a clarifying point, because some have remarked in the comments on how political designations are inconsistent over time:
you'll note I use the terms 'conservative/liberal' and not 'republican/democrat' or other political branding.
when I say conservative, I mean the morality that experiences disgust responses in the insula and has a larger amygdala. I consider this a masculine moral genotype, producing a conservative political phenotype.
when I say liberal, I mean the morality that experiences a sympathy response in the insula and has a larger ACC. I consider this a feminine moral genotype, producing a liberal political phenotype.
-
On definitions:
I consider 'conservative' appropriate terminology because it protects the ingroup, is hierarchical, emphasizes the behavioral immune system, and appeals to stability and the known past. this is inherently conservative (it seeks to "conserve"). whether or not tories, republicans, or other "rightwing" parties actually do this is not the point. the parties often shift over time. this is why I don't use political party nomenclature.
liberal is an appropriate term because it's open to new experiences, more intellectually flexible, more concerned with care/harm and less so hierarchies (thus more feminine). its outgroup emphasis is at the expense of "conservation" of ideals/standards and not as focused on threat detection. whether or not democrats or other "leftwing" parties embody this, again, is not the point. the nominal parties are prone to shifting over time.
-
Additional thoughts:
the ability of these moral genotypes to fully express themselves as political phenotypes is always contingent on the environment; this is why I often say in my essays "the environment dictates the expression". for animal species, the environment dictates how genotypes express their phenotypes. I find it to be no different for humans.
the environment is very decadent in the west, this facilitates more pronounced feminine moral genotype expression, creating a more dominant liberal political phenotype. this can only happen in a backdrop of comfort and prosperity.
conversely, in environments trending towards hardship, poverty, or war, that environment allows masculine moral genotypes, resulting in dominant conservative political phenotypes, to take hold. the concept of hypermoralization, which is covered in Part 1, touches on this too.
no hedonism in poverty, no discipline in decadence.
I'll defend and elaborate on this in Biofoundationalism Part IV. it's not as byzantine as it seems, promise.
We are living through a period of political realignment. Are environmental changes causing expression of the political phenotype to change?
It also occurs to me that our left/right (or liberal/conservative) dyad is a product of the Enlightenment. Before that, in the West, the great political schism was Protestant vs Catholic. Sometimes these religious conflicts can feel like blue vs orange morality to moderns—throwing someone out of a window for respecting the Pope too much seems incomprehensible. It’s a shame we can’t brain scan a bunch of German burghers from the 17th century, but perhaps the early Protestants were biologically more like modern liberals. Then again, there’s something almost Calvinist about biofoundationalism…. Much to consider.
you know what's funny, I've never listened to much radiohead. I'm kind of indifferent on them, it's just that one song, Everything In Its Right Place, that I'm obsessed with. I have like 10 different versions/remixes that I listen to. it always randomly springs into my mind.
regarding your other points, I think this linked comment should address them. and thank you kindly for reading <3
I wonder how much of these innate temperamental qualities can change based on external factors even when they're already ingrained. For example, regular meditation seems to increase the activity in the left and right insula and ACC. Similar to how people's views on certain topics skew more liberal after brain damage.
Similarly, how would something like CBT affect disgust responses in this way? I also think about in 2012 when same-sex marriage was being voted on in various states and it came out (heh) that people were much more likely to support it if they knew a gay person. I wonder what significance regular exposure has when it comes to the conservative instinct for disgust for certain behaviors?
One thing I have difficulty understanding, though, is that if "conservative" neurobiology has a stronger inclination towards disgust directed towards impurity, why is it that it was the "liberals" who embraced masking, quarantines, vaccines, closing schools and businesses, and the like, during the Covid panic?
liberals were not exhibiting a disgust response in 2020. you'll note they didn't care at all about covid at the start; in feb 2020 we're telling people to go to chinese new year parades and the like. however when trump started to downplay it, they pivoted in full force.
a disgust response is instinctive. looking at mutilated bodies. decaying flesh. maggots. repulsed at something sexually unpure. it's not a strategy, it's an intrinsic reaction; not the obverse stance of your perceived political enemies.
democrats exhibited a form of social control and signaling with the mask theatrics and orwellian covid games. it was doubly apparent when you saw the double standards surrounding the Summer of Love protests that year; they were ok with braving the virus for "social justice" gatherings, but if you gathered outside to have a BBQ or go to the beach, that was forbidden.
you also saw this with all the politicians who got caught violating their own rules. a genuine disgust response would take these measures seriously.
that is not disgust. that is displaying a form of dominance and advancing political goals in a hypermoralized society.
On one side, neural activity is revealed by an MRI machine, scanning a brain and decoding millions of radio waves emitted from hydrogen atoms in a fluctuating magnetic field. When processed, they show a precise 3D map of the brain and a real time picture of the specific regions as they are activated.
On the other side, there is a line with five points which measures whether the subject’s political views tend to be more conservative or liberal as those terms are understood in 21st century America.
Neural activity involving fear and disgust is correlated with modern conservative politics. Whereas neural activity reflecting curiosity, openness, and nuance tends to correlate with modern liberal politics.
Based on how liberal and conservative positions are presently marketed, this makes sense. However, I would be surprised if the same neural correlations would be found at different points in the evolution of liberalism and conservatism. For example, would the same liberal /conservative distinctions also appear in the brain activity of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton? Lincoln and Douglas? McKinley and William Jennings Bryan? Hoover and FDR?
We cannot go back in time and run these tests, but I would not be surprised if we found the same fear & disgust vs. openness & nuance dichotomy. But I strongly suspect that during some periods the fear/disgust activity would correlate with the liberal views of that era and the openness/nuance activity would correlate with the conservatives of that era. My hypothesis would be that as the political landscape shifts over time, the conservative side may at some points appeal to brains that favor openness/nuance and at other points to the brains that favor fear/disgust, and vice versa with liberalism. In other words, human brains are hardwired to favor either the fear/disgust impulse or the openness/nuance impulse, but over time those two impulses are not fixed to one side of the conservative vs. liberal dichotomy.
very thoughtful reply. broadly speaking, this linked comment speaks to it. namely in respect to the branding, which I fully agree oscillates over time.
I think there is only one dyad (male/female) rather than two (which would also include conservative/liberal) - given the significant overlap in their respective philosophies and modes of operation.
The complication arises because the conflict (the gender war eternal) is mediated across different ethnics groups, with alliances across and within genders often formed. Clearly men of all ethnicities have sounded off - not quite overwhelmingly, but more than ever in history. Will be interesting to see how the world rotates around this dyad now - and what new alliances will be formed. Hopefully we will not rotate back to the operating structure of the recent past.
I believe the unity of this dyad also explains why the two most common and popular discussion topics on Substack are politics and sexual relations.
And the discontent among the resurgent male political bloc had its first foundations online, via Substack and some of the earlier iterations including 4Chan. Memes have in fact changed the world.
Very interesting to think about. What I can’t quite square in my head is: Was the amygdala in the republican brain bigger from birth? Or has it grown to be larger as a reaction function of its environment growing up?
For definitive proof you’d need to scan a bunch of children’s brains, predict how they’d turn out politically 20 years later, and then wait to see if your prediction was right or not.
Otherwise the “nature or nurture” question isn’t really answered to me.
And the other thing that I was thinking of was the tendency to grow more conservative as you get older (that old saying that “if you’re 20 and not a communist, you have no heart. If you’re 40 and still a communist, you have no brain”)
a clarifying point, because some have remarked in the comments on how political designations are inconsistent over time:
you'll note I use the terms 'conservative/liberal' and not 'republican/democrat' or other political branding.
when I say conservative, I mean the morality that experiences disgust responses in the insula and has a larger amygdala. I consider this a masculine moral genotype, producing a conservative political phenotype.
when I say liberal, I mean the morality that experiences a sympathy response in the insula and has a larger ACC. I consider this a feminine moral genotype, producing a liberal political phenotype.
-
On definitions:
I consider 'conservative' appropriate terminology because it protects the ingroup, is hierarchical, emphasizes the behavioral immune system, and appeals to stability and the known past. this is inherently conservative (it seeks to "conserve"). whether or not tories, republicans, or other "rightwing" parties actually do this is not the point. the parties often shift over time. this is why I don't use political party nomenclature.
liberal is an appropriate term because it's open to new experiences, more intellectually flexible, more concerned with care/harm and less so hierarchies (thus more feminine). its outgroup emphasis is at the expense of "conservation" of ideals/standards and not as focused on threat detection. whether or not democrats or other "leftwing" parties embody this, again, is not the point. the nominal parties are prone to shifting over time.
-
Additional thoughts:
the ability of these moral genotypes to fully express themselves as political phenotypes is always contingent on the environment; this is why I often say in my essays "the environment dictates the expression". for animal species, the environment dictates how genotypes express their phenotypes. I find it to be no different for humans.
the environment is very decadent in the west, this facilitates more pronounced feminine moral genotype expression, creating a more dominant liberal political phenotype. this can only happen in a backdrop of comfort and prosperity.
conversely, in environments trending towards hardship, poverty, or war, that environment allows masculine moral genotypes, resulting in dominant conservative political phenotypes, to take hold. the concept of hypermoralization, which is covered in Part 1, touches on this too.
no hedonism in poverty, no discipline in decadence.
I'll defend and elaborate on this in Biofoundationalism Part IV. it's not as byzantine as it seems, promise.
First, Kid A is the superior Radiohead album.
We are living through a period of political realignment. Are environmental changes causing expression of the political phenotype to change?
It also occurs to me that our left/right (or liberal/conservative) dyad is a product of the Enlightenment. Before that, in the West, the great political schism was Protestant vs Catholic. Sometimes these religious conflicts can feel like blue vs orange morality to moderns—throwing someone out of a window for respecting the Pope too much seems incomprehensible. It’s a shame we can’t brain scan a bunch of German burghers from the 17th century, but perhaps the early Protestants were biologically more like modern liberals. Then again, there’s something almost Calvinist about biofoundationalism…. Much to consider.
Great stuff as usual.
you know what's funny, I've never listened to much radiohead. I'm kind of indifferent on them, it's just that one song, Everything In Its Right Place, that I'm obsessed with. I have like 10 different versions/remixes that I listen to. it always randomly springs into my mind.
regarding your other points, I think this linked comment should address them. and thank you kindly for reading <3
https://thedosagemakesitso.substack.com/p/biofoundationalism-ii-the-moral-genotype/comment/88504449
I wonder how much of these innate temperamental qualities can change based on external factors even when they're already ingrained. For example, regular meditation seems to increase the activity in the left and right insula and ACC. Similar to how people's views on certain topics skew more liberal after brain damage.
Similarly, how would something like CBT affect disgust responses in this way? I also think about in 2012 when same-sex marriage was being voted on in various states and it came out (heh) that people were much more likely to support it if they knew a gay person. I wonder what significance regular exposure has when it comes to the conservative instinct for disgust for certain behaviors?
Excellent essay.
One thing I have difficulty understanding, though, is that if "conservative" neurobiology has a stronger inclination towards disgust directed towards impurity, why is it that it was the "liberals" who embraced masking, quarantines, vaccines, closing schools and businesses, and the like, during the Covid panic?
thank you very much.
liberals were not exhibiting a disgust response in 2020. you'll note they didn't care at all about covid at the start; in feb 2020 we're telling people to go to chinese new year parades and the like. however when trump started to downplay it, they pivoted in full force.
a disgust response is instinctive. looking at mutilated bodies. decaying flesh. maggots. repulsed at something sexually unpure. it's not a strategy, it's an intrinsic reaction; not the obverse stance of your perceived political enemies.
democrats exhibited a form of social control and signaling with the mask theatrics and orwellian covid games. it was doubly apparent when you saw the double standards surrounding the Summer of Love protests that year; they were ok with braving the virus for "social justice" gatherings, but if you gathered outside to have a BBQ or go to the beach, that was forbidden.
you also saw this with all the politicians who got caught violating their own rules. a genuine disgust response would take these measures seriously.
that is not disgust. that is displaying a form of dominance and advancing political goals in a hypermoralized society.
On one side, neural activity is revealed by an MRI machine, scanning a brain and decoding millions of radio waves emitted from hydrogen atoms in a fluctuating magnetic field. When processed, they show a precise 3D map of the brain and a real time picture of the specific regions as they are activated.
On the other side, there is a line with five points which measures whether the subject’s political views tend to be more conservative or liberal as those terms are understood in 21st century America.
Neural activity involving fear and disgust is correlated with modern conservative politics. Whereas neural activity reflecting curiosity, openness, and nuance tends to correlate with modern liberal politics.
Based on how liberal and conservative positions are presently marketed, this makes sense. However, I would be surprised if the same neural correlations would be found at different points in the evolution of liberalism and conservatism. For example, would the same liberal /conservative distinctions also appear in the brain activity of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton? Lincoln and Douglas? McKinley and William Jennings Bryan? Hoover and FDR?
We cannot go back in time and run these tests, but I would not be surprised if we found the same fear & disgust vs. openness & nuance dichotomy. But I strongly suspect that during some periods the fear/disgust activity would correlate with the liberal views of that era and the openness/nuance activity would correlate with the conservatives of that era. My hypothesis would be that as the political landscape shifts over time, the conservative side may at some points appeal to brains that favor openness/nuance and at other points to the brains that favor fear/disgust, and vice versa with liberalism. In other words, human brains are hardwired to favor either the fear/disgust impulse or the openness/nuance impulse, but over time those two impulses are not fixed to one side of the conservative vs. liberal dichotomy.
very thoughtful reply. broadly speaking, this linked comment speaks to it. namely in respect to the branding, which I fully agree oscillates over time.
https://thedosagemakesitso.substack.com/p/biofoundationalism-ii-the-moral-genotype/comment/88504449
babe wake up
ACC gf, amygdala bf
I think there is only one dyad (male/female) rather than two (which would also include conservative/liberal) - given the significant overlap in their respective philosophies and modes of operation.
The complication arises because the conflict (the gender war eternal) is mediated across different ethnics groups, with alliances across and within genders often formed. Clearly men of all ethnicities have sounded off - not quite overwhelmingly, but more than ever in history. Will be interesting to see how the world rotates around this dyad now - and what new alliances will be formed. Hopefully we will not rotate back to the operating structure of the recent past.
I believe the unity of this dyad also explains why the two most common and popular discussion topics on Substack are politics and sexual relations.
And the discontent among the resurgent male political bloc had its first foundations online, via Substack and some of the earlier iterations including 4Chan. Memes have in fact changed the world.
Very interesting to think about. What I can’t quite square in my head is: Was the amygdala in the republican brain bigger from birth? Or has it grown to be larger as a reaction function of its environment growing up?
For definitive proof you’d need to scan a bunch of children’s brains, predict how they’d turn out politically 20 years later, and then wait to see if your prediction was right or not.
Otherwise the “nature or nurture” question isn’t really answered to me.
And the other thing that I was thinking of was the tendency to grow more conservative as you get older (that old saying that “if you’re 20 and not a communist, you have no heart. If you’re 40 and still a communist, you have no brain”)
What if someone uses these sciences to justify mass extermination? Not a trick question, I really need to know.