[Grovenet] The Problem with Electing Authoritarian Conservatives

[Geri]

Walt, have you heard/read anything about the "startle response" being related to one's politics? Experts have been thinking and wondering about genetic traits which maybe influence one's politics ...  I'd heard about this a month or two ago, and here are a couple articles you and others may find interesting, whether taken seriously or not.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/politics/6065412.html

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1842523,00.html


Geri

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Walt Wentz" <waltw at teleport.com>
To: "Forest Grove local interests list" <grovenet at rdrop.com>
Sent: Thursday, November 06, 2008 9:24 AM
Subject: Re: [Grovenet] The Problem with Electing Authoritarian Conservatives


> Interesting stuff-- but one wonders, where does the authoritarian 
> streak ultimately come from? Yes, absolutist family upbringing does 
> produce absolutist children, as Lakoff pointed out in "Don't Think of 
> an Elephant," but what of those people who rebel against narrow 
> family strictures and grow up open-minded, or those from open-minded 
> and tolerant families who retreat into absolutism? Barring inborn 
> impulses, shouldn't exposure to the wider, more varied world slowly 
> erode the authoritarian percentage of the population, despite the 
> most desperate efforts of intolerant parents, xenophobic churches and 
> authoritarian leaders?
> Some years ago, a few anthropological researchers were proposing that 
> violent and amoral types were born as a fixed percentage of the 
> population, generally becoming criminals unless their violent 
> tendencies were harnessed or modified by the family or social 
> environment, and that this fixed genetic fraction was a once useful 
> but now destructive trait inherited from our monkey-band past, 
> formerly serving the purpose of providing a pool of aggressive 
> fighters to defend the band's territory.
> Is it possible that the authoritarian personality is another outdated 
> monkey-band trait, originally useful in producing a reservoir of 
> subservient and unquestioning "beta" apes to enforce the authority of 
> whatever "alpha" ape took command of the band?
> (Of course, one does not see this exact social organization in 
> chimpanzees or gorillas today, but then the great apes are highly 
> evolved from the old ancestral primate stock).
> All this is mere speculation on my part, of course, but could it be 
> that we are going to be stuck with a fixed genetic percentage of 
> authoritarian xenophobes for as long as the race lasts, despite our 
> most determined efforts at enlightenment and tolerance?
> Ook-ook, anyone?
> Walt
> 
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