Is Leftism a Mental Disorder?
(www.powerlineblog.com)
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I would suggest a subtle but crucial change to the question, to wit: is Leftism caused by a mental disorder?
I would further suggest that it's not a mental disorder per se, but that their thought process fundamentally differs from that thought process which everyone assumes we all share (without evidence).
Anyone remember there was a horse that could do simple arithmetic? Greatly impressed everyone for quite some time. How could a horse think in a way that it takes a human child some years to develop?
Wrong question. The horse was not thinking at all in the way a human does arithmetic. Rather, the horse was looking for extremely subtle clues his owner would subconsciously give off when the horse reached the correct answer.
As I said, it took some time for someone to stumble upon this. That means all the humans who examined the situation were completely oblivious to that subtle form of interaction. Important lesson there.
Precisely my understanding, basically if the mental processing used creates rationale that is not logical or acceptable then there is a clear sign there is an issue.
As far as how to ask the question and to recognize what is happening in a given mindset is non trivial, we are left to study and assume, which clearly creates a large misunderstanding, such as with the horse.
The best thing we have to rely on is language communication revealing the initially mentioned lack of logical processing.
Just so.
When given the opportunity, if someone really wants to understand what's going on with the phenomenon present before us roughly described as "Leftism", I always advocate that they should listen very, very carefully to what Leftists say, most particularly when they're "just talking amongst themselves". It is very surprising and enlightening.
Sure, no one wants to hear it and it's infuriating, but when it just so happens to come my way I mentally step back, put on a lab coat, and stare at the rats running around the maze. Which sounds bad, but then again they're the ones speaking aloud for all the world to hear.
For example, you'll hear them say contradictory things to one another, but just move right on because they're "on the same side". When pushed into a rhetorical corner, you can't ever detect the point psychologically "landing" on them at all like, "Okay, maybe I need to look at that one again." Also, they will never indicate an awareness of their own ignorance in any way, even with something as simple as, "Oh, I didn't know that before."
You'd think some "scientists" would have studied this all long ago, but "Asch conformity" is about the closest I know. I suspect that no one is going to give me a grant for it either. Why it's almost as if this "feature" of human cognition has been weaponized against all of us.
Rest assured it has been studied for many ages. The entire conflict of man resides in the bowels of this design.
I like to imagine early human life, simple cave life for example, in this system we can assume that there was some form of leadership and with that it is likely that some form of 'might is right' logic prevailed, because mixed in this human is the desire to maintain self preservation. Given all the inputs we keep refining these control mechanisms preying on the weak and needy to embolden the forward direction.
Ah, regrettably I see that we differ here. I have come to very different conclusions about the story of the human race, and how that story shapes human affairs to this very day. I'd link you to researchers holding a similar worldview to mine but there aren't any.
I'm sure you'll be seeing bits of it in other posts. I try to wedge it in where I can :)