Liberals and Conservatives: Living Together in Fear

In April of this year, a report appeared in the scientific journal Cell which claimed that there are significant quantifiable neurological differences in the brains of liberals and conservatives.

Specifically, the report shows that political conservatives have larger amygdalas, which mediate emotional reactions such as fear and aggression.

This report got picked up all over the mainstream press, as with this article in The Atlantic headlined Are Liberals and Conservatives Hard-Wired to Disagree? and another article over on Raw Story titled Brain structure differs in liberals, conservatives: study, which says “Liberals have more gray matter in a part of the brain associated with understanding complexity, while the conservative brain is bigger in the section related to processing fear, said the study on Thursday in Current Biology.”

From a purely sociological standpoint, this may have some element of truth, at least in the sense that repeated sociological studies have shown conservatives to be motivated by fears of collapsing social order, loss of social hierarchy, and social disorder.

But qualifying conservatives as fearful and liberals as optimistic is really kind of silly, seems to me. Liberals, in my experience, are just as likely to be driven by irrational fears, and to make decisions based on poor evaluation of those fears, as conservatives are.

Take, for example, the nearly universal fear among those on the political left of nuclear power. Despite the fact that nuclear power is by far the safest form of large-scale electrical generation yet invented (coal power kills more human beings every year, primarily from air pollution but also from coal mining accidents, than nuclear power has killed in the entire history of its use combined–including Chernobyl), liberals are nearly universal in their stark raving terror of all things “nuclear.”

Liberals like to mock conservatives as ignorant, uninformed, and anti-intellectual, but the reality is that across the United States, anti-intellectualism is extraordinarily popular; its cause is championed by people of all political stripes. It manifests differently, sure; conservatives tend to oppose pure science, particularly biological and geological science (but even physics is not immune; there are some highly vocal nutjobs on the right who claim that Einstein’s theory of relativity is a sinful attempt to undermine public morality by embracing moral relativism), though quixotically they tend to embrace technology.

Liberals, on the other hand, claim to champion science, at least when they can be arsed to learn enough to be able to separate it from pseudoscience; but they reject technology, in forms ranging from vaccination to food processing. Liberals are particularly frightened of life sciences; their terror of genetically modified food is second only to their terror of nuclear power as a common source of fear.

I’ve been chewing on this for a while, and as I often do, I’ve made a chart.

The things that will actually kill you tend, by and large, not to be the things you’re afraid of. Conservatives fear terrorism, which is stunningly unlikely to kill you; the number of Americans who lose their lives to terrorists every year is roughly on par with the number killed by sharks and bears, and is dwarfed by the number of people killed by falling off stepladders. On the other hand, as small as this number is, it’s still mountains bigger than the number of Americans killed by nuclear power every year, which tends to hover year after year at somewhere around zero.

How ironic, then, that the billions spent fighting these fears and the work done on both sides to advocate for these fears, and it’s actually driving to the office or not getting away from the TV to exercise that will do you in.

24 thoughts on “Liberals and Conservatives: Living Together in Fear

  1. And you’re grossly simplifying the issues with nuclear power, the huge costs & subsidies and the waste are bigger issues for many…

    Actually, no. The huge costs, subsidies, and waste are rationalizations. People have an emotional response to nuclear power, then look for reasons to validate that response.

    It’s easy to demonstrate that this is true. Many political liberals who oppose nuclear power advocate solar and wind power. Yet wind power is so incredibly heavily subsidized that if the same subsidies were applied to other forms of power generation, nuclear power would be free…and the government would pay you for each kWh of coal-generated electricity you used! And solar? Don’t get me started; the subsidies on solar are so eye-wateringly high that even thinking about it without proper protective gear is likely to give you a nosebleed.

    With prodigious subsidies comes prodigious waste; look at the recent bankruptcy of Solyndra, which went bust right after receiving a half-billion-dollar loan guarantee from the government.

    If subsidies and waste were actually REASONS to oppose a power generating technology, then people who opposed nuclear power on those grounds would also oppose solar and wind. Since they don’t, it is obvious that those aren’t reasons; they’re rationalizations.

    …than the repeated & obvious safety threats.

    And again, nuclear power has a better safety track record per mWh of power generation than any other form of large-scale power generation, solar, wind, and geothermal included.

    The initial response is fear. The arguments–cost, safety, subsidies, and so on–are ex post facto rationalizations for the fear.

    • History & I disagree with you, Franklin, and these blithe dismissals and false assertions about nuclear critics were quite literally written in the 60’s & 70’s by spinmeisters for the industry as a playbook for dismissing valid concerns about the waste & its disposal, poor maintenance and safety checks at the plants, water contamination from the cooling process, and more… not to mention the extent of damage from Chernobyl, which you will only see if you read non-US sources as there’s been an almost complete media blackout about it here for years.

      There’re real, genuine issues of several sorts with nuclear and they need to be discussed before it’s considered viable or safe… to start, probably 90% of the world’s current reactors need to be decommissioned and a method to dispose of all the waste found.

  2. And you’re grossly simplifying the issues with nuclear power, the huge costs & subsidies and the waste are bigger issues for many…

    Actually, no. The huge costs, subsidies, and waste are rationalizations. People have an emotional response to nuclear power, then look for reasons to validate that response.

    It’s easy to demonstrate that this is true. Many political liberals who oppose nuclear power advocate solar and wind power. Yet wind power is so incredibly heavily subsidized that if the same subsidies were applied to other forms of power generation, nuclear power would be free…and the government would pay you for each kWh of coal-generated electricity you used! And solar? Don’t get me started; the subsidies on solar are so eye-wateringly high that even thinking about it without proper protective gear is likely to give you a nosebleed.

    With prodigious subsidies comes prodigious waste; look at the recent bankruptcy of Solyndra, which went bust right after receiving a half-billion-dollar loan guarantee from the government.

    If subsidies and waste were actually REASONS to oppose a power generating technology, then people who opposed nuclear power on those grounds would also oppose solar and wind. Since they don’t, it is obvious that those aren’t reasons; they’re rationalizations.

    …than the repeated & obvious safety threats.

    And again, nuclear power has a better safety track record per mWh of power generation than any other form of large-scale power generation, solar, wind, and geothermal included.

    The initial response is fear. The arguments–cost, safety, subsidies, and so on–are ex post facto rationalizations for the fear.

  3. Fear, like most emotions, is rarely rational. I know several people who are deathly afraid of cockroaches. One of them will call her husband, wherever he might be at the time, to come and kill a roach if she finds one in the house, because she’s too terrified to deal with it herself. She’s an extremely intelligent, well-educated woman. She knows, intellectually, that a roach cannot kill or even harm her. It doesn’t change her fear.

    I can’t speak for the items on the conservative side of your list, but as a liberal, I would say that many of the items you mention are *concerns* of mine, but not fears at all. (Also I’m liberal bordering on socialist but I am opposed to fluoridated water–are you sure that’s a conservative thing?)

    For example, the overuse of fertilizers in mass agriculture is leading us to a global shortage of phosphorus. In addition, fertilizer runoff has been shown to pollute water sources, creating algal blooms that kill off other life forms. Am I afraid of fertilizer? Well, no, but I do think that it causes a lot of problems and I would like to see policies limiting its use to protect the environment. It’s a rational opposition based on the science we have available.

    But these concerns don’t really make me feel afraid, in the way that, say, small, enclosed places make me feel afraid.

    I’m concerned about cancer, heart disease and diabetes, too, because I know they are major killers, and that’s *why* I question things like pesticides and HFCS. If these things are contributing to those diseases, we should do something to rectify it.

    Another thing about fear, though. Fear isn’t usually just about death. I’m not afraid of dying. I’m afraid of pain and suffering and horror. That’s why people fear things such as nuclear plant meltdowns or the flesh-eating virus. It doesn’t matter if these things are rare. They are horrifying. We all know we’re going to die sooner or later. But we all would prefer it happen with minimal pain and maximum dignity. Things that cause us long-term suffering and a horrible loss of dignity frighten the hell out of us.

    I also think that things out of our own control frighten us more than things we believe are within our control. My husband is terrified of flying but not driving. Why? He isn’t in control of the plane. Rationally, he knows that the pilot is qualified and he also knows he’s not *really* in control on the road (there are all those other drivers after all). But emotionally he prefers to *feel* that he has some measure of control. So things that other people (or “the government,” or “corporations”) do are much more frightening than the risks we subject ourselves to.

    I will comment on one liberal fear that I think is perfectly rational, however. That of “religious extremists.” I’m a woman who is still capable of reproducing. I have a career. Not only do I work, but I *have* to work to support myself and my son. Religious extremists are trying to take away my ability to control my fertility. Even if my husband agreed to be celibate with me (which I think is unreasonable), I could get raped. Religious extremists would like to force me to bear a child if I become pregnant. Even if it threatened my life. Even if it threatened my livelihood. That fills me with a LOT of fear. I know of several women who were perfectly healthy before pregnancy and had to be put on bedrest for the entire 9 months. They lost their jobs. My close friend’s sister recently, and unexpectedly, *died* in childbirth. She was young and perfectly healthy. I’m not all that young and I’m not currently in the best of health, and getting pregnant would be hugely taxing on me. It’s not a risk anyone should force me to take, but people out there want to. So yeah, I think it’s 100% rational that these people scare the shit out of me.

  4. Fear, like most emotions, is rarely rational. I know several people who are deathly afraid of cockroaches. One of them will call her husband, wherever he might be at the time, to come and kill a roach if she finds one in the house, because she’s too terrified to deal with it herself. She’s an extremely intelligent, well-educated woman. She knows, intellectually, that a roach cannot kill or even harm her. It doesn’t change her fear.

    I can’t speak for the items on the conservative side of your list, but as a liberal, I would say that many of the items you mention are *concerns* of mine, but not fears at all. (Also I’m liberal bordering on socialist but I am opposed to fluoridated water–are you sure that’s a conservative thing?)

    For example, the overuse of fertilizers in mass agriculture is leading us to a global shortage of phosphorus. In addition, fertilizer runoff has been shown to pollute water sources, creating algal blooms that kill off other life forms. Am I afraid of fertilizer? Well, no, but I do think that it causes a lot of problems and I would like to see policies limiting its use to protect the environment. It’s a rational opposition based on the science we have available.

    But these concerns don’t really make me feel afraid, in the way that, say, small, enclosed places make me feel afraid.

    I’m concerned about cancer, heart disease and diabetes, too, because I know they are major killers, and that’s *why* I question things like pesticides and HFCS. If these things are contributing to those diseases, we should do something to rectify it.

    Another thing about fear, though. Fear isn’t usually just about death. I’m not afraid of dying. I’m afraid of pain and suffering and horror. That’s why people fear things such as nuclear plant meltdowns or the flesh-eating virus. It doesn’t matter if these things are rare. They are horrifying. We all know we’re going to die sooner or later. But we all would prefer it happen with minimal pain and maximum dignity. Things that cause us long-term suffering and a horrible loss of dignity frighten the hell out of us.

    I also think that things out of our own control frighten us more than things we believe are within our control. My husband is terrified of flying but not driving. Why? He isn’t in control of the plane. Rationally, he knows that the pilot is qualified and he also knows he’s not *really* in control on the road (there are all those other drivers after all). But emotionally he prefers to *feel* that he has some measure of control. So things that other people (or “the government,” or “corporations”) do are much more frightening than the risks we subject ourselves to.

    I will comment on one liberal fear that I think is perfectly rational, however. That of “religious extremists.” I’m a woman who is still capable of reproducing. I have a career. Not only do I work, but I *have* to work to support myself and my son. Religious extremists are trying to take away my ability to control my fertility. Even if my husband agreed to be celibate with me (which I think is unreasonable), I could get raped. Religious extremists would like to force me to bear a child if I become pregnant. Even if it threatened my life. Even if it threatened my livelihood. That fills me with a LOT of fear. I know of several women who were perfectly healthy before pregnancy and had to be put on bedrest for the entire 9 months. They lost their jobs. My close friend’s sister recently, and unexpectedly, *died* in childbirth. She was young and perfectly healthy. I’m not all that young and I’m not currently in the best of health, and getting pregnant would be hugely taxing on me. It’s not a risk anyone should force me to take, but people out there want to. So yeah, I think it’s 100% rational that these people scare the shit out of me.

  5. Interesting how science (or pseudo science) is being seen through the lens of a two party political system. How does this theory hold up in countries (like Canada) with a three or more party system?

  6. Interesting how science (or pseudo science) is being seen through the lens of a two party political system. How does this theory hold up in countries (like Canada) with a three or more party system?

  7. However, once clean, cheap, abundant source of energy is found, decentralization will be effectivly meaningless.

    That assumes one will be found. I have serious doubts about this. We’ve been looking for decades and are no closer to a fuel to replace petroleum than we were 100 years ago.

    Furthermore, wouldn’t it be prudent to move in two directions at once, looking for that still-unknown future energy source (perhaps in vain), while at the same time we increase the resilience of our built environment to better withstand energy shocks?

    It might just take an additional 125 years to find something as elusive as a new energy source. I’m actually thinking it will take longer.

    • If we don’t find a new energy source, decentralization won’t make much difference. The global economy will still fully colaps and everyone that’s not Omish will be screwed. With decentralization it will take longer, but it will still happen. That’s the fatal flaw in decentralization.

      So what’s more prudent, splitting our resources and attempting a plan that will require enourmous resources and a complete resturcturing of our economy, knowing that at best it will only have a short term effect. Or do we focuse 100% of our resources on the ONLY path that will give us a long term solution to the problem?

      Even in the short term it may very well fail. Converting our very centralized economy to a dispeperced economy may end up costing us more resouces in the short term than it will save us. It’s entirely possible that attempting this stop gap messure will only agrivate the problem.

      • I’m afraid I agree only with your conclusion, that the global economy will collapse in time. We can and should learn from the Amish.

        I’m further afraid that I regard much of the construction of our society (our built environment, including transportation, manufacturing and housing) as being as misguided in the US as the French’s focus on building the Maginot Line after WWI, only bigger in scope. As Jim Kunstler noted, our suburban society may prove the biggest mis-allocation of resources in all of human history.

        I’m still further of the opinion that focusing our resources in only one area may prove the most disastrous approach at all. By contrast, I agree with John Michael Greer, that we must work through dissensus, to go in as many directions as possible in the hopes that someone finds a few that work.

        All that said, while I find talk in this vein entertaining, perhaps we shouldn’t clog ‘s LJ with stuff that really doesn’t deal with his OP. Come on over to my LJ. You should find lots of grist for the mill over there, especially under the tag “The Erections Around Us” and “Just Peaking!”

  8. However, once clean, cheap, abundant source of energy is found, decentralization will be effectivly meaningless.

    That assumes one will be found. I have serious doubts about this. We’ve been looking for decades and are no closer to a fuel to replace petroleum than we were 100 years ago.

    Furthermore, wouldn’t it be prudent to move in two directions at once, looking for that still-unknown future energy source (perhaps in vain), while at the same time we increase the resilience of our built environment to better withstand energy shocks?

    It might just take an additional 125 years to find something as elusive as a new energy source. I’m actually thinking it will take longer.

  9. If we don’t find a new energy source, decentralization won’t make much difference. The global economy will still fully colaps and everyone that’s not Omish will be screwed. With decentralization it will take longer, but it will still happen. That’s the fatal flaw in decentralization.

    So what’s more prudent, splitting our resources and attempting a plan that will require enourmous resources and a complete resturcturing of our economy, knowing that at best it will only have a short term effect. Or do we focuse 100% of our resources on the ONLY path that will give us a long term solution to the problem?

    Even in the short term it may very well fail. Converting our very centralized economy to a dispeperced economy may end up costing us more resouces in the short term than it will save us. It’s entirely possible that attempting this stop gap messure will only agrivate the problem.

  10. I’m afraid I agree only with your conclusion, that the global economy will collapse in time. We can and should learn from the Amish.

    I’m further afraid that I regard much of the construction of our society (our built environment, including transportation, manufacturing and housing) as being as misguided in the US as the French’s focus on building the Maginot Line after WWI, only bigger in scope. As Jim Kunstler noted, our suburban society may prove the biggest mis-allocation of resources in all of human history.

    I’m still further of the opinion that focusing our resources in only one area may prove the most disastrous approach at all. By contrast, I agree with John Michael Greer, that we must work through dissensus, to go in as many directions as possible in the hopes that someone finds a few that work.

    All that said, while I find talk in this vein entertaining, perhaps we shouldn’t clog ‘s LJ with stuff that really doesn’t deal with his OP. Come on over to my LJ. You should find lots of grist for the mill over there, especially under the tag “The Erections Around Us” and “Just Peaking!”

  11. Diabetes, cholesterol and high blood pressure are all related to bad diet. High fructose corn syrup and other fast-digesting carbohydrates are one of the most common variations on bad diet.

    Suicide seems like a strange thing to fear, since it’s your choice to at least some degree. Fearing depression might make more sense, and suicide would be the mechanism for how it could kill you.

  12. Diabetes, cholesterol and high blood pressure are all related to bad diet. High fructose corn syrup and other fast-digesting carbohydrates are one of the most common variations on bad diet.

    Suicide seems like a strange thing to fear, since it’s your choice to at least some degree. Fearing depression might make more sense, and suicide would be the mechanism for how it could kill you.

  13. I’ve gotta take some exception to your generalization. I don’t oppose nuke tech at all, but do oppose the kind of power centralization nukes require. Anyone, including myself, can buy a solar rig and profit from the power it generates…

    Well, kind of. Anyone who’s a reasonably wealthy middle-or-upper-class homeowner can buy a subsidized solar setup and profit by selling the power back to the electric company at above-market rates, but the economics don’t really work out long term.

    First, most such solar rigs have no backing store. When you buy one, you’re counting on the grid to do your load balancing for you, and to provide you with power when the sin’s not out. This increases the difficulty of the load balancing problem for the electrical company. It’s not a big deal if only a few people do it, but it becomes a very big deal if, say, half the houses in the city are doing it.

    Worse, that transfers cost onto people who don’t live in solar-equipped houses–which will likely be disproportionately those living in apartments or without the means to install solar (read, the poorest socioeconomic segments). They end up footing the bill for the electrical utility’s increased cost of load balancing and for the premium the utility pays for that solar power.

    Now, you could give everyone who has point sources of solar some sort of backing store as well, so they’re entirely off the grid…but that drives up the cost of going solar (a lot), and now you’re trucking huge lead-acid or LiIon batteries all over the place, which is a nontrivial source of risk. The failure modes of lead acid batteries can be pretty bad; the failure modes of LiIon batteries tend to be catastrophic. And if you use a centralized backing store, which is economically more efficient…well, then you’re right back to centralized power distribution again.

    And all that before we even talk about the environmental impact of solar cell manufacture, which historically has been a very dirty industry.

  14. I’ve gotta take some exception to your generalization. I don’t oppose nuke tech at all, but do oppose the kind of power centralization nukes require. Anyone, including myself, can buy a solar rig and profit from the power it generates…

    Well, kind of. Anyone who’s a reasonably wealthy middle-or-upper-class homeowner can buy a subsidized solar setup and profit by selling the power back to the electric company at above-market rates, but the economics don’t really work out long term.

    First, most such solar rigs have no backing store. When you buy one, you’re counting on the grid to do your load balancing for you, and to provide you with power when the sin’s not out. This increases the difficulty of the load balancing problem for the electrical company. It’s not a big deal if only a few people do it, but it becomes a very big deal if, say, half the houses in the city are doing it.

    Worse, that transfers cost onto people who don’t live in solar-equipped houses–which will likely be disproportionately those living in apartments or without the means to install solar (read, the poorest socioeconomic segments). They end up footing the bill for the electrical utility’s increased cost of load balancing and for the premium the utility pays for that solar power.

    Now, you could give everyone who has point sources of solar some sort of backing store as well, so they’re entirely off the grid…but that drives up the cost of going solar (a lot), and now you’re trucking huge lead-acid or LiIon batteries all over the place, which is a nontrivial source of risk. The failure modes of lead acid batteries can be pretty bad; the failure modes of LiIon batteries tend to be catastrophic. And if you use a centralized backing store, which is economically more efficient…well, then you’re right back to centralized power distribution again.

    And all that before we even talk about the environmental impact of solar cell manufacture, which historically has been a very dirty industry.

  15. History & I disagree with you, Franklin, and these blithe dismissals and false assertions about nuclear critics were quite literally written in the 60’s & 70’s by spinmeisters for the industry as a playbook for dismissing valid concerns about the waste & its disposal, poor maintenance and safety checks at the plants, water contamination from the cooling process, and more… not to mention the extent of damage from Chernobyl, which you will only see if you read non-US sources as there’s been an almost complete media blackout about it here for years.

    There’re real, genuine issues of several sorts with nuclear and they need to be discussed before it’s considered viable or safe… to start, probably 90% of the world’s current reactors need to be decommissioned and a method to dispose of all the waste found.

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