David Pratt of Ecopundit writes:
Conservatives depend on external, authority-driven rules and ideologies. They've grown up asking the why
questions. All children do. They've grown up breaking the rules, of
course, because we all experiment with breaking the rules. That's
human. The real problem begins with what each of us does within our own
history of rule-breaking and question-asking.
Conservatives repent and atone to the rules, and accede to the
"reasons" given by authority. In so doing, they learn to define
themselves as rule-followers belonging within the secure boundaries of
the authority structure. The problem with this is that it creates a
myopic moral duality. It causes them to be angry and condemning toward
anything not status quo,
while they are still impulsively drawn to whatever the rules have
forced them to reject. Conservatives close ranks around the rules. They
are deeply frustrated, agitated, and aggressive toward anything that
reminds them of their repressed desires and uncertainties.[archetype:
finger-wagging, portrayed above] They often live double lives of hidden
"sinfulness" and aggression, while maintaining upstanding "clean"
public images. They tend to enclose themselves in rule driven groups
and experiences that will not remind them of their unresolved
vulnerabilities and uncertainties. They feel unhinged and assaulted by
liberal "fancy pants" ideas.
For liberal/progressives the rules are open to constant challenge and
reevaluation. When we break the rules and see the problems, we have
learned to seek change and self-correction without condemnation.
[archetype: shrug, portrayed below] We're expansive in our thinking,
openness, and range of experience. We are also fearful of the
thinly-restrained aggression of conservatives toward our more open
beliefs and lifestyles. Today, in the U.S., with the "red states"
moving toward old models of patriarchy, we are afraid. We are
justifiably afraid. We can see that conservative certainty is breaking down the rules and laws that have been established to restrain them from (en masse) harming us.
This
is a powerful reading of the psyches and fears of conservatives and
liberals that are at once formed by our different Lakoffian 'frames'
and help form those frames.
What is the evolutionary basis for these fears?
Is conservative aggressiveness what Hall calls
the Alpha behaviour in times of adenaline-fired extreme stress: The
manifestation of preparing for the culling of the weak, the
self-sacrifice of the lower hierarchies in deference to the dominants,
the eating of the young that allows a massively-overpopulated tribe of
animals to bring its population into balance?
If this is the case, because of our separation from nature, and from
our true natures, this normal balancing behaviour is manifesting itself
in an utterly dysfunctional way. Neither liberals nor conservatives are
playing their proper evolutionary role, taking their aggression out
instead on the very nature it is designed to protect.
If this isn't the explanation, there must be another one. Why would our
natures, conservative and liberal, be pitting us against each other so
fiercely and fearfully at exactly the time we most need to work
together to save not only our own species, but the rest of the planet
that now depends on our intelligent stewardship?
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