Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Liberals and atheists, that is. And their I.Q. is higher as well. Yeah that’s right, we got another one.
People who later admitted to being “not at all religious,” and who classified themselves as “very liberal” politically had higher IQ scores as teenagers than those who were “very religious” and “very conservative.”
The difference isn’t huge. Only 11 points, on average, separate the liberal from the conservative, for instance. But [researcher Satoshi] Kanazawa believes it’s significant.
“Liberalism”—which Kanazawa defines, in part, as caring about the well-being of vast numbers of people you’ll never meet—”is a very new thing for humans,” he said.
“Historically, humans cared about the welfare of immediate family and friends but not complete strangers.”
Well, I think there’s something to this. Changes in environmental pressures have caused a sort of social evolution that was not here previously. Only thing is, a “change” in pressure is not necessarily an increase. It can be a drop. Which means the genome is devolving…weakening. It has to meet fewer challenges. It’s bored.
This is evidenced by the fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals, aptly demonstrated here. A conservative cares about whether he is confronting a particular challenge effectively. A liberal cares about whether he is confronting a particular challenge more fashionably, as interpreted by some third party, than the conservative. Whether the actual problem is solved in the end or not — he’s too distracted by these other considerations to notice.
Before you are effective, be approved-of. And in gauging whether or not your approval is sufficient, just compare it to the other guy’s.
James Lewis at The American Thinker is not being snookered by it, even for a moment.
[It’s] typical of the cultural Left today — and of its hopeless cravings to validate itself as being smarter, better-educated, and of course, more compassionate than those conservative throwbacks to a brute past. Somehow the Left always needs to boast, and like any other compulsive boaster, it is compensating for its own feelings of inferiority. I suspect that that’s the real inner nature of the Left: Most of its followers worry about their personal adequacy in life.
They certainly do seem to expend a whole lot more energy on relativism, and perceptions of others, compared to their conservative counterparts. If Kanazawa agrees with me that this is where our recent societal pressures are pushing us, and it would appear that he does, then IMO his research is valid. Our environment is descending into a pit of lethargy, distraction, despair and indulgence. Our push is to intoxicate our priorities, to become penny-wise and pound-foolish — to pursue our most vexing problems, in a manner that leads to all sorts of consequences other than a successful resolution. Our push is toward classic Bacchanalia. Yes, we are evolving in that direction. Our liberals first.
Hat tip to Dr. Sanity, via Maggie’s Farm.
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Just finished “A Conflict of Visions” last night.
In it, he hammers home the differences between the constrained vision (the vision that man is imperfect, that concentrating power in the few is dangerous, and that basic human nature does not change over time, and that social process is where fairness and justice are measured) and the unconstrained vision (the vision that man is perfectable and that human nature changes over time, that human nature evolves, and that social ends are where fairness and justice are measured).
Near the end (and remember this is 1987) he had this to say about the differences in which people with the constrained vision (which most of us conservatives hold) and people who hold the unconstrained vision (which most progressives hold) see each other like this:
- philmon | 03/19/2010 @ 12:48A leftist would far rather direct the welfare of someone he does not know. Trying that with someone he does is not safe, and icky. His empathy increases in proportion to his distance from the problem.
- jamzw | 03/20/2010 @ 00:10I actually don’t give a shit if the Left thinks I am not “evolved.” I’m actually proud of being a caveman, a Neanderthal, a throwback to another era. I’m not cool or hip or “with it.” Whoopty frigging do.
- cylarz | 03/25/2010 @ 02:40