I’ve heard a hypothesis before that seems plausible, that right wing thinking is the natural convergent thought pattern of those who are under duress.
Consider a neolithic band that is consistently short of food and being attacked by other bands. They will want:
Strict adherence to the rules and beliefs of the band for safety and survival reasons.
Well defined roles for each person to play, so others can know what to expect from them.
A clear heirarchy of command, so the group can work effectively as a unit in times of crisis.
A strong preference for members of the band, large amounts of distrust towards outsiders, and extreme vindictiveness towards defectors.
High status for the warrior class.
I’m a bit drunk rn and dont feel like continuing to enumerate, but I feel like you can fill in the blanks.
Hence, humans under duress naturally seek this state. And the modern world has any number of stressors to trigger this part of the human brain, even if that particular human is, in actuality, well fed, safe, and cared for.
I never realized until just now that this was my head cannon for what causes conservativism.
Income inequality is very real and the richer folks take their money from the pockets of the poor through inflation and wage stagnation. Just those two factors alone mean that many folks are making only less than half what they used to be able to make for the same jobs 20-30 years ago.
This means there’s a whole lot of folks who started jobs 20-30 years ago who just can’t make ends meet anymore doing those same jobs. Farmers, waiters, factory workers, truckers, officer workers, the list goes on and on of folks who every year have to tighten the belt a little more. And it’s hard but to get really deeply scared after a lifetime of watching your budget get tighter and tighter.
The frogs are being slowly boiled, but a lot of frogs are getting angry and looking for an answer as to who is making their lives harder, and there’s a whole lot of propaganda companies who will happily tell them it’s anyone but those who set our inflationary monetary policy and who own all the resources. Concentrated resources cause asset inflation, monetary policy pushes it higher, and weak labor laws and unions keep the wages low.
Modern propaganda makes it easy to point to folks with different color skin or religion and blame them as the cause of all this, when they couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s not a few percent of undocumented workers who are printing dollars by the billion making housing, medical care, and education so expensive. It’s not the folks without social security cards who build a society that concentrates wealth in the hands of a few ultra rich by taking it from the poor.
That may be wrong though. Our societies are so propagandized into hierarchical thinking that many often believe that hierarchy and orders of command are the only ways to react to crises. This might be some sort of naturalistic fallacy, where whoever said/wrote what you wrote there probably has looked into how militaries and disaster response work today and concluded that’s the only way it could work successfully.
However, I remember there being a master’s thesis by an anarchist political science student who showed that a principled anarchist military could, in fact, work very well.
Edit to clarify, because that leap might have been a bit too far: my head went to this topic because the argument that a tendency toward authoritarianism under duress is somehow human nature depends on that assumption. If the assumption isn’t true, that explanation loses most of its base. It might not be the natural response to duress, just the socialized one.
I think you’ve outlined a distinct archetype that I’ve definitely seen plenty, but I’d disagree that “humans under duress naturally seek this state”. In my experience (as a human under duress for much of her life), a large proportion of the people who most throw themselves into helping others are those who have experienced significant duress. Hell, a big part of why I’m still kicking around is because if I were no longer here, I would never be able to honour the countless acts of kindness and solidarity I have experienced by paying it forward.
I’m reminded of a phrase that says something like "There’s two kinds of people in the world: those who experience injustice and go “I had to go through that so you should too”, and those who go “I had to go through that, so I don’t want anyone else to”
I’ve heard a hypothesis before that seems plausible, that right wing thinking is the natural convergent thought pattern of those who are under duress.
Consider a neolithic band that is consistently short of food and being attacked by other bands. They will want:
I’m a bit drunk rn and dont feel like continuing to enumerate, but I feel like you can fill in the blanks.
Hence, humans under duress naturally seek this state. And the modern world has any number of stressors to trigger this part of the human brain, even if that particular human is, in actuality, well fed, safe, and cared for.
I never realized until just now that this was my head cannon for what causes conservativism.
Income inequality is very real and the richer folks take their money from the pockets of the poor through inflation and wage stagnation. Just those two factors alone mean that many folks are making only less than half what they used to be able to make for the same jobs 20-30 years ago.
This means there’s a whole lot of folks who started jobs 20-30 years ago who just can’t make ends meet anymore doing those same jobs. Farmers, waiters, factory workers, truckers, officer workers, the list goes on and on of folks who every year have to tighten the belt a little more. And it’s hard but to get really deeply scared after a lifetime of watching your budget get tighter and tighter.
The frogs are being slowly boiled, but a lot of frogs are getting angry and looking for an answer as to who is making their lives harder, and there’s a whole lot of propaganda companies who will happily tell them it’s anyone but those who set our inflationary monetary policy and who own all the resources. Concentrated resources cause asset inflation, monetary policy pushes it higher, and weak labor laws and unions keep the wages low.
Modern propaganda makes it easy to point to folks with different color skin or religion and blame them as the cause of all this, when they couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s not a few percent of undocumented workers who are printing dollars by the billion making housing, medical care, and education so expensive. It’s not the folks without social security cards who build a society that concentrates wealth in the hands of a few ultra rich by taking it from the poor.
That may be wrong though. Our societies are so propagandized into hierarchical thinking that many often believe that hierarchy and orders of command are the only ways to react to crises. This might be some sort of naturalistic fallacy, where whoever said/wrote what you wrote there probably has looked into how militaries and disaster response work today and concluded that’s the only way it could work successfully.
However, I remember there being a master’s thesis by an anarchist political science student who showed that a principled anarchist military could, in fact, work very well.
I even found it after a short search. If anyone’s interested in reading it: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/chris-beaumont-defending-an-anarchist-society
Edit to clarify, because that leap might have been a bit too far: my head went to this topic because the argument that a tendency toward authoritarianism under duress is somehow human nature depends on that assumption. If the assumption isn’t true, that explanation loses most of its base. It might not be the natural response to duress, just the socialized one.
I think you’ve outlined a distinct archetype that I’ve definitely seen plenty, but I’d disagree that “humans under duress naturally seek this state”. In my experience (as a human under duress for much of her life), a large proportion of the people who most throw themselves into helping others are those who have experienced significant duress. Hell, a big part of why I’m still kicking around is because if I were no longer here, I would never be able to honour the countless acts of kindness and solidarity I have experienced by paying it forward.
I’m reminded of a phrase that says something like "There’s two kinds of people in the world: those who experience injustice and go “I had to go through that so you should too”, and those who go “I had to go through that, so I don’t want anyone else to”