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I just took the test at https://t.co/NubkaHaS2C and my first reaction is . . . What business do these questions have on a political ideology test?? 👇
🙉“When you are troubled, it’s better not to think about it, but to keep busy with more cheerful things.” 🍀 “Some people are naturally unlucky.” 🎨 “Abstract art that doesn’t represent anything shouldn’t be considered art at all.”
It’s revealing of the inner workings of our political psychology 🧠⚙️🔦 Art realism has to do with Accepting our lot has to do with Be with it as it is. It’s all very realistic. Almost Buddhist, actually . . . All three questions are part of the same axis.
The next question makes the connection to politics explicit . . . https://t.co/gzOjCjn0ox
There’s wisdom here, and it points to something I think a lot about: The Right seems to have better wisdom for individuals: acceptance of as-is, a noble, awakened spirit to continue living under conditions. https://t.co/6CMV7LNMmd
This is why Jordan Peterson blew up on the Right. It’s why it resonated. There’s truth for the individual there. The Left seems to have better wisdom for society as a whole: a fervour to make things better, a systems approach to what could be. https://t.co/iBZ5DQ4V5D
In a trivial sense, every proposition is true, really, once you reframe proposition X to: ”my background factors led me at this moment to feel X” ”Ah yes, you’re right, your background factors would lead you to believe that.” There’s something there https://t.co/yFaxGm6eRb
Jonathan Haidt and company go to town with this stuff. https://t.co/r10VeyDwty https://t.co/H4b9EVKzjG Here’s a TED talk that didn’t make me bash my head in: https://t.co/yTXjHMNi7u
Core thesis: Just like “lust” evolved as an emotion in our head . . . to keep animals reproducing . . . so did the feeling of morality. That sense that somebody is a bad person? It was a way for social primates to cohere as a group and enforce normed survival.
Consider disgust. You feel it at the man who left a plastic bottle in the forest. (Or maybe you feel it at tattooed people, I don’t know.) Either way, isn’t it weird we feel disgust . . . a reaction meant for food . . . towards people??
One simplistic story is: Disgust evolved as a reaction in omnivores to keep them from eating dangerous stuff. Since the architecture was already there, Disgust got co-operated by evolution to be pointed towards Bad things like adultery that threatened the survival of the group.
(Jonathan Haidt can be a bit wishy washy; Peter DeScioli is another good start to the literature: https://t.co/BZTOKKvBYp)