Global Warming threatens the very sense of self of conservatives so they reject the science reflexively

The Republicans have, since being taken over by conservatives, adamantly refused to even consider the possibility that global warming is true. Their reaction has been irrational to the extreme. Rhania Kalek describes this as being a bad case of cognitive dissonance.

Climate change poses a profound threat to many things that right-wing ideologues believe in. Conservatives tend to champion individual freedom, private property rights, small government, free markets, and above all else, unfettered industrial capitalism. Industrial capitalism is an economic system predicated on the accelerating extraction and consumption of fossil fuels for energy, which is driving the climate change we face today. To accept this basic premise, one is compelled to question the wisdom of capitalism itself, which is a terrifying notion for conservatives. And it doesn't take long to recognize that conservative values are inherently antithetical to the desperately needed actions to tackle global climate change.

Seriously dealing with the threat of climate change would require government to heavily regulate corporations and subsidize renewable energy. It would entail a strong international body, most likely boosting the power of the UN. It would bring an end to the inefficient and energy-wasting free-trade agenda, as localizing economies would become necessary to sustain communities. And, most importantly, confronting climate change demands addressing climate justice for developing nations suffering from the pollution of industrialized nations, or more simply, a redistribution of wealth from North to South. Climate change poses a direct threat to the spread of free markets, the maintenance of national sovereignty, and the continued abolition of governmental regulations, all key components of the conservative agenda. These are the types of ideas that cause conservatives to gasp, point, and shout "communist!"

When we recognize the role of cognitive dissonance, it becomes clear that conservatives and Republicans are more likely to dispute or deny the scientific consensus and the claims of the environmental community, in order to defend the industrial capitalist system. It is far more simple to deny science, than to accept that one's worldview is wrong. Unfortunately, environmental organizations are in a kind of denial as well. Climate change is about an economic model that demands infinite growth on a finite planet. However, environmental groups are reluctant to relate climate change to economics and politics, probably because conservatives would see it as confirmation of the right-wing myth that global warming is a socialist plot to redistribute the world's wealth.

For a conservative whose entire identity is defined by faith in the economics of capitalism and free markets, acceptance of climate change poses a danger to their sense of self, and will be avoided at all costs. Therefore, attempts to persuade this portion of the country with science and logic is a lost cause. However, for those of us who truly care about the future of our one and only planet and our species, it is time that we face what we have been loath to highlight in the past: Unfettered industrial capitalism is unsustainable and is causing climate change to spiral out of control. Until we begin to challenge the economics fueling environmental degradation, we are no better than our climate denying counterparts.

Consider what cognitive dissonance is.

there is a tendency for individuals to seek consistency among their cognitions (i.e., beliefs, opinions). When there is an inconsistency between attitudes or behaviors (dissonance), something must change to eliminate the dissonance. In the case of a discrepancy between attitudes and behavior, it is most likely that the attitude will change to accommodate the behavior.

The Republicans are going to resist any attitudes that challenge their strongly held free market beliefs. Those beliefs are core to the personality and self of strong free marketers such as Rand Paul, Lyin' Paul Ryan, David Koch, Dick Armey and Alan Greenspan. They have to deny global warming or admit that the strongest beliefs on which their core selves are based are wrong. They will not be convinced by science or facts. It is pathological with them.

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The article is largely based on a sociological study entitled THE POLITICIZATION OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND POLARIZATION IN THE AMERICAN PUBLIC’S VIEWS OF GLOBAL WARMING,2001–2010 published in

Sociological QuarterlyVolume 52, Issue 2, Article first published online: 18 APR 2011

Psyop - how does creativity work?

Art is a way of messing with someone else's mind through perception. Good art changes the very structure of the observer's mind.



Consider this a guide to innovation and creativity.

David Brooks with a really informative and inspiring talk on what people really are

I am always suspicious of David Brooks. His main function seems to be to put a positive face on the indefensible from conservatives and then explain them to the rest of us. So I was quite surprised to listen to this talk, both funny and very, very informative. Obviously it has nothing to do with conservative political ideology.

How bad can grief over the death of a loved one get?

What happens to the people left behind when someone dies? In the U.S. 2.5 million people die each year and on average four other people are affected. The death of a loved one can be painful and lasting but most people get over it in time. However for roughly 15% of the survivors the effects persist for 2 to 20 years to the extent that the person can barely get out of bed in the morning.

This extreme form of grieving is called complicated grief or prolonged grief disorder. For over a million people a year

...becomes what Dr. M. Katherine Shear, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia, calls “a loop of suffering.” And these people, Dr. Shear added, can barely function. “It takes a person away from humanity,” she said of their suffering, “and has no redemptive value.”

Research has shown that such grief can become a mental disorder quite as debilitating as Depression or PTSD. Research shows that it can. For susceptible people such prolonged grief can predict sociality, a higher level of substance abuse, cigarette and alcohol consumption better than can a diagnosis of depression can.

The New York Times science section has an interesting report on this disorder. It apparently is likely to appear in the Diagnostic and Statistics Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) scheduled to be issued in 2012.

Make your mind sharper and become more interesting

Here are twelve exercises recommended by Dorothea Brande. The purpose is to make your mind keener and more flexible. If nothing else, they will almost certainly cause you to behave in ways you do not normally behave.

1. Spend an hour each day without saying anything except in answer to direct questions, in the midst of the usual group, without creating the impression that you're sulking or ill. Be as ordinary as possible. But do not volunteer remarks or try to draw out information.

2. Think for 30 minutes a day about one subject exclusively. Start with five minutes.

3. Write a letter without using the words I, me, mine, my.

4. Talk for 15 minutes a day without using I, me, my, mine.

5. Write a letter in a "successful" or placid tone. No misstatements, no lying. Look for aspects or activities that can be honestly reported that way.

6. Pause on the threshold of any crowded room and size it up.

7. Keep a new acquaintance talking about himself or herself without allowing him to become conscious of it. Turn back any courteous reciprocal questions in a way that your auditor doesn't feel rebuffed.

8. Talk exclusively about yourself and your interests without complaining, boasting, or boring your companions.

9. Cut "I mean" or "As a matter of fact" or any other verbal mannerism out of your conversation.

10. Plan two hours of a day and stick to the plan.

11. Set yourself twelve tasks at random: e.g., go twenty miles from home using ordinary conveyance; go 12 hours without food; go eat a meal in the unlikelist place you can find; say nothing all day except in answer to questions; stay up all night and work.

12. From time to time, give yourself a day when you answer "yes" to any reasonable request.

If you'd like to read a more lengthy explanation of the twelve disciplines, or about Brande's explanation for these exercises, go here and search for Chapter 11 - Twelve Disciplines.

I'm trying a few of these at different times. none of them involve a real commitment, but some are quite difficult.

Discipline with a switch or belt does not work. It leads to parental abuse.

Remember "Spare the rod and spoil the child?" A new study by doctors at UNC-Chapel Hill shows that use of the rod is much more likely to lead to child abuse than other forms of discipline.

A study released today by doctors at UNC-Chapel Hill finds that parents who spank their children with an object -- such as a belt, switch or paddle -- are nine times more likely to abuse their child through more severe means. Also, parents are much more likely to beat, burn or shake their children if they spank frequently, according to the study, which is being published by the American Journal of Preventative Medicine.

"Parents get angry when they're spanking, and it's not working," said Adam Zolotor, lead author of the study and a pediatrician at UNC-CH's Department of Family Health. "If a child gets spanked so often, they just don't care anymore and will misbehave anyway."

So spanking a child with an object will lead the child to simply not care anymore, while the frustration the parent faces as the spanking does not work to correct misbehavior will lead to anger, more frequent spankings, and even child abuse.

Any self-analyzing parent will recognize the anger they feel growing as the child refuses to respond as demanded. Parents who raise hyperactive children are especially prone to this. Many parents are not that self-analytic, so they will find themselves beating the child more frequently and harder to try to get some control.

It's not "beating" the child you say? It's "disciplining" the child? No, not when it is not working and gets more frequent or harder. That's beating the child.

It becomes child abuse. And it does nothing to gain control of the situation. All it does is let the parent express his or her anger at the child. When you are beating a child to relieve your own anger, and doing nothing successful to maintain control of the child or the situation, then you are a child abuser.

So what does "Pretty" and "Ugly" really mean?

The answer to that question is unknowable. Worse, it is concealed from us by Photoshop and makeup. "Beauty" is a fantasy. So is "Ugly." Maybe "Attraction" is knowable, but I wouldn't count on it. Here's a good article on the subject.

And if you wonder why a blog that normally focuses on politics and economics is referring you to this, I also try to understand psychology. This subject is a biggie. Consideration of this subject is one of the major things that makes us human. Economically it drives a almost all advertising and a lot of sales. Politically? It matters a lot. Personally? Well, the consideration of our own beauty or lack thereof drives a lot of what we do with our lives. How much of race prejudice is driven by concepts of beauty? And where do those concepts come from?

The article addresses unrealistic concepts of Beauty. As for the other questions, I really have no answers, just more questions. But for damned sure, "beauty" and "ugliness" is central to being human.

Does Innate in-born talent give a real edge in life success?

If you are hiring to staff an organization that has to be creative and innovative to succeed, do you want to hire individuals who have been identified as talented very early in life and who have been trained at the best schools (Ivy League, or similar institutions?) Or do you search for people who search out challenges that help them to grow?

The unnuanced version of that question is whether success comes from nature or nurture? Are the most creative and innovative individuals born with the required talents or do they possess a learned mindset that allows them to develop the required skills?

Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck thinks she knows the answer, and she has the research to support her opinion. Go read the New York Times for the answer.

Researchers cause out-of-body experiences

An enduring mystery for each human being is the question "What is consciousness?" Or in other words, "How is it that I perceive whatever it is that is me?

To make the question more personal, consider that as you read this, you are aware that you are reading it, and for most of us that person - that self-aware you - is looking out at the world from somewhere behind your eyes.

Who or what is that looking out from behind your eyes?

A little over 20 years ago Marvin L. Minsky published a fascinating book entitled The Society of the Mind. In it he points out that the mind actually consists of a lot of relatively simple functions. In order to get the body to do anything, there has to be a function that links together the necessary simply basic functions and activates them while suppressing those functions not needed.

Interestingly, those things we do most efficiently are things in which we are not aware that we are doing all this linking and activating of lesser functions. When we get good at doing something, it becomes unconscious, like driving a car. But when we have a problem or things cease to be routine, then we become conscious of the process and attempt to modify it. Whoever it is that becomes aware of the process is that thing we call our "self".

So what is this "self?"

No one knows, but presumably it is another function of the mind. [As an aside, remember that we are talking about the functions of the mind. How the physical brain creates the mind is another issue entirely. Let's not confuse the two things. Now, forget about the mind-brain connection for the moment and let's get back to the present issue.]

One characteristic of this "self" is that we normally identify it with our body. So how do we deal with reports of "Out of body experiences?"

Out of body experiences are subjective - that is, only the person who is having it can actually know he or she is having it. Since it can't be measured, a behaviorist psychologist would simply ignore such reports of events. Unmeasurable psychological events cannot be scientifically studied according to Behaviorism. But what if a researcher could induce such events, and the reports of the resulting "out of body experiences" could be correlated to the efforts to induce them?

Talking Points Memo provides the following Associated Press report, sourced from the Journal Science. (The journal is subscription only.)

Researchers in England and Switzerland have figured out ways to confuse the sensory signals received by the brain, allowing people to seem to be standing aside and watching themselves. [Snip]

Dr. Henrik Ehrsson of University College London's Institute of Neurology and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, explained that he was interested in a person's perception of the "self."

"I'm interested in the question of why I feel that my self is located inside my physical body. How does my brain know that I am standing right here," he said.
And what would happen to the self if a person could effectively move their eyes to another part of the room and observe themselves from an outside perspective? Would the self move with the eyes, or stay in the body, he wondered.

So seated volunteers were fitted with head-mounted video displays that allowed them to view themselves from behind, using a pair of video cameras, one for each eye.
A researcher would stand behind them and extend a plastic rod which they could see toward the area just below the cameras. At the same time another plastic rod, which they could not see, touched their chest.

The volunteers said they experienced the feeling of being behind their own body watching. Many found it "weird" and seemingly real, though not scary.
They felt "that their center of awareness 'self' is located outside their physical bodies and that they look at their bodies from the perspective of another person," he reported.

"The idea is to change the visual input and its relationship to the tactile information," he said. "The brain is always trying to interpret sensory information. The brain can trick itself."

In a second test, Ehrsson connected sensors to the skin to measure electrical conductance, which indicates emotional response.

He then allowed them to watch a hammer swing down to a point below the camera, as though it were going to hurt an unseen portion of the virtual body.
Their skin conductance registered emotional responses including fear, indicating they sensed their selves had left their physical bodies and moved to the virtual bodies where the hammer was swung.

The research has applications in neuroscience and also potentially in industrial applications involving virtual reality, he said.

So who is looking out from behind your eyes if whoever it is can be fooled into thinking it is looking at the back of your head?

How do terrorists think?

Here is an excerpt from an article by Juan cole.

Terrorists imagine the world in black and white, as full of demons and angels, and place themselves on the side of the angels. Sociologist Mark Juergensmeyer has called this way of thinking "cosmic war." Small terrorist cells arise in part because their members develop a specific way of looking at the world, which they reinforce for one another in everyday interactions. As the group becomes more and more distinct in its views from the society around it -- and more isolated -- its members can cross boundaries of reason and human sentiment, becoming monstrous. [Snip]

Paul J. Hill, who shot down abortion clinic physician Dr. John Britton in 1994 in Florida, was a formally trained clergyman who started out committed to helping people spiritually, not killing them. He became so overwrought about what he considered genocide inflicted on the unborn, however, that he felt compelled to save innocents by killing Dr. Britton. The reverend reflected, chillingly, afterward, "If I wounded him, just shot him in the leg or shoulder, I knew there was an excellent probability that he would return to killing innocent children. In my thinking it just became: I had to kill him."

Becoming a religious terrorist depends on several steps. The first is conversion to a way of thinking by which the perpetrators identify with a core group that they wish to protect, but which they believe is being subjected to great harm. Typically this group is imagined to be composed of innocents or lonely carriers of divine truth, whose existence is both essential and yet precarious."

Learning to think this way is both an individual and a group process. It appears to be effective in producing all kinds of extremists. Fortunately, violent extremists are relatively rare. Unfortunately, not rare enough.

While individuals who conduct terrorist actions (like Paul Hill) need to be held individually responsible for their actions, the isolation and group impetus towards violent action is also important. Or in other words, education and socialization are more important that cops and punishment.

The Mind of the Voter

How do voters make decisions who to vote for? Drew Weston says his research has one BIG answer. It's not rational.

The vision of mind that has captured the imagination of Democratic campaign strategists for much of the last 40 years -- a dispassionate mind that makes decisions by weighing the evidence and reasoning to the most valid conclusions -- bears no relation to how the mind and brain actually work. When campaign strategists start from this vision of mind, their candidates typically lose.

Democrats typically bombard voters with laundry lists of issues, facts, figures, and policy positions, while Republicans offer them emotionally compelling appeals, whether to their values, principles, or prejudices. As a result, we have seen only one Democrat re-elected to the White House since Franklin Roosevelt -- Bill Clinton, who, like Roosevelt, understood how to connect with voters emotionally -- and only one Republican fail to do so -- George H.W. Bush, who ran like a Democrat and paid for it.

Essentially Drew Westen is suggesting that we choose our politicians based on emotion, then expect them to government based on logic and rationality. That sure would explain why polls show that American voters prefer Democratic positions even though conservatives keep winning election. Or at least, this is an alternative explanation to the one that the conservatives are stealing elections. I may add his explanation to those I consider useful, but I won't discard the clear evidence that "conservative" or "Republican" are just other ways of spelling the word "criminal."