The Conservative Mind

As you may already know, there appears to be increasing evidence for the difference in brain structure for people with conservative beliefs compared to people with liberal opinions. This has been discussed in the media (e.g. here: http://healthland.time.com/2011/04/08/liberal-vs-conservative-does-the-difference-lie-in-the-brain/) but what I would like to discuss is how this might affect everyday life.

I believe conservatism serves an important role for humanity, just like the fish in a school that are afraid to discover new territories. They may become disadvantageous for not achieving the resources the more brave fish do but they also might survive a predator that is lurking in the unknown.

Conservatives seem to have larger and more efficient brain structures for processing fear, while liberals tend to have larger structures for decision-making. It's not a competition, but to me it would seem that liberals do in fact have better biological characteristics for - wait for it -  decision-making. This suggests that liberal-minded people perform better than conservatives in settings where making decisions is key, for example in leadership positions. Still, liberals are not crushingly visible in politics for a variety of reasons.

Democracy. Event though there must be plenty of people who want a person with supposedly higher skills for decision-making, there probably is at least the same amount of people who think that something else is more important. Something that arouses their fear. Foreigners, gays, socialism, science, who knows, it's a scary world out there. For people with conservative beliefs, fear is more important than precise capabilities to decide. But are there more conservatives than liberals? How can there ever be any change?

I believe liberal beliefs always prevail in the end. Just have a look at humanity at the present moment. What we've discovered and how we've evolved. We're not living in caves anymore. The liberals of the Stone Age wanted progress. So did the liberals of the Middle Ages. Even though there are always times when we revert to old ways and go backwards in progress because of fear, humankind tends to go forward in the end. We tend to evolve culturally. This is why I'm not strongly repulsed by conservatives throwing their fearful guesses about political issues in the air, because I know there will be a time for that and there will be a time for progress as well. And even conservatives of today are far more liberal than conservatives of yesterday, which proves the comforting thought that the world is moving forward, not backwards.

Never stop looking forward.

Summer Vacation

I return once again to blabber, hopefully, about something interesting after a well spent extended summer. I believe I will be continuing with the same line here, talk about psychology, post photographs and random links, but I would also like to include politics. That is because recently, I’ve been really pissed off about certain political opinions relying on simple populism. Basically, in my opinion, politics should rely on facts, not beliefs. (I’m counting Bible and other religious texts as non-facts because they lack scientific evidence and I’m sorry if this insults somebody).

To sum up, I’ll be getting back to writing, and I’m trying to have politics included in some form. Meanwhile, enjoy this banter:

I had this bolded ending text thing going on, so I don't know, never stop bantering I guess.

Synthetic Happiness

A while ago I bumped into an outstanding video on TED on happiness. Feel free to donate some of your browsing time to tune in. You won't regret it, unless you've already heard about it, or if you're unable to feel happiness.

Never stop being happy.

A Break

My apologies for having a small break in writing (not in following, mind you!) due to having a vacation. Not having kept my brain active, I have no idea what to blabber about next, thus the poll you might have noticed. Instead, I'll just post some fancy pictures I took with my brand new EOS 500D. Do enjoy!

An Expansion

Started a new, more sort of an easy-reading blog. And with more essentially legal drugs. May I present to you: Coffeeshop Diaries @ http://koffieshopdiaries.blogspot.com/

Never stop... you know.

Ways of knowing

In regard of an exam tomorrow, I've published a poll about the sources of knowledge, and this text.

According to a textbook I'm currently reading, people gain knowledge about the environment mainly through four different ways: authority, observation, logic, and intuition. One may argue that some are better than the others but I'm not here to judge. Much.

The four ways of knowing may be used simultaneously as well as separately, or one may put a higher priority on some, that is, put things on top of other things.

I had to do it.

For example, belief systems such as religion and government mainly value authority and intuition over observation and logic, whereas the priorities are quite the opposite for science. Philosophy, on the other hand, resembles science in many ways, except it values logic over observation. To make things more clear:

from most to least important ways of knowing

Religion / Government: Authority-Intuition-Logic-Observation

Science: Observation-Logic-Intuition-Authority 

Philosophy: Logic-Observation-Intuition-Authority

In conclusion, the ways in which we gather information are principally quite few and that different belief systems rely on different sources of information. It's up to people to judge what to accept as valid information, and the different variations in priorities are many in number. I do realise that this post might bias the outcomes of the poll but honestly I don't give a flying fudge.

Never stop thinking, again.

Evaluations

Despite my indubitable insight in Social Psychology (Sarcasm, where's the goddamn sarcasm button?), I feel that today's exam didn't quite go as well as I predicted. Anyhow, here's some photos from The Netherlands...

... For Your Enjoyment!