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[–]Captzapheart 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

Both the left and right have some merit if not we would cast them to the bin of history, the only thing that you/we have to decide is who represent the idiologies best...the left/right illusion is a basic mind trick that most fundamentalist fail.

[–]Chipit[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

It's not a mind trick, it's basic human characteristics. Some of us only have 1 or 2 values. Those are the left. Some of us have 5 values. Those are the right.

Jonathan Haidt has shown this most powerfully in his work on morality and how the moral positions we take are not governed, as we like to think, by our intellect and reason but by self-serving mental processes outside our awareness.

See Haidt, J (2012). The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics And Religion. Pantheon Books.

Johnathan Haidt's research has so far uncovered six evolved psychological mechanisms of social perception, subconscious intuitive understanding, and conscious reasoning. He calls them moral foundations. He ALSO finds that moral foundations are the essential building blocks of human society. In his 2008 TED Talk "The Moral Roots of Liberals and Conservatives" he explains that human society is possible through the use of "all the tools in the toolbox." It's no coincidence that evolution pre-wired them into our brains.

Haidt finds that conservatives use all of them but liberals use about half of them, and of that half mostly just one. There's no conservative moral foundation that is not also a liberal one, but half of the conservative foundations are external to, and inaccessible by, liberal cognition.

When half of the evolved psychological mechanisms of social perception and understanding are essentially unavailable to one's subconscious intuitions and conscious reasoning one is left with no cognitive alternative for understanding people who think differently but to conclude that they're afflicted with some sort of mental dysfunction.

A conversation about social issues between a liberal and a conservative is like a conversation about rainbows between a color blind person and a fully sighted one in which the color blind liberal "knows" that the sighted conservative is an extremist nut case because he sees moral colors that "everybody knows" are just not there, and conservative think liberals are misinformed because they DON'T see moral colors that everybody knows ARE there.

R. R. Reno concluded his review of The Righteous Mind in the magazine First Things as follows:

"Thus the profound problem we face. Liberalism is blind in one eye, yet it insists on the superiority of its vision and its supreme right to rule. It cannot see half the things a governing philosophy must see, and claims that those who see both halves are thereby unqualified to govern."

Jonathan Haidt has an interesting talk on TED http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html on where differences from liberals and conservatives originate from.

[–]Captzapheart 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Good theory....but in practice all sides are guilty of selective blindness, to say this trait is exclusive to the left/liberals is questionable at best.

[–]Chipit[S] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

Left and liberals are completely different. It's the left that is the problem. The left hijacked the label liberal, something they have never been. After they ruined and destroyed the meaning they moved on to "progressive".

How do you tell the difference between liberals and leftists? Easy. Liberals believe in freedom of speech. They might disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it.

Leftists, on the other hand, freely use censorship as a weapon of first resort. Their own positions are so weak that if people are allowed to point out the many problems, they would collapse.

[–]Captzapheart 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Are people not allowed to point out the many problems relating to the left...? You do it 24/7 no one is stoping you. And if you are wrong on that what else might you be wrong about... Fundamentalism is not healthy, please stop misinforming. Your ideas about the left and right are poorly informed.

[–]Chipit[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

What? A lot of people will stop you. You get censored all over the place. That's why saidit was founded in the first place.