US culture is an incubator of ‘extrinsic values’. Nobody embodies them like the Republican frontrunner
Many explanations are proposed for the continued rise of Donald Trump, and the steadfastness of his support, even as the outrages and criminal charges pile up. Some of these explanations are powerful. But there is one I have seen mentioned nowhere, which could, I believe, be the most important: Trump is king of the extrinsics.
Some psychologists believe our values tend to cluster around certain poles, described as “intrinsic” and “extrinsic”. People with a strong set of intrinsic values are inclined towards empathy, intimacy and self-acceptance. They tend to be open to challenge and change, interested in universal rights and equality, and protective of other people and the living world.
People at the extrinsic end of the spectrum are more attracted to prestige, status, image, fame, power and wealth. They are strongly motivated by the prospect of individual reward and praise. They are more likely to objectify and exploit other people, to behave rudely and aggressively and to dismiss social and environmental impacts. They have little interest in cooperation or community. People with a strong set of extrinsic values are more likely to suffer from frustration, dissatisfaction, stress, anxiety, anger and compulsive behaviour.
I think this study is more at the root of the issue:
"One explanation for this might be that conservatives see “loyalty” as an innate moral principle and liberals don’t. There was a study that asked people to explain how they judged scenarios as right or wrong. It came to this conclusion:
Liberals have three principles by which they judge morality: care/harm, fairness/cheating, liberty/oppression
Conservatives have six principles by which they judge morality: care/harm, fairness/cheating, liberty/oppression, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, sanctity/degradation.
This explains why it’s hard for conservatives and liberals to have a debate about morality. Say the topic is flag burning. The conservative would say that burning a flag violates sanctity but a law against it violates liberty, so the principle of sanctity must be balanced against the principle of liberty. The liberal doesn’t see sanctity as a moral principle so only sees the violation of liberty. The liberal can see no reason to ban flag burning and can’t understand the conservative’s reasoning. However, both can agree that murder is wrong because it harms people, and that rich and poor must obey the same traffic laws because of fairness.
These are two extreme examples, but if I understand the theory correctly moral reasoning exists on a spectrum. A question for those who believe they don’t see sanctity as a moral principle at all: if your beloved dog died of natural causes, would you be comfortable serving its body as a meal? If you hesitated at all, you’re at least slightly morally conservative.
Dead link now: https://www-bcf.usc.edu/~jessegra/papers/GrahamHaidtNosek.2009.Moral foundations of liberals and conservatives.JPSP.pdf
Possible alt: https://daverupert.com/2017/08/jonathan-haidt-the-moral-roots-of-liberals-and-conservatives/
More differences:
Agreed, but it seems that Trump’s rise has coincided with a change to those 6 conservative values. Sanctity in particular seems to be drastically less important than it used to be, as vulgarity has been embraced by the right to an unprecedented degree. Gone are the days when Ned Flanders and David Brooks personified the typical conservative. Vulgarity, foul language, lack of church attendance, sexual impropriety, substance and gambling use, etc are all drastically more acceptable today than at any point in America’s post-WWII history
Having said that, there still are elements of Sanctity that these conservatives care about - kneeling during the NFL’s national anthem being one of them. But these occurrences seem to be increasingly uncommon
Lead. Hypoxia. Carbon monoxide. Stroke. Hypertension. Frontotemporal dimentia.
It’s true. I’m GenX, and I’m 50% plastic, 10% Styrofoam, and 5% lead.
Your age has nothing to do with your voting habits.
Inb4 you realize geriatrics love fox news and vote according to whatever the current Fucker Carlson firmware version tells them to.
My octogenarian mother never liked fox or fucker. So… she was very “left”
Oh thank God, that means trump doesn’t have any support /s
Every rule has an exception
Thanks for agreeing with my original statement.
Feels like some BS, using many words to separate the world into sane people and Trump (or his kind) supporters.
The author should pick a line between “inclination towards empathy, intimacy and self-acceptance” being attributed to one side and “dismissing social impacts” being attributed to another. Because “self-acceptance” is in direct conflict with “social impacts”.
And a lynching crowd is a “social impact” too, for example.
Also behaving rudely and behaving aggressively is not the same. Most of time aggressive behavior is not rude and rude behavior is not aggressive in my personal social experience.
They have little interest in cooperation or community.
So every commenter here saying nothing meaningful except for “another part of my country consists of idiots and I’m of course smarter than them” is interested in cooperation and community?
However, I’m pleased by “intrinsic” here being something good and “extrinsic” being something bad. At least my kind of people is presented as the better kind for a difference.
are more likely to suffer from frustration, dissatisfaction, stress, anxiety, anger and compulsive behaviour
Well, of course people in pain would be less pleasant. But your usual average human would say that they are themselves to blame, because the universe is a fair game (except for market economics and climate change and gender dynamics, of course, here they do notice problems or pretend to notice), so let’s just call them all idiots who should be stripped of voting rights or something.
It’s easy, he positioned himself as a political outsider. He’s a fake populist, and the rubes voting for him fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Of course, in reality he’s a sociopathic loser.
You want to beat Trump in the biggest political ass whooping this country has ever seen? Let a real populist run against him, to enact meaningful progressive change to positively improve the lives of all Americans. Won’t happen because we’re held captive by other sociopathic dinosaurs and corporations all looking to line their pockets, but it’s certainly possible.
Seems like we need something like a bernin’ sandrstorm to fix the problem.
I just want a democrat/republican ticket. So tired of this 2 parties war that brings us nowhere at best, back in times at worse. Give me a Biden/Hayley nom, I don’t care but bring back boring and normal.
That won’t happen with today’s politics. In that scenario the only objective the Republicans would have would be to impeach Biden so they could install Hayley as president.
I read the whole article, yet in my head it was being narrated by Adam Curtis. Same vibes.
Modern conservatives believe poor people have it easier than rich people and the majority ethnicity and religion are oppressed by the minorities. They are comfortable and uninterested in learning, but believe they should be treated with the upmost respect and consideration.
The factors are:
Lack of empathy
Stupidity
Fear
Its not just a lack of empathy.
its a downright terrified fear of empathy.
Because they think giving a shit about their neighbor might make them liberal, or gay, or whatever other weird connection their fucked up driven-mad-by-fox-news-brain comes up with.
Same reason they are terrified of trans people, because they are terrified of being attracted to a trans person cause, in their head, that makes them gay, which comes with the fear of being treated like they’ve treated gay people.
Honestly, almost everything comes back towards a baseless, ignorant fear. Mostly fear of having done to them what they’ve done or wanted to do to others.
This is just as false as saying “all liberals are snowflakes”. There are people who lack empathy, sure. But all people show empathy. The difference is that for liberals there is less of an out/in group mentality. And so they express empathy more widely. For conservative people (in the context of this article) they feel empathy just like everyone else, except it is only towards their in-group. Because of this idea of being different to out-groups.
Well then they must hide it really fucking well, Cause there sure hasnt been any outward signs of empathy towards their in-groups.
Just a cycle of no-true-scotsmaning themselves into smaller groups any time someone dares to have wrong-thought.
its a downright terrified fear of empathy. Because they think giving a shit about their neighbor might make them liberal, or gay, or whatever other weird connection their fucked up driven-mad-by-fox-news-brain comes up with.
It’s a fear of empathy, but not for the reasons you describe.
Working class conservatives are afraid of caring for their neighbor, let alone caring for a stranger, because they fear being taken advantage of. They fear being victims of a scam. They fear being deceived. They fear that the person asking for help is actually a rich person who is dressed up like a poor person because asking for handouts is an easier way to make money than working for a living. Where you and I see the unhoused and the genuine victims of capitalism, they see grifters and charlatans.
Which is all obviously a distortion of actual reality - the unhoused are not tricksters who are out to deceive us. But that is the narrative that needs to be addressed and countered if we want to build genuine empathic behavior
Utmost*
I don’t want to vote for either of them. They both suck.
They may both suck but Trump and party made abortions a lot harder to get, have made life a lot harder for Trans people, tried to stop the transfer of power and are undermining the nations confidence in elections. In addition, some are now trying to undermine a bi-partisan deal on border security to have a talking point at the ballot box.
Elections a lot of times are a vote for the lesser of two evils. And because the President gets to nominate Supreme Court justices it’s critical to vote. every. time.
Saying ‘they both suck’ is a cop-out.
Both of them do suck. I hate both of them, not the leaders I’d want in office. I’d rather vote for RFK, but even he has his quirks. My family is right leaning, I’m not, but I’m sure as hell not voting for Biden to get relected.
Are you going to respond to the other comment below yours? Or are you just here to ensure Trump gets elected?
Wasn’t on my phone yet jackass
Some psychologists believe our values tend to cluster around certain poles, described as “intrinsic” and “extrinsic”. People with a strong set of intrinsic values are inclined towards empathy, intimacy and self-acceptance. They tend to be open to challenge and change, interested in universal rights and equality, and protective of other people and the living world.
People at the extrinsic end of the spectrum are more attracted to prestige, status, image, fame, power and wealth. They are strongly motivated by the prospect of individual reward and praise. They are more likely to objectify and exploit other people, to behave rudely and aggressively and to dismiss social and environmental impacts. They have little interest in cooperation or community. People with a strong set of extrinsic values are more likely to suffer from frustration, dissatisfaction, stress, anxiety, anger and compulsive behaviour.
Pretty garbage takes here: we have the good, properly motivated group that votes for good guys and the bad people who are attached to the superficial and illusions…
This would not be different from a conservative analyzing the left as motivated by prestige/status (proper virtue signaling as approved by academia/mass media) and material gain through democrat policies, while the right is motivated by reason and real values, true philosophy, etc. Something I think we’ve heard done…
Pathologizing your political opponents is absolutely never a good look whether left or right does it.
I will not say that there are aspects of the above that are not true, however, just as how some leftists are very performative and only concerned with appearing correct and receiving accolades from people they admire. But to really suggest the majority of Trump voters (which are conservatives in general) are not motivated by their own principles and visions is just demonizing your opponents.
This article strikes me as the typical dayjob of “intellectuals” - to explain to the masses why they are being fucked not because how the system is fucking them, but because for some fancy esoteric reason.
Trump embodies a new fascism and the neoliberal system reducing effective quality of life and prosperity and education and manipulative media and science denial have paved the way for it for many decades. But to look at those root causes, the justified anger and easy manipulation would mean pointing the finger at themselves and at their masters.
So their job becomes one of confusing people to distract from meaningful change. A lot of this simply has to do with material prospects, and when it gets too bad it opens the door for people who promise inequality in order to solve it.
I’ve been thinking about this article again. I think your comment gets at what people are missing from this article. The author is very much saying the system is fucking us. The reason is straight forward and I have noticed this about my conservatives friends. They want to be successful, be famous and win at any cost. They’ve internalized the late stage capitalist system we live in and made the flaws that enable massive wealth disparity their values.
We are not born with our values. They are shaped by the cues and responses we receive from other people and the prevailing mores of our society. They are also moulded by the political environment we inhabit. If people live under a cruel and grasping political system, they tend to normalise and internalise it, absorbing its dominant claims and translating them into extrinsic values. This, in turn, permits an even crueller and more grasping political system to develop.
If, by contrast, people live in a country in which no one becomes destitute, in which social norms are characterised by kindness, empathy, community and freedom from want and fear, their values are likely to shift towards the intrinsic end. This process is known as policy feedback, or the “values ratchet”. The values ratchet operates at the societal and the individual level: a strong set of extrinsic values often develops as a result of insecurity and unfulfilled needs. These extrinsic values then generate further insecurity and unfulfilled need
This is how we end up with tankies, people on the far left who go to bat for communist dictatorships. And I’ve talked to a number of tankies on lemmy. They’ve internalized the flawed democracy we live in and made the flaws that allow for minority rule their values. They don’t just want to impose their economic polices on everyone using a dictatorship. The dictatorship is what they value. It’s the system they already think they are living in. To them doing away with the electoral system is just doing away with a valueless formality. To them the US has always been a dictatorship.
Fascists don’t just want to impose a dictatorship on everyone using their economic policies. The late stage capitalism is what they value. A tiny minority owning all the wealth where everyone else lives in destitution is the system they already think they are living in. To them doing away with social programs to fix wealth inequality is ensuring the natural order of things. To them hundreds of millions of people below the poverty line is normal.
Intrinsic values vs extrinsic values explains the modern saying, “Nobody wants democracy, they want a dictatorship that agrees with them”. This isn’t about liberals vs conservatives. This about what people believe our society is fundamentally about. It’s people who see the flaws in our society and want to do better vs the people who see the flaws in our society and think that is the way it has always been and that is the way it should always be. Different people internalized different flaws in our society, but they were all fucked by the same system. If we fail to stop fascism now, the next generations will have worse conditions to live under. Many of them will internalize those conditions as their values and then they will in turn create worse political and economic conditions.
I see it more like a slime mold, or bio film. There is energy here and there, some poisons there, some predators, and basically everything is controlled by the gradients of energy.
Lets assume for a moment that large states work like that to a degree. Not purely like this but to a large or at least significant degree. This is not meant to be dehumanizing: With individual humans you can have intelligent conversations but in large masses we maybe don’t work like that at all. A view like that is completely ignored in mainstream media and politics. Possibly because it’s bonkers, but humor me:
Ideology or values isn’t what guides these processes, it’s what’s secreted by specialized cells that form symbiotic relationships and in return receive more energy from large concentrations of chemical energy. Lets call them “intellectuals” and the concentrations of energy “capitalists”. It’s not a conscious process, but over time certain secretions helped increase the power and energy reserves, and in tern replicated and diversified and was further refined. Billions of cells in this biofilm can thus create complex behavior.
So humanity could work quite similarly except that humans are of course intelligent and would be much smarter on their local level, just doing their obs, advancing their careers, making that money. All that is needed to be completely stupid on a global level is that certain viewpoints are suppressed as “radical”. One method might be:
“Well it’s about extrinsic and extrinsic values! The individual cells…” bla bla bla… sorry I just get so angry at this shit. Public relations is about mass psychology, how people can be categorized and then marketed and manipulated to. So yeah values do play a role but they are more like a technology, a tool wielded by those with all the money to pay the smartest sociopaths.
Instead you have to look at the rules and systems that are in place and create these outcomes and in tern generate new outcomes. Like the details. And many have been manipulated in favor of… . A major property of our civilization is extreme wealth inequality and therefor power imbalance, a few people owning everything. Or systems like how people are filtered before they become journalists and spew ideology in turn.
It’s people who see the flaws in our society and want to do better vs the people who see the flaws in our society and think that is the way it has always been and that is the way it should always be.
There is a modern definition of fascism which is about instilling a belief in “Inequality through mythological and essentialized identity”
So that’s happening presumably because inequality has gotten so bad, the old formula don’t work any more. So new ones, or old ones in new style are tried. Most likely it will be rejected but it proved a good distraction and helped further wealth transfer.
But the old formula lead to this situation. In a way that makes the old formula just as bad. Because anyone who tries to mess with primary motivation - moving along energy gradients - is filtered out. When was the last time you read an article about the psychologically corrosive nature of advertising or PR?
So how are we ever going to change this if we’re all constantly pulled back into this illusion?
But things are breaking now. For one we’re still on the worst case climate change pathway RCP8.5 - we haven’t diverged a bit in 30 years: Because we are absolutely unable to make rational logical decisions as a civilization. This is very strong evidence that what we’ve been doing doesn’t work on a fundamental level.
But tell me more about the extrinsic values of Trump :D The guy belongs in psychiatric care, the real issue is how can a sick person like that get so rich and powerful. We cannot expect amoral systems to produce productive results. It’s got nothing to do with values.
Geez sorry this is way too long of a rant lol
Geez sorry this is way too long of a rant lol
It’s fine. It’s good to vent. The first half of your post with the microbe analogy got at the important issue that our systems our what causing the problems. This is not being disputed. I get disliking intellectuals over complicating things and missing the point. However in this case, this intellectual’s point is that there is a self reinforcing mechanism in those systems.
Neo liberalism leads to fascism. Neo liberalism creates economic inequality that gives fascists room to reach the masses via blaming peoples’ problems on an out group like migrants. But Neo Liberalism also entrenches that inequality as a value in the people living under it. So when the fascists arrive and promise to uphold that inequality and in fact expand upon it, there is already a large group of people who believe the fascists are establishing the natural order of things. I often see people online asking the question how can anyone support Trump. Whether Trump realizes it or not he does embody what his supporters value. Trump is very much a symptom.
There is a modern definition of fascism which is about instilling a belief in “Inequality through mythological and essentialized identity”
I read through it, it does a good job of covering the many facets of fascism. Ur Fascism also does a good job of defining fascism. However I am not defining fascism where you quoted me. I am defining the divisions in America. We are a divided society. But not in the way most people think. It’s not left vs fascists. We have people on the right fighting for late stage capitalism because they grew up with that and have made its flaws their values. We have people on the left who have no interest in fighting for our democracy. They have grown up with the flaws in our democracy that enable minority rule and made those flaws their values.
But tell me more about the extrinsic values of Trump :D The guy belongs in psychiatric care, the real issue is how can a sick person like that get so rich and powerful. We cannot expect amoral systems to produce productive results. It’s got nothing to do with values.
You are right, we can’t expect late stage capitalism to have productive results. This idea is not an abstract concept and is really less about Trump. Again he is just a symptom. This gets at how people feel about our systems of government and economics. It really does have to do with what people value. People, myself included, often say the Republican Party doesn’t stand for anything. That they have no values and the voters are just rooting for their political party like it’s a sports team. While the Republican Party itself doesn’t have a real platform, their voters do stand for something. They stand for capitalist system where a minority of them can be rich like Trump.
But things are breaking now. For one we’re still on the worst case climate change pathway RCP8.5 - we haven’t diverged a bit in 30 years: Because we are absolutely unable to make rational logical decisions as a civilization. This is very strong evidence that what we’ve been doing doesn’t work on a fundamental level.
Yes, things are getting bad because of our systems. But there is no point at which things will get bad enough to make people realizes the system needs fixing. I think this idea explains the why behind the saying people use when describing Russia “and then it got worse.” Living under flawed systems that generate inequality doesn’t make people want to change the systems. Instead people normalize the systems. So if we rely on things getting worse and assume that eventually people will be forced to try to fix the systems we will be disappointed. They will in fact create even worse systems, based on the flaws they internalized as values, that then make things even worse. It is a feedback loop.
But the old formula lead to this situation. In a way that makes the old formula just as bad. Because anyone who tries to mess with primary motivation - moving along energy gradients - is filtered out. When was the last time you read an article about the psychologically corrosive nature of advertising or PR?
Unfortunately this individual didn’t do a great job of getting his point across in the article. I clearly haven’t done much better. I can really only insist to people that there is a valuable idea here. We need people to reexamine their values. Or else people on the right are going to keep voting for Trump and people on the left are not going to be interested in upholding democracy, our best tool for enacting positive change. edit: typos
Trump’s team realised how many racists exist in America when they saw how popular his birther campaign was. These people are overwhelmingly conservative.
The interesting thing about America is that it was founded on the idea that people are equal, religion has no place in politics and conservative rules were holding back the common man. They fled the monarchies of Europe to create a more egalitarian society but ended up creating a divided and racist society with a capitalist aristocracy.
The interesting thing about America is that it was founded on the idea that people are equal
While our early national rhetoric certainly hammered the idea that all humans are equal, our early national actions discriminated against everyone except for landowning white anglo-saxon protestant men.
We have been an oligarchy from the start. Albeit an oligarchy with a phenomenal Public Relations department
Our founders did flee European monarchies - but they didn’t do it for the equitable reasons you describe. They fled the dictatorships of the aristocrats in order to create a new dictatorship - a dictatorship of the merchant class. Said another way, a dictatorship of the wealthy. Said yet another way, a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. That is what the United States of America is, and that is what we have always been.
- The internet makes people feel that they are actually smart - Like they possess a lot of knowledge just because they have access to it, in theory
- This country was founded in part, by very deeply racist people. That racism never actually “left”, it’s just had moments of quiet, but it’s always there because we didn’t punish the traitors behind the civil war hard enough. We also allowed the daughters of the confederacy to attempt to literally rewrite history.
- trump is a poor person’s idea of a rich person. They also see him and think inside, quietly, “he’s an idiot, so that means if I wanted to be the president, I could be the president, I just don’t want to right now”. Then when people attack trump, they feel personally attacked and defend him.
It’s somewhere in the balance of these three points.
This is silly. The reason why people are voting for him is because he’s NOT a Democrat. It’s the same shit on both sides. Biden’s a fucking idiot, and most Demcorats know this…yet, they will keep voting for him because he’s NOT a Republican.
Nah, it’s because Trump is far worse. They are not equivalent idiots.
Conservatives believe in a hierarchy and stratification of society.
They simply place themselves as the leaders and arbiters of that order based on their self-appointed superiority. They will always place themselves at the top of the totem pole.
Therefore, even if they were to completely acknowledge their failings (not a chance), their failings will never be reason to upset that order; but everyone else’s failings, perceived or real, will be more than sufficient to be kept to the end of the totem pole stuck in the dirt.
This isn’t anything that hadn’t been said before. What they are describing is shitty people and assholes. Folks have been saying that for awhile now.
The type of people breed by suburbs; under-socialized and lonely.
Because deep down many Americans dream of being outlaws on the run in the wild west being chased down by federales. They see themselves as the next Pancho and Lefty or Billie the Kid.
