Fight Like An Animal

"Climate denial" has the specific connotation of outright denial such a thing exists, but what about all the other forms of denial? The human mind has a general tendency not to come to terms with overwhelming input. The institutional and grassroots political responses to climate change, in most cases, are also forms of climate denial. Here, we examine the psychology of confronting unbearable truths, searching for cultural systems that can allow us to face our fears and thus affect outcomes. This piece originally appeared in Dark Mountain #15. 

Academic constructs, valid or otherwise, tend to diffuse into our culture at large. How has this impacted social and political conflict? Quite a lot, and mostly badly. In this episode, we look at climate activism, movements against police violence, and the book White Fragility to illustrate the huge range of contentious issues which are still burdened by the legacy of 20th century social sciences and the opposition to human nature. We see how even though scientific debates about human nature have largely ended, the rhetorical devices used in them are very much alive, with real consequences.   

In this episode, we trace the journey of 20th century social sciences through innumerable versions of the nature vs. nurture debate, talk about how the denial of human nature led scientists to torture baby monkeys, and do a blow-by-blow analysis of Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault's famous 1971 dialogue on human nature, describing how the reasoning Foucault employs is the precursor to many of the frustrating and ineffective aspects of contemporary political movements. 

Because anthropology describes the observed range of human variation, as well as constants in human life, it is inextricably linked to the project of describing what is possible for a revolution to achieve. This episode examines cross-cultural universals, technological thresholds, and hierarchies. We assess the notion that small, egalitarian societies are such because they consciously subdue the impulse to domination, that there is no fundamental discontinuity between "traditional" and "modern" people, and that traditional societies, also, were shaped by social movements. 

Renowned anthropologist Margaret Mead's research in Samoa challenges perceptions of human nature. The podcast explores ideological conflicts in social movements and the importance of clear visions for a better society. Discussions on human behavior, cultural observations, and debunking myths about human population differences provoke thought on nature versus nurture debates.

A CIA counterintelligence chief once described his world as a wilderness of mirrors. In this episode, we ask how ecological and egalitarian movements can navigate this wilderness. The internet is opening information warfare possibilities to non-state actors, Cambridge Analytica is influencing elections, and Western media is striving for ever-greater hyperbole about the influence of Russia. Is it time for movements to use the same tactics against the powerful that the powerful have long used against movements? We examine the time-honored strategy of divide and conquer, FBI campaigns of disinformation, the psychology of subterfuge, and more.  

We've looked at some of the psychological traits that correlate with ideology, but what about those that don't? Considering the tendency for systems of power to behave the same regardless of their overt ideology, what should we know about the psychology of power? We look at scales of empathy (or lack thereof), manipulativeness, sense of connection to the world, and more.  

Having described innate psychological tendencies associated with other political perspectives, in this interview we examine what makes an environmentalist. Ken Ward describes his path through professional environmentalism and direct action, the values he encountered among liberals and leftists, and how they are in conflict with ecological survival. We discuss the different forms of intelligence found in the human species; their evolutionary value; and the prospects for a legitimately pluralistic society, in which radically different perspectives can coexist.   https://www.facebook.com/ClimateDirectAction/https://www.thereluctantradicalmovie.com/

Having described the right-left spectrum in psychological terms, we will now examine the psychology of the liberal, an entity sometimes described as moderately left who has no real counterpart on the right. We will ask why the violence-nonviolence binary has proven so consistently psychologically seductive but also so destructive to social movements. We will talk about the book Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolence, the bizarre elaborations on the 'outside agitator' trope currently emerging in American culture, and a whole bunch more. 

Here we conclude our discussion of the biology of the right-left divide. We discuss how developmental delay shaped human evolution and how aggression and its correlated traits map elegantly to right-left politics. We also talk about the problem of self-referentiality and the capacity for hyper-technological societies to amplify cognitive bias, setting a foundation for future discussions of what the biology of human political conflict implies.