Peter Watts Explains Sarah Palin
Oct. 11th, 2008 02:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nemorathwaldOne of my favorite science fiction authors, Peter Watts, blogged an amazing article referencing a whole raft of scientific studies to explain why the behavior of the sort exhibited by Sarah Palin is popular with anyone, ever. An excerpt:
There isn't really a soundbite for this essay. Nearly every paragraph is rife with quotability. The bottom line: It costs a lot to adhere to fundamentalist lunacies. Paying that cost in order to agree, offers proof to the rest of the national or religious group that you are committed to them. Social cohesion results. That's why fundamentalist churches spread and progressive churches die out. That's why calm secular societies don't achieve as much invention, battle victory, and imperialistic expansion as insane ones-- they're less motivated and don't love each other with maddened red-eyed passion. I was raised in the lunatic fringe, and I recognize what he's saying from my own observations.
- People perceive nonexistent patterns, meanings, and connections in random data when they are stressed, scared, and generally feel a loss of control in their own lives.
- Right-wing people are more easily scared/stressed than left-wing people. They are also more likely to cleave to authority figures and protectionist policies. There may be a genetic component to this.
- The dumber you are, the less likely you'll be able to recognize your own stupidity, and the lower will be your opinion of people who are smarter than you (even while those people keep treating you as though you are just as smart as they are)
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Date: 2008-10-11 08:28 pm (UTC)I can't remember where I saw this but I recently saw a study which was conducted on this very topic. Maybe I heard about it on NPR. It turns out that it is possible to influence the degree to which people see patterns where none exist. The way to get people to stop seeing these patterns is to get them to focus on things they DO have control over, such as strong relationships they have formed in their lives. Also, people who are not prone to see such patterns will start to see them if you put them in a situation where they feel a loss of control. Weird, eh?
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Date: 2008-10-11 08:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-12 01:28 am (UTC)(Additionally, I would argue the Barack Obama attracts more of a personality cult-type following as Sarah Palin, and certainly far, far more than John McCain ever has. I'm not seeing the superior rationality of left-wing people in that comparison.)
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Date: 2008-10-12 01:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-12 01:56 am (UTC)You've heard the phrase "suspension of disbelief"? Obama requires me to suspend belief, rather than disbelief, and impose skepticism by an act of my will. Like it or not, he got his following with intelligence, skill, and the careful craftsmanship of political charisma. So it's actually tough to see through him. Palin, by contrast, requires suspension of disbelief. I think one has to banish an acknowledgement of her failings by an act of will.
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Date: 2008-10-12 02:15 am (UTC)Sarah Palin is clearly not an airhead and is not an in-your-face religious fundamentalist socially conservative warrior (unless turning in corrupt Republicans is somehow a fundamentalist thing?). She just doesn't seem interested in the dem-durn-evilutionists-shtick, whatever her personal beliefs may or may not be. She has had stretches of incredibly high popularity in Alaska (as in, rates >90%) yet managed not to host any book burnings.
She has the acumen to be as politically talented as Bill Clinton and no matter how 2008 turns out (personally, I believe Obama will win if economic news continues as it has), we certainly have not seen the end of Sarah Palin on the national stage. Calling her an airhead is just politically-motivated crassness and ignorance.
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Date: 2008-10-12 04:17 am (UTC)No, it's not. It's the image she's currently projecting.
Her popularity in Alaska is due largely to rooting out the corruption that was running rampant in the state's government prior to her, and she's done some very interesting and smart things there. She could be a force to be reckoned with at the national level, too. But right now, she's actively acting like a Barbie doll. Why? Honestly, I don't know. I don't think she's anywhere near as stupid as she's playing. I rather wish she'd stop it.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-12 05:09 am (UTC)Where are you at?
Date: 2008-10-12 02:51 am (UTC)Re: Where are you at?
Date: 2008-10-12 05:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-12 04:02 pm (UTC)It took the Catholics four hundred years to apologize to Galileo; a hundred fifty for one of their own middle-management types to admit that they might owe one to Darwin too (although his betters immediately slapped him down for it).
Which does not commend the quality of his reasoning. Maybe we all look alike to him.
(He does link to an article which says "...Darwin's theories were 'never condemned by the Catholic Church nor was his book ever banned.'")
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Date: 2008-10-12 10:38 pm (UTC)There is a reason for this-- distinctives between some denominations don't look very significant to outsiders. To an outsider you've got major categories such as Catholic-like, Baptist-like, and Pentecostal-like, only because the differences in worship style are so visible and audible. And yet worship style is not actual doctrine. It's like categorizing Islam into Sunni, Shiite, and Sufi. Westerners tend to be satisfied with that, but I'll bet you a Muslim isn't.
To an outsider, when Esperanto and Ido split over some obscure grammar mechanism, they're all still among "the artificial language people". Similarly with religion, once you see someone willing to swallow that three people can be one person and one can be three, it's tough to care about their split over the specific hows and whys.
I acknowledge that it does matter just how far over the top, and in what ways, a person's faith has taken them. To me it all depends on whether they use their faith as a weapon to justify getting their way in a dispute. I haven't seen you cross that line, so you're OK by me.
My opinion about Galileo and Darwin is that nobody needs to apologize for things that happened before they were born, because they didn't do them. If an organization has people in power who disagree with the last people in power, they should just issue an announcement that they don't stand by what their predecessors did.
In any case, I'll tell Peter about the fact-check.
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Date: 2008-10-13 03:59 am (UTC)My dad actually started out as an Anglican before he jumped ship and became a Baptist minister. By the time he retired he was the General Secretary of the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec, so I was kind of steeped in the faith while growing up. I do know the difference between Anglican and Catholic; that was a stupid error on my part.
That said, though, I checked the points I made downstream and wouldn't you know it, the mistake doesn't seem to have sunk the rest of the argument. And you're right: once you've bought into the fundamental concept of a deity, the differences between Catholic and Anglican -- or Christian and Muslim, for that matter -- dwindle to differences in chrome and trim to an outsider.
I'm glad you liked the article, by the way. It got a lot more attention than I was expecting.
Peter
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Date: 2008-10-13 04:14 am (UTC)Completely unrelated, earlier this year I listened to your two readings on StarshipSofa.com and was really impressed. Not that I had not read those stories before, and not that I hadn't already heard your performance of the vampire slide show, but these two surprised me in particular that you can read your own writing aloud, so well. I would like you to do so more often.
Have you considered reading for perhaps Pseudopod? Not that I can just make it so, but I can talk to Ben.
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Date: 2008-10-16 01:52 pm (UTC)Glad you liked the SS readings. I actually did a whole lecture for them on the neurology of identity, which scared up a lot of comments (although the thread was ultimately hijacked by, ironically, religious types objecting to my use of the phrase "placard-waving antiabortion protesters"). SS wanted me to do a monthly installment, and I agreed to do something "monthlyish", since I couldn't guarantee such regular installments. So far I've only been able to do the one, though. Problem is, what I do for a living isn't considered especially worthwhile, so the pay's bad. Which means I have to do it a *lot* to make ends meet, and that doesn't leave many hours left over for volunteer work.
In fact, I better get back to it...
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Date: 2008-10-16 02:16 pm (UTC)