This article from Crooks and Liars by Susie Madrak cites a "Study: Oh Yes, We Can Change Conservative Minds." Here's the problem:
"Fariss Samarrai, author of the study, American Liberals and Conservatives Think as if From Different Cultures, states, '... political thought was somewhat malleable. They discovered that if they trained holistic thinkers to think analytically, for example, to match scarf with mitten, they would subsequently start viewing the world more liberally (though not on economic policy). Likewise, liberals, if trained to think holistically, would come to form more conservative opinions.'"
What is the
possibility the Right Wing Noise Machine and their minions are even open
to training? Have you ever witnessed a Fox-News-viewing-Limbaugh-listening
poltroon willing to consider for even one second to look at anything
differently? We're not talking about house-breaking a dog here. We're
talking about making someone change their world view, which is much harder
than training a dog to go pee outside.
These articles make me crazy. It's just another example of mushy-headed liberals trying one more time to figure out how to get crazy stupid people to stop being crazy stupid people. The real studies nobody wants to talk about are how the actual brain structure of conservatives is different from liberals.
According to Wikipedia...
"... A 2011 study by cognitive neuroscientist Ryota Kanai's group at University College London published in Current Biology, found a correlation between differences in political views and differences in brain structures in a convenience sample of students from University College London."
More here:
"Differences in Conservative and Liberal Brains -- 16 peer-reviewed studies show liberals and conservatives physiologically different."
Loopy Digression Department
Smoking literally physically changes the
brain. The brain develops extra receptors to accommodate the large doses
of nicotine from tobacco. The more you smoke, the longer you smoke, the more
nicotine receptors are created in the brain. The resulting expanded receptor
pool contributes to the craving and agony of smoking withdrawal. Non-smokers
don't "get" why smokers have such a hard time quitting because they don't have
chunks of their brains screaming for MORE NICOTINE. They don't
understand that the real problem isn't a lack of desire to quit smoking,
poor judgment, lack of will power or poor money management skills. The real
problem is how to deal with a brain that has been physically
re-structured to need nicotine. And how does one go about restructuring
their brain? Sounds kinda hard doesn't it?
So ...
How the hell
would a liberal go about getting a conservative to change his/her brain
structure? It is tantamount to asking a conservative to levitate by next
Thursday. Won't happen. Can't happen. It's one of those TWNH
moments...
That
Will
Never
Happen
And
then there's this:
Are Liberals and atheists smarter? Intelligent people
have values novel in human evolutionary history. According to Science Daily, a study by Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science, argues...
"...that humans are evolutionarily designed to be conservative, caring mostly about their family and friends ..."
So, zillions of years ago a "conservative" brain came in pretty handy. That helped the family/tribe unit to survive. The paleo-conservatives did whatever it took to get whatever was needed to keep their DNA rolling down through the ages. The paleo-conservative took care of his/her own and told everybody else, "I've got mine ... Screw You." That's being "evolutionarily familiar." Acquisitiveness is an evolutionarily familiar trait that kept the paleo-conservatives alive during the lean times. Millions of years later, completely over-the-top acquisitiveness is the hallmark of the out-of-control, voracious 1 percent.
Kanazawa continues,
"... being liberal, caring about an indefinite number of genetically unrelated strangers they never meet or interact with, is evolutionarily novel."
So empathy is
an evolutionarily novel trait. Above all it is the single trait that could lead
to the survival of the planet and everything that lives on it. The
evolutionarily novel human beings care about the survival of their DNA
... and everybody else's as well.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
