Personalities and Structures

I get these political emails. I suppose we all do. Most of them are somewhere between mildly funny and moderately offensive. They skewer famous politicians. Sarah Palin, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the late Ted Kennedy have all been popular targets.

Back during the 2004 campaign season, scientists at Emory University put some political partisans in a functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging device to see what parts of their brains lit up when their favorite candidates were criticized. The researchers presented the subjects with information showing their favorite candidate caught in the act of self contradiction. The lead researcher, Drew Westen, summed it up this way: "None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged," "Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want, and then they get massively reinforced for it, with the elimination of negative emotional states and activation of positive ones."

It’s about loyalty to an individual, and it was a key survival trait for most of human history. Group cohesion and strong, unified threat response was vital when we lived in small kinship and tribal units. This social functionality trumped a more nuanced analysis of justice or long term benefit. After all, for much of human existence there was no “long term” for an individual to look forward to. Teenage pregnancy wasn’t a problem, it was a necessity.

The flip side of this loyalty is a hostility and suspicion of those outside one’s group, however that group is identified.

This was very useful for the hundreds of thousands of years we spent roaming around in small bands. It is a serious handicap when we live in societies of millions. Personalities don’t matter at this scale.

Although all labels are inaccurate, you could call me progressive or left wing. Nevertheless, I don’t care if people attack Pelosi or Obama or even Bernie Sanders personally. I am exasperated by people who consider this or that politician a savior. Sure, I was pleased when Obama was elected. I didn’t expect some huge shift in direction, but the eventual cessation of the most destructive policies then in place. As I have written elsewhere, I regarded him as a tourniquet, not a cure. (I see now that I was optimistic even in my limited expectations.) I recognized that he was put in place by the same political mechanism that installed George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan.  

I care about structures. Show me the political structure, the means of selecting the decision-maker, and I will tell you what decision will get made. The personality of the person selected, at least the important core of that personality, is dependent upon the methodology of selection. Our present money-soaked campaign system, dependent upon corporate media, corporate PACs, and millionaires with open checkbooks, dictates particular policy outcomes. As we know from experience, few of these outcomes have long-term benefits for the average schmo.

So don’t hail the new savior, whatever political persuasion that savior may be. For that matter, don’t waste your time reviling the new devil. That person is just acting out a predefined role on the public stage. Examine how these people get to where they are and work on that process. I realize that this is difficult. It goes against how our species has behaved for the past couple of million years. It will be vital if we are to survive another hundred.