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Political extremism, of any variety, comes from an intense dissatisfaction with the status quo, where 'status quo' is going to be interpreted based on the person's own standing and condition. If they are personally doing well, they're obviously going to interpret things as going well, if not, they won't. But if you have high levels of anxiety or fear, naturally that'll push you to the kinds of thinking most people won't see as reasonable. I wouldn't say it's an absolute cause and effect, but it's got to a tendency. That, and an obsession with politics could act as a kind of surrogate for other personal problems, or act as a kind of hobby in itself.
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Oct 3, 2016 08:13
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I can't agree with the assertion that it's just 'extreme' right/left, conceivably you could have an insane conspiracy centrist. I mean, if you have someone only slightly left of center believing in crystals or whatever, versus this rationalized conservative thinkpiece, does being closer to one extreme necessarily imply the latter has mental illness? Not so. But while it's not a necessary relationship, I don't think it's wrong to say that people who veer outside tend to think unusually, and that's on the one hand to be expected. People are different, your distribution of people on the spectrum is going to be a bell curve, like most anything else. On the other hand, we need to consider what motivates people to believe things, and in particular, what's going to motivate someone to lean left or right. The answer is probably Unconscious response to unusual or disgusting stimulus. Liberals tend to display a more open response, while conservatives tend to display more anxiety. Now that sort of makes sense, if you look at what those words mean. If you're an anxious person, you're going to be averse to changes, any changes, that seem unfamiliar. So, OP, the reason your friend found that his patients held right-wing views, was probably because they all had anxiety or paranoia problems, that naturally fit with a right-wing worldview. That shouldn't be surprising, anxiety and paranoia are generally bad things, but more relevantly, are going to create situations where your patients are more likely to be baker-acted/institutionalized. Someone extremely liberal, probably wouldn't be treated the same way, because they wouldn't been seen as threatening. It'd be naive to assume there's no symmetry here, so I'm sure the counter-part to your patients exist, they're just, like, out there, man. Something I've always wondered though, is whether you could have your cake and eat it too, when it comes to these kind of political discussions. Can you introduce changes to society while simultaneously guaranteeing that such changes won't induce anxiety? So Eg - if we're talking immigration for example, can you settle new (arbitrarily selected) people in the country, while having a structure in place that makes the ethnic/cultural tensions impossible? Because if you can get that, if such a structure existed, politics as we know it would be a 'solved' problem. Here's the optimal policy, QED. Woolie Wool posted:You have to understand that "'authoritarian idealists" would see you as a burden on society and murder you, right? Whatever your romantic (in the classical sense of romanticism, not in terms of "people you want to gently caress") inclinations might be, they are not your friends! rudatron fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Oct 4, 2016 |
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Oct 4, 2016 16:19
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So first off, I don't think it's constructive to worry too much about bias - yes, people have confirmation bias, and other biases, that we should be aware of, but you cannot start your thinking from the conclusion that your thinking is faulty. It's just not practical. You have to do the best to mitigate irrationality, it's important to have self-doubt. But, I mean, you've got to own what you think, right? If it turns out you're wrong, accept it and move on. The faster you do that the better off you are. I think what matters more than exact policy positions, or knowledge, is the process that people arrive at those positions. If you irrationally believes something that happens to be correct, does that make you less crazy? Not necessarily. If you had no reason to think that, you're still out there. So if you look back in time, or across countries, certainly the majority of people can believe strange and crazy things, without themselves being crazy. I mean that's basically what religion is. For most people, your direct experience is going to form your beliefs. So if you're embedded in a society where trusted authority figures say This Is The Way Things Are, you're going to believe that, because how can you really say otherwise? If you're a part of a community, you're strongly incentivized to just accept those community social norms, because you don't want to get ostracized. That's not strictly rational in terms of belief, it doesn't really make it more likely to be true, but it is the behavior of sane human beings. So when you're seeing this broad shift in, say, the GOP political positions or the country as a whole, I don't think that's got anything to do with an increase in mental illness, that's a shift cultural or subcultural norms, in response to mass media and public events. In the case of the GOP, I personally think it's a consequence of the Southern Strategy embedding racism, by tying that racism to opposition to Big Government projects and welfare specifically. The result of that strategy being that these dogwhistles have taken on a life of their own, even as they exist alongside explicit racism that's just now reasserting itself. But I imagine there are a thousand theories you can throw out there. Regardless, that's a discussion for sociologists and political scientists, not psychologists. But I do think you can look at what some people with odd views say, and how they justify their beliefs, and conclude that they're not normal, based on that justification they use. Going further than that, I personally don't see how certain views can reasonably be justified, with the wealth of knowledge we have today, and so without necessarily hearing the justification, I do feel that some beliefs signal a confused mind. But they're the pretty cut and dried things. Some of the real, deep, philosophical questions, that ones that form the bedrock of ideologies, are I think unresolved, or at least uncertain enough that I can't really hold it against someone if they happen to take a different view on than I do.
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Oct 5, 2016 04:08
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Bob le Moche posted:People in this thread need to read this book
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Oct 8, 2016 04:53
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