Amerika

For a couple decades, the writers behind this site have indicated the root of Leftism as individualism, which as a philosophy means the self first before all else. This provoked resistance on a number of fronts.

Conservatives resisted it because they confuse convention and tradition. Where tradition means a continuous goal and set of principles from origin to future, convention refers to “how we do things around here” and is more present tense oriented.

The average GOPbot thinks of Lincoln as the foundation of conservatism and does not understand why anyone would look prior to that, therefore includes the quasi-Marxism of the Radical Republicans in his general approach of patriotism, Jesus, and libertarian economics.

Leftists of course do not want anyone to know their secret. They play-act at being altruists but in fact are the most self-oriented people around there, using their tolerance as an excuse to remove all of the rules and behaviors that constrain the individual, namely themselves.

They offer the same right to others not from altruism but to form an attack mob or personal army which will then tear any opposition to their own desires for anarchy. This lets them disguise their selfishness, misdirect everyone else to false goals, and conceal their own desire to exploit the situation.

New research points out that their tendency to scapegoat leadership in fact reflects narcissistic tendencies made aggressive by their defensive nature, since a narcissist fears discovery more than anything else and will defend by attacking those who might notice his narcissism:

Narcissistic individuals and those with psychopathic tendencies are more likely to strongly endorse left-wing antihierarchical aggression, according to new research published in Current Psychology. Antihierarchical aggression refers to a specific type of hostility aimed at challenging or opposing hierarchical power structures or authority figures. The new findings shed light on psychological mechanisms that motivate some individuals to participate in violent political activism.

“Authoritarianism can be found on both sides of the political spectrum,” Krispenz and Bertrams said. “Indicators of authoritarianism on the political left are anticonventionalism (i.e., the absolute endorsement of progressive moral values), top-down censorship (i.e., the preference for the use of governmental and institutional authority to suppress any speech that is considered as offensive and intolerant), and antihierarchical aggression (i.e., the motivation to use force and aggression to overthrow established hierarchies).”

The researchers found that individuals high in [left-wing authoritarianism] tended to have high levels of neurotic narcissism, which means they cared strongly about what others thought of them, experienced high levels of shame, and had a strong need for admiration. Surprisingly, the researchers did not find a relationship between LWA and altruism, indicating that LWA and altruism are not strongly linked.

In other words, they prioritize social values above everything else, but do so out of the type of narcissism that requires social affirmation to feel stable about itself. They only feel good when they have other people affirming their narcissistic delusions.

This fits with earlier research that found that liberals get a dopamine hit from social affirmation and therefore seek what is popular as an ideal:

By matching genetic information with maps of the subjects’ social networks, the researchers were able to show that people with a specific variant of the DRD4 gene were more likely to be liberal as adults, but only if they had an active social life in adolescence.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter affecting brain processes that control movement, emotional response, and ability to experience pleasure and pain. Previous research has identified a connection between a variant of this gene and novelty-seeking behavior, and this behavior has previously been associated with personality traits related to political liberalism.

As a consequence, people with this genetic predisposition who have a greater-than-average number of friends would be exposed to a wider variety of social norms and lifestyles, which might make them more liberal than average. They reported that “it is the crucial interaction of two factors — the genetic predisposition and the environmental condition of having many friends in adolescence — that is associated with being more liberal.”

People who learn to survive by socializing become hyper-social but also, because their position is contingent upon the approval of others, defensively narcissistic as a way of resisting the critical nature of peer pressure.

When this combines with novelty-seeking behavior, or the sort of extraversion that requires constant external stimulus in order for the organism to feel in control of itself, it manifests as the psychosis of liberalism.

Tags: dopamine, leftism, liberalism, narcissism, novelty-seeking