Saturday, April 30, 2011

Jesse's Rant - MWBOT5

The flexible nature of Ventura's rant (which Texan99 emphasises) is curious. One can imagine it coming from a fringe player of half-a-dozen groups, all over the American spectrum - including some from history. "Elites" are pushing us around, making money, and rubbing our noses in it - and this seems a moderately common idea, however the targets vary.

This seems related to my earlier observation that a belief in a conspiracy precedes identifying its members. (No search reveals this here. I make the observation on other sites frequently, but have apparently not mentioned it here. Huh.)

So the paranoid tendency about hidden forces controlling us and ruining everything may pre-exist targets, and the resentful tendency about open, flaunting forces controlling us and ruining everything may also be a personality trait.

Are there other political tendencies that are factory-installed, waiting only to imprint on some random local condition? There are people who seem congenitally determined to reject both sides of a conflict and seek a compromise. That's often a wise approach, and gene pool likely needs a fair number of those to keep us off each others' throats, but it does have its own weaknesses - eventually you are attempting to get Jesus and the Pharisees to sit down together and talk it out, and listen to each others' POV. (and Jesus would appreciate the reminder, right? Blessed are the peacemakers and all that? He'd thank you later.)

The disquieting thought, of course, is that all of our political and social beliefs are just local variants of relatively few genetically-acquired outlooks. I suspect all base types might be necessary for a tribe to survive over time. I'd be curious if the American immigration populations - which would bear some similarity to Canadian, Australian, and other settler groups - has different proportions to those who stayed home, and if the involuntary immigrants (slaves, transported criminals) were a third mix.

Readers are encouraged to speculate wildly on this one, without regard to whether there is solid evidence to back up their new favorite theory.

1 comment:

  1. Sam L.5:57 PM

    I'm guessing those groups will differ, though the voluntary and involuntary lees from each other than the stay-at-homes. The Vs and Is should share the trait of being unhappy with "current" conditions, but with different tendencies on what to do about them

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