Conservatives are baffled by the liberals’ tendency to mock their own group. Liberals are perplexed by the conservatives’ readiness to criticise others. Conservatives view liberals as prejudiced and disloyal impostors. Liberals regard conservatives as fanatical and intolerant zealots.
Who is right and why do they fight?
We’re all locked in our own little bubbles, ignorantly assuming that we perceive the world as it is. We think that everyone else is seeing the same world we are, but that’s just not how our brain works.
John Gray highlights this key concept in the humorous, though often using stereotypes, bestseller – Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus.
Men and women are like two species of aliens who have been accidentally marooned on the same planet. They speak different languages, have different customs, and can’t seem to understand each other. But if they’re ever going to get along, they need to learn to communicate.
The same is true for liberals and conservatives. They have different values and priorities, so they see the world differently. They too come from different planets.
Conservatives are like Mars, mostly following the traditions seen on Earth. Liberals, on the other hand, are hell-bent on rotating in the opposite direction like Venus.
Why?
Because the way their brain works is very different. At least that is what the latest research using brain scans suggests. It’s biology, not politics, thinks Sunny Yang, assistant professor of political science at Northeastern University.
Brain scans suggest that conservatives have a very active and larger right amygdala compared to liberals. The amygdala is sensitive to threats and is the region of the brain responsible for flight or fight response. This makes conservatives sensitive to negative emotions, especially to news and posts that trigger fear and disgust. They are also more sensitive to emotional faces, especially the ones that are threatening.
Ref (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092984/)
One of the reasons human beings live in communities is to avoid threats. Groups had more chance to survive than individuals. Such a form of preference for own race is seen even in 3-month-old infants. Conservatives tend to be group-based thinkers, and their brains can easily categorise in-groups and out-groups. They tend to prefer security, predictability and authority.
A study by Nam and her colleagues, published in Nature, suggests that people with more active amygdala tend to consider social systems as legitimate and desirable, even if at the cost of injustices and inequalities to few.
Liberals, as per the studies, tend to use their anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) more than conservatives and also have increased grey matter volume in the ACC. ACC is responsible for compassion, detecting errors and resolving conflicts. They tend to be more at ease with novelty, nuance and complexity.
This means that when faced with conflict, liberals are okay with spending some extra time to process the information before reacting. In the wild, that extra time could mean certain death.
According to Jonathan Haidt, there are six universal moral foundations that humans use to judge right and wrong: Care/harm, Fairness/cheating, Loyalty/betrayal, Authority/subversion, Sanctity/degradation, and Liberty/oppression.
Liberals tend to value care, fairness, and liberty more than the other foundations. To them, morality is about protecting the rights and welfare of individuals, especially the oppressed and marginalized.
Conservatives, on the other hand, value all six foundations more equally, and they see morality as preserving the order and stability of society, especially the institutions and traditions that bind people together.
Simply put, conservatives have group-based thinking putting groups above individuals. For them, the sum becomes greater than the parts through symbols, like flags, religion, culture, etc. They can react violently when they think such symbols are being insulted.
Liberals have individual-based thinking putting individuals above groups. So, they would want to maximise individual freedom and minimise interference from the government or any body of authority. Such thinkers would generally put less value on symbols than on the lives of individuals.
Since liberal individual-based thinkers do not view the world as in-groups and out-groups in most cases, they tend to be more open to the cultures and ideas of out-groups, which sometimes may come at the cost of native cultures.
The conservatives will see them as being influenced by alien foreign cultures. Such cultural influences from outside would be seen as a threat to native (read in-group) cultures and would be resisted. Liberals would interpret the resistance as bigoted and close-mindedness.
Why has there been such a polarisation now?
The social media seems to have acted as a catalyst that increased the polarization. It has become easier to bully others using a gadget rather than face-to-face. The amount of information, especially misinformation, has increased. In fact, the algorithms are made to feed you more as per your prejudices. One tends to have similar types of friends on social media and thus post the version of truth that is best liked by their similar-minded peers. It is very common nowadays to block and unfriendly those who differ. Social media is making us intolerant of opposing views.
Liberals tend to disproportionately criticise their own groups in social media and are often blamed for not pointing out the mistakes of out-groups.
One of the extreme outcomes of liberalism is the dogmatic vengeful liberalism (a term used by Douglas Murray) often associated with woke culture. Woke culture is used to describe a set of beliefs and practices that promote awareness of social and racial injustice. It is often associated with progressive social movements such as Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ+ rights.
The term “woke” originated in African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) in the 1930s. It meant to be aware of and responsive to racial prejudice and discrimination. In the 2010s, the term began to be used more broadly to encompass awareness of other forms of social inequality, such as sexism and homophobia.
The downside of woke culture is that it often demands that people conform to its beliefs and values, and it can be quick to dismiss or even attack those who disagree. Woke culture often focuses on the differences between people, rather than their commonalities. This can create a sense of us-versus-them, traditionally not associated with liberalism, which can make it difficult to build bridges and create a more inclusive society.
Such ultra-liberals often take up moral superiority and curb the free speech of conservatives by force. ‘Bigot’, ‘homophobe’, ‘sexist’, ‘misogynist’, ‘racist’ and ‘transphobe’ have become common terms to attack conservatives instead of trying to find a common ground. It has become a fashion to label right-wing politicians as Nazis.
One of the examples is ultra-feminism. The Nobel Prize-winning Professor Tim Hunt, who was 72 years old at the time, had his career ruined after making just one clumsy joke about men and women falling in love in the lab at a conference in South Korea. Douglas Murray points out several such extreme examples in his book The Madness of Crowds.
Conservatives often proudly promote their culture and religion and disproportionately compare and criticize out-groups. They are threat-sensitive, which makes them susceptible to conspiracy theories. This makes it easier for politicians to manipulate them into feeling under attack from out-groups.
A strong political cult leader who vows to protect the conservative in-group and rectify historical injustices can easily turn them into blind devotees. Hero worship is very strong among conservatives.
Disgust for out-groups activates the same part of the brain that is activated when you eat rotten food or smell something foul. Extreme conservatives often use propaganda to create similar feelings of disgust for out-groups. This makes it easier to marginalize and even kill people from out-groups. The Nazis used similar strategies against the Jews. Conservatives would be more prone to conform with the group, which in extreme cases, may lead to genocides.
Extreme conservatives often criticize intellectuals and mock liberals as pseudo-liberals, anti-nationals and communists. They come together to suppress liberal voices, often telling them to leave their land or be eliminated. They become vocal bullies in internet and social media. LGBT movements and liberal relationships are often seen as Western corruption and pollution of native culture, rather than natural human values.
Who is correct?
Conservatives and liberals both have important roles to play in society. Conservatives help to preserve traditional values and institutions, while liberals drive progress and innovation. However, at extremes, both can be dangerous. Extreme conservatism can lead to stagnation and oppression, while extreme liberalism can lead to chaos and anarchy.
It is difficult to find a common middle ground because it is biology, not politics. Conservatives and liberals are from different planets and their brains are wired differently. It is difficult for conservatives and liberals to understand each other’s perspectives.
It is difficult to say if the political views differ because their brains are wired differently, or their brains behave differently because of their differing opinion. Considerable range in the spectrum between liberals and conservatives do exist and there are exceptions to the general behaviours mentioned above.
However, it is important to remember that both conservatives and liberals are motivated by a desire for a better world. They both want to create a society that is fair, just, and prosperous. One side wants it for each individual, a bottoms-up development that would transform the group. The other side wants it for their group, which, they think, would then trickle down to each individual. There is no group without individuals, and no individual can survive without a group.
The modern world is much more liberal. Even the conservatives of today are more liberal than the liberals of the Middle Ages. In the overall progress, the political leaders have oscillated between both ends.
The best position is often not the middle path, but oscillations between extremes that average out in the middle. The debates should continue.
Healthy debate requires both sides to hear each other, and understand each other’s arguments before putting forward the counterargument. If we are too polarised we would not be hearing each other. Or worse, hear each other wrongly. That’s is where the debate stops and the ugly war begins.
References:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11211-017-0295-0
