“May the Lord soften the hearts of the rigid, of people who are enclosed in the law and condemn everything outside of the law.” This was Pope Francis’ prayer this morning at Holy Mass, in the chapel of his residence at Santa Marta.
When I say something is hardened, what so you think about its past? Was it easy, or difficult? It is hardened because it was exposed to hardship. We say life can be hard, but why? What links the physical property of a piece of matter being hard with the more abstract adjective of a non-physical circumstance being unpleasant? We even say the cold, hard reality. All of this is our brain subconsciously drawing parallels based on deep connections it sees, and it affects our choices when creating colloquialisms.
What the Pope is talking about are amygdalae that appear hard and unchangable, because they are molded into immutable form by a clear, and unchangeable perspective of the world’s reality. When amygdalae are molded by reality, they cannot change willy-nilly. Only when they are not molded by reality, but adapt to fantasy can amygdalae be soft, and malleable, changing to fit whatever feels best in the moment.
Interestingly the Pope also sees hardening as producing an adherence to law and rules. Those too are linked to hardness, just as a lawless world will be a world ruled by those whose amygdalae are too soft to tame it.
Of course the Pope is also no fan of libertarianism:
Pope Francis had harsh words to describe libertarians Friday, saying they deny the value of the common good in favor of radical selfishness where only the individual matters.
“I cannot fail to speak of the grave risks associated with the invasion of the positions of libertarian individualism at high strata of culture and in school and university education,” the Pope said…
“A common characteristic of this fallacious paradigm is that it minimizes the common good, that is the idea of ‘living well’ or the ‘good life’ in the communitarian framework,” Francis said, while at the same time exalting a “selfish ideal…”
Francis said that libertarianism, “which is so fashionable today,” is a more radical form of the individualism that asserts that “only the individual gives value to things and to interpersonal relations and therefore only the individual decides what is good and what is evil.”
Rabbits cannot compete, so their only hope of asserting their will over others is that the group will force the individual to do what they want. View that scheme from the perspective of free resources, and free dopamine. It is a deep evolutionary desire for free resources and free dopamine, applied to the field of interpersonal interactions. Here the Pope demands that every individual do what the group wants – as long as what the group wants is leftist tyranny.
The Pope is a rabbit. I don’t judge, we are all products of our genes and our past. But clearly the Pope has an r-selected psychology, and as the Pope he is not exposed to the stimuli which would reverse that programming. When you have that programming, you cannot fathom why anyone would not expend resources freely for others, in a bid to minimize conflict and aggression.
As he looks out on the world, the Pope sees the sea change. Whether it is immigration, the rise of the right, or just people growing more protective of their earned income, people are changing, growing harder, and his brain is programmed to find that repulsive. Of course there is not much he can do, other than pray.
These institutions are reflections of the dominant environment when they are formed. The Pope took over during a time of peak r. I expect the Church will have a sea change of its own as the K-shift sets in.
Spread r/K Theory, because there is no harm in not wanting to be beholden to everyone else
[…] The Rabbit Pope Wants The Hardened To Soften And Cede To The Group […]
Why is the Pope so r? He is basically a fair skinned (much lighter than the swarthy Bavarian he succeeded), blue-eyed Celto-Germanic. His ancestors come from core Europe – Piedmont, a mainstream European province in the cold Alps of extreme NW Italy.
I suspect it is bc he has the neotonous pedoface of Lindsay Graham. IME gay men are extremely hedinistic (r trait) & this trumps their ethnic nackground. Frivolous like a typical gay.
Matthew 5:
18 For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. 19 Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
Calling for more communal activity in a time of r sounds very r. Calling for more communal (read in-grouping) in a time of K sounds very K.
Think on that. A selfish or individual r in a K will do everything it can to pass on its genes and damn group solidarity. Who cares if cucking happens as long as that r gets ahead.
This is where motiviation is a KEY on whether something is r or K. I can read everything said in the second quote and see it as a K mind set.
The first quote would tend to seem more r than K, but it is also more in dealing with universals rather than individual cases. That is, something I’m not sure fits in teh r/K without more thought. For instance, is a bread thief deserving of mercy in his theft? Why is he stealing it? A Universal says “there are minimal standard sentencing.”
And being a hard ass for government seems r to me. I think of them as “what ever is not prohibited is mandated and whatever is not mandatated is prohibited.” So single momming has gone from being disapproved under K prior to 1960 to being mandated under r in post 2010. Or that not just tollernance but mandated acceptance and participation in activities. etc etc.
All that said, The current Pope seems more r leaning that K leaning
This pope picks and chooses from the Bible what he wants others to believe. He is a plant. The Catholic Church, has always been based on lies, like priestly confession, communion, and ritual in place of belief, but it has always been solid on family and abortion. Now, the Catholic Church is backing off on both. Given the pope’s exalted position of power within the Church, one must assume he is either compromised or a willing participant. If we knew this creature’s true history, I think we would find proof of sodomy.
“Libertarianism” is indeed a truly pernicious and evil ideology. Human beings are social animals and truly K-selected specimens seek out groups to strengthen themselves. r-selection is individualist; K-selection is collectivist in the sense that it recognizes humans were meant to function in groups, as an extended, distributed organism.
I have libertarian urges, so I see it slightly differently. I’m just not designed for large groups and fitting in to expectations. I suppose to a hard K that is evil, but to me, if I was in the spread out wilderness, there would be no groups, so my psychology would just be perfectly mated to the environment. Fight if I have to, avoid if I can, and focus on beating out the harsh environment as it tries to kill me.
The Church is likely headed for schism among European, African and L.American branches. And pointing to the Pope’s psychology- he was exposed to hardship when he was younger. It obviously failed to toughen him up. He is a very ‘r’ individual. On the surface his words appear good, but a second look reveals the despicable. He wants us to bring in migrants, while he does not, he wants us to ignore our laws, while he keeps the ones he wants. His church makes no attempt to convert the migrants, and even allows muslim imams to recite homilies in arabic inside the Vatican calling for the destruction of Christianity. Then while the faithful are raped and decimated, the Pope commands them to “turn the other cheek” and never resort to violence- even to defend themselves. Well I’ll say this to the faithful, we have already turned the other cheek again and again. Now its “Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth”. I don’t know much, but I do know a certainty. The way to lose a fight, everytime, is never fight back. And the way to destroy your nation is to make it lawless. Pope Francis is not a defender of the faithful.
Speaking for myself, hardship has hardened me and made me more conservative. I know people who because of hardship have turned to drugs. Strangely they became more liberal.