I meant alienated from society at large, not from LW, although the influence of society at large obviously affects discussion on LW.
One aspect of my feeling is that I increasingly suspect that the fundamental reason people believe things in the political realm is that they feel a powerful psychological need to justify hatred. The naive view of political psychology is that people form ideological beliefs out of their experience and perceptions of the world, and those beliefs suggest that a certain category of people is harming the world, and so therefore they are justified in feeling hatred against that category of people. But my new view is that causality flows in the opposite direction: people feel hatred as a primal psychological urge, and so their conscious forebrain is forced to concoct an ideology that justifies the hatred while still allowing the individual to maintain a positive pro-social self-image.
This theory is partially testable, because it posits that a basic prerequisite of an ideology is that it identifies an out-group and justifies hatred against that out-group.
There is a quote commonly mis-attributed to August Bebel and indeed to Marx: “Antisemitismus ist der Sozialismus des dummen Kerls.” (“Antisemitism is the socialism of the stupid guy”, or perhaps colloquially, “Antisemitism is a dumb-ass version of socialism”) That is to say, politically naïve people were attracted to antisemitism because it offered them someone to blame for the problems they faced under capitalism, which — to the quoted speaker’s view, anyway — would be better remedied by changing the political-economic structure.
Jay Smooth recently put out a video, “Moving the Race Conversation Forward”, discussing recent research to the effect that mainstream-media discussions of racial issues tend to get bogged down in talking about whether an individual did or said something racist, as opposed to whether institutions and social structures produce racially biased outcomes.
There are probably other sources for similar ideas from around the political spectra. (I’ll cheerfully admit that the above two sources are rather lefter than I am, and I just couldn’t be arsed to find two rightish ones to fit the politesse of balance.) People do often look for individuals or out-groups to blame for problems caused by economic conditions, social structures, institutions, and so on. The individuals blamed may have precious little to do with the actual problems.
That said, if someone’s looking to place blame for a problem, that does suggest the problem is real. It’s not that they’re inventing the problem in order to have something to pin on an out-group. (It also doesn’t mean that a particular structural claim, Marxist or whatever, is correct on what that problem really is — just that the problem is not itself confabulated.)
There is a quote commonly mis-attributed to August Bebel and indeed to Marx: “Antisemitismus ist der Sozialismus des dummen Kerls.” (“Antisemitism is the socialism of the stupid guy”, or perhaps colloquially, “Antisemitism is a dumb-ass version of socialism”) That is to say, politically naïve people were attracted to antisemitism because it offered them someone to blame for the problems they faced under capitalism, which — to the quoted speaker’s view, anyway — would be better remedied by changing the political-economic structure.
Does that make socialism the anti-semitism of the smart? Or perhaps of the ambitious—they’re attracted to it because it gives them an enemy big enough to justify taking over everything?
Sure, obviously there are real problems in the world. Your examples seem to support my thesis that people believe in ideologies not because those ideologies are capable of solving the problems, but because the ideologies justify their feelings of hatred.
I suppose I see it as more a case of biased search: people have actual problems, and look for explanations and solutions to those problems, but have a bias towards explanations that have to do with blaming someone. The closer someone studies the actual problems, though, the less credibility blame-based explanations have.
The part where the emotional needs come first, and the ideological belief comes later as a way of expressing and justifying them, that feels credible. I just don’t think that everyone starts from the position of hatred (or, in the naive view, not everyone ends with hatred). There are other emotions, too.
But maybe the people motivated by hatred make a large part of the most mindkilled crowd. Because other emotions can be expressed legitimately also outside of the politics.
Tentatively: Look for what “and therefore” you’ve got associated with the feeling. Possibilities that come to my mind—and therefore people are frightening, or and therefore I should be angry at them all the time, or and therefore I should just hide, or and therefore I shouldn’t be seeing this.
In any case, if you’ve got an “and therefore” and you make it conscious, you might be able to think better about the feeling.
I meant alienated from society at large, not from LW, although the influence of society at large obviously affects discussion on LW.
One aspect of my feeling is that I increasingly suspect that the fundamental reason people believe things in the political realm is that they feel a powerful psychological need to justify hatred. The naive view of political psychology is that people form ideological beliefs out of their experience and perceptions of the world, and those beliefs suggest that a certain category of people is harming the world, and so therefore they are justified in feeling hatred against that category of people. But my new view is that causality flows in the opposite direction: people feel hatred as a primal psychological urge, and so their conscious forebrain is forced to concoct an ideology that justifies the hatred while still allowing the individual to maintain a positive pro-social self-image.
This theory is partially testable, because it posits that a basic prerequisite of an ideology is that it identifies an out-group and justifies hatred against that out-group.
There is a quote commonly mis-attributed to August Bebel and indeed to Marx: “Antisemitismus ist der Sozialismus des dummen Kerls.” (“Antisemitism is the socialism of the stupid guy”, or perhaps colloquially, “Antisemitism is a dumb-ass version of socialism”) That is to say, politically naïve people were attracted to antisemitism because it offered them someone to blame for the problems they faced under capitalism, which — to the quoted speaker’s view, anyway — would be better remedied by changing the political-economic structure.
Jay Smooth recently put out a video, “Moving the Race Conversation Forward”, discussing recent research to the effect that mainstream-media discussions of racial issues tend to get bogged down in talking about whether an individual did or said something racist, as opposed to whether institutions and social structures produce racially biased outcomes.
There are probably other sources for similar ideas from around the political spectra. (I’ll cheerfully admit that the above two sources are rather lefter than I am, and I just couldn’t be arsed to find two rightish ones to fit the politesse of balance.) People do often look for individuals or out-groups to blame for problems caused by economic conditions, social structures, institutions, and so on. The individuals blamed may have precious little to do with the actual problems.
That said, if someone’s looking to place blame for a problem, that does suggest the problem is real. It’s not that they’re inventing the problem in order to have something to pin on an out-group. (It also doesn’t mean that a particular structural claim, Marxist or whatever, is correct on what that problem really is — just that the problem is not itself confabulated.)
Does that make socialism the anti-semitism of the smart? Or perhaps of the ambitious—they’re attracted to it because it gives them an enemy big enough to justify taking over everything?
I’ve seen it phrased as “Anti-semitism is the socialism of fools”.
Sure, obviously there are real problems in the world. Your examples seem to support my thesis that people believe in ideologies not because those ideologies are capable of solving the problems, but because the ideologies justify their feelings of hatred.
I suppose I see it as more a case of biased search: people have actual problems, and look for explanations and solutions to those problems, but have a bias towards explanations that have to do with blaming someone. The closer someone studies the actual problems, though, the less credibility blame-based explanations have.
The part where the emotional needs come first, and the ideological belief comes later as a way of expressing and justifying them, that feels credible. I just don’t think that everyone starts from the position of hatred (or, in the naive view, not everyone ends with hatred). There are other emotions, too.
But maybe the people motivated by hatred make a large part of the most mindkilled crowd. Because other emotions can be expressed legitimately also outside of the politics.
Do you have an in-person community that you feel close to?
What I’m trying to get at is, does it bother you specifically that you are alienated from “society at large,” or do you feel alienated in general?
Tentatively: Look for what “and therefore” you’ve got associated with the feeling. Possibilities that come to my mind—and therefore people are frightening, or and therefore I should be angry at them all the time, or and therefore I should just hide, or and therefore I shouldn’t be seeing this.
In any case, if you’ve got an “and therefore” and you make it conscious, you might be able to think better about the feeling.