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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTHE WALL creates certainty for certainty-addicted sex-on-the-wrong-brain authoritarians
Trump advisor Sam Nunberg says the wall was a mnemonic device used to help Trump emphasize the immigration issue. As a builder, Trump could identify with a big solid simple wall.
The wall is also a device used to create certainty where there is none. It helps authoritarians deny reality and judge the world in absolutes. One side or the other. Bad brown hordes on that side and good white Amurcans on this side. Chaos on that side, order on this side.
A well known psych study identifies the need to avoid uncertainty as the main motivator common to conservatives, authoritarians, and fascists. They need certainty more than liberals. The stronger the need for certainty the easier harmless uncertainty turns into anxiety and fear.
That fear motivates authoritarians to impose and accept order, control, and conformity to reduce uncertainty, unpredictability, diversity, and chaos. It motivates them to reduce life to simple absolutes and help them judge the world in black or white, good or evil, right or wrong, this side or that side.
The wall is a perfect example of the authoritarian power dynamic at work. Leader Trump points with great certitude to the threat and chaos on the other side of the border theyre bad and offers his certainty addicted followers the simple certain fix they need to feel safe again. All the other elements in the discussion, like ladders, tunnels, surveillance technologies, alternative strategies for reducing migration, etc., represent stressful complicated uncertainties that must be avoided.
Why do authoritarians have this irrational need for certainty?
Humans evolved over hundreds of thousands of years surrounded by the never-ending infinite uncertainty of nature.
Sex on the wrong brain, or sowb for short, explains the irrational need for certainty as a mental disorder that developed as a bi-product of civilization, when we began delaying the age of reproduction.
Sex on the wrong brain happens when impatient satisfaction-demanding reproductive urges are diverted to/associated with brain functions that require patience and objectivity.
Sowb is easier to explain if brain functions are simplified to the left or right side.
While most brain functions involve both sides of the brain there are trends in lateralization. Language, for instance, is mostly a left side function. There are exceptions but for centuries the left side of the brain has been associated with functions like logic and mathematics, for instance, and the right side with emotion, creativity, and orgasm.
Authoritarians like Trump are diverting and trapping powerful impatient reproductive energy on the wrong side of the brain, where it interferes with logic and problem solving and demands premature conclusion, finality, and certainty.
But nothing is final or certain that is a fantasy. At first logic resists but the stress and fear builds until its unbearable. Logic finally opens the gate to the creative right side of the brain to help it deny reality and rationalize the irrational. Thats when some of those reproductive impulses are finally released to seek pleasure on the right side, where they were supposed to go in the first place.
So there is a reward for being a liar and idiot. That is the satisfaction of certainty.
Unfortunately, without the sex education that authoritarians resist, most humans will learn sex with the right hand. The right hand is connected to and controlled by the left side of the brain, burning in neural connections that can last a lifetime.
Thats why this jackoff shut down the government.
Other symptoms of sex on the wrong brain include ignorance, greed, fascism, misogyny, racism, sexual dysfunction
.
90% of humans are right handed. In most modern human societies sowb has been normalized and its symptoms often dismissed as human nature.
Most modern humans have sowb but within the wide spectrum of human genetic and experiential diversity some people and populations are more susceptible to it than others. Some of its symptoms, such as greed or increased suspicion of strangers, could provide short term competitive advantage and survival value that may have selected for sowb-susceptible gene pools.
In authoritarian societies sowb is rewarded. By design or default sexual repression increases sowb levels, prevents its diagnosis, and hides the simple preventive action.
Those who are good at denying reality and rationalizing the irrational and can help others discover the pleasure of certainty in the face of overwhelming uncertainty may become leaders.
Symptoms may be reduced if there is a healthy regular use of creativity and emotion and ongoing cooperation between the two sides of the brain. While most liberals also have some sowb too, those reproductive impulses may be more likely to wander through the left side and find their way over to the right side to fuel emotion, creativity to woo a mate, sex, orgasm, and reproduction.
Adapted from Sex On the Wrong Brain Ard Falten 2016
Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition John T. Jost John T. Jost, Arie W. Kruglanski, Jack Glaser, Frank J. Sulloway 2003
BigmanPigman
(52,129 posts)certainot
(9,090 posts)right handed folks are more likely to be in denial!
BigmanPigman
(52,129 posts)After reading it I sat still for a second (not easy for me) and thought about left brain/right brain in relation to being left handed and creative and the left handed people that I know of.
certainot
(9,090 posts)ran into that might interest left handers - "a left hand turn around the world" by David Wolman and more general about handedness and its history " right hand, left hand" by chris mcmanus
mcmanus points out that some left handed people actually have their brain hemispheres switched so they are essentially right handers switched over.... there's a bunch of interesting stuff.
it's interesting that a lot of the brain research makes sure the subjects are right handed
BigmanPigman
(52,129 posts)He taught me a lot of info that I was unaware of. He loves driving fast cars and driving is a pain along with a zillion other things. Just writing with your hand contorted is frustrating enough. He told me that Catholic school nuns used to beat kids until they wrote with their right hands since the left is "Satan's hand".
certainot
(9,090 posts)and more likely to be curious and questioning of authority due to less of that irrational need for certainty
at some level it's default and self perpetuating absent sex education but the koran, for instance, includes the law - "man can only have sex with his wife and that which the right hand possesses"
the scholars interpret that as referring to slaves and captives but what about non soldiers and young men who didn't have the resources for a wife or slave? how does that translate to modern times? then with the chiefs getting more than one wife they're officially ramping up the frustration and sowb.
then couple that with the promise of 72 virgins in heaven to fantasize about.... you can really get an obedient authoritarian certainty worshipping army together
LeftInTX
(29,424 posts)I can understand "border security"...but a wall? Shutdown over a wall? State of emergency over a wall?
There have been border issues for generations...this isn't an emergency....
This isn't 9/11 or something new. It's same old..same old...yet Trump is trying to make it sound like, "big bad new". This kinda stuff was going on in the 70s...(I was born in 1956) I think there are people older than me that remember other issues.
I just don't see how this sells.
certainot
(9,090 posts)to sell voter suppression and the republicans have been ramping it up ever since, with 1500 radio stations leading the way
i'm sure the border states have been dealing with this issue for decades but rove used it with talk radio to divert attention from their election theft in 2000, claiming dems were using illegal aliens, etc
there were the minutemen, calls for more wall, the defense contractors were going to make out big, etc. rove tried to force attorney generals of some states to make up cases of voter fraud etc.
and they sold a lot of voter suppression with that shit