November 16, 2017

The disgust factor.

"According to some assessments, a pivotal factor in last week’s elections was a sense of disgust with the President—and one of the results was a sharp increase in the number of female candidates and winners," wrote David Remnick in that New Yorker piece I've already blogged about this morning.

I was struck by the idea that rising disgust had potential to lift the Democratic Party to new success, because a couple days ago we were talking about a test that uses susceptibility to feelings of disgust to determine how conservative or liberal you are. There, I noted reports of research that sees liberals as resistant to disgust. Psychology Today had a piece called "Are You Easily Disgusted? You May Be a Conservative," which said:
Evidence suggests that harm avoidance and the need for fairness underlie people's moral judgments in a number of cultures. While liberals rely primarily on these two values, conservatives also rely on desires for group loyalty, authoritative structure, and, most importantly here, purity. Following this logic, Kevin [Smith] and other researchers became interested in the potential for a relation between disgust and political orientations. They speculated that conservatives are more disgust sensitive than liberals as a result of their concern with purity-related norms and that this difference would manifest itself on issues that some may associate with sexual purity (e.g., homosexual sex and, therefore, gay rights).

Sure enough, Kevin and his co-authors found that conservatives are more easily disgusted than liberals....
If we assume this research has got it right, Democrats might want to reconsider the use of the disgust factor. Maybe the effort to disgust liberals will fall flat, and they won't get excited and out to the polls to vote for Democrats. Meanwhile, the disgust talk might stimulate conservatives, and they'll be running out to vote, presumably for Republicans. Or do you think the disgust-oriented ones, the erstwhile Republicans, will go for Democrats because the Republicans — Donald Trump, Roy Moore, etc. — have been successfully portrayed as just so disgusting?

I'm trying to look at the big picture, the long-term effect, and I think there's some risk for the Democrats in going too far into sexual negativity. I think those of us who are disposed toward liberalism — and I say "us" because I came up 59% liberal on that disgust test — will tune out or come to view them as too fussy and nosy about sex.

ADDED: I'm talking about persuasion at the emotional level, so I naturally thought of Scott Adams's book "Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter," which I've read in full. Adams talks about how persuasion is all about emotion, but he doesn't get into the role of disgust. The word only comes up once, quoting the famous Megyn Kelly debate question that began, “You’ve called women you don’t like ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs,’ and ‘disgusting animals . . .’” Trump (as you must remember) broke in to say, “Only Rosie O’Donnell.”

It wasn't Kelly's effort at using disgust that got Adams going. It was Trump's interruption:
He created an emotion-triggering visual image (Rosie O’Donnell) that sucked all the attention from the question to the answer, and it wasn’t even a real answer...  He also picked a personality who was sure to trigger the emotions of his base. Republicans generally don’t like Rosie O’Donnell because of her outspoken liberal views. Trump knew his Republican base has a strong negative reaction to O’Donnell, so he bonded with them on that point. This is the persuasion method known as pacing and leading. First you match your audience’s emotional condition to gain trust, and later you are in a position to lead them. 
Another way to look at that is Trump was able to stimulate conservatives — the disgust-susceptible human beings — by confronting them suddenly with a particular "disgusting" woman.

But why should Trump benefit from attaching himself to disgustingness? Elsewhere in the book, Adams says Carly Fiorina made a terrible mistake when she attempted to showcase her opposition to abortion by vividly describing a botched abortion:
Fiorina paired her brand with a dead baby. I knew voters wouldn’t want to think about Fiorina’s horrible story of a dead baby for one second longer than they needed to. I doubt anyone consciously interpreted the situation as I describe it. But humans don’t make political decisions for rational reasons.
If that's correct, maybe it shouldn't have worked for Trump to "pair his brand" with a (purportedly) disgusting woman. You could say Trump was (essentially) offering to defend us from disgusting women, but Fiorina was offering to defend us from dead babies. Adams says "Fiorina lost support because she polluted her brand beyond redemption by associating it with the most horrible image one could ever imagine, on live television." He's really talking about disgust there: the emotional reaction to something that seems "horrible" and "polluted." There's an idea that particular, reasoned arguments don't matter. If what is disgusting gets all over the person, we'll feel aversion, at an instinctive emotional level. And that doomed Fiorina.

But why, then, wasn't Trump doomed? Maybe Trump would have fared worse if Megyn Kelly had been able to ask her question uninterrupted, speaking generically about women and Trump's bad mouth. She sought to ruin him by making him disgusting to the disgust-susceptible conservatives, and he interposed the image of a lady comedian. It's funny. It's all in good fun.

88 comments:

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

Maybe disgust helps the opposition party.

Sebastian said...

Progs don't bother with mere disgust. They prefer violent hate.

Martha said...

I came up 57% conservative on that disgust test and I am convinced that the Democrats have gone way too far into sexual negativity. Read Arthur Miller’s The Crucible—that is where the sexual hysteria is leading us.

rehajm said...

It's about accusing your accusers of the thing you're guilty of that could hurt you politically. The disgust meme is a Sunstein nudge. Yes, it could backfire.

Laslo Spatula said...

"I don't want to hear about your disgust, I have Asperger's."

I am Laslo.

BillyTalley said...

The Disgust Test sounds like science but there's no way to correlate the results since it is nearly impossible to know the political identity of the participants. Even the participants might not know, I certainly took the test to amuse myself with a supposed reveal of my political orientation.

Roger Sweeny said...

There are different kinds of purity and disgust at different things. I don't think the research is capturing all of them, and it is thus giving a misleading picture of reality.

What is political correctness if not a desire for purity in thought, an avoidance of pollution by racism, sexism, homophobia, and all the other near occasions of sin?

traditionalguy said...

The new movement that accuses all men to be disgusting pigs for the mention of with sex with a women without a ring and a license first, and then keeps it all a secret taboo, sounds like Hugh Hefner has let us down. Hey hey Mrs Robinson should be the new theme music.

The new movement seems to want Prohibition. The Saudis are good at sex police patrols and can teach us how to enforce it.

But this means all those Statues of Bill Clinton will have to come down.

campy said...

If we assume this research has got it right, [...]

It's social "science." Anyone with an IQ higher than his shoe size assumes it's wrong.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

They speculated that conservatives are more disgust sensitive than liberals...

Sure enough, [they] found that conservatives are more easily disgusted than liberals.


I wonder how many different ways they ran the experiment before reality decided to agree with their speculation.

Laslo Spatula said...

The Amateur Anesthesiologist...

As you know, I am a sociopath: everything all of you do disgusts me. The way that you are weak disgusts me. The way you let emotions rule you disgusts me. The way you eat your food, the way you say "Hello" to me, a total stranger, as you pass by: I am disgusted by you...

Sometimes I imagine walking down the street with a machete, cutting off people's heads. And then their headless bodies keep walking, like nothing happened. All of the decapitated heads in the street and on the sidewalk and in the gutters have their eyes open: they are seeing things for the last time as they finally realize they never even mattered, that their existence was only a random genetic mistake: the world will go on...

I tell you this knowing it will not change you: you think it is me that has the problem. This does not disgust me: this enables me to move freely...

I am Laslo.

Henry said...

Can I say, objectively, that on the gross motor skills spectrum that Donald Trump is more disgusting than Hillary Clinton?

No one is disgusted with Hillary Clinton because of what she eats, or her sexual behavior. People are disgusted with her because she's a self-serving fraud.

Maybe disgust is the wrong metric, braniacs.

Hagar said...

For people who are too "fussy and nosy" about sex, they sure seem to enjoy wallowing around in it.

Hagar said...

DailyMail kind of sex, that is.

rhhardin said...

The rhetorical thing about disgust is that it's always outside analysis. That's its point. It's a starting term that needs no critical justification.

Derrida, in Economimesis, I think.

David Begley said...

David Remnick is a Dem political hack. A favorite of Obama’s. A Chris Coumo who can write. IMHO, not worthy of Althousian analysis other than to expose him for the partisan he is.

Paddy O said...

I was 55% Democrat on that disgust test, so I think that makes me the sort of moderate I often assume I am.

I'm much more conservative in my practical politics, but often for liberal sorts of reasons. I'm highly against corruption, as I think that's one of the chief causes of poverty. Whereas my progressive friends seem to have very little interest and even active disregard for issues of corruption (I've been told corruption is not an issue by them).

Disgust isn't just a general emotion, of course, and maybe the test is skewed toward certain kinds of disgust. The better question is what people are disgusted by. That's also an issue in the sort of postmodern relativism that's asserted these days. It's not actually relativism, it's just that people care about different things. People are still entirely and completely judgmental about things they actually care about.


And as has been discussed hereabouts over the years, there's a difference between Western conservative and Southern/Midwest conservative. Western conservatives have more of a live and let live approach, but not wishy-washy. Don't impose values on each other.

Which is why so much of California politics is really fundamentalist politics in an Eastern or Midwestern way, rather than pure western. All the progressives moved West to impose their version of authoritarian moral control, while gorging from the trough of public money.

Darrell said...

The Dems won a few local elections in States where Trump lost by spending a ton of money and treating them like they were the most important elections in history. They even let previously-banned convicted felons and illegals vote, in some of the areas won. There is no disgust of Trump. That's the Democrat's narrative being set up.

dreams said...

"and I say "us" because I came up 59% liberal on that disgust test"

That test doesn't have any value, I scored even higher and I know I'm a conservative Republican.

Danno said...

PaddyO, You just have to look at Africa to see how corruption turns out. Mugabe has taken the former Rhodesia to news levels of poverty in a country that was once the breadbasket of Africa.

Danno said...

new not news

Michael K said...

I came out 77% liberal on the "Disgust" text.

First they need to have a different test for doctors, s surgeons or pathologists who do autopsies.

Second, a lot of commenters and Ann came out on the "liberal" side suggesting, as I have done before, that this is a libertarian blog,

Thirdly, Meagain kelly killed her career with that debate performance

dreams said...

"Trump knew his Republican base has a strong negative reaction to O’Donnell, so he bonded with them on that point."

Maybe some people have forgotten but it was Trump who put a stop to Rosie O'Donnell's bullying everyone. Before Trump you had all these people who had said something that she didn't like and she went after them and they all apologized and beg her for forgiveness. Poor Donny Osmond begged her and beg her for forgiveness before she got off his case.

etbass said...

"But humans don’t make political decisions for rational reasons."

Left out a word? But (female) humans don’t make political decisions for rational reasons.

Bilwick said...

I find the sadomasochistic desire for serfdom that "liberals" and other liberty-phobes have pretty disgusting.

Paddy O said...

Danno, precisely. And Venezuela. Chavez's daughter is one of the richest people in Latin America. Her wealth is enough to pay off their national debt. Interesting...

The African situation is interesting to me because of how there's such an interplay of causes that feed into corruption. Corruption fed into the abuses of Africa in the colonial eras, and corruption feeds into current corporate abuses, even as those who are in charge now use the very real reality of colonial corruption in order to secure their power and fight against asserted enemies in the present. Mugabe is the chief example but certainly not the only one. There's enough food and enough money for all, but not when the food and resources are secured by populist leaders who keep the people angry at past abusers so as to keep them from focusing on present abuses.

It's a wicked cycle, and no side is immune to it, though I'm more conservative now precisely because it seems only on the (non-GOPe) conservative side is there a movement to fight it.

Sydney said...

I didn't get a percentage on that test. It just told me my brain was a Democrat, and I know that is not true. In fact, I am disgusted by most of the Democrats' platform. I consider them the party of death and tyranny. That test didn't measure disgust. It measured squeamishness, something a career in medicine has eliminated in me.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

At first glance I thought the disgust test was nonsense since the results were so clearly out of line with it's premise. Now I realize that its moral, not sensory, disgust they were talking about. The Democrat Party enthusiastically enabled a rapist for 20 years. It's fair to say that Democrats are not prone to feelings of disgust. They can feign it, but they can't feel it.

Paddy O said...

"But (female) humans don’t make political decisions for rational reasons."

You have a very irrational view of male humans if you think they make rational political decisions. And a vastly ignorant view of pre-20th century politics.

Danno said...

Agree totally PaddyO, and the coup that ousted Mugabe probably won't fix a thing.

gg6 said...

ALTHOUSE says: "If we assume this research has got it right"
But why in the world would we do that?! Just to have a discussion about unproven and even ridiculous 'premises' - like whathehell is the scientific/researchable definition of "purity" - anything that allows us to make it seem all about "sex" and/or "homophobia"? On the basis of this post the meaning of "purity" seems to be whatever they need to suit their premise.
Of course, I'totally biased since I already think most/all sociological 'research' is pure junk - either 'biased by intent' or fit for a big 'Duh!"(RESEARCH PROVES 'Apples are different than oranges!').

jwl said...

Jonathan Haidt - Politics of Disgust:

It’s a fascinating emotion, lurking behind most of the divisive social issues in the American culture war, from abortion through flag burning, gay marriage, and now trans-gender bathroom access. My colleagues and I have found that social conservatives are higher on “disgust sensitivity” than are progressives and libertarians .....

http://righteousmind.com/the-politics-of-disgust-animated/

Paddy O said...

"It's fair to say that Democrats are not prone to feelings of disgust. They can feign it, but they can't feel it."

I'm not sure this is entirely true. My best way of coming to terms with Progressive politics is that it's a party of idealists being led by sociopaths and narcissists. The narcissists take advantage of the idealism, and can sound very idealistic, and idealists want to believe, so they ignore the warning signs.

I think Trump fits this model too, but there's less pure idealism in conservative ranks, which tends to be oriented toward mistrusting government and other people, so he isn't going to be given the kind of leeway that progressive politicians are given.

Static Ping said...

If Social Justice Warriors count as liberals, then the concept that disgust is a conservative thing is most certainly busted. Unless the explanation is SJWs are motivated by hate, which I will also accept.

Kate said...

I may be your only commenter who had an accurate outcome on the "disgust" test. 62% conservative. I think your reading of sexual disgust is correct: the Right will be empowered and the Left will retreat.

I'm also a person who had Carly as my first choice until that debate. It wasn't her abortion discussion. I was happy to see someone speak so frankly about such an upsetting topic. It was her lack of humor that killed it. Not only is Rosie O'Donnell disgusting to conservatives, Trump mocked her with such a light touch. Stridency is a delicate weapon and Carly wielded it without ever taking a break.

Paddy O said...

I've not done a formal study, but my experience around a lot of progressives is that progressive politics is very much driven by guilt. Those who feel a lot of guilt about past history or their own inner demons tend to be more progressive in politics so as to assuage their sense of guilt. It's a kind of secularized atonement. I'd be curious to see a guilt test like the disgust one.

gg6 said...

KATE said: "'I had Carly as my first choice until that debate. It wasn't her abortion discussion.... It was her lack of humor that killed it...... Stridency is a delicate weapon and Carly wielded it without ever taking a break."
Amen and bravo! to you, KATE! I totally agree - in one single night Fiorina exposed herself as a strident, scolding and - I'm sorry - a bitch! It was a case of unwitting, un-selfaware political seppuku.

KittyM said...

@Paddy O "...my experience around a lot of progressives is that progressive politics is very much driven by guilt."

That's an excellent and astute point. I agree and recognise this motive in myself and many other liberal friends of mine.

I would like to pursue this thought. I find that many conservatives on this board are made deeply uncomfortable by *any* suggestion of guilt, either personal or as pertaining to history. The reaction to any idea that, say, men enjoy historical advantages over women (yesterday's discussion) or that white people have a history of injustice towards African-Americans that is not flattering, is greeted by extreme displeasure and denial.

You may be onto something!

chuck said...

I became disgusted with the behavior of the Democrats in the aftermath of 9/11 and haven't voted for one since. The Democrats were always a bit dumb, but their amoral clawing after power without the slightest show of integrity disgusted me.

MacMacConnell said...

"According to some assessments, a pivotal factor in last week’s elections was a sense of disgust with the President—and one of the results was a sharp increase in the number of female candidates and winners," wrote David Remnick in that New Yorker piece

I assume he is writing about the New Jersey and Virginia elections recently. This is spin. Both are blue states, the elections mirrored percentages of last November between Clinton and Trump.

chickelit said...

The politics of repulsion isn't new. I even made a molecular analogy back during the primaries in 2016: link

Anonymous said...

Vaguely on-topic ramble:

Some years ago a "philosophy" site run by utilitarian types put up a quiz with a series of questions that alleged to reveal the intellectual "consistency" of one's moral views, or lack thereof.

It was silly, as every question explicitly set forth conditions that required the respondent to accept every (axiomatic) premise of preference utilitariansim. Essentially, every question boiled down to "If person X does this gross thing, and we assume that it causes no harm to anyone, and we assume that things that don't harm anyone can't be immoral, then is there anything wrong with what person X did?"

Well, duh, if I assume I'm a preference utilitarian, then I score 100% intellectual consistency in "my" moral views, simply by choosing the answer that logically accords with the assumptions set out in the question. But since I'm not a utilitarian, this set-up tells me nothing about the consistency of my actual moral views.

But what was interesting here wasn't the pointlessness of the quiz, or even the fact that it was created, in all seriousness, by "educated" people with degrees from very high-falutin' institutions. What was interesting was how many people, on record as "conservative" or religious or otherwise adamantly opposed to the utilitarian world view (who had struck me as sharp people, and also prestigiously degreed), didn't spot the sham set-up immediately. One would think it flamingly obvious that the boundaries of what constitutes "harm" for, e.g., a traditionalist Catholic and a secular preference utilitarian, would not be co-terminous, even if they over-lapped somewhat. You'd think so, but you'd be surprised at how many (apparently non-stupid) "conservatives" can't see the obvious, and muddle around trying to defend their views on the basis of somebody else's (cough cough liberals) axioms.

This is not to say that the stuff being discussed here is all invalid. Haidt's work is well worth your time. But it was nice to see that most people here (and in the previous related thread) are spotting the "sham set-up".

rhhardin said...

A highly trained dog can express disgust when somebody gives him a command who has not earned the right to.

Gets up, stiffly walks away.

Fernandinande said...

Michael K pontificated...
I came out 77% liberal on the "Disgust" text.

First they need to have a different test for doctors, s surgeons or pathologists who do autopsies.


...and for veterinarians and farmers and hunters and garbage collectors and the guys who clean up dead animals.

Second, a lot of commenters and Ann came out on the "liberal" side suggesting, as I have done before, that this is a libertarian blog,

So puritanical you got a liberal value because you're Special, but the other people who got a similar liberal value did so for for some other reason because they're not Special like you.

Figgers!

Curious George said...

"Maybe Trump would have fared worse if Megyn Kelly had been able to ask her question uninterrupted, speaking generically about women and Trump's bad mouth. She sought to ruin him by making him disgusting to the disgust-susceptible conservatives, and he interposed the image of a lady comedian. It's funny. It's all in good fun."

No, that's not it. Rosie O'Donnell is a fat dog pig and disgusting animals slob. And people know it.

gg6 said...

KITTY M says: "I find that many conservatives on this board are made deeply uncomfortable by *any* suggestion of guilt, either personal or as pertaining to history. The reaction to any idea that, say, men enjoy historical advantages over women (yesterday's discussion) or that white people have a history of injustice towards African-Americans that is not flattering, is greeted by extreme displeasure and denial."
Or perhaps, KITTY, these evil, unfeeling Conservatives(aka white males?) are reacting on the basis of 'Just Principle' and not at all from your accusation of "Denial"?? The operative principle - in your example - being that a 'white person' in 2017 has absolutely NO personal participation/"guilt" for what happened/didn't happen over 200 years ago, so has absolutely NO reason to FEEL "guilt" about it now. Which is absolutely NOT to suggest that such a guilt-free 'white person' cannot and does not feel empathy and justice-driven compassion for any legitimate CONTEMPORARY Black complaints. Ditto regards 'female complaints'.
By your form of reckoning, KITTY, it seems the only people who might be allowed to be 'guilt-free' should be Black females.
But I agree that Liberals seem to LUV 'guilt', even thrive on it? Perhaps because it makes them feel so righteous and full of that "purity" we bandy on about - and this righteousness empowers their craving to control and regulate the Lives of all others?

Michael K said...

The reaction to any idea that, say, men enjoy historical advantages over women (yesterday's discussion) or that white people have a history of injustice towards African-Americans that is not flattering, is greeted by extreme displeasure and denial.

Democrats keep coming up with these theories to try to explain why they alway fail at governing. It didn't used to be true. Roosevelt, while he wrecked the economy through ignorance, did a good job running World War II. Lyndon Johnson lost the Vietnam War after blundering into it. Eisenhower, who knew about war, refused to help the French. Kennedy, who knew a bit about war, may have been smart enough to keep it a Special Forces war but he acquiesced in the assassination of Diem which lost it. Eisenhower was willing to use Darlan to try to avoid a shooting war with the French in North Africa and took a lot of guff for it.

The terrible Reconstruction after Lincoln's assassination, left the South angry and in wide resistance by the whites. The Democrat Party was built on this resistance after the war. They fought all attempts at Civil Rights until Johnson knew he had to do something if he was ever to have a chance at the Presidency. Hence, the 1957 Voting Rights Act, which did little for southern blacks.

After Kennedy was assassinated, Johnson did a whole agenda of leftist wish list items including Medicare and Medicaid plus the 1965 Civil Rights Act which broke the power of the Southern Democrats. He was finally free of their influence which had made him powerful in the Senate.

Leftists today, like you Kitty, know no history and are trying to expunge it from schools so the students can be taught the Marxist view, as seen in Zinn's book.

This "Male Privilege" stuff is evidence of the frustration of feminism which is anti-family and does not correspond to most women's desires. It's biology, Kitty.

The "White Privilege" is frustration with more biology plus the behavioral pathology of cities since Johnson destroyed the black family with the "War on Poverty."

Venezuela is where you would take us with the Bernie agenda of today's Democrats.

Michael K said...

" the other people who got a similar liberal value did so for for some other reason because they're not Special like you. "

Please, please ignore me. You have some thing about doctors, I guess, but please pretend I din;t exist.

RNB said...

"According to some assessments..." Translation: "Me and the other guys around the newsroom agree..."

Lucien said...

I think Remnick's phrase "According to some assessments" translates to "A friend hypothesized after her third glass of Chardonnay".

His description of Secretary Clinton as an "intelligent feminist" isn't about to persuade anyone right center, nor is his repetition of the story that President Trump had been "prowling" behind Secretary Clinton in one of the debates.

buwaya said...

Historical (collective) guilt is a very modern, very silly idea.

More, it is a manufactured weapon of ideological war, a meme created within soviet-communist propaganda to exploit anti-colonialist, nationalist sentiment in the then third world, after 1945. It was built on the complex of emotions post-WWII, especially the Jewish holocaust, but cleverly weaponized to serve as an ethical justification for various communist revolutions.

Its one of those ideological weapons that outlived their creators, now thrashing about and causing destruction randomly. There are of course opportunistic scavengers, like feminists, scrounging about in the ruins in the track of this war-machine.

buwaya said...

As a good colonialist, being as we are exceedingly multicultural and tolerant, I scored 96%.

According to the disgust rule, this makes me Pol Pot, or Joseph Stalin. Actually, I think this just marks me as Conrad's Kurtz. Not actually a monster (probably), just well-adapted.

We colonialists, such of us as still exist, grew up with live-and-let-live, and when-in-Rome, and are accustomed to all sorts of tropical miseries that can upset natives back home.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

“Maybe disgust is the wrong metric, brainiacs.”

I agree. Liberals feel a tremendous amount of disgust when it comes to Trump and some rightist policies. I was 54% Republican on that silly test. I’m probably among some of the most liberal commenters here.

Inga...Allie Oop said...

It was pretty damn disgusting to hear bully Trump say this about Carly Fiorina:

“Look at that face!' Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?!”



mandrewa said...

On the previous 'disgust' thread someone mentioned this topic from "The Last Psychiatrist":

https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2008/09/either_conservatives_are_cowar.html

And that was a commentary about a paper that appeared in Science in 2008 that asserted that conservatives experience more fear than liberals based on a skin-response test as people are exposed to disturbing pictures like for instance a spider on someone's face.

The Last Psychiatrist pointed out that another obvious assertion one could make from the data is that liberals showed the same skin-response profile as psychopaths. The paper didn't point that out, of course.

Now should we conclude from this that conservatives show more disgust than liberals, that conservatives show more fear than liberals, and that liberals look identical to psychopaths when we look at their response to disturbing pictures?

No. We shouldn't, because actually none of this looks real science, and it's entirely possible that all of those assertions are false.

Now why do I say that? What clues me in that this is quite possibly pseudo-science?

Well, part of doing real science, and this is hard to do, I don't mean to say that every paper or even most papers do a good job of doing this, but with real science at least they are making an attempt to find problems in their reasoning, to actively look, for instance, for errors in how they are measuring what they claim to be measuring. Neither of these papers show an effort to do that. It's right there in front of us.

I suspect that if I were to spend weeks on the question I would be able to come with an ever expanding list of what is missing from these studies that should be there. I don't want to do that. I don't want to spend my time on that. But unfortunately, as a general observation, there is a huge amount of crap coming out of the universities from people being paid to be scientists which are really more like the opposite.

buwaya said...

Historical guilt as a weapon is designed as a way to demoralize your opponent into restricting the application of his power, by creating internal dissent, and even, through confusion of values and objectives, driving him into self destruction. The last is something of a stretch-goal, and the soviets and their western-intellectual brain trust probably never imagined such an outcome, but the zombie monster has shown it is, given time (much more time than the Soviet Union had) quite capable of such a thing.

The ultimate result is likely to be that bit at the end of "Life of Brian" (a brilliant film, impossible to make today), the Jewish suicide squad.

Paddy O said...

"I would like to pursue this thought. I find that many conservatives on this board are made deeply uncomfortable by *any* suggestion of guilt, either personal or as pertaining to history. The reaction to any idea that, say, men enjoy historical advantages over women (yesterday's discussion) or that white people have a history of injustice towards African-Americans that is not flattering, is greeted by extreme displeasure and denial"

KittyM, very interesting you agree. Maybe I am onto something! I think the issue you're highlighting is an important one for political and social responses. I, for instance, tend to be conservative and as you note I don't feel guilt and am sometimes offended by people trying to make me feel guilty about things that happened outside of my control and before my life. That said, I have no problem saying that people are jerks, and that some jerks have taken advantage of others.

I think racism is morally abhorrent. I think slavery was an utter and absolute betrayal of Christian beliefs. Indeed, I think slavery is an actual heresy, that is antichrist. I think it's a heresy because it imported views on personhood that were not what Christianity taught. It betrayed the message of the New Testament, and with that so has sexism or other such -isms that have been about securing power over others, diminishing their personhood and negating their participation in community.

I look back on the history of America and see how it betrayed the very values it asserted in its best hopes. I don't feel guilt about that, but I do see that history as being a reason to continue to not put up with that anymore.

Why does this distinction make a difference for me? Because, as I see it, a person driven by guilt will be driven to assuage that guilt, and that sometimes means policies that don't actually help but have the appearance of doing something. Whereas I don't care about assuaging guilt, so don't have to feel better about something, but I do see a need for real changes, so I want to support those who lead in making real change, in actually helping the poor, in creating opportunities for people to contribute as they are able and willing in their success.

I think this is where a big problem lies in communication across the aisle. Liberals who are driven by guilt are confused when guilt-laden rhetoric doesn't work, even as there really is a shared driving interest in moving past the racism of the past. Conservatives who share that value are confused and angry by people who need to talk through their feelings of guilt and come to terms with the psychological effects of the past on both oppressed and oppressors.

Both sides are needed for a holistic approach, but both sides are taken advantage by leaders who sow division for the sake of their own power and wealth.

Paddy O said...

buwaya, I'm not convinced that guilt is entirely new. It's more that guilt has been traditionally kept in the religious spheres. The Church has used the transaction of guilt and penance for centuries. It's more recent that guilt has become a social-political tool.

buwaya said...

Personal guilt is ancient, as you say, though probably not integral to human nature. There are cultures where its difficult to discern such a concept. There are cultures where sin does not exist.

What is new and ideological is collective guilt.

buwaya said...

To explore the idea of collective guilt, and its status as an innovation, its useful to consider 19th-early 20th century literature. My favorite is Joseph Conrad, but the weltamshauung is general.

Its odd to think, now, that Conrad was considered quite a liberal in his day. He was also a "psychological" novelist, but yet one deeply grounded in reality. He has every sort of feeling, guilt especially, explored in his characters. But this is not collective. Guilt is personal, usually the result of not living up to their cultural standards.

Even Orwell had no collective guilt, even in "Burmese Days". The colonized deserved their miseries, and colonialism was a problem because it benefited neither the colonists or the colonized - that view was new-ish, but not as new as collective guilt.

And so on. The past is another country, and travel is educational.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

If heightened sensitivity to disgust predisposes people to conservatism, and lack of disgust to liberalism, women would be predominantly Republican, and men Democrat. Girls don't like spiders and snakes, as a general rule.

KittyM said...

@Paddy O Thank you for your very interesting, lengthy and thoughtful response to my very brief reply to your post. Things can get a bit "rough" around here in the comments and although I recognise that it's all part of the game and that nobody (as was correctly pointed out yesterday to me) owes me anything here in terms of politeness or courtesy, nonetheless it is wonderfully refreshing to be able to engage with someone in a discussion where it doesn't feel like I'm being personally attacked. Thanks!!

I have read your response carefully and basically agree with everything you write! But here are some things that continue the conversation on this topic:

The "liberal guilt" thing shouldn't be understood as the same kind of guilt that we feel when we've personally behaved badly. It's about acknowledging past or present injustice in an open and non-defensive way. In particular, it's about acknowledging that privileges that we might enjoy often come at the expense of other people, past or present. At least, that's how I see it.

"I don't feel guilt and am sometimes offended by people trying to make me feel guilty about things that happened outside of my control and before my life." I can understand and sympathise with that completely.

"Because, as I see it, a person driven by guilt will be driven to assuage that guilt, and that sometimes means policies that don't actually help but have the appearance of doing something." Yes, agree with this. On the other hand, sometimes the "doing something" won't happen at all because people are not prepared to acknowledge wrong-doing or injustice in the past that led to a bad outcome in the present. I can only repeat that there is a lot of defensiveness in these comments from the more right-wing commentators when, for example, issues of America's slave past come up. And this strident tone prevents people from even getting to a point where they acknowledge a problem that we as a society might want to solve (racial discrimination, say).

I love your final sentence and say "Amen!" to it!

Michael K said...

I think it's a heresy because it imported views on personhood that were not what Christianity taught. It betrayed the message of the New Testament, and with that so has sexism or other such -isms that have been about securing power over others, diminishing their personhood and negating their participation in community.

Most early Christians were slaves. Slavery was always the anti-Christian philosophy but the age of human and animal labor was tolerant of slavery. It made a lot of work possible to do.

The Industrial Revolution was an outgrowth of the Protestant Reformation. The Catholic Church has become corrupt as so many ancient institutions do. I haven't read Luther's 95 These but I have read summaries of them. They don't mention slavery but Protestants, perhaps because so many were small tradesmen and craftsmen, and because many had indentured apprentices who would become colleagues in trade once they completed their indenture, seemed far less interested in slavery.

The South was an agricultural society and, in spite of the fact that many were Christian Protestants, there were many among the early Scots that were Catholic. Maybe that made slavery more tolerable.

Michael K said...

we as a society might want to solve (racial discrimination, say).

We have "oversolved it" to the point that we have destroyed the black family and possibly it will lad to the extinction of black society in this country. The Holocaust of black abortions is only once facet of this.

Even those achievers from the right tail of the IQ curve, and there are many, are tarred with the broad brush of Affirmative Action.

Mr. Fabulous said...

(World Famous Lurker Says....)

As a sales professional nearing retirement, this discussion is fascinating to me. For the last 20 years or so, one of the main schools of sales thinking has as its main premise that almost all sales decisions made are based upon emotion. "People buy emotionally, then justify it intellectually." There is a lot of depth to this idea, which I won't go into here. If you are interested, try looking up David Sandler, and the Sandler Institute. I sell in a highly technical field (IT), mostly to businesses and governments, and my assessment is that this premise is more germane to sales to individuals than to institutions, but it has been very useful to me nonetheless.

What interests me about this discussion is that I had previously never really made the connection to politics and religion. (If our good friend the Filipino Crocodile, and others, hadn't brought up religion, I might not have made that intellectual leap right away.)

Let's restate that sales premise in light of this current post: "People make their political decisions (and religious decisions) emotionally, THEN they justify them intellectually and morally."

A great example is Gloria Steinem's op-ed many years ago about Bill Clinton, which Ann has several previous posts about. If Gloria had started evaluating what Clinton had done from an intellectual viewpoint first, I seriously doubt that she's had come to the conclusion that Clinton was allowed "one free grope", and I suspect that her op-ed would have been written differently.

In fact, this premise may explain (but not necessarily excuse) much of the hypocritical behavior we consistently see from people in the public eye, whether politicians, movie stars, journalists, athletes, etc.

Here is my alternate premise to compete with the one pushed by this crappy poll: In general, liberals are more likely to base their political and moral decisions based upon emotion than conservatives are. A great example of this might be how one views what happened in Ferguson MO, or how one views BLM.

Owen said...

Buwaya, Paddy O, Michael K: great comments. Kitty also making useful (caralyzing?) points.

I can't add much except to say that being able to lay a guilt trip on your adversary has been a huge plus for a long time. Our impoverished rhetoric allows for little else. When the guilt trip is collective, you get an economy of scale, but it tends to piss off people, like myself, who don't buy into the concept of being responsible for things I never did, especially when that means writing checks to people who were at best members of some arbitrary group some of whom were allegedly harmed by somebody at some time.

The current fracas was fully adumbrated in the squabbles years ago about "reparations."

Michael K said...

"The current fracas was fully adumbrated in the squabbles years ago about "reparations."

"Reparation" has never gone away. I just seems more silly as time goes by.

The losers always wish they could get free stuff from the winners.

Then there are the workers.

Paddy O said...

"What is new and ideological is collective guilt."

This is an interesting point, especially globally. Shame is more of a driver than guilt, for instance, in many places. Though, I wonder if such guilt is new or just being expressed in different ways. It doesn't seem new to impose collective guilt on others, the sin of Ham, for instance was a justification for enslaving Africans. Or anti-semitism justified by calling them "Christ-killers" or any number of regional problems. It's definitely newer to emphasize self-collective guilt as happens nowadays, and still globally rare to be sure.

buwaya said...

The ancient Roman said "vae victis".

That is an interesting concept, vae victis.

Its a good filter among peoples, to identify those indoctrinated by Christianity versus the others. Who objects to it, in a general sense (other than out of prudence, or if ones own tribe is the victim), is Christian, to a degree, whatever his overt beliefs.

KittyM said...

@ Michael K

"The South was an agricultural society and, in spite of the fact that many were Christian Protestants, there were many among the early Scots that were Catholic. Maybe that made slavery more tolerable for the slave owners"

Fixed that for you.

Paddy O said...

KittyM, glad to contribute to real conversations! I certainly agree with your point that guilt is a motivator to action. It can lead to dysfunction, but can get people up and active in ways that are needed. It can also be taken advantage of, but that's not a reason to not fight for what is right and good. I really do think people in this country share more common ground but differ in motivation and methods. It gives me hope for the country even as I've become more cynical about politics and disgusted with media.

Thanks, Owen!

Michael K, your point about 'oversolving' is one reason I got to thinking about guilt. Justifying actions that result in dysfunction must come from something besides pure interest in helping. Realizing it's about guilt can explain why results and impact are secondary. And it also is a way for those in power to continue to manipulate guilt in order to keep in control. Perpetuating cycles of oppression perpetuates cycles of penance, thus keeping the transaction going, where no one actually wins except the corrupt. Slavery was definitely a tension in which religious ideals were sacrificed for immediate gain, and in large part I think because of Muslim cultural influences.

Paddy O said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Paddy O said...

"Who objects to it, in a general sense (other than out of prudence, or if ones own tribe is the victim), is Christian, to a degree,"

I entirely agree.

Paddy O said...

I highly recommend a newish book The Patient Ferment of the Early Church, by the way, showing how the early church embraced patience in transformation, but with Constantine and Augustine this changed to impatience in forcing change, and that opened the door to justifying state and social power against perceived enemies.

Bruce Hayden said...

“No one is disgusted with Hillary Clinton because of what she eats, or her sexual behavior. People are disgusted with her because she's a self-serving fraud.”

Not so sure about the sexual behavior. A lot of evidence suggesting that she is bi, if not full boat lesbian, and picturing her with her most likely paramour (Huma Abedin) is not a pretty sight, on her part. Straight guys are supposed to get turned on by lesbo action, but that presupposes two good looking lesbians, and not all the ones verging on morbid obesity that seem to predominate the movement. Visualizing Huma with another woman of equal attractiveness, nude, in delecto, would probably be just fine. But not with a nude Crooked Hillary, cankles and elephant thighs included.

Anonymous said...

Owen: I can't add much except to say that being able to lay a guilt trip on your adversary has been a huge plus for a long time. Our impoverished rhetoric allows for little else.

Or perhaps the "impoverishment" of the rhetoric is a tactic, not a bug. The rhetoric didn't impoverish itself.

Some people see quite clearly that the "guilt trip" can be, and is, a tactic to be used against an enemy. Others focus on "collective guilt" in its other manifestations - perhaps because it's just more interesting, or perhaps because acknowledging that particular purpose isn't going to lead anywhere pleasant.

A small illustration of this point: A while ago I heard some cheery apparatchik on NPR intone the phrase "truth and reconciliation committee" in the context of a discussion on "reparations". Intone in that bland, blank-brained way in which bland, blank-brained, cheery apparatchiks intone slogans. You know - that way that makes the non-oblivious shudder. (I have heard the phrase "social engineering" used by NPR guests in the same way, with similar effect.) I think that when nice, bland, nuance-oblivious guests on NPR start talking like that, it's probably past time to pay more attention to the "collective guilt" shtick in its specific "enemy tactic" sense, rather the ranging over its (admittedly more intellectually engaging) wider anthropological scope.

mikeski said...

"What is new and ideological is collective guilt."

That's old, too. We called it "original sin". It was curable, though.

The new political version of original sin, called "white privilege", is incurable.

Michael K said...


Blogger KittyM said...
@ Michael K

"The South was an agricultural society and, in spite of the fact that many were Christian Protestants, there were many among the early Scots that were Catholic. Maybe that made slavery more tolerable for the slave owners"

Fixed that for you.


I wonder why you thought that made a difference?

Virtue signaling ?

buwaya said...

"That's old, too. We called it "original sin"

That's not collective guilt.
That is a defect in human nature that leads to personal sins.

And collective guilt in this sense is not the sort that is an attack on some other tribe - Christians calling Jews Christ-killers, for instance. Its an assertion that those other guys should be considered guilty, not that those others should be expected to feel guilty.

The old idea is akin to murder, the modern one is akin to suicide.

If there was such a concept, there would be, say, a movement of Jews beating themselves, and other Jews, up for being Christ-killers just because they are Jews. That sort of thing didn't happen.

gg6 said...

MICHAEL K says and KITTY agrees: ""The South was an agricultural society and, in spite of the fact that many were Christian Protestants, there were many among the early Scots that were Catholic. Maybe that made slavery more tolerable ( for the slave owners)"
Thats' interesting - do I understand this to mean that Scotch Catholics were 1)a significant portion of the Souther populace/slaceholders; and 2)positively inclined/supportive toward 'slaveholding' in the pre-war South?
I'd luv to see some factual support of both the 'many' claim and the 'more tolerable' claim.

Skevo said...

I am a strong conservative. The Psychology Today questionnaire identified me as a strong liberal. I read the questions through a different paradigm -- I included the notion of 'necessary'. If the act was necessary, then it could be unpleasant, but not disgusting.

I did this based on experience:

--It is unpleasant to dump pig guts into a 55 gallon drum -- but necessary.

--In Vietnam I did a football drill to keep from stepping on numerous fresh-killed bodies -- necessary, therefore not disgusting.

--In my youth I was a police reporter in Waco, Texas. I often reached the scene of the latest bloody corpse before the police. Not pleasant, but not disgusting.

--I watched a coroner turn over a long-dead body that had morphed into mud ('earth to earth'). He wore a pale-blue polyester suit, and it was necessary that he turn the body over to view its front. It was unpleasant for him, but necessary.

If you include the word 'necessary', the notion turns the questionnaire on its head, and I am labeled a strong Democrat.

Roger Sweeny said...

Environmentalists are generally considered liberals, but environmentalism is at base a purity thing: get rid of pollution, whether it's toxins or development or non-native species (immigrants!). Perhaps that means that when it comes to the environment, liberals are conservative and conservatives are liberal. But that means you have to be real careful with those labels

(And to risk invoking Godwin's Law, the Nazis were environmentalists, being in favor of nature and against pollution, including smoking and, of course, Jews and Slavs and anyone who wasn't a pure Aryan.)

Michael K said...

"I'd luv to see some factual support of both the 'many' claim and the 'more tolerable' claim.

11/16/17, 3:35 PM"

There's your opportunity. Go for it !

KittyM said...

@Michael K "I wonder why you thought that made a difference? Virtue signaling ?"

No. I was trying in a succinct way to "call you out" on the assumption your comment made about who you are talking about when you write that such and such "...made slavery more tolerable."

Slavery was NEVER tolerable for those people who were slaves.

FIDO said...

KittyM

When one weaponizes guilt and has in the past taken any of the tiniest admission of wrong doing as a cudgel to beat on the confessor, like a Maoist Commisar is it any wonder that any admission of hyperpoliticized wrongdoing does not come out?

And when the accusers show such blatant hypocrisy and double standards, one is correct to question their motives of 'good faith'.

There is none.

FIDO said...

KittyM

I would question your historical accuracy. From the Bible to Roman Law, there has always been law for one to voluntarily enter slavery.

This no doubt was seldom employed, and frankly anyone who DID volunteer, no one would want. But which is more tolerable: starvation or service? Which is preferable: serve or die?

KittyM said...

@FIDO "When one weaponizes guilt and has in the past taken any of the tiniest admission of wrong doing as a cudgel to beat on the confessor, like a Maoist Commisar is it any wonder that any admission of hyperpoliticized wrongdoing does not come out?"

Who here is "one"? There can have no conversation between us if anything I argue is "tainted" for you with past wrongdoing or unfairness (as you see it) by people with whom I might broadly share political views.

I mean, I could equally dismiss much what is expressed here by referring to hypocrites or other unpleasant people on the right who have in the past argued in bad faith. But I don't. I try as best I can to engage with the actual arguments and statements that I read here.

As to your further points, I would repeat my original point, but update it to "Slavery IS NEVER tolerable for those people who ARE slaves" since there is slavery in the world today. Slavery is human bondage and quite different from paid work, freely chosen. Quite shocked to find you have issues with this.


gg6 said...

Michael K said...
"I'd luv to see some factual support of both the 'many' claim and the 'more tolerable' claim.
11/16/17, 3:35 PM"
There's your opportunity. Go for it !

Ah, the old rhetorical foot shuffle. I'll take that as a full admission YOU HAD NO SUPPORT, Michael.
Very beneath your Brand.