One of Mamet’s favorite books has been Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, published during the First World War by the British social psychologist Wilfred Trotter, inventor of the term “herd instinct.”
“Trotter says the herd instinct in an animal is stronger even than the preservation of life,” Mamet said. “So I was watching the [2008] debates. My liberal friends would spit at the mention of Sarah Palin’s name. Or they would literally mime the act of vomiting. We’re watching the debates and one of my friends pretends to vomit and says, ‘I have to leave the room.’ I thought, oh my god, this is Trotter! This is the reaction of the herd instinct. When a sheep discovers a wolf in the fold, it vomits to ward off the attacker. It’s a sign that their position in the herd is threatened.”
The sidewalks of Hogtown and Ottawa must have been a mess after the May 2nd Shellacking Harper gave them all. The sidewalks must have been covered in vomit. But the next day it was all cleaned up again. As they say, a dog always returns to his vomit.
Here’s Mamet’s Village Voice Essay.
http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-03-11/news/why-i-am-no-longer-a-brain-dead-liberal/full/
No where is the herd instinct more entrenched then in the labor unions.
I saw a video of American Buffalo and never thought of it as an indictment of the capitalist system, primarily because I was so caught up in the story and characters. As the article pointed out, he deals with people, not stereotypes.
It will be revealing when the left disowns him as a no talent.
The Liberal Mind Explained
That’s a good one! Reminiscent in its simplicity of the Grand Unified Theory.
It is the sheep who make me vomit.
My favourite treatment of the subject comes from Evan Sayet.
At first it’s mainly humorous, but the more you think about it…
The important thing about a shibboleth is not whether it is true… The point of the shibboleth is not reaffirm external truth, but to reaffirm personal identity.
It is no wonder they all quickly fall in a line and begin spouting minor variations on the same stupid claim. The point was never, ever to consider the truth of the matter, and subject it to analysis; but precisely to simply repeat what other self-discovered members of the New Aristocrats are saying, because that’s how they each know they belong…
An argument is a reasoned series of premises designed to prove a point. It’s not just the automatic gainsaying of whatever someone else says; that’s just contradiction.
But that’s precisely what the New Aristocrats do. This isn’t thinking. This isn’t reason. This is simply the automatic, reflexive contradiction of anything a commoner might happen to say. Even if the “commoner” happens to be right.
Because the whole point is to have a different opinion, one the commoners do not share. And the commoners, being, generally, a reasonable and sound-thinking lot, unfortunately have the tendency to think the right things a distressingly large amount of the time.
Forcing the New Aristocrats to often, and more and more, take increasingly unreasonable positions simply to signal their uncommonness.
And hence: Increasing stupidity from the supposedly smart.
As the saying goes: Only an intellectual can believe things this stupid.
http://minx.cc/?post=315939
And they can’t even say “shibboleth” fast five-times.
This is one of the best SDA threads in a long time. I read and enjoyed both the Weekly Standard essay “Converting Mamet” and the Village Voice essay “David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal'” (Thanks for posting that link, Melinda!)
That “herd instinct” concept really explains the view of almost all liberals, based on my experiences. It ties in seamlessly with the concepts of “groupthink” and “doublethink”, as Orwell so artfully wrote on in “1984”.
It goes without saying that, like everyone, I surely have my own intellectual limitations while being a conservative (another liberal-in-my-youth person), but I’m always amazed at the intellectual comformity, lack of open-mindedness and shallow thinking of most of the liberals I know. “Diversity” to them means anything BUT intellectual diversity. Male, female, young, old, white, black, straight, gay, whatever … all that “diversity is good…but any real diversity -intellectually diversity- from 100% acceptance of liberal dogma is instantly condemned with a label, in attempts to shut off real debate. Better to immediately label as “racist”, “sexist”, “Christofascist”, “Islamophobic”, whatever, so as to immediately cut off any need to address the message, rather than just attacking the messenger.
I think the hat tip goes to lookout here. She posted about Mamet @ 9:59 AM this morning.
Superb article.
I’m getting Mamet’s book.
I meet amongst my work colleagues derision when I announce my support for Sarah Palin, Their attitudes towards he are dictated by the MSM; however, I shall be able to rub thei noses in the beauty of a Palin presidency.
I am agog; first to recently read a reference to the “longshore” philosopher Eric Hoffer.
You will recognize this accepting approach of labelling a working class intellectual. It was the only way the patronistic purveyors who told the masses what was acceptable to read could mention his name.
Now actually reading the name Thomas Hobbes in an article about philosophical musing is almost too much for this wondering untellectual’s grasp.
I recall sitting in an early term University seminar as mature student, when a bright young man started his comments on another student’s
assignment presentation with “in this Hobbesian world we live in” and I interrupted to ask which of Hobbes’ writings was he referring to. As you suspect he did not know of any.
I seriously doubt if he knew where Thomas Hobbes fitted in the geneology of Philosphers. It really wasn’t fair of me and he wasn’t a dumb kid, just a bit full of himself and headed for Political Science and/or English Literature.
If someone did not take the pomposity, out he would only be the coffee getter in poly/sci. If English Lit. was the goal then it would be encouraging yet another generation of inanity. Cheers;
I’m in with the ‘In’ crowd
I go where the ‘In’ crowd goes
I’m in with the ‘In’ crowd
And I know what the ‘In’ crowd knows…
Oh yeah.
That’s an excellent article.
Myself, I never read Hayek and all these other Conservative guys. What happened to me was Kim Campbell and C-68, the gun ban law. I had a rifle I was -extremely- proud of, and she BANNED it for reasons I knew were sheer idiocy. Cost me $700 and a lot of trouble to comply with that law, and I lost my rifle. That p1ssed me off.
So, I looked into the whole gun control issue. That one act by the PCs change me from a non-political, trusting sheep into the vengeful beast I am today, due to the utter corruption of that whole political issue. Knowing how crooked that whole thing is, all the greenie issues with the windmills and the taxes etc. don’t shock and amaze me. They just p1ss me off some more.
I think I got through my “crisis” of political thought a hell of a lot faster than Mamet. Possibly his is better thought out, but really it all comes down to being able to tell sh1t from shinola. I don’t need to read Hayek to do that.
This takes you way back to 1961.
US President was ?
…-
“Up from Liberalism”
“Janet Daley”
“I became a Marxist out of sheer perversity. Well, perhaps that is unfair to my adolescent self: it was a mixture of conscientiousness and perversity. The official atmosphere in the California high school where I spent my junior and senior years was—hard as it may be to imagine this now—hysterically anti-communist. This was 1961, but the sixties as we know them had not yet begun. The doctrinal orthodoxy of the day was McCarthyism in its final, decaying phase. Accordingly, my senior civics class regularly showed us propaganda films, whose crudeness constituted a provocation to (not to say an insult to the intelligence of) any potentially rebellious 16-year-old. I can remember watching lurid graphics, in which red triangles pierced through defenseless red, white, and blue balloons, and then the slogan “Socialism and communism are the same thing” flashed onto the screen—all accompanied by a triumphal musical score whose climaxes underlined the most unsubtle messages of the narration.
Such films, inevitably, caused the more independent-minded students to think, “Whoa, hang on a minute. What is this you are so determined to make me believe, and why?” As one of my more thoughtful peers put it (in a very quiet voice), “Actually, I think a bit of socialism could help to protect a country against communism by making it seem less necessary.”
So it had started. This was the beginning of the skepticism that led to cynicism and then to disaffection: the suspicion that everything your country was telling you might be blinkered at best or malign at worst. But the real damage was done for me by the hugely influential film Operation Abolition. This was the faux documentary made by the House Un-American Activities Committee to celebrate its own procedures. With a patronizing didacticism that would now seem risible, the movie recorded the HUAC hearings in San Francisco, which hauled in “known subversives” to be hectored and pilloried by some of the most unattractive legislators in U.S. history. But the clash between the “known subversives” and the congressmen—who would not allow them to finish a sentence of their “prepared propaganda statements”—was not what affected me so deeply. It was the sight of the protesters against HUAC, who had gathered outside the chamber, being attacked with fire hoses by the police. The film described the demonstrators as “dupes” of a communist plot to abolish the heroic congressional committee (hence the movie’s title). As the water swept them painfully down the marble stairs of San Francisco City Hall, we were, I suppose, expected to cheer. We didn’t. We just thought our own thoughts.
What I thought went something like this:…”
http://www.city-journal.org/html/13_2_up_from_liberalism.html
Think any knuckle dragger can explain the liberal mind?
Try this>
“Strauss-Kahn just hired Michael Jackson’s lawyer.”
“He represented pop king Michael Jackson in a child molestation case in 2004 before stepping aside, and New York Giants football star Plaxico Burress for carrying a gun into a nightclub that went off when it slipped down his pants. And he won a not guilty verdict for rapper “P.Diddy” Sean Combs, on illegal weapons and bribery charges in a nightclub brawl and shooting that was witnessed by over 100 people.”
…-
“The Wrath of Kahn”
“The Wall Street Journal raises an interesting question: are knuckle draggers to be held to the a higher standard than those whose sophistication is immeasurbly higher?”
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/2011/05/15/the-wrath-of-kahn/#more-14728
Well said Dave in PA! My Liberal’s friends will always sing the same song. They tell me to read on what Harper has been doing….(bad, sic) I always ask, what have you been listening too, CBC???? OMG, I am going to love the next 4 years… It’s been a long time come’n………………
The herd are all headed to the vomitorium …
I love schadenfreude.
Well, we are apes.
This is kinda related but not
CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN TO ME
In the movie 1984 where he say’s “under the sprawling chestnut tree i sold you and you sold me”
I saw that is was a cafe full of what looked like beurocrat’s or something but i wouldl iek some clarity if you could i would appreaciate it.
same with the same guy who say’s he hates purity and all of that but yet he likes this women or something i don’t quit get there realtionship they like living in a dictatorship but hate having to hide it ? I am not sure if you could please explain. thank you.
The average liberal minded person is simply a dependant personality, generally weak of character. They don’t exist in struggling or advancing societies, they “pop” out of the woodwork when the society becomes comfortable and soft.
Our societies greatest determent is that we have created this cancer of the left because we have become too successful for too long to remember our humble roots. It’s like developing gout “the rich man’s disease” of over abundance and pampered lifestyles.
I believe that this is a cyclical symptom of society, we are now on the decline of ours. One day the left will destroy what we have built, and the cycle of rebuilding will start anew, minus the lefties. This new society will rebuild into something new and different following all the societal rules of a beginning, a middle and an end.
My only hope is that we can forestall the lefts cancerous advance and our current societies eventual death for many generations to come.
“The average liberal minded person is simply a dependant personality, generally weak of character. They don’t exist in struggling or advancing societies, they “pop” out of the woodwork when the society becomes comfortable and soft.”
LOL
NO collectivists in developing societies.
Look, I vote for the CPC, etc., but this is just dumb. Liberals is a different worldview, maybe even some different brain structures, but they’re not stupid.
They — on average — earn slightly more income. They are — slightly — better educated, and while the data is less clear here, probably are slightly more intelligent (again, the data is less clear). They prefer novel solutions which means they’re less likely to be religious. They make worst decisions most, but not all of,the time, precisely because they are drawn to novel (i.e., not conservative or traditional or tried and true) solutions. They are much, much more likely to be scientists. They are less generous than conservatives, and believe the government should take care of folks, not so much them, personally. They are also somewhat less likely to volunteer for service, possibly for the same reason.
It’s a mixture of good and bad, but to reduce them to some kind of herd instinct parody is a bit ridiculous. The truth is, conservatives and liberals are both animals.
Humans, apes, monkeys, primates, etc. … just different classifications of the same branch of animal, all of which describes you and I.
paul in calgary >
Here’s an interesting place to start –
http://www.orwelltoday.com/readerchestnut.shtml
At the moment I’ve been nagged with questions about the movie/ book Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road”. Lots of entertaining online theories and discussions about it for me……….
Christoph >
Allot of what you commented on I agree with, some of it not so much.
I don’t believe “on average” that Liberals earn more money. Certainly the Liberal University professional grads will earn more than a High School graduate labourer, yet there are allot of conservative University graduates, Liberal unemployed & underemployed and a large segment of High School dropout self made businessmen of either ilk.
The other disagreement was the supposed intelligence question. Obviously there is huge distinction between intelligence and IQ. In a nutshell “stupid is as stupid does”, and liberals do allot of stupid things regardless of their perceived intelligence. That perception is a Liberal bigotry and a self identification.
Your comment supports what I’m trying to say:
“They make worst decisions most, but not all of, the time, precisely because they are drawn to novel (i.e., not conservative or traditional or tried and true) solutions”
The below comment – not so much:
“They are much, much more likely to be scientists”.
I think there needs to be clearer understanding by many people who equate conservatism with religion. That is a misdirection by Leftist Activists to rally support for their cause(s) by labelling “conservative thought” with extreme religious views.
“I don’t believe “on average” that Liberals earn more money.”
There is hard data to that effect in America, as well as the fact conservatives donate more time, blood, and money, literally, but I don’t have any data for Canada. See:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/03/conservatives_more_liberal_giv.html
W. Bush carried 24 of the 25 most charitable states in the union, for example. That’s pretty shocking, but in line with the theory.
As far as liberals being slightly intelligence, there was some research to that effect carried out by a pretty conservative evolutionary biologist, but it was structurally flawed, and while suggestive, can’t be relied on. I personally suspect it is true, and this explains a few things. To wit, that liberals are more likely to be scientists, more likely to earn more money, and less likely to be religious. Each of those things individually is associated with a higher IQ.
But they aren’t associated necessarily with better life decisions generally. If anything, conservative traditions and religion (which provides a read-made worldview, and therefore saves one time and attention from thinking about this in depth) leave conservatives better positioned to make a lot of great life choices. And, if any, the difference in IQ between the two groups would be slight.
I personally believe most conservative, i.e., tried and true, solutions work better than most novel solutions, and this is to be expected. It isn’t always true, but it’s generally true.
It is factually correct that people on the right are more likely to be religious, Knight 99. I’m not, but I do believe there were evolutionary advantages to religion, and some of these advantages persist to this day, including pre-formed social circles, as well as a thought-conservation strategy, allowing one to devote more attention to solving survival and reproduction related problems.
Oh, conservatives reproduce more too. Yay.
😛
My meta-point is thinking of liberals as dumb instinctive herd animals and conservatives as epitomes of reasoned thought from first principles (or something) is way off base, and could only lead conservatives who buy into it to seriously misunderstand their political opposites.
They — on average — earn slightly more income.
Easily explained, they work in gov’t. Or for gov’t.
Christoph >
“It is factually correct that people on the right are more likely to be religious”.
I’m not disagreeing with that, I’m trying to say that “conservative thought” and religion are not as mutually exclusive as the left propagandizes in a negative way. I believe the “mostly Liberal scientist” theory of yours is inaccurate. Science itself rationalizes experimental provability by conservative rationality i.e. facts. “Liberal thought” is not generally interested in facts or truth as a defence. They prefer emotionally based rationality as an approach to society and life.
This is why conservative’s are judgmental and gravitate to employment positions of predictability, dependability and judgment. Liberals on the other hand gravitate towards emotion based fields of work, like the arts, teaching, social engineering and on……….Obviously all is not set in concrete and there are always exceptions to the rule.
“conservative thought” and religion are not as mutually exclusive as the left propagandizes in a negative way.”
Of course not. I’m talking about trends affecting either side. While I personally am not religious and therefore strongly disagree with religion (and I vote conservative for economic and foreign relations reasons, mainly, as well as being pro-life), there are lots of smart religious people and plenty of dumb-ass atheists.
I agree with the points you made in your last comment, except that I would say conservatives are strongly emotional too, they’re just emotional about different things.
Generosity takes emotion, after all! A desire to serve in the military takes emotion. I think law-abidingness takes emotion of a sort. I think it may be more accurate to say that conservatives are less impulsive, by and large, but even that’s not really what I mean. You’re probably right. There are a lot of emotion-based liberals, at least on the far left.
It was great communicating with you, Knight. I’m off to bed, and I hope you enjoy your day!
Christoph>
“It was great communicating with you, Knight. I’m off to bed, and I hope you enjoy your day!”
I enjoyed the chat too. I think we almost narrowed it down to nearly mutual agreement.
Yup, it’s 3:30pm on my side of the world now, that’s 1:30am and a day earlier in Calgary.
Cheers!
Nice discussion guys. I like it!
Christoph said: “Liberals is a different worldview, maybe even some different brain structures, but they’re not stupid.”
That’s the scary part, isn’t it? To the contrary, they are very inventive. No surprise, they are -us-. Liberalism is a belief system, not a species.
Its a religion, and because its a -collectivist- religion its adherents have to be cautious of their position in the collective. Or “herd” as noted above. One does not want to be the Borg drone that has to clean the toilets, right? You want to be the drone that pushes buttons in the nice clean lab.
People who are fierce Liberals in this country, as somebody discussed in a different thread, are either in it for the money or they don’t examine their thinking much. They can espouse contradictory beliefs one after the other without any apparent dissonance in the brain pan, and believe six impossible things before breakfast.
Which is fine I suppose, but not when they try to make ME do it and not when they make ME pay for it. If I’m paying, I’d like whatever it is to function in the real world and achieve the ends its supposed to. Gun control, as I mentioned above, is fiercely defended by liberals to the point where they commonly lie and manufacture “data” to support it. Pretty much ALL the so-called “scientific” support of gun control is utterly fabricated, and it takes willfull blindness not to see it.
Willfull blindness in the same people who raise hell when drug companies fudge numbers to get their products approved.
So that’s pretty much Liberalism in a nutshell. Clever people making sh1t up to defend stupid ideas, so as to protect their place in the f-ing Borg collective. Idiot/savants.
Trolls, this is why we mock you.
Too bad the old fellow wasn’t around to observe the ‘herding’ that happened 2 weeks ago in la belle province.
Talk about a laboratory for the study of ovine behaviour…
Phantom nailed it!
liberal = a$$hole
BTW, I was born a conservative(with no heart apparently). I had an excellent social studies teacher who gave a balanced lesson and never tried to sway my POV. My first conservative role model would have been Alex P. Keetan (Micheal J Fox) from the old show “Family Ties”.
When I was a little kid I always hated those smug teachers who told you with great authority stuff that you knew wasn’t true, like that people were really nice and happy all over the world, and that the field trip was going to go really well and we were all going to have a great time, and that that little suck Meghan deserved to get the exemplary behaviour medal eight times in a row, and that the way you typed out the cover page to your assignment, putting your name in the proper corner and the date in its proper corner and etc., was more important than what you actually wrote. Those teachers irritated me and I liked feeling smarter than them. When I learned what liberals were (mainly from P.J. O’Rourke, who also taught me the importance of heavy drinking at a very inappropriate age) I realized that I always got the same vibe off them; not really surprising, since teachers are all lefties anyway.
I’ve always been a conservative. I always knew liberals were full of it.
A lot of old lefties love to think they’re rebelling against The Man; in my case, smug leftism was always the conformist attitude, so I guess it could be a sort of instinctive antinomianism in both cases.