From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Mon Sep 16 2002 - 16:49:32 MDT
Marc writes
> In terms of psychology I have found evidence that those who lean
> left generally have paranoid-schizoid tendencies. Those who
> lean right generally have narcissistic tendencies. An empirical
> hypothesis is that the greater the degree of paranoid-schizoid
> tendencies, the further left a person is inclined to lean
> politically. And the greater the degree of narcissistic
> tendencies, the further right a person is inclined is lean.
That would be amazing! Actually, I hope that you're right
because then a number of our differences would disappear
as soon as it was revealed that they mostly originated in
brain chemistry. One could, for example, feel oneself
slipping a little towards the right on some issue, and
say "Hmm, better get my mumble-mumble checked".
I would say that these are surely minor degrees of the
traits you list, because often I've known someone for
quite some time to be then completely surprised on their
political persuasion. (For all my extreme skeptical
readers out there, this is NOT because I thought someone
intelligent and then it turned out they were a liberal ;-)
or vice-versa---rather that I had just picked up from the
way they acted certain expectations, and then was completely
surprised.)
Can you elaborate? Perhaps with characterizations of
conservatives and narcissistic tendencies and liberals
and paranoid-schizoid tendencies? Also, any idea of
why one would tie into the one thing, and the other
into the other thing? Also, since several people have
condemned my crude approximation of differences into
a single dimension, it might be interesting to think
about how libertarians and authoritarians differ.
> In terms of philosophy, I have found that a person's
> political views are almost completely correlated to
> their position on a realist/non-realist scale
> in the field of ethics.
> Those who lean left generally are skeptical that objective
> ethical principles exist. (These people do not believe that
> it is possible to move from an 'is' to an 'ought' : they
> believe that ethics is a subjective invention)
The tendency that you've noted may arise from religious
instruction; sounds like it.
But observe that on this very list a recent discussion broke
out where a number of the left-leaning (going all the way
back to Jacob Bronowski) advocate a close tie in between
science and values while the right-leaning (at least me)
deny it. In fact, although conservative/libertarian, I
am skeptical that objective ethical principles exist.
> The desire for equality and government control of society
> follows naturally: if there is no objective basis for
> ethics, then the way society is, is simply a function of
> government policies: there are simply rival gangs of people
> with differing ethical views, and since all the views are
> of equal validity, only the government can mediate.
Well, even Hitler ruled his subordinates by creating as
much rivalry behind them. Current efforts by leftists
in government to create class conflict by constantly
pitting "the rich" against "the poor" does have the
consequence you mentioned.
But I think that one could make exactly the *opposite*
point to the one you're making: from a sincerely and
deeply held belief in the objective truth of one's
values (e.g. the Catholic Church) then there's even
more of an excuse to have government control.
> Since I have narcissistic tendencies, and since I believe
> that it's possible to put ethics on an objective footing,
> I lean right ;D
You could turn out to be right, statistically. Thanks
very much for the theory!!
(How does one find out whether one has narcissistic
or paranoid tendencies? And if you feel that you
have both, how do you tell which is in the
ascendancy ;-)
As yet I'm skeptical because (as I said) I resist all
efforts to put ethics on an objective basis, and yet
lean right myself.
Lee
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:17:05 MST