Supremacy is the magical thinking that one’s ingroup is the only source of truth. It’s the ultimate conspiracy theory, and the apotheosis of a hierarchical worldview. Supremacy is a common worldview shared by narcissists and totalitarians. Supremacist groups in American history White supremacy in particular is both a psychological condition and an institutional condition — […]
Mind control is a type of “psychological technology” used by con artists, cult leaders, and influence peddlers of all stripes to try and modify human behavior, to twist it to one’s own nefarious and usually opaque ends. Also referred to as undue influence techniques, brainwashing, emotional abuse, or thought reform, mind control is a set […]
Research has shown that emotional repression causes authoritarianism (Altemeyer, Adorno, Stenner et al). Fundamentalist religious groups favor the most repression, culturally — ergo, fundamentalist groups are at the highest risk for nurturing authoritarian traits. Emotional repression is the keystone of fundamentalist parenting. The strict application of “Biblical law” as cherry-picked by extremists is inherently contradictory […]
You may not know it yet but you’ve been drafted into a war. A conflict of cognitive warfare, in which the battlefield is your mind. We are all unwitting participants in an information war that isn’t just plaguing U.S. politics to the point of making our neighbors and allies worry about us — it’s all […]
Or capital vs. labor, oligarchs vs. plebes, plutocrats vs. proles, rich vs. poor — however you want to narrate it, the property vs. people struggle continues on in new and old ways, each and ere day. Here in America, the plutocrats have devised many clever methods of hiding the class struggle behind a race war […]
The hierarchy vs. fairness framework is an attempt to classify the world into two major spectra: a hierarchical, authoritarian worldview (R1) and a cooperative, collaborative, egalitarian one (R2). The former tends to be the value system associated with the right wing on the political spectrum (conservatives, Libertarians, the alt-Right, and so on), while the latter […]
Or: How Milton Friedman destroyed Western civilization, the neolliberalism story. An economic ideology first theorized in the 40s and 50s by scholars, it was brought to popular attention in the 1970s by the works of economist Milton Friedman and novelist Ayn Rand among others. It grew in popularity and became widely adopted in U.S. economic […]
Integrative complexity is a statistical measure of how much a person’s thinking and reasoning involves the incorporation of multiple perspectives and potential outcomes, along with the related precursors to acquiring them. Its score reflects the structure of an individual’s thoughts, and the richness of their problem-solving and decision making abilities. The integrative complexity measurement has […]
Only 7 out of 50 among them are patriots — the rest, cowards and knaves who continue to seek destruction of this republic out of self-interest and an authoritarian’s need to dominate others. Today’s impeachment vote of acquittal for Trump‘s role in the January 6 insurrection was brutal but of course, not surprising. It highlighted […]
Cult leader playbook: 1. Position himself (and the group — his extension) as the benevolent safe haven to turn to when afraid 2. Isolate the follower from other sources of safe haven 3. Arouse fear in the follower Rinse; repeat. Qualities of a Cult Leader Narcissistic — highly self-absorbed, they demand excessive admiration and slavish […]
Hannah Arendt coined the phrase “banality of evil” to refer to the confoundingly commonplace motives of the Nazis who perpetrated some of the worst war crimes in history. Primo Levi maintained that few monsters exist. “More dangerous are the common man, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions,” the Holocaust survivor […]
More proof that narcissist Donald Trump is a narcissist: It’s a hallmark of NPD to first dramatically underreact (“coronavirus is a Democratic hoax!”) and then suddenly dramatically overreact (threatening military-enforced quarantine of NYC). Donald Trump narcissist-in-chief is followed by fellow egomaniacs who see themselves in him — and see themselves getting away with murder no […]
We’re so often entranced by what we see that we forget there is more going on underneath the surface of all things. There is a cognitive basis for this, in the way our perceptual apparatus prioritizes vision above all other senses — and in the difficulty of “visualizing” The Unseen. There are psychological reasons as […]
The Lone Wolf myth is pervasive in Western culture — the idea that what really moves the needle and has the power to make change is a single solitary force: an exceptional, rugged individual who can brute force his (and it’s usually a he) way through all opposition and Get Things Done. It’s the seductive […]
Magical Thinking is a development phase we all go through as children. Unfortunately, some never come out of it fully. It’s a juvenile way of imagining you can wish reality into existence through the sheer force of your mind. There is a role for Magical Thinking in key contexts, such as creative fields — as […]