Thursday, November 17, 2016

Freakout on the Right!

NewsBusters has put together a video compilation of MSM freakouts, and truly, you'd have to be utterly soulless to not laugh out loud. I wrote down some of the comments, because they go to what we've been discussing in the last two posts about about defense mechanisms and decompensation:

--This is a different earth today than it was 24 hours ago (it sounds like Matthews was about to trespass our beat and say "cosmos")

--America is crying tonight

--It feels like the end of the world

--It is a moment filled with fear

--Is there a doomsday plan for this?

--History is put on hold once again

And the winner:

--Get your abortions now because we're going to be fucked (which of course reverses cause and effect)

If what I've been saying is true, it feels like the end of their world because it is the end of their world; this is precisely what decompensation feels like.

Note that it is not just different perceptions, i.e., content; rather, the entire context is transformed. In other words, it's not just a different contained but a radically different container.

Which is all the more pathological. Understand that the mind contains "stuff": thoughts, ideas, emotions, plans, memories, etc. We all know this.

However, it is also a kind of space in its own right. To a certain extent you might even say this follows the different functions of the left and right cerebral hemispheres, whether understood literally or figuratively.

That is, the left side is more linear and rational in the conventional sense, whereas the right is more holistic, intuitive, and translogical. Not surprisingly, what we call the "unconscious" is more deeply rooted in the right brain. Furthermore, the right brain develops ahead of the left, and contains our earliest preverbal (and therefore somatic) memories.

I'm tempted to review some literature on the subject, but it might take us too far afield. I'm not aware of any research that surpasses Allan Schore, who comprehensively integrates our hardware (neurology) and software (mind). The book I have linked is perhaps the most nakedly scholarly, but he and people he has influenced have written more accessible ones.

Let's just look up "right cerebral hemisphere" in the index... Hmm, over 30 entries. This one goes to what I said a couple of paragraphs above:

"The early maturing and 'primitive' right cortical hemisphere, moreso than the left, is particularly well reciprocally connected with limbic and subcortical regions" -- those latter two being the deeper emotional and even "reptilian" centers of the brain. The right "is dominant for the processing, expression, and regulation of emotional information."

Furthermore, "investigations into the neural bases for social interactions should focus on the role of the holistic, affective, and silent right hemisphere in the mediation of social life."

Gosh. There's a lot more interesting stuff of that nature, but following up on it would take all morning and beyond. The text is over 500 pages and there are over 100 pages of references. The guy does his homework.

Recall what Schore says about the processing and regulation of emotional information. In the examples of liberal freakoutery provided above, they all betray obvious difficulty processing what has happened. Note that there can be no merely cognitive, i.e., rational difficulty: we had a presidential election and somebody lost. Happens every four years. End of story.

But that is not the end of the story, because it has caused an earthquake of sorts in the collective right brain (again, whether understood literally or metaphorically). It "feels like the end of the world," and they are indeed living on a different planet than the day before. It's a new cosmos, baby!

It should also be pointed out that, as Schore mentions, the right hemisphere has much deeper roots that extend into our bodily representation. If you trace the mind all the way down to the ground, it merges with the body, thus the common observation of what are called "psycho-somatic" symptoms. I can scarcely articulate it better than moonbatress Sarah Silverman, who tweeted:

That r deep! In the shallowest conceivable way, of course.

Now, am I suggesting that the Bob is free of such primitive reactions? Of course not. Like anyone else, my telovator goes all the way down. I'm trying to remember how I felt in 2008 and 2012... Yes, I felt bad. I don't claim to be Spock. However, I did not cry. I was not filled with fear. It was not the end of the world, let alone a different planet. History did not stop. The cosmos was still the cosmos.

In other words, I was able to process and "contain" what had happened -- even though -- and time proved me correct -- I knew full well that Obama was undertaking a direct assault on my world, AKA the world envisioned by America's founders. I knew that we were in for fundamental transformation, good and hard.

But I've also cracked a history book, so I knew that the world is never ideal, never "safe," indeed, never a good place to invest one's hope. Do that and you are building your psyche on sand.

For the ground is not below. Rather, above. But the left -- and this is important, so pay attention -- has replaced religion with politics, so it is as if they have been abandoned by their God, with all that entails. There is no doomsday plan for that, since God is the only reliable doomsday plan, the only sensible hope in the face of the Worst Possible Thing(s).

Christianity assumes the misery of history, as Christ assumes the misery of man.

Christianity does not solve 'problems'; it merely obliges us to live them on a higher level.

And

How can anyone live who does not hope for miracles? --NGDx3

10 comments:

Gagdad Bob said...

How appropriate that they seek spiritual consolation and guidance from rocks.

#Can'tMakeItUp

Gagdad Bob said...

'In Hiplandia, "I couldn't stop crying!" and "I vomited!" are dispositive proof that Trump is a bad man -- not that these people are mentally unbalanced. Their own paranoia is cited to show how evil their enemies are.

'... liberal parents are intentionally raising neurotics by telling their children that they are living in Nazi Germany.'

Call it a full-employment program for the psychotherapists of the future.

julie said...

Makes me wonder how they handle any other sort of difficulty in their lives. If you haven't had a real personal catastrophe by the time you reach adulthood, you haven't been paying attention. Wailing and breaking down - especially over something that really is beyond your control - doesn't fix anything, it just makes everything harder.

Re. the somatic component of cognitive distress, I experienced some of that a couple weeks ago when the big argument was happening. Unnecessary drama literally makes me ill. Even so, one must suck it up and get on with life, and especially not allow that unpleasantness to do the actual thinking.

julie said...

I'm reminded of the movie Life is Beautiful, about the Italian family that was sent to a concentration camp. The father told his little son that it was all a big game that all the adults were playing, and as a result the boy held on to his innocence (and brightened the lives of the people around them) through unimaginable suffering.

He reframed it completely to take away the fear. Today's liberals abuse their children by doing precisely the opposite.

Gagdad Bob said...

They really do. It's an assault on their innocence, a theft of their sacred right to a slack. If you have no slack as a child, it's unlikely you'll be able to recover it as an adult. You'll just be another neurotic searching for your lost slack in politics.

Tony said...

"You'll just be another neurotic searching for your lost slack in politics."

You mean like this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp1lmANuDWo

ge said...

heard this yet?
''Obama played the race card, Hillary played the woman card, but America played the Trump card.''
nice!

Cousin Dupree said...

Biden played the 'tard card.

Rick said...

This is so good I almost can't stand it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaNCVXzms0Q

H/T Happy Acers

Gagdad Bob said...

Just watched it myself a few minutes ago -- superschadenfreudilisticexpialidocious!

Theme Song

Theme Song