Open thread, May 17-31 2013

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

I have a few pieces of knowledge that I think could be somehow synthesized to form a really powerful idea with a lot of implications.

In Yvain's excellent "A Thrive/Survive Theory of the Political Spectrum" (read it if you haven't already!) he makes a really compelling argument that "rightism is what happens when you’re optimizing for surviving an unsafe environment, leftism is what happens when you’re optimized for thriving in a safe environment."
It seems to me that a similar analogy can be made with happiness, where happiness is thrive mode and depression is survive mode. I'm not sure how widely accepted this theory is, but it seems kind of intuitive and obvious to me - happiness is what happens when things are going well, depression is what happens when things aren't, and the two moods must serve some sort of evolutionary function, right?
There is a direct relationship between happiness and political ideology, where the more right-wing you are, the happier you are, i.e. far right people are the happiest, far left people are the least happy. (I got this information from the General Social Survey by correlating the happiness and political ideology variables, but it was a few months ago when I did this, and the website is really confusing and I can't figure out how to display it the way I had it before, let alone link to it. So maybe you'll have to take my word for it.)

So it seems like the strategy you're using for yourself is the opposite of the strategy you're using for society, or something? Yvain theorizes in the post how someone who formulates a heuristic for themselves early on in their life that says "the world is basically dangerous" will become a right-winger, and someone with the opposite heuristic will become a left-winger, and this explains why people divide so easily into political categories. But it seems like the reverse is in fact true? This makes sense with religiosity (believing in a loving God who will keep you safe) being correlated with right-wing beliefs and poverty (growing up in a dangerous environment where survival is uncertain) being correlated with left-wing beliefs.

I don't really know what to make of this, but it seems like it could be really important.

It seems to me that a similar analogy can be made with happiness, where happiness is thrive mode and depression is survive mode.

People who are depressed aren't very productive. Depression is no useful survival mode.

Yvain theorizes in the post how someone who formulates a heuristic for themselves early on in their life that says "the world is basically dangerous" will become a right-winger, and someone with the opposite heuristic will become a left-winger, and this explains why people divide so easily into political categories.

I don't think that people are so easily devideable into political categories.

2ThereIsNoJustice13y

Regarding: "rightism is what happens when you’re optimizing for surviving an unsafe environment, leftism is what happens when you’re optimized for thriving in a safe environment." My suggestion would be that politcal beliefs in general are for optimizing survival and fairness. Both ends of the spectrum want the world to be safe. Both ends believe in fairness. But the threats are coming from different places. Yvain makes a major assumption in his post that in apocalyptic scenarios people turn on each other. But this is something I would say we find more in films than in real life, except in cases of insider-outsider groups, like pogroms. At the same time, it is a defining factor in a person's political views. If we were to argue about this, we'd be arguing about politics, and I think we consider that off-limits here? Anyway, in the abstract: It seems to me that the defining characteristic of left and right is how much authority, power, structure there needs to exist for there to also be order. "People don't rape, kill, and steal because the government/god/[structure] stops them." vs. "People don't rape, kill, and steal because they don't want to, for the most part." So the methods of optimizing for a safe environment with these opposing views point in opposite directions. Are the structures and hierarchies holding our society together, or are they its biggest threat? Build them up, or tear them down? Obviously, there are more moderate positions. Basically, these are not safe vs. unsafe, but about the perception of where that source of danger will be found. Regarding your last two points: "happiness is what happens when things are going well, depression is what happens when things aren't" and "the world is basically dangerous" etc. Thinking makes it so. A person on the right perceives their enemies as far away, and weaker because their idea of an enemy is likely a foreigner in another country without a large military. They never have to personally interact with

2knb13y

It seems that the Right/happy Left/angry-and-depressed distinction may have been around for a long time. The English Roundheads were infamously grim and dour, the Cavaliers laughing and cheerful. As for Yvain's post, he is buried so deep in Whig history (believing that the whole arc of history is leading to his own leftist beliefs taking over the world) that his whole thought process is absurdly provincial and hopelessly flawed. The left's ascendance in western countries over a period of a couple centuries in no way implies that the it is destined to control the future.

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Open thread, May 17-31 2013

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Open thread, May 17-31 2013

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