Conservatives don’t know anything about the person they voted for. They don’t know anything about how their government functions. They don’t know anything about their Constitution.
I promise they don’t know what an amygdala is or what it does.
For the curious ones, from Psychology Today:
“A larger amygdala is primarily associated with increased anxiety, heightened emotional reactivity, and stress-related disorders, often acting as a hyper-active “threat detector” Symptoms frequently include persistent fearfulness, depression, irritability, and hypervigilance, as the brain over-processes neutral stimuli as threats.”
Whoever made the original meme is an absolute moron.
FWIW, wp:Amygdala.
So, the amygdala doesn’t just impact fear response, it also does anger, anxiety, and stress. An overactive amygdala negatively impacts your ability to think clearly.
Just like alligators. They’re so ornery because they have all them teeth and no toothbrush
Well looks like mama was wrong!
I understood that reference
Which should mean that it would be implicated in conservative thought processes, being as they are so fear-and-anger-driven in everything they do.
it’s a bit of a “chicken and egg” problem, but yes studies show that conservatives typically have an overactive amygdala. now, is it overactive because they’re conservative, or are they conservative because it’s overactive? hard to say.
I’d say it’s the first one. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen conservatives that had no brain whatsoever.
we cant give in to the thinkers!
No worries, conservatives have no use for thinking anyways.
OMG they are so detached from reality that they are bragging about being terrified?
I’m guessing they think it helps them wake up and see the truth that they are being exploited on, while they see people with a smaller amygdala as like mindless sheep that just takes in any info and takes that as doctrine.
The thing that they don’t consider though, is that fear and anger is often a form of control.
It’s because they think we take in information the same way they do.
The process in which they construct understanding:
- Feel something (id)
- Come up with an explanation that satisfies id. (Super Ego)
- End process
How real understanding is best constructed:
- Feel something
- Come up with an explanation that satisfies id.
- Ego passes the explanation over to Super Ego.
- Super Ego looks for any aspect of the explanation unsupported by objective fact.
- If a gap of knowledge is discovered, ask why recursively until you cannot ask why any more.
- Super Ego passes explanation back to id via Ego again.
- Id tells you if the explanation feels like it’s bulletproof.
- Go to sleep because that was a lot of hard cognitive work and you deserve it, and the other person didn’t do any of this work.
- Understand that the other person that opposes you likely didn’t work as hard as you to disprove yourself.
- Listen to them call you lazy for not doing the work.
- Present Day
You can’t change minds if you don’t know how their minds work.
Ah, the typical nazi idea of correlating random body measurements with complex behavioral and emotional patterns.
You mean the Brit/American eugenics idea.
Hitler was a great fan of these racists so he sent a dr Mengele to study the superior Nordic race at Carnegie’s American Eugenics Society.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eugenics_Society_Exhibit_(1930s)._Image_from_Wellcome_Library.jpg
HA HA take that COMMIE you’re braver than me due to your genetic superiority! ^oh ^wait
I didn’t have fascists scientifically proving that they’re cowards on my 2026 bingo card.
It’s still just as funny as the flat Earthers that keep accidentally proving that the Earth is round
It’s still just as funny as the flat Earthers that keep accidentally proving that the Earth is round
Which is itself extra funny because I believe they both knew this and measured its circumference in ancient Egypt using two faraway towers, if I’m remembering that episode of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos correctly.
Eratosthenes, to within 10% of the modern value. They think, I don’t think they’re 100% on the exact size of his measurement unit. Stadia?
It’s still just as funny as the flat Earthers that keep accidentally proving that the Earth is round
And somehow they never go “oh shit, maybe I should reevaluate my beliefs based on the evidence” – instead it’s “well the evidence must be wrong”
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The better educated you are, the more left leaning you tend to be:
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2016/04/26/a-wider-ideological-gap-between-more-and-less-educated-adults/Conservatives tend to be dismissive of science and empirical evidence:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160713172717.htmHigher verbal IQ correlates with liberal attitudes:
https://www.psypost.org/verbal-iq-predicts-political-participation-and-liberal-attitudes-twice-as-strongly-as-performance-iq/Whatever this dumb shit is, is a reaction to that. As usual, they project their own shortcomings on their enemies.
In any case, what it comes down to is basic empathy and morality. If you care for others, you tend to vote left. If you care for only yourself and your self-interests, you vote right. There is no debating that, it’s stated right there in the fucking ideology.
How can you not mention the awesome studies on bullshit.
https://jspp.psychopen.eu/index.php/jspp/article/download/6565/6565.pdf/
Conservatives fall for bullshit.
I would also add that somewhere between 21% - 25% of the American population is functionally illiterate. This means that people can read short messages, texts and headlines if they focus, but are basically incapable of comprehending and internalizing written material more abstract or complicated than a meme or tweet.
The far-right MAGA conservatives who are ride-or-die with Trump no matter what happens also seem to line up pretty close to this percentage. I don’t think anyone has done a direct study of a connection or even correlation, but I would put money on the bet that the Venn diagram is a perfect circle.
About a third of the illiterates in the US just don’t speak English. They may be literate just fine in their native tongue, but that rate captures English literacy.
I’m not saying that that number is wrong per se but it would be better to see a curve based on age brackets
If for instance 25% of adults are over 90 then it wouldn’t be surprising if they couldn’t read properly. (Not saying that that’s true, just as an example)
I appreciate the effort but conservatives are not reading any studies.
Kinda like they refuse to admit we all came from Africa and and thus our ancestors are black.
Fear is, famously, an excellent impetus for rational decision-making. (/s just in case)
Fear and rage force you to use unreliable heuristics instead of critical thinking and analysis resulting in poorer choices, it’s why so much propaganda relies on triggering those emotional states to get you to stop thinking and accept the message. Less fear in decision making is a beneficial mutation.
I’ve been saying this forever, but, like, these people really need to go back and reread Chicken Little. They’re getting Fox News, getting scared, and reacting based off of what Fox is telling them, and not what the Chicken Little’s are telling them.
The sky is not falling.
Take a deep breath, calm the fuck down, and chill. Everything’s okay. As long as we stop freaking out.
Ha ha ha, Chicken Little is way above the reading level of most Conservatives.
But I saw that TV show too. They got Meth
Except everything isn’t okay… Everything is actually really, really bad. Not for me personally, as a white cis man everything is fine. But for so many people the world is a bad and dangerous place right now, and that terrifies and stresses me the fuck out.
But, and hear me out, if the people that were constantly freaking out and terrified all of the time were to chill a little bit, the world would improve dramatically, almost instantaneously.
We are in a period of time where calmness is the most vital thing for our leaders and for the people.
And if you can’t make it yourself, store bought is fine.
There is no point in being scared and stressed for the sake of it. If you’re not channeling those emotions into real action, you’re really just better off chilling tf out until there is some real and immediate threat to stress about.
reread Chicken Little
If those people could read, they’d be … less upset, I guess.
“I ain’t no chicken, ‘n’ I gots the truck nuts t’ prove it!”
I’M AFRAID OF EVERYTHING LIKE A REAL MAN!
I’m autistic and have an oversized amygdala but that doesn’t stop me from being leftist. I just feel compassion for everyone human. Still struggling with the compassion for animals that I eat.
ironically i fear the SHIT out of right wingers, because they seem to actively want me to suffer before i die, for the crime of not being able to have a job
To be fair, they want everyone but themselves personally to suffer and die.
Which is itself a form of suffering, imagine the humanity they miss out on and what you’d be without it. Liberalism and fascism are ideologies that subsist on the concept that there is an imaginary amount of violence that can be inflicted outward to relieve internal suffering.
There are a lot of “liberals” in the United States who are actually leftists, they’ve just been propagandized their whole lives into believing that’s what liberal is, and that “commies” are right-wing authoritarians. We need to awaken them.
Not all the “libs” are Bill Maher.
I can’t tell if you’re joking, or if you actually meant to suggest that liberalism in the US – the most violent and destructive ideological hegemony in human history – could be socialism in a trenchcoat because some liberals sleep better with welfare liberal policies as opposed to the more honest and open genocide.
You know socialism was already popular in the US, right? For fifty years before WW2 it gained traction and its advocates successfully clawed away concessional labour rights and social-welfare programs. Y’know what happened? It did improve the conditions for workers in the US; and the institutions of white supremacy and patriarchy effectively disarmed its popularity once privileged classes got theirs. You’re claiming to be a communist of some sort, yet have neglected a material analysis of this history. They will reward people who subscribe to liberalism with better material security, and we know it works very well.
Liberals in the US believe what they believe because they correctly identify that so long as this system exists, they will be guaranteed something above any colonized people. They aren’t fucking stupid, they don’t have to have theoretical language to apply intuitive knowledge on their position in an empire. Liberalism is a result of their position in that society, not some form of victimization that compromises some innate moral purity.
When I say they suffer, it’s because of the fundamental ways in which a person who subscribes to that system must sever their connection to humanity and the world to maintain their comfort. It isn’t because they’re powerless.
Or there is no benefit to introspection. there is no party left of democrats, so it doesn’t change my vote either way.
Learned helplessness.
Its a death cult
The fear of dying of starvation should motivate you to contribute in society ::: spoiler spoiler /s :::
Veganism is my unattended moral compromise. I am positive that future generations will look at us and our factory farming and, aghast, see us as the monsters as we are - much like we look back at slaveowners, even those who were against the institution at the time.
Since I am not living in or near the wild and not hunting for my own food, it is clear to me that veganism is the only real moral choice, and yet I still participate.
I am complicit in this delightful supreme pizza and complicit in this breaded chicken sandwich.
I feel your shame friend. We have so little opportunity to do the right thing, and we still fail.
Factory farming is the problem, not animal husbandry. If the whole world went vegan, do you think the vegetables we eat would not be altered to better serve yield rather than quality? Do you think pesticides would not be used in staggering levels? Do you think vegetables aren’t alive so it’s okay to eat them? If it doesn’t have a face, it’s cool to eat? Life is sustained by consuming other life, the world over. I agree that industrial farming is disgusting and cruel, but not just to animals.
Killing animals for taste pleasure is morally wrong, weather it happens in a factory farm or on that mythical uncles farm that tottaly loves and pets his animals to death.
And yes, it’s ok to kill plants because they do not feel pain. They can’t feel pain because they lack a nervous system to do so as well as an evolutionary reason for pain to exist.
And even if plants feel pain, it takes MUCH more plants to feed animals to then feed humans.
It isn’t morally wrong, it goes against your morals maybe, but that doesn’t make it wrong. We are allowed to disagree and you are free to choose the diet you prefer, as are the rest of us.
Nah, it’s morally wrong and if you are honest you will actually agree. Let me explain:
Let’s set a moral baseline that we both agree with. Shooting a random person that has done no harm to anyone in the head without their explicit consent is morally bad, yes?
Now, what is different about, say, a pig that makes it less than morally bad to kill the pig? If we then apply that difference to that random human again, is it now less than morally bad to kill them?
The honest answer (and one that I can at least accept) is: there is no such difference.
What is your answer?
The pig is food. I will eat the pig. I won’t eat the human. The pig isn’t indiscriminately murdered, it is slaughtered for food. We as a society still think it is morally right to kill someone convicted of a crime in some places. While I don’t agree with that, those states do. If morals can be grey, it’s because they are. Morality is a human construct. What’s moral today can be immoral tomorrow.
So if someone declares you food, is it now moral for them to slit your throat and butcher you?
the “name the trait” argument is so well known vegans just call it “ntt”. they’re not here in good faith; they think they have a gotcha.
“what is different about a pig that makes it less than morally bad to kill the pig?”
oh, the classic rhetorical trap of “name the trait” which always devolves into a no-true-scotsman. on its face it’s purely a spectrum fallacy. the inability to identify a singular trait or even a set of traits that differentiate humans from pigs doesn’t change the fact that they are fundamentally different.
please, no one fall for this line of discussion. it’s just an exercise in shaming and time-wasting.
“I can’t answer this, so it must be a trick.”
Ok then.
it takes MUCH more plants to feed animals to then feed humans.
most of the plants fed to animals are parts of plants we can’t or won’t eat. a great example is soy: we run over 4/5 of the global crop through an oil press and extract what we want, and feed the leftover plant matter to animals. no more plants are harmed in this process, and we conserve resources by getting food back from the animals.
And yes, it’s ok to kill plants because they do not feel pain
you can’t prove this
what a gish gallop. you sure you didn’t have any more righteous claims too stack in?
I was directly adressing the points brought up by the other person. What did you contribute?
Killing animals for taste pleasure is morally wrong
no one does that, anyway. but even if they did, what is wrong with it? eating animals is fine.
Farming is already optimized for yield.
Not to the levels you can expect if it is all industrialized. You are correct though. A strawberry from 50 years ago tastes a million times better than the monstrosities we buy today as a quick example.
Trust me, the more explorations I do on the nature of consciousness, the more I wrestle with all of that.
I don’t believe that it is inherently wrong to kill in order to eat. But as a species we don’t. Which isn’t to say there aren’t members of our species who very much do still need to kill to eat.
But I don’t need to kill to eat, and I’ve outsourced that killing so it feels like more of an abstraction than it is. I can at the very least acknowledge this.
Which I think is almost worse… think about concentration/extermination camps (which I think our animal industry is basically)
And it’s perfectly healthy to be vegan (maybe even more healthy at this point when done right, than meat consumption).
My main reason though for that is less moral than just wanting to be less wasteful, i.e. meat is just inefficient. I predict that we at some point will move past meat consumption, it’s just not necessary, even when considering taste…
Plants don’t have nervous systems, which appear to be what enables suffering
Did you mean to say plants instead of animals, or…?
I’m not even sure about plants not having something similar as a nervous system. They live on different timescale, but it’s impressive what e.g. Trees in forests are capable of (with a little help of funghi)
Yep, sure did. Thanks for the correction
The smell of cut grass is the grass warning other grass that doom is upon them. Plants communicate in ways we can’t understand in the same way as they don’t make noise. They don’t like being harvested anymore than an animal does.
And how do you suppose that warning response leads to qualia?
Yes?!
Still struggling with the compassion for animals that I eat
not trying to preach but in my experience the only thing that soothes your conscience once you’re to this point is to go vegan
I feel bad for the forks and spoons in the drawer which didn’t get used that day… My amygdala must be an absolute fuckin’ HOG
Still struggling with the compassion for animals that I eat.
Drop acid and watch Samsara
The best solution to that struggle is to not eat animals
It’s worth buying your meat from places with good practices
I’m fortunate enough to have some permaculture farms nearby
that doesn’t stop me from being leftist
It’s because you’re autistic!
Fun fact: Conservativism can be linked to Lead and/or Mercury exposure
Or brain damage
Without clicking I knew who you linked to.
There’s no better man than Fettermanas an example of brain damage
Anyone who is 50+ is lead brained.
I’m a leftist and I have an anxiety disorder! Checkmate, conservatives
“I’m afraid more often and that’s why I’m a terrible person!”
“I’m more scared than you!” Is a weird flex.
Went to a Mediterranean restaurant for dinner with my wife. We celebrated her birthday, and so decided to check the dessert menu. We generally don’t get dessert, just never really lie thing, but this menu has a dessert called amygdalopita, which piques my interest. Why would they name it after part of the brain?
And so upon further research, we discovered that the Greek word αμύγδαλο (amýgdalo) means almond. And this really got my wheels turning, because it brought back memory of EMT classes, way back in like 2003, where they talked about the amygdala being named such due tonit being almond shaped.
So I like a dessert that not only tasted great, but also helped me make connections, maybe fire off some neurons I hadn’t in a while.
In Flemish/Dutch the toncills (Tonsillae palatinae) are called almonds
You ate brains for dessert?!
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