed in several places around the site, and in the book. Conservatives have higher birthrates than Liberals, but that is primarily an effect of modern technology. If you look at the data, Liberals have more sexual partners, shorter relationship durations, and less desire to raise children (even extending into a lower preference for the smell of babies, surprisingly). In nature, absent birth control or abortion that behavioral profile produces a lot of kids, regardless of the ability to invest, as well as single-mother parenting.
Add in birth control and abortion, however, and it is only natural that an intellectual drive to not invest in offspring among r-strategists, combined with a simple, readily available trick to forestall pregnancy, would result in a dramatic diminution in birthrates among human r-strategists. In short, if sex always produced babies, Jane Fonda would have thirty or forty kids, all of whom she would have raised alone as her bad-boy boyfriends took off to date other women. But add in abortion and birth control, and suddenly the Jane Fondas fo the world no longer need to be burdened with children.
With respect to Conservatives, they do have more kids than upper class ideological Liberals, but not to the extent that it diminishes the ability to invest heavily in the offspring. Today in the US, a four or five child household is seen as huge, but by the standards you would have seen in more primitive times (or even in the third world today), that is a small number of children, and easily supportable.
With time this will adjust. Darwin never stands still. What that means for the future of reproductive strategies is actually going to be the topic of a future blog post.
One last question. It seems the K-selected Robertsons marry their women off at 15-16 years of age while in america in general the age of marriage continues to climb:
http://perezhilton.com/2013-12-30-duck-dynasty-phil-robertson-marry-15-year-old-girls/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/31/duck-dynasty-star-phil-robertson_n_4522254.html
And ancient societies married off the females as soon as they hit puberty at 12-13 years of age. Would you consider that r-selection or K-selection?
Actually, it depends on a lot of factors, and just using “ancient societies” isn’t nearly specific enough to examine. Why were they married off at that age? Who was married off? Were resources free enough nobody died in the population? What was the lifespan back in those days? If disease routinely killed people in their twenties, then it wouldn’t be surprising that if you wanted kids, you got to it, and your parents didn’t argue. Especially when resources weren’t so short that some people in the society were dying. My guess is, let a real famine hit in those societies, and they would begin marrying girls off later.
Most importantly, was earlier mating associated with resource availability? Royalty routinely married earlier than the peasant class, and probably had more partners as well as shorter relationship durations, and less personal parental investment, if we knew the truth. Yes, there were r-strategists even back then, and they popped up where resources were free. All that has changed is that we all live like those royals today, which separates out those more prone to r-strategery and those not so prone, at least among the upper class.
What it comes down to is that the difference we are talking about is one of purpose. Do you like the idea of your daughter getting graphic, desensitizing sex-ed at twelve under some hippie sex-ed “teacher,” so she can begin banging guys freely, and rack up twenty or thirty notches before she gets to college? Are you OK with girls leading that life in general? Leftists are. Would a leftist support, instead of graphic sex-ed and free contraception and abortion, 13 year olds marrying, and committing to a legally enforced, monogamous relationship designed to raise children carefully?
You can continue to argue this, but you are beating your head against a wall. r/K and Liberalism/Conservatism look so alike for a reason. They arise at the appropriate times, for a reason. Once you see the mechanism, and internalize it’s various gears and springs, there is no going back, and the view only gets clearer with time. Every time you see a study on it, or new research discussed, it just further affirms what you have already seen. Pretty soon, you see it everywhere.
Totally ignoring the research on the subject, and beginning to look for one or two cases which break the rule, in a world of billions of people, in the hopes that will support your thesis, is not a way to find truth. Clearly, looking at the research, r and K align with both the issues ideologues support, and their behaviors. I didn’t make up r/K, nor did I make up the research on mating behaviors of ideologues, nor did I make up the research on what ideologues support – I just put all that data in one place, and said look how similar this all is. Conservatism and Liberalism even arise in history at the appropriate times, as resources wax and wane, and as the graphs should show, I didn’t make up that research either. Given all that, it is safe to say that the similarities between r/K and Liberalism/Conservatism are almost certainly not coincidental.
Still, r/K is not absolute, even in animals in nature, where intellect rarely affects decisions or overides instinct. I’m sure you will find differences in aggression and sexual drive between individuals, even in strongly r-selected species such as rabbits. You will also find the same outliers in humans.
On Robertson, I think a good question is, why is Robertson advocating marrying off girls early? Is he interested in maximizing the promiscuous mating of girls with an eye to producing copious offspring of varied parentage, fitness, and traits? Or is he looking to foster the creation of stronger monogamous bonds between highly fit mates, by creating unions before the girls have acquired the three sexual partners, beyond which a marriage is likely to end in divorce, according to the research? If you think it the former, then yes, Phil is an r-strategist, just looking to see his daughters rack up notches, and bang a lot of guys, beginning as early as possible. Even if that was the case (and obviously, it’s ridiculous), it can’t stand up to the broader studies, showing Leftists have more partners, shorter relationship durations, and less desire to expend effort rearing children. Even if Phil was a raving r, he would just be an outlier, according to the research. Of course, Phil, in his own way, is trying to promote monogamy.
Now my turn. Why are you so viscerally opposed to seeing Liberals labeled as r-strategists, or their strategy likened to that of the rabbit? I thought promiscuity was grand, babies were expendable and able to be aborted at a whim, kids need free birth control and graphic instruction in its use because promiscuous casual sex among them is OK, a competitive economic environment was evil Social Darwinism, and single mom-ing was all the rage. If those concepts are all good, why do you so oppose the label r-strategist, which basically just pulls all of those ideological tenets under one theoretical roof?
Nope. My only quibble was this point. So your point is that even if the age of marriage and the coming of age is just at puberty for both boys and girls as it is in ancient and tribal cultures it will still be k-selection provided the norms and chastity as well as high-investment in offspring.
I agree with all your other points but I wondered if early age of sexual intercourse in a monogamous marriage nullified the fact that it was k-selection.
If resource depletion causes a strong shift to K-selected behavioral traits then why doesn’t this always happen in other countries? It appears to me that they frequently turn communist.
That’s a good question. The short answer is that shortage will produce a shift towards a K-psychology in the populace, but that might actually help install a communist regime, under some circumstances.
First some caveats. My strength is biology, not history, so where this gets applied to history is not my strength, though until a historian shows up to take this forward in that direction, I will do what I can here. I can’t speak to every instance where Communism was imposed, since there will probably be a lot of unique historical circumstances contributing to each result. There will undoubtedly be some other factors which complicate matters, such as societies which trended more r before a sudden collapse seeking to assuage panic in their less developed amygdalae by placing hope in government to save them, rather than facing what is around them. I do kind of see traders in 1929 who acclimated to the dopamine of a boom, and then would rather have jumped out of their window than see their amygdalae contemplate the market collapse.
Along those lines, economic self interest might lead people to respond to a system of capitalistic cronyism and corruption in a failing economy by seeking to attack it through supporting communists who promise to tear it all down. If we find out bankers at the top ripped us all off, stole all the Fed’s gold, and destroyed our economy, and Republicans say we should quiet down and move on, while Communists promise to hang them from lamp posts, we will have a tough decision, in part due to our K-natures wanting to fight, in part due to issues of Republican corruption unrelated to r or K.
I am also very unclear to what extent epigenetic effects act on this. Research in other species indicates it might be a lot. Does a generation of kids need to be conceived, gestated, and born, under the parental stress produced by shortage to really create a K-generation, or can people raised from conception in-plenty, just shift back as dopamine is pulled. This is all new, and these specific nuances are unresearched, so I can’t say for sure.
I also found myself editing some material in this post, which might be of use to r’s in the future, so I hope it doesn’t seem disjointed.
That all said, there is one important broad-stroke consideration that I do see, and I keep harping on it for a reason. It is, in my opinion, a huge problem – perhaps the largest that we will face in the coming decades as we enter a period of resource scarcity.
Human populations are overwhelmingly K-strategist, with periodic slides towards r (but not too close), during resource abundance. Left to choose a form of governance by an honest vote of the populace, you will tend to see overwhelmingly moral K-governments which slide somewhat, towards r and immorality, with freer resource availability, but which rarely go full r (Communism), willingly.
As a result of our species’ natural tendency towards K, in cases where you see a pure r-government imposed, it will almost always be imposed by force of violence over a mostly unwilling populace. Populations employing force of violence will tend to only occur during periods of resource shortage (rather than when everyone is fat and happy, and fighting looks stupid), so many such r-governments will tend to arise during resource shortage. I would assume if you looked at every case of resource shortage though, the relative numbers of instances where r-government arose would be smaller than the number of instances of resource shortage which produce K-civilization structures.
The reason that you can end up with a paradoxical circumstance where resource shortage ends up with a forcefully imposed r-governance is that as resources grow scarce, r’s will employ a strategy of pitting groups of K’s against each other, and trying to ride events to places of power over the K’s who fight. Occasionally, however much I hate to admit it, this strategy works very well, probably due to circumstances just happening to favor the r’s.
If you look at Communist revolutions, you will not see Barack Obama’s, or Bill Clinton’s, or Bernie Sanders wielding the guns, or killing people violently. Rather, guys like Lenin will be behind the scenes trying to guide affairs from a distance, as they coax average citizens to fight some “enemy” who just happens to be in the r’s way. Look at the revolutionaries who actually do the fighting, and you will find a lot of people who want freedom from some form of oppression, to marry, maintain monogamy, discourage kids from mating early, have loyalty to an in-group, and want to fight an enemy for their in-group. They get roped into fighting for the r-strategists because the r-strategists find a way to make them want to fight the r’s enemies. Maybe it is ginning up a group of K’s to fight those in power who are “betraying the nation,” maybe it is fighting those with money who are manipulating the markets to enrich themselves at the expense of good people, fighting the corrupt, fighting “terrorists,” proletariat vs bourgeois, etc.
Rommel wanted to fight for mother Germany, and yet he ended up carrying out orders issued from a leader that he loathed so much he tried to kill him. Most German soldiers were K-warriors of the first class, yet they fought in support of National Socialists running death camps for women and children that would have made Stalin blush. Why did they support the Nazi’s? National Socialists assured everyone that their main concern was nationalism, and protecting the interests of Germans against evil outsiders looking to harm them – something all K’s aspire to do. Circumstances favored the r’s, and we saw what happened.
This is important to the Conservative movement in the US because it is not impossible for us to end up with something similar happening to us, especially if we end up with a full on collapse. As Bush 1’s recession dragged on into Clinton’s first term, I think you actually saw this with the militia movement. K’s began to rise up, and let it be known they would not bow down to Clinton and the new government if they trashed the Constitution. r’s started to get panicky about the new militia movement, so they began to focus their proxy strategy on them. Militias weren’t knocked down by Bill Clinton and leftist media types with guns, or even the Occupy Wall street types wielding AK-47’s. Rather, the r-strategists goaded some arguably militia-type K-strategists into shootouts with K-strategist government agents using the most ridiculous of pretexts. Even the brilliant NRA fell into the trap, as rank and file Conservatives spread the phrase “Jack-booted thugs,” and began to portray law enforcement as the enemy, when it was really the r’s in power (and the grassroots r’s who supported them) who set it all in motion.
The r-strategists were very successful. Lots of K-strategist Law Enforcement who probably voted for Bush I and abhorred Clinton, got angry and freely killed a whole lot of people, from Randy Weaver’s wife, to women and children Branch Davidians, to Timothy McVeigh, and even carried out warrants and prosecutions on a whole lot more K-gunowner’s, with whom they had no other problems.
Many have made the case that it was the bomb at the Murrah Federal Building (which targeted K-LE, and other K-citizens who worked there) that saved Bill Clinton from being a laughing stock, as it was the aftermath of that tragedy which let him recast himself as being on the side of the people, and a national healer, and divide the right against itself. That is a manipulative r-strategist creating fights, and riding the waves of conflict to power, without having an ounce of the balls necessary to survive alone in the actual K-environment. Clinton got K-strategist Feds to kill women and children at Waco, and then turned around and used the blowback to elevate himself and his stature, and cast all those who opposed the murders at Waco as villains. Before long, the militia movement collapsed, and the resurgent right was in retreat.
Had times been more tumultuous, resources far more scarce, and McVeigh not alone in his attack, who’s to say what power Clinton could have seized, and where our government could have ended up, despite our citizenry being more K overall than anywhere else.
Already, as our economy declines today, we see military strategy papers casting the Tea Party as a military threat about to rise up and attack US government agents. Practicing Christians are being cast as enemy’s of the very military they serve in. Muslims are being groomed in the Midwest as a proxy force for a left which curries favor with them at every opportunity. We see attempts to portray gun owners as radical racists out to kill innocent black kids, and at war with the black community. Gun dealers were supposed to be funneling guns to Mexican cartels, linking gun dealers and enthusiasts in the US with drug dealers in Mexico. We’ve got immigrants vs anti-immigration forces, and Republicans who want to fight with any woman who wants birth control. It is all bullshit, but that bullshit is how you get fights started between K-strategists and divide the movement. r’s are already trying to implement their strategy, perhaps even unaware of it themselves. Notice, none of those groups above, pitted against each other, includes pacifist hippie types, leftist media people, leftist professors, teachers unions, socialists, communists, or any other home of true r-strategists, nor are any comparable fights like that created by the right. Ever see the right pit blacks against gays, Latino immigrants against unions, etc? It’s just not in our nature, just as it is natural to the leftists.
When they employ that strategy, as resource shortage kicks in, they actually benefit from K-strategists getting even more competitive, confrontational, aggressive, and protective, because the increased K-psychology makes getting those fights to start, easier.
We will see more of that as things get bad, and r’s look to get any groups of K’s with any minor difference into fights. If we allow ourselves to be drawn into a fight with K’s who we otherwise would have no problems with, when we have so many r-enemies within our nation, we will be the ones who lost all that was so painstakingly given to us. This is why I oppose all violence against any LE or government agent, agency, or asset, and any racial conflict between K-strategists. No matter how much r’s goad another clique of K’s into offending you, not a single K from any other group could be nearly as much of an enemy as the low-level, grassroots, r-strategist loser who tries to portray themselves as a non-combatant as the violence breaks out. If you have an enemy, it is that rabbit in his hole, even if they will openly plead themselves to be unarmed, cowardly, helpless, and not interested in any fighting. They are the source of the entire problem.
This work is where the motive forces behind our ideologies evolved from, but to answer your question, the monkey wrench in the works is that r’s are clever, cunning, and programmed to expressly avoid combat while seeking to pit groups of K’s against each other in Machiavellian fashion. Unfortunately, K’s tend to fight most blindly when resources are most short. So, strange as it seems, it is easier for r’s to grab full control using K’s as proxies when resources are scarce and K’s want to fight, than it is when everyone is fat and happy and the idea of fighting is viewed as bizarre.
I’ve got a post coming with a video, which will highlight the cognitive neuroscience of how K’s can become irrational under certain conditions, how some r’s perceive just how to engender this state, and how violence becomes inevitable when that occurs. If you view that post, in light of this reply, I think you will begin to see why resource scarcity can result in full-on communism, and actually enhance the r’s ability to pit K’s against each other. In the post, an r manipulates a K into a frothing-at-the-mouth amygdala hijack, and once engendered, the K has almost no control over his rage.
If the K-movement is sharp, it can easily use this knowledge to its advantage in formulating strategy in the midst of any tumult. Knowing intellectually how r’s work allows you to avoid all the pitfalls they will try to throw your way, and even perceive an easy strategy which would win any Civil War within days, with almost no casualties, should it ever come to that. Sadly, not knowing all this can lead to you doing exactly what the r’s want, putting them in power, and even destroying your own movement by killing principled K-strategists just like yourself for the pleasure of r’s. It is almost instinctual within us.
This is why I really hope all of this hits the arena and gets wide dissemination in time. What is approaching in the coming decades could be a real threat.
Machowicz, in his book “Unleashing the Warrior Within,” described the process of attack. There are three things: (1) Target, (2) Weapons, and (3) Movement.
Your Target determines your weapons. Your Weapons determine your Movement.
What is the Target? The r amygdala, their social context feeling a part of the rabbit crowd. Attack their social connection to the rabbit crowd to blast their amygdala to pieces.
What are our weapons? We use their own rhetoric they use against K types. Because if they are individually attacked and picked off one by one by being seen as a racist or a bigot, or any other r destroying connection, they will sense being removed from the rabbit crowd and be psychologically destroyed.
Weapons determine movement. So the weapon is rhetoric. The movements? Figuring out which image to use in the rhetoric to make the rabbit feel be has been ejected from the rabbit social world. This can be KKK white sheets and burning crosses, racist attacking blacks, sexists attacking women, Nazis, etc. Associate the rabbit to any of these images, assault their amygdala, and do not let up on the assault until we see terror in their eyes from feeling they just got removed from the rabbit crowd and they are alone (to be eaten by wolves). It may take a person with a dash of the sociopath to make this type of social assault, but I think the guys in the manosphere are perfectly capable of doing this effectively if well-trained for the assault. Many are already trolling feminist sites as Agent Provocateurs.
By the way, thanks for your research and the book.
K-Wolf
Interesting synthesis. The only thing I’d add is that I have found leftists not only panic at ejection from the rabbit warren, but also at seeing K-groups they cultivate for protection, turned against them, particularly groups they see as out-groups. (Leftists see minorities, especially aggressive K-segments of them, as out-groups. As an example, leftists would love to culture the allegience of the “Bloods” street gang for protection, but let a leftist think you have just pissed the Bloods off at them, and you will see some amygdala action. They do not like their own game used upon them.)
This is often easy to do, becasue Leftists only cultivate groups they view as inferior in some regard, either economically, or intellectually, or morally. Leftists, especially white leftists, need to maintain that personal delusion of superiority over everyone else. But when they view a group as an inferior, it makes them hyper-sensitive to you calling them on it to destroy the relationship.
No problem on the research and book. We are a team.
AC,
Good topic for strategists to explore. So, leftists, being rabbits, look for protection from other wolves. So, not only can we terrorize rabbits with the fear of being removed from rabbit society, but we can terrorize rabbits with turning the other wolf groups against them.
So, the rabbit strategy against wolves is to turn one wolf group against another to duke it out while the rabbit plays in the fields of grass. Going back several years, during the Abolitionist Movement, those rabbits sought to incite a slave rebellion by getting blacks (wolves) to kill white southerners (wolves). They have used this same strategy since then and AC has exposed it for what it is: turn a minority that the rabbits already see as inferior against a strong white opponent and let them duke it out while the rabbits play in fields of grass. So, Ivy League rabbit masters of strategy have been doing this for a few hundred years and getting away with it. Busing in the 1960’s was putting blacks and whites together, in the hope that blacks would kill whites or vice versa. Integration was the same thing. Affirmative action is the same thing: stir up hatred among two groups of people, let then duke it out, while the Ivy League rabbits play in fields of money and grass. Illegal immigration is another such strategy. Ivy Leaguers hate black people and would prefer not to hire them as servants, preferring Latin Americans to do their house work. Thus, they will swamp the country with Latin Americans, destroying any hope of black people getting work. And, they let blacks and Latin Americans duke it out in gang warfare in California, not giving a damn, just as long as the Ivy League rabbits can play in fields of grass and money.
So, AC has exposed the rabbit Ivy League strategy, as Mencius Moldbug has exposed the long history in factual lists. Moldbug did the factual research, and AC has put forth the convincing theory.
Now, it is time for strategists to take advantage of the research and take power away from the rabbits, and even punish them for the long years of devastation and death they have caused because they were cowards in the first place. Let’s unleash the wolves on the rabbits.
So, gun control is an instrument of hating black people. Rabbits wreck the black family, causing tons of violence, and then take their guns away! Why? Because they hate black people and want to keep the black man down! Gun control is racism and hatred!
Illegal immigration is an instrument to keep the black man down! Why? Evil rich white liberal Nazis hate black people and want to replace them with Mexicans! They do not want black people cleaning their houses because they hate them! Illegal immigration is racism and hatred of black people! Latin Americans will take the jobs from the black man and the black man will starve or end up in prison and get gang raped by white supremacists! Supporters of illegal immigration are racists and hate black people!
Gay marriage is racist! Everybody knows most black young people are in prison. How do you control blacks in prison? White racists will ass-rape them! Gay marriage will make this all easier to control the black man because nobody will care after sodomy and gay marriage are legal. Gay rights is so white racists can gang rape black people and keep them under control of those liberal white Nazi racists!
95% of blacks vote for democrats? Why you say? It is because of white racist liberal terrorism! If you were black, you would be scared to death of voting Republican because those racist whites will gang rape your daughters in retaliation! A black man who votes for Republicans is a dead man and is scared to death of his sons in prison getting gang raped in retaliation if he does not vote Democrat! Liberals are terrorists! Liberals will kill blacks who vote republican! It is Stockholm Syndrome!
So, let the wolves feast on the rabbits…
K-Wolf
This is one of the things I hope flows from this work, namely the tactic of demotivating r-strategists. In politics today, a lot of effort is expended on motivating the Conservative base, and trying to attract the mushy middle through the creation of positive feelings for Conservatism. However, if you look at the cognitive neuroscience, it should actually be much easier, and much more effective to burn amygdala pathways into the brains of the populace associating Liberalism with Aversive Stimulus, and negativity.
It has long been known that negative advertising is highly effective as a political tool. One ad making your opponent look evil is worth 10 ads making you look patriotic. With r/K Theory, you have a bedrock theory designed to imbue the whole political debate with a theme that r-strategists are the out-group, and their ideology is very wrong, and repulsive.
Given how r-strategists avoid amygdala stimulation, and get hijacked with the slightest of negative/critical stimuli, the types of things K-Wolf is focusing in on are immensely powerful political tools. Rather than weakly attracting 2% of the 5-10% of swing voters, you are much better off strongly depressing 1% of the 45% of regular Democrat voters. If you attach that negativity to their ideology, rather than to any candidate personally, that negativity can create a long-lasting pathway in the amygdala which is almost indestructable, and easily restimulated each election cycle. The real key is nuance, and presenting these stimuli below the radar, but obvious enough to have their effects. Obviously humor is ideal.
Given how the r-strategy is about five urges which are inherently noxious to humans, and how Leftists are inherently terrified of critical, out-grouping, and conflict stimuli, demotivating Leftists through direct amygdala attacks offers a potent strategy for engaging the enemies of freedom in the political arena.
Communism is often an example of dominant groups (the party leaders, etc.) employing rabbits for their own purposes. Stalin wasn’t a typical rabbit, although he played one for the masses’ consumption. Democracy often works the same way. The rabbits may gain power, but require alpha-rabbit leadership to hold it. I would not call these coney commanders “k-selected” because they are not in any way I understand it from your writings. However, they are leaders and likely fall into a category you would describe as an extreme narcissist. Current examples include leftist politicians like Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer and leftist financiers like George Soros. Their underlying psychology may be pure rabbit, but they are also effective leaders and abusers of their fellow rabbits. Other rabbits see that crazy, narcissistic gleam in their eyes and think “I’ve got to get me some of that!” It’s as if the rabbits understand on some level that they are lacking k-selected traits that are essential to survival, so they substitute their own ersatz version. Thus, we have the phenomenon of the crazy leftist dictator/autocrat who is supported and often adored by the leftist masses he abuses.
>It’s as if the rabbits understand on some level that they are lacking k-selected traits that are essential to survival, so they substitute their own ersatz version.
I think that’s dead on. It is also why you get leftists importing terrorists who hate America, currying favor with the criminal underclass, and looking for anyone who will fight with their K-selected countrymen. Nothing terrifies them like the thought of raw, unbridled Darinian selection choosing between them and their K-selected competition. Anything, including the embrace of total evil, is preferable to that.
I have been thinking about the r/K theory and how to formulate effective attacks on the enemy’s amygdala that will drive them nuts. I think it comes down to rhetoric and attacking them on issues that they save for attacking K-types. If we can call them racists, sexists and bigots and blast the hell out of their psyches, I think this may work. The problem is making a convincing assault, and not stopping the assault until the victims are psychologically destroyed. The following are some examples I think may bear fruit.
—–
K: Democrats are racists.
R: ha ha, a retard!
K: Democrats are racists and they hate black people.
R: uhhh…
K: The Democrats are run by the KKK.
R: huh. What the heck…
K: Robert Byrd was a Klansman, and he ran the Democratic party for decades until 2010. Therefore the leader of the Democrats was a racist who hated black people.
R: …
K: The leader of the Democratic Party wore white sheets, burned crosses, and terrorized black people. Democrats hate black people. Racists are evil people, and I will not tolerate any racists near me! Are you a racist? I hate racists, I despise these nasty excuses for a human being!
K: The Democrats are also sexists who hate women.
K:Bill Clinton raped a woman and got away with it.
K: So the Democrats are racist, sexist raping pigs.
Constant assault. No let up. Drive the assault until the target is destroyed.
I agree, but with one nuance. Increasingly, I think the Leftist lobs the attacks they do at us to ally themselves with a K-group that may oppose us. Hence, they say we are anti-Muslim, in the hopes Muslims will save them from us. We are Racists, so hopefully Blacks will fight with us, to save the pansy Liberals from us. We hate women, so hopefully women will ally with them against us. Etc. etc.
But those attacks are great. To add gas to the fire, apply them in front of blacks (preferably aggressive K’s), and angry hairy-chested Feminists.
Also, I have had good luck offering attacks as one of two bad options. ie.:
K: Democrats are racists.
R: ha ha, a retard!
K: Democrats are racists and they hate black people.
R: uhhh…
K: The Democrats are run by the KKK.
R: huh. What the heck…
K: Robert Byrd was a Klansman, and he ran the Democratic party for decades until 2010. Therefore the leader of the Democrats was a racist who hated black people.
K: Either Democrats openly supported a known Klan member as a leader because they found klan membership acceptable, or they are so ignorant of theri own leaders that they shouldn’t be anywhere near governmental decisions. It’s one or the other.
I’ve found Leftist amygdalae seem to only be able to hold one idea at a time. Apply the argument like that, and their amygdala locks up as it shifts back and forth between one bad option and the other, constantly shifting into higher and higher gears.
[…] ConservativeJanuary 16, 2014The Forces Exerted By r and K-Selection Effects Mold the Ideological Inclinations of Societies – H…[It’s a pleasant thought but I’m not convinced of this conclusion even though I’m mostly […]
I would like to point out that of all the islands in the Caribbean, only Cuba has good farmland. Of all the nations in the world, Russia’s mineral wealth is mind boggling, and while China may be the least resource rich of Communist empire, its historic role in trade is a key to prosperity.
The common theme I see in the “misery index” isn’t a scarcity of resource, but a market scarcity of resources. Something that stops the natural flow of trade and market liquidity. And I think that the common man “K-strategist” gets fed up with mismanagement and becomes willing to fight for someone who has a vision of prosperity.
Communists are all about selling a dream. They can only deliver equal misery but they can sure sell a beautiful dream. I think it is ironic that the biggest source of market lockup is government uncertainty (source David Smick, “The World is Curved.”) and yet that breeds the conditions for the ultimate in uncertainty, revolution.
I agree – it is ironic. And it is uncertain, because you end up not knowing if the K’s fighting for the r’s will win, or if the K’s fighting for the K’s will win. Interesting times coming.
This is interesting when reading it from an r/k perspective: http://www.velociworld.com/Velociblog/Oldvelocity/004086.html
…and thanks to you, r/k theory is always in the back of my mind when examining anything to do with society these days.
Very interesting. Once you see r/K, it is everywhere.
The two links to the Misery Index infographic no longer work (the site died), but you can replace them with this link: https://web.archive.org/web/20140106040355/http://www.financedegreecenter.com/misery-index
or this link directly
Thank you!