Becoming Real

SEEING THE DICHOTOMY AND TEACHING IT

by John Mark

Now that I see this dichotomy between hopeful-moral-wishful thinking and resigned-legal-realistic thinking, I see it everywhere.

Leftists, obviously moral/wishful. Libertardians, “principled conservatives”, classical liberal, and Civnats are still moral/wishful.

Even my wife, after Dems took the House, was emotionally upset. I said, “I’ve been telling you democracy is false hope for a long time now. Even if we’d won the House it would mean nothing in the long run.” “Yeah, but it’s just so upsetting (moral rant as she works through the emotions).”

It is hard to have your hopes shattered. High-openness right-wingers have it a bit easier because we immediately probe for outside the box solutions, that’s what we do. Low-openness folks have it harder because change is less comfortable for them in general.

It’s amazing watching the Right catch up to us slowly in real time. TheConservativeTreehouse (boomer civnat site) comment section on midterms night had many people saying “this was the nonwhites”. A new dynamic for them, normally signal hard against any race talk. The site proprietor said he just wanted to go fishing. (Emotional/wishful/hopeful thinking being shattered into realism.)

Becoming more aspie/scientific/realistic is emotionally difficult for most people, it usually only happens through the trauma of reality slapping them in the face brutally, and even then humans show a remarkable capacity to resist it. But any individual or group that embraces it (classic example Western Civ) to a greater extent than others has a tremendous advantage.

So the question is vital: How do we train it?

–John Mark

(CD: The Law is Easy to Teach)