I was watching the coverage for the March For Our Lives, and marveling at what a disaster it was for the left, from a cognitive neuroscience perspective.
Right now, our nation is divided on the issue of guns. About 60% believe gun ownership increases safety, and thus is progun and anti-government-control. On the other side, 38% is anti-gun.
That is the backdrop to the gun control debate. About 6 in 10 people oppose gun control, which means their amygdalae light up with uncomfortable aversive at the image of others espousing gun control.
Now speaking as one of those people, I would feel uncomfortable if an intelligent, likable person of high intellectual status were to advocate intelligently for gun control. But my discomfort would be solely due to the unpleasant idea of gun control itself.
But watching the coverage for March For Our Lives, all I saw were the idiots in the media preaching to me that I should subvert my personal security to appease a bunch of weak, obnoxious, narcissistic children who were clearly being propped up in their phony machinations by duplicitious leftist phonies trying to manipulate everyone. What I saw was hitting far more amygdala buttons than just the idea of being disarmed. The kids were obnoxious. The media was stupid, in that it was acting as if children to running our government was actually a good idea. The whole thing was dishonest. There was even some sort of strange instinctual status-based-amygdala-trigger it was hitting, where a tiny coward who hid in a closet was trying to smugly give me an order to disarm.
Between the David Hoggs and the shaved headed teenaged lesbians posing and preening as they campaigned to have government agents forcibly disarm me, what had been a minor amygdala stimulus before, solely in response to the idea of being disarmed, was fleshed out to trigger multiple diverse instinctual amygdala pathways simultaneously until it was all so massively amygdala-triggering that I began to feel overcome with an urge to destroy random things in my living room.
Attaching all of that amygdala to the idea of gun control, in the 60% of Americans who already opposed it, can only serve to increase gun owner turnout a few points in the next election. And given how obnoxious the kids are and how phony the production looked, I will not be surprised if several percentage points of anti-gunners find themselves going pro-gun.
This is a measure of how much we are diverging. Leftists are losing the ability to calibrate their manipulation with respect to normal people, as the population goes more K, and they head more r.
Their manipulation appears, to them, flawless and irresistible. And yet to us, it is only reinforcing the triggers which are driving us K with still more triggers that are totally unrelated to the initial trigger. What we used to support solely for intellectual reasons, is now further driven by other triggers relating to deep instincts over things ranging from social hierarchies, to contempt, to frustration with stupidity, narcissism, dishonesty, and other aspects of personality which leftists are totally blind to.
It is an interesting phenomenon which I suspect we will see more as time goes on. Leftists have always been diverging from what was normal in human psychology. What saved them these last few decades was that everyone else was heading leftward as well due to the resource levels. But now the population is beginning to head rightward. As it does, the left is beginning to panic, and retreat into social bubbles of likeminded leftists to avoid being triggered by bad think, and as they do, they are losing what little ability they had to actually affect the opinions of normal Americans.
All I can say is, please, please make David Hogg the face of the modern gun control movement, as he calls the politicians whose votes he needs bitches, the Police racists, and gun owners selfish assholes.
Tell others about r/K Theory, because leftists are just obnoxious
> Their manipulation appears, to them, flawless and irresistible. And yet to us, it is only reinforcing the triggers which are driving us K.
Indeed. Let’s invite Jonathan Haidt…
“When I speak to liberal audiences about the three “binding” foundations – Loyalty, Authority, Sanctity – I find that many in the audience don’t just fail to resonate; they actively reject these concerns as immoral. Loyalty to a group shrinks the moral circle; it is the basis of racism and exclusion, they say. Authority is oppression. Sanctity is religious mumbo-jumbo whose only function is to suppress female sexuality and justify homophobia.
In a study I did with Jesse Graham and Brian Nosek, we tested how well liberals and conservatives could understand each other. We asked more than two thousand American visitors to fill out the Moral Foundations Questionnaire. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out normally, answering as themselves. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as they think a “typical liberal” would respond. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as a “typical conservative” would respond. This design allowed us to examine the stereotypes that each side held about the other. More important, it allowed us to assess how accurate they were by comparing people’s expectations about “typical” partisans to the actual responses from partisans on the left and the right)’ Who was best able to pretend to be the other?”
BOOM:
“The results were clear and consistent. Moderates and conservatives were most accurate in their predictions, whether they were pretending to be liberals or conservatives. Liberals were the least accurate, especially those who described themselves as “very liberal.” The biggest errors in the whole study came when liberals answered the Care and Fairness questions while pretending to be conservatives. When faced with questions such as “One of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal” or ”Justice is the most important requirement for a society,” liberals assumed that conservatives would disagree.”
Summary:
“- His main insight is simple but powerful: liberals understand only two main moral dimensions, whereas conservatives understand all five.
– Liberals care about harm and suffering (appealing to our capacities for sympathy and nurturing) and fairness and injustice. All human cultures care about these two things but they also care about three other things: loyalty to the in-group, authority and the sacred.
– As Haidt puts it: ‘It’s as though conservatives can hear five octaves of music, but liberals respond to just two, within which they have become particularly discerning.’”
https://www.conservativehome.com/the-deep-end/2012/04/why-liberals-dont-understand-conservatives.html
https://theindependentwhig.com/haidt-passages/haidt/conservatives-understand-liberals-better-than-liberals-understand-conservatives/
JONATHAN HAIDT: When I began this work, I was very much a liberal. And over time, in doing the research for my book and in reading a lot of conservative writing, I’ve come to believe that conservative intellectuals actually are more in touch with human nature. They have a more accurate view of human nature.
We need structure. We need families. We need groups. It’s okay to have memberships and rivalries. All that stuff is okay, unless it crosses the threshold into Manichaeism. So I think that it would be very difficult to run a good society without resting much on loyalty, authority and sanctity. I think you need to use those.
https://theindependentwhig.com/haidt-passages/haidt/haidt-conservatives-understand-human-nature-better-than-liberals/
https://charlescarrollsociety.com/2017/01/04/a-liberal-who-comes-close-to-the-truth-about-conservatives-jonhaidt-patriot/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN42ZLwNFBY
BONUS: Rabbitry simulator, the video game. A bit long, but both hilarious and completely fck’ed up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll4sI0aiX0E
Amazing! Thank you very much for sharing that Bob. Have a great day!
Rules for gun confiscation:
1) Those that advocate guns be confiscated must personally collect the guns.
2) No guns may be used to collect the guns.
Good luck.
I’m going to have to disagree with this on moral grounds. You see, if they aren’t armed, I’m not allowed to SHOOT THEM. So pretty much the same relationship that I have with the DMV and the county planning commission. Therefore please send armed government agents. Thank you.
http://img.4plebs.org/boards/pol/image/1522/04/1522041475757.jpg
Lol, read the panflets the Antifa scumbags were giving to the kids on the rally. They want to kill whites. Deep state is trying to turn kids into members of the paramilitary groups of the deep state. What could go wrong?
Read the first chapter of The Turner Diaries and tell me it doesn’t feel oddly similar to our present vector in more ways than one.
Read it, you won’t regret it.
I just read about that book on Wikipedia (yes, I know…) and although I haven’t read it, one thing I do know: the cabal DOES want to eliminate whites form the face of the Earth. Ever wonder why no MSM outlet even mentions the overt white genocide in South Africa? It’s simply because it goes against the neoliberal/progressive narrative that whites are the origin and reason of all evils in the world and that exterminating whites is the only way to fix the world.
Their going to be in for a rude awakening, because many many many people would rather go down fighting if the cabal and leftists manage to kickstart a civil war, and lets not forget we are on the brick of a massive global economic meltdown in the form of Sovereign Debt Crisis and Pension Fund Crisis, which will make people in-group automatically via instinctual bio-mechanics.
Strange and fascinating times indeed. Better get ready to rock, just in case the leftists and their overlords manage to kickstart a hot war.
What is aweing me every day is how everything we see is part of a controlled production. If the Cabal doesn’t want it in the narrative, it doesn’t matter how awful it is, it will not get airtime anywhere.
I was amazed and upset with all the doubling down, until I saw that kid’s face. Then I laughed and laughed. Go for it, piss-ant! lolololololololololol
I keep wondering how long we have to wait for there to be a radical change to K.
It’s even simpler than that. Remember, for 95% of people, politics is all identity.
So, what kind of person looks at the skinhead lesbian and a smarmy, smart assed foul mouthed jerk and thinks, “those are the kinds of kids I want to have”?
Excellent point, well made. Question: Do you think the same may be at work regarding the feminist #MeToo and the LGBT/transgender movements: in other words, laying the foundation for their own demise?
Every time I see that little catamite (hogg) I want to kick the living shit out of him. Would love to seem him knocked off the air by some embarrassing revelation…
I can somewhat confirm your observation.
I’ve flowed from a “moderately K” outlook as a “libertarian” varietal of conservative to a much more K outlook over the past ten years. Of course, I had no real exposure to the concept 10 years ago, at best I had a set of vague intuitions. I won’t get into biographical details for obvious reasons.
As for the gun grabbers, my feelings are a mixture of disgust, pity and anger.
I’m disgusted by gun-grabbers attempting to use children against me politically. Exploiting children in this way just sets me off, children should be protected, not used as supposedly unassailable mascots. It simply shows to me that they have nothing cogent to offer, they are just trying to exploit what they see as a hole in my psychology. Ten years ago, that might have worked. No longer.
I also feel pity for the kids — even Mr. Hogg. His father should have stopped this shit weeks and weeks ago. His son is not tall enough for this ride and will eventually come to regret all this “fame.” He’s taking too many positions that he’ll never be able to walk back. As a parent, in this age, a blank history is one of the best gifts you can give.
I’m also angry that these Leftists won’t take responsibility to protect themselves and want to marginally defend themselves by making me and mine a softer target (reducing the chance that they will be targeted).
I haven’t destroyed anything, however, I’m just motivated to improve myself and my preparedness.
Lots of evil people out there, but leftists don’t think they’re evil.
Pitcrew hatewatches so he has pushup rage fuel. This is how Pitcrew gets swole.
Pit — Same with me, except it’s burpees. They’re doing us a favor by providing motivation.
AC — Hang a heavy bag in the garage to save living-room furniture.
ATTENTION:
This reeks of a setup for a false flag.
The people pushing, protecting and financing antifa are using ignorant retarded kids, drug dealers, druggies, mentally ill transexuals, muslims and illegals to act like their para military groups.
These people don’t know jack shit, that is why they are prime useful idiot material.
They don’t care about anything but to vent their anger and to feel like they are victims and are rebelling against the system, and the system knows that and uses them to strengthen itself. Devilish.
It is completely plausible that the globalists and deep statists wil try to false flag the Hogg so they can further their agenda. It would be their best move at this point and time, and all the shills saying we should all stop talking about them confirm that shit from plausible to probable.
Read: http://boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/165544270/hogg-to-be-culled-soon
We have to get this into normiedome so the false flag can be averted.
I had figured the “sudden” “exposure” first that Camera Hogg was 27 and had been arrested in SC for meth and then that it wasn’t him — gave the media a target against the Right to use to trip us up — but then I saw a couple of Camera’s HUGE mis-steps in his ranting and raving (cause, what 17-yr-old, egged on my fame, media, and apparent adulation, CAN control his ranting?) — and then needed to QUICKLY direct attention away from his ranting, while they try to get him back under control… (Really, his “First Amendment protects our privacy against see-through backpacks (that the school is mandating) AT THE SAME TIME as he’s screaming that the Second Amendment must be crushed?!? How STUPID can he… oh, never mind…
This is why I love your site, AC. You give the “neuron-level” explanation for *why* SJWs always double-down.
I’m curious as to your thoughts on amygdala stimulation and developing “physiogamy is real.” That is, will physiogamy become “realer” to more people as amygdala light up from SJWs doubling down further? For those who saw the anti-gun Maoist rally, will seeing a Hogg-like soyboy in the wild now trigger hatred as opposed to mild disgust or disinterest?
Related: memes are another point of r/K divergence. The chans like to say “the left can’t meme.” But the memes serve different purposes for each group: r wants virtue-signaling memes as rabbit badges, whereas K wants dank truth shivs forged in a merciless environment like the chans.
I agree on both points. As amygdalae begin forming connections, those connections are relaxing, because they give a feeling of control. Meeting someone and having no idea who they are is subtly disconcerting, which is what drives the desire to find out who they are. But meeting someone like Hogg and being able to instantly size them up lends a feeling of control. That desire for that relaxation of being in control is what drives people to seek out sites that offer the insights to read people quickly. As amygdalae light up with the Apocalypse, you bet more and more people will seek that out. They will probably even adopt some wrong info, simply because it creates the feeling of control.
On Memes, the point you raise is interesting. We seem to know that amygdala stimulation is superior for our cause compared to simple status signaling about how awesome we and our cause are compared to the r’s. It is almost like we want to attack the r’s using their sense of comfort, while the r’s just want to reassure everybody that they are going to win. Never thought about that before…
I have seen and heard a preposterous premise from many “pro-safety” people, that there are NO “gun restrictions.” How can such an egregious lie sit untouched? They are said by Hollywood stars like Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Rock, opinion people like Chris Matthews, Angela Rye etc.
There are at least ten major forms of federal legislation, mostly “clarifying” and restricting gun ownership, and 50 separate state, numerous county, and even city laws.
Look see!
https://youtu.be/ZDgjOWjkdCM?t=21m46s
I’m surprised Ann let that one go!