What you're reacting to seems more like armchair guessing of people's motives (yeah that is B.S.)

I saw that other thread. I personally don't put much energy concerning how liberals abuse folk psychology — Saphsin

Yeah, to be clear, I'm referring specifically to trait-based, psychological, innate, yadda yadda yadda, means through which to interpret, predict, understand, etc. politics, individually speaking or by cultural phenomenon. Perhaps I need to find a fairly universal term to avoid misunderstanding. As much as I agree that such work ultimately amounts to "armchair guessing", unfortunately it's a considered as legitimate as conservative economics by the public, with plenty of book deals, lucrative grants and speaking opportunities to Harvard graduates.

That was just a suggestion and it wasn't even mine. It isn't my fault that people don't read critiques of Marx or his theories by reputable historians and other scholars. — Apollodorus

For clarities sake you need to do a better job distinguishing what is your suggestion or position, and when you are citing someone else's opinion (and maybe source it), since this has happened several times with you. I've read critiques of Marxism along with a notable biography of Marx and while some of those personal traits listed are more or less true of Marx the idea that Marxism was constructed by Marx for personal gain and power is inexcusably idiotic. I'm quite curious what braindead oaf actually posed this.

Regarding what Marxism is; the attempt to pin it to a specific disciplinary such as philosophy, economics, is pretty pointless, uninteresting, and yet this question continues to pop up on this forum, perhaps unsurprisingly by people who have read much of Marx, if at all.

To my mind, Marx formulated a methodology, viz. Historical Materialism (which you can read more about in the chapter on Feuerbach in The German Ideology), and Marxism is Historical Materialism through the lens of Marx, or in other words, an interpretation of Historical Materialism through Marx via his writing, where one can glean specific areas of philosophic and socio-economic interest, moral positions, and how some of these interests and positions etc. changed and developed over his life time.

We know that Marx as a student was rebellious and mischievous and that contemporary descriptions portray him as “intolerant”, “autocratic”, “malicious”, “domineering” and “power-obsessed”.

In short, could it be that Marxism is not a philosophy but an elaborate hoax designed to help Marx acquire influence and power, a hoax that perhaps started as a prank and later developed into something more serious? — Apollodorus

Another example of why political psychology is bad.

gah well that's quite upsetting.

The Bourgeois: Between History and Literature by Franco Moretti

Liberalism: A Counter-History by Domenico Losurdo — Maw

This was brilliant, can't recommend enough

This is also a psychological explanation, albeit one not rooted in personality traits but social conditioning — Joshs

Sure, I'll admit to getting lazy by virtue of how other people are responding. Such as the quote below:

From my understanding of it that premise is not stressed or pivotal to the theory. — praxis

The importance of the premise re: threat and conservative worldview was explicitly provided by the social psychologists and political scientists themselves. I took the time to emphasis those remarks and reexamine them after contradictory phenomenon was provided to the authors, so that they couldn't be avoided by commentators here, but congrats, you're attempting to do so anyway.

It wasn't so much a misunderstanding as a declining of your opening gambit. — Isaac

To be clear, any attempt to psychologically map out an explanation for why and how conservatives and liberals or whatever political appellation believe what they believe is nonsense. It's about as vague as astrology and just as predictive. — Maw

Not sure how my original post varies from what I've subsequently been saying, but whatever.

Is it possible that there are some personality traits that are statistically more commonly shared by liberals than conservatives and others more common to conservatives? If so, is there any value in identifying them? — Fooloso4

Sure, but these are just spurious correlations, therefore, no, there is no meaningful value in identifying them.

Reductionism is not a flaw limited political psychology, nor is it a flaw which exhausts political psychology. — Isaac

Maybe you're misunderstanding what I'm specifically I'm targeting here. I'm talking about political psychology that says liberals are liberals and conservatives are conservatives because of they have X Y Z behavioral or personality traits. This is in response with the claims of the opening post and subsequent claims from the original poster. Your original, response to me, however, seems to be about political advertising targeting those who have specific political priors. That is not what I'm referring to.

I'm in a one bedroom/one bathroom around 750 sq ft.

We really need to get everyone vaccinated and back on the streets, people are clearly getting way too horny

given that you also find it worthless there’s no point in bothering to explain — praxis

Pretty evident that I find it stupid, but not worthless, however if you just wanted to get a quick hit-in-run dig to make you feel a little better about yourself I'd understand.

I "decluttered" my vinyl collection back in the 90s before the vinyl renaissance. Well, CDs were the thing, no streaming yet (which low bit-rates make almost all mp3 noise shit anyway), and I needed the money ... to buy more CDs. I've even "decluttered" by swapping out CD albums for CD compilations – consolidating to fewer CDs with more "hits" per – where it made aesthetic sense to do it. Again, used the money to buy ... DVDs. Yeah, I'm that guy. Cut the cord more than a decade ago. If I can't (sample) stream it or DVD it, I don't watch it or even know about it. Over 2k DVDs and just over 1k CDs. Why? I'm not a "collector" by any stretch but I love to roam libraries and love having my own library even more. Books? Down to 3-3.5k so far. Minimally furnished, pet-free, 2 large bedrooms with lots of space to pace among shelves & stacks. (No roomies or guests ever, there's a fine little boutique hotel around the corner.) I hope I can half everything down again before my move to Oregon this fall. — 180 Proof

Physical media is really the way to go. My last book count landed me a little under 400 books across three book shelves and a built in shelf next to my bed. I have room for just one more book shelf in my NYC apartment which I'll probably be getting later this year.

This study helps us understand why people with equally strong moral convictions may vehemently disagree on political issues such as abortion, capital punishment and flag burning.....So, politics does have something to do with psychology after all, But it takes a "philosophy forum" to deny it ... — Apollodorus

Let me provide a very simple example as to why psychological analysis is a poor explanatory model for political attitudes. Here is an article from Ezra Klein, a liberal political analyst, that attempts to explain, through a political psychological lens, why conservatives are far less concerned with Covid than liberals. (To be clear, this is a stupid article).

Klein writes in the article's prolegomenon that, "Put simply, conservatives are psychologically tuned to see threat, and so they fear change. Liberals are tuned to prize change, and so they downplay threat." He subsequently justifies this with several quotes from political scientists and social psychologists, including Jonathan Haidt. I will quote and emphasis:

“Liberalism and conservatism are rooted in stable individual differences in the ways people perceive, interpret, and cope with threat and uncertainty,”

Of the many factors that make up your worldview, one is more fundamental than any other in determining which side of the divide you gravitate toward: your perception of how dangerous the world is,”

“Conservatives react more strongly than liberals to signs of danger, including the threat of germs and contamination, and even low-level threats such as sudden blasts of white noise,”

Well that's weird, Klein realizes...because it's clearly American conservatives who are downplaying the virus to the point of denying it's very existence. It's completely antithetical to the statements above which emphasis, if not outright insist, on the "rooted stability" or the "fundamentality" of how reaction to threat molds political attitudes. "This is the opposite of what a straightforward read of decades of political psychology research would predict," writes Klein.

So, he asks half-a-dozen political psychologists directly to explain and they came up with three theories.

The first is that conservatives are "denying and repressing fear" and displacing directly bodily and health-related threats through fear of economic recession and instability. "For all we know," says on respondent, "Americans who are explicitly denying the problem are experiencing (even) more stress and anxiety than those who are not.” For all we know!

The second is that this is occurring because of hyper-partisanship messaging. Trump and other conservative politicians and conservative pundits are downplaying the coronavirus for political reasons. Haidt responds that Trump's message "overwhelms the small average difference in disgust sensitivity which would, ceteris paribus, have Republicans more concerned about contagion." "Small average difference"? Above he was quoted as saying that conservatives "react more strongly" to germs and contamination than liberals. Well which is it? Likewise, Christopher Federico, a political psychologist who above stated that "Liberalism and conservatism were rooted in stable individual differences" in regards to threat, responds to Klein saying "Chronic sensitivity to threat, disgust, and disease is one factor.... [but] it is not the only one. Partisanship itself is perhaps the most important factor in shaping how people respond to issues or public concerns.” So now we move from political attitudes being" rooted in stable" psychological differences to oh actually this is really all explained by Trump's political hegemony with conservatives and political propaganda.

The third explanation basically connects the two, arguing that conservatives are threatened through xenophobia by Trump's anti-China messaging.

As you can (hopefully) see, what these political scientists and social psychologists are doing is providing half-baked supplementary hypotheses as to why, in their own words, their foundational theories and essential predictions are being contradicted by real-world conditions. And when they do provide a more accurate non-psychological explanation for why conservatives are minimizing the virus threat, viz. that they are digesting a wide apparatus of conservative messaging, including propaganda from the President, that is downplaying the virus for political reasons, their "rooted" and "fundamental" theories suddenly turn into gossamer.

So does Ezra Klein also come to the similar realization that political psychology is just bunk science? No, in order to retain the authenticity of the profession he offers a bland metaphor about how political psychology is like soil. Haidt suggests it's like the foundations of a house. If all you can do to is offer metaphor to defend an ostensible scientific theory then, buddy, you don't have an actual scientific theory.

In any case, it would be designed for a particular audience, an audience that is inclined to maintain the status quo. — praxis

Well perhaps @Isaac could clue us in as to who signs his paycheck

Something of a strawman given that I think only Apollodorus takes that book seriously. — praxis

You can find this type of reasoning in a plethora of books, from reactionaries to liberals. The article that @fdrake supplied "raises concerns about a core/critical assumption in the literature" vis-a-vis "personality causally preceding political ideology", so this isn't my own pet qualm or strawman. To @StreetlightX's point, the reduction of political ideology and attitudes to innate personality traits appeals to non-revolutionary types (i.e. non-Leftists/Socialists etc.) because existing political structures become justified based on "innate traits" and act as a barrier to structural change.

It seems to me you're reacting against the latter, individualistic "mental traits determine political activity/ belief/affiliation" belief, and not necessarily the idea that political ideologies and psychometric quantities can covary. — fdrake

or rather that evidence shows one does not precede the other, and they may develop in tandem. — praxis

This doesn't seem to be any more interesting, causal, or explanatory than any other preferences or attitudes that develop/form over time, such as personality and music preference, personality and hobby preference, political attitudes and literature preferences, or whatever other combinations.

I don't really think these moral hypotheticals are actually useful or interesting

Studying the mind to help explain behavior sounds reasonable to this (me) moron. — praxis

Well the promise of political psychology is more complex than that. What the OP and the book in question is describing here is a trait-based framework where personal traits such as "authoritarian" or "cooperation" or "openness to change" or "cosmopolitanism", "introversion-extroversion", "agreeableness", "curiosity" and a potpourri of other traits (and in the case of the book in question, narcissism) can explain or predict a person's political orientation, attitudes, or policy preferences. This is bunk.

The money can be used to save more lives, so you are committing far more murder if you don't take the money and use it for good.

I doubt that. But hell, I'm paid an awful lot of money for my moronic guesswork so at least I've got something to cushion the blow... it's a wonder there's not more astrology consultants in the courts, corporations and civil service, they too could benefit from whatever mass deception I've inadvertently manged to weave. — Isaac

That just describes other lucrative, but bullshit industries such as economics, evolutionary psychology, neuromarketing, etc. How much do you think Larry Summer gets paid despite constantly being wrong? Either way, what's the problem? You get paid good money from clueless individuals or corporations to produce nonsense. I think that's great.

Not at all. It may be vague in general outline but less so once you've looked into the more detailed facts of it. Most scientific theories start off about "as vague as astrology and just as predictive". If we dismissed everything before even considering or discussing it there would be no science.

Trial, error, modification, refining, certainty, that's how thought and knowledge progresses. But it often starts with a "vague" suggestion or proposition. — Apollodorus

Political psychology is not new.

I don't disagree with any of that. However, the point the book seems to be making is that both the Left and the Right tend to describe each other in psychological terms, perhaps the Left more so.

"Leftist social scientists sought to show that conservative values are psychologically abnormal" p. 5

"Even the conservative Right [as opposed to the far Right] is generally described in psychological terms as 'regressive' and 'repressive'" p. 7

The term "right" seems to be acquiring a similar connotation to the way "left" was used in the past.

In any case, psychological analysis including "psychohistory" (I didn't know such a thing existed) seems to be increasingly applied to these issues. What is the explanation for this development? Despite all the talk of "unity", is society really becoming more and more pollarized?

Obviously, I've only just started reading the book but I must say it's very interesting and thought-provoking so far. — Apollodorus

To be clear, any attempt to psychologically map out an explanation for why and how conservatives and liberals or whatever political appellation believe what they believe is nonsense. It's about as vague as astrology and just as predictive.

Question: Am I just too old to be on this planet anymore and might as well drown myself in the gene pool now? Or is this generation clinically insane? "Asking for a friend." — fishfry

Who fucking cares

Assuming people could talk about the same issues, that is. — ssu

:roll:

This a pretty nebulous digression that's irrelevant to what I'm saying.

In Europe feudalism can be viewed as the result of when the state is incapable of gaining and upholding a centralized power. Simply put it, when those in power have basically no ability to create a central power, then the last option is to simply divide the land to your allies to the size that is governable. Yet for the pre-capitalist era the economic system referable to would be mercantilism as feudalism and mercantilism go quite well hand in hand. It is the remnants of mercantilism as the economic system that capitalism had to fight against and overcame in the 19th Century. Hence I think Bitter Crank does have a point because otherwise we won't notice the subtle differences between a political system and an economic one. — ssu

This is historically backwards. Feudal power on continental Europe was fragmented - began as decentralized - and eventually moved towards centralized power (e.g. French Absolutism which began the 16th and 17th century). Mercantilism, like Feudalism, requires politically-based extra-economic means through which to gain and establish commercial power, e.g. dominating ship building, monopoly of trade routes, provision of trading privileges, establishing trading posts in external markets, etc. through which to sell dear in fragmented markets. I'm not quibbling about "subtle differences" between systems. Obviously there are differences. I'm simply saying that, contra Bitter Crank, we shouldn't separate Democracy under politics and Socialism under economics.

I don't personally care to spend time on the topic currently, but maybe another time.

But I would disagree with @Bitter Crank in regards to the a priori contrast between democracy as a political system and socialism as an economic system. We know such a contrast was untrue for Feudalism, a social system whereby political elites obtained economic surplus by appropriating from the peasantry. This is an integration of the economic and political. Separating the economic and the political spheres when conceptualizing post-Capitalist socio-economic structures is an unfortunate byproduct of Capitalist realism, as under Capitalism, it is the market imperatives that provide the coercive measures to supply the economic surplus which had previously been ensured by militaristic power behind the aristocratic elite. (Albeit the "rules of the game" under Capitalism e.g. property rights, worker rights, regulatory apparatus, etc. are indeed political constructs, so the demarcation of politics and economics is more illusory than at first appearance). So the question for Socialists is...how would we reintegrate the political and the economic in order to avoid coercion through market imperative while also avoiding coercion through class exploitation? I would say it probably looks something like (as @180 Proof suggested) economic democracy

:fire: :flower: :death:

This thread could have been interesting if it's thesis wasn't supplied by asinine quotes:

Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. — Nikolas

while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.” — Nikolas

No qualification, no real argument, just an blind assertion. Only adequate response is, "no". Not only in regards to the commentary on socialism, as shallow as it is brief, but to democracy, which doesn't "attached all possible value to each man", or "seek equality in liberty" and other vague unqualified statements.

liberty is being rejected for the security of becoming "a mere number" — Nikolas

"Never has the individual been so completely delivered up to a blind collectivity, — Nikolas

Insane. Absolutely insane. We are living in a time of unprecedented individualism as demonstrated by the self-centered response of Western countries in response to Covid. People have in fact become a "mere number", a sacrifice to a pandemic or sacrificed others, because they couldn't bear to wear a mask for their own or others protection, they had to eat indoors because they couldn't bear to go months without being served, people demanded that they be able to shop indoors. THE GOD DAMN CEO OF GOFUNDME SAID THAT 1/3rd OF DONATIONS ARE TO COVER MEDICAL COSTS.

There is an interesting debate to be had between democracy and capitalism and socialism but we won't find it here.

You don't seem capable of reading more than a paragraph of information so that would have been pointless.

Ever notice how right-wingers don't read books and substitute that by just pimping bad quotes?

If you truly believe in democracy then you truly believe in socialism. There's no contradiction. Maybe that's why Yurtle the Turtle, aka Mitch McConnell, called statehood for Puerto Rico and D.C "full-bore Socialism"

There's a great historical drama by Peter Watkins called La Commune (Paris, 1871) that's filmed in the style of a documentary. It's nearly 6 hours long.

Thinking about Daunte Wright



Now, who's the real thugs, killers and gangsters?
Set the revolution, let the things bust and thank us
When the smoke clear, you can see the sky again
There will be the chopped off heads of Leviathan

My friend, they call 'em strangers
Anybody talk to him end up in some danger
"They'll never change...
They stay...
Strange ways..."
Can't reform 'em

Harvey says neoliberalism is quasi-independent of states. I've just been trying to understand how — frank

Quinn Slobodian's Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism might be helpful here

What you reading from the right? — csalisbury

I read Ayn Rand, Hayek, Milton Friedman, von Mises, Murray Rothbard when I was 20 to around 24 when they enjoyed a resurgence of interest shortly after Obama was elected. I read Locke and Burke not long after that...some Buckley too. Mostly centered on far right-wing economics.

Culturally, Trump's election in 2016, Bannon's brief role, and some additional individuals and events, changed the trajectory of conservative intellectual interest away from the more economic-focused thinkers and towards more unsavory socio-political ones, such as Evola, Schmitt, etc. whom I don't have much interest engaging with, at least at book-level, at this point. Otherwise, I've read some First Things and Claremont Institute articles, some Yoram Hazony, National Review, Douthat op-eds from time-to-time, but I don't find any of them intellectually serious.

Liberalism: A Counter-History by Domenico Losurdo

*Eric Weinstein gets harassed on twitter for saying something stupid*

"I'm a disagreeable contrarian...basically it's like being a Black American"

He's just a big dumbass

Btw, how extremely do you mean by "extremely attractive"? — 180 Proof

Think a young Monica Vitti, Anna Karina, or Bibi Andersson

because your formulation doesn't exclude a position like "Whatever enhances my wellbeing and diminishes my suffering is moral (morally good, morally right, just, righteous), even if in the process of this, other people or their property get hurt or damaged". — baker

Right, so you asked for clarification and I said no, that it doesn't entail that position.

As for it going either towards utopianism or narcissism, no, it doesn't lead to either absurdly extreme positions.

Can moral problems be experienced at the individual level? Sure, but the most important and consequential ones aren't. Are moral problems experienced exclusively at the individual level? No.

Does moral realism lead to justification of Capitalist extremity? No.

Should a useful theory of morality provide guidance for individual situations? Sure, but I'm not discussing a normative moral theory that's based on moral realism, I'm justifying moral realism itself.