Wednesday, July 02, 2014

The Liberal Subspecies: Homo Controlus

I suppose you could say that man has common sense -- an implicit sense of things held in common -- if man is a species. But maybe he's not.

The secular left, as always, is of two mindlessnesses about this: on the one hand, man is nothing but an animal, ergo, a species. On the other hand, he is a product of culture, and therefore not a species at all, since cultures are so beautifully diverse, with no common core, so to speak. In the latter view, putting a man on the moon is no better than putting a bone in one's nose. There's just no universal, objective way to distinguish these activities, much less say that one is more evolved than the other.

But if moon-manners and nose-boners aren't just horizontally diverse but vertically distinct, then they are more like different species. True, they can still interbreed and produce fertile offspring, but that alone doesn't resolve the species problem:

"It is surprisingly difficult to define the word 'species' in a way that applies to all naturally occurring organisms, and the debate among biologists about how to define 'species' and how to identify actual species is called the species problem. Over two dozen distinct definitions of 'species' are in use amongst biologists."

Even though the academically correct insist that man is nothing but an animal species, I have a feeling that they would object to the idea that this species naturally divides into subspecies, but why? I suppose Because Hitler and other progressive thinkers who leapt to the wholly unwarranted conclusion that this was a zero-sum game, and that other subspecies needed to be exterminated. But only a barbarous and undeveloped subspecies would arrive at such an evil conclusion.

Another example of secular muddleheadedness: virtually all psychological theorists posit a developmental model in which man transitions through various stages on the way to maturity. At the same time, they tell us that a fetus is not a human being. In short, they affirm that man is always in transition, pointing beyond himself to a higher organization, except during the first nine months of his existence. We've actually had commenters insist that this entity is not a human being. What is it, then? Oh, just a meaningless aggregate of cells.

That kind of thinking, by the way, is prima facie evidence of a certain subspecies of human being. We've discussed it in the past, but its main psycho-cognitive characteristics revolve around what Melanie Klein called the "paranoid-schizoid position" (heretofore PS) and what Bion called "attacks on linking." Briefly, starting with the latter, an attack on linking has the purpose of eliminating an unwanted meaning by attacking the cognitive links that lead to it.

Let's say, for example, I refuse to believe that congress shall make no law prohibiting the free expression of religion. It takes a lot of cognitive work to make that one go away, but liberals are always up to the task. This is what makes them such an intriguing subspecies to study! Think of the tortured mental process that can result in the belief that religious expression is not a constitutional right, but killing your baby is.

Same with Citizens United. How to get around the fact that congress can make no law abridging the freedom of speech? It takes a constitutional scholar to argue that the amendment applies to all "speech" -- including pornography, flag-burning, and dung-flinging -- except political speech.

Back in the day, I remember that this particular book, The Matrix of the Mind, did a superb job of explaining what paranoid-schizoid thinking is all about. Let's pull it down from the shelf and see if it still holds up.

Here it is, chapter 3, The Paranoid-Schizoid Position: Self as Object. I realize this may or may not be of interest to you, but it is to me, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it. So come along. You might even learn something. One thing you might learn about -- not that you care -- is the deeper roots of my whole worldview, roots so deep that they have been forgotten and now operate unconsciously. In other words, this may lay bare some of my cosmic deep structure, for better or worse.

"Melanie Klein's view of psychological development can be viewed as a biphasic progression from the biological to the impersonal-psychological, and from the impersonal-psychological to the subjective." Well, first of all, that's three phases (biological / impersonal-psychological / subjective), to which I would add a fourth, the transcendent-universal, but this is a good start, for it highlights the fact that man is gradually teased out of this biological matrix, both individually and collectively. That is, as I described in the book, just as humanness was teased out of the biosphere, the mature human being is potentiated from the infantile matrix. Indeed,

"The first of these developmental advances involves a transformation of the infant as a purely biological entity into the infant as a psychological entity." The only thing I would add is that when he says "biological," a better term might be "psychobiological," because he's referring to a biological mode of human cognition, not to biology per se. It is a mode of thinking with distinctly human characteristics, not equivalent to something like "cellular thinking."

The shift from biological to psychological marks the entry into the PS position, "a developmental phase of 'itness,' wherein the infant is lived by his experience. Thoughts and feeling happen to the infant rather than being thought or felt by the infant."

I can confirm that Theodore Dalrymple is absolutely correct in his view that the permanent underclass is completely dominated by this arrested form of cognition -- which is why the War On Poverty is utterly beside the point, since we're not just talking about material poverty or even intellectual and spiritual poverty, but an impoverished mode of thinking as such. (See, for example, The Knife Went In. I didn't put it there. It just, you know, happened.)

PS thinking is dominated by certain processes known as "defense mechanisms," but they are really only defense mechanisms for a person in a higher developmental stage. In other words, for PS thinking, they are normative, and especially include splitting and projection, which naturally lead to a failure of integration at various levels of being.

The roots of splitting go back to "the most basic mode of management of danger," that is, "separating the endangering from the endangered." You might say that this is a psychological analogue of, say, a turtle withdrawing into its shell, or a possum playing dead, or a liberal placing his head up his ass. "Logic and volition are no more involved in this pattern of defense than they are in the neurological reflexes of the newborn infant."

Thus, what we call "splitting" is simply a mode of managing psychological danger. But how does a human being separate the endangering from the endangered if they're both in his own head? Easy: by splitting his head in two, and projecting the bad part out (or sometimes by projecting out the good, in order to keep it "safe"). Projection "can be understood as an effort in phantasy to remove an internal danger by locating the danger outside oneself, i.e., separating oneself from it as if it were located in another."

For example, why is it that the only females who believe there is a war on women are those at war with their own femininity? Or, why are men in the Islamic world so obsessed with the dangers of female sexuality? In order to control their own sexual thoughts and impulses, they exert extraordinary control over the object that provokes them. Or, why is it that only covetous liberals obsess over the "greedy one percent"?

In each case, the "bad" is placed outside the individual's mind, but only in phantasy, not of course in reality ("ph" phantasy is a psychoanalytic term of art essentially meaning a fantasy that is operating unconsciously). In reality it is an intrapsychic process between parts of one's own mind. Which is why, as Bion put it, such a person cannot "learn from experience." Why not? Because they are not actually experiencing something outside their own head, for starters. Because of this, the process will simply be repeated ad nauseam, which is one reason why liberals never learn, and why the same mistakes must be made again and again.

In short, with these kinds of primitive processes, "biological automaticity has been transformed into psychological automaticity." Such processes cannot be examined in a detached and critical manner, because they are not quite at the level of "experience." They are more basically "a mode of organizing experience," a mental operation "used in the beginning to create order out of the chaos of the infant's earliest experience on the basis of categories inherent in his instinctual deep structure."

You will have noticed that liberals are all about order. For them, the unjust order imposed by the state is infinitely preferable to the spontaneous order of free human interaction. So, for example, out of the 2.9 million inconsistencies produced by ObamaCare, only 15% can be fixed. Doesn't matter. Anything is preferable to the chaos of freedom. Make it go away!

So yeah, liberals are pretty much a different species: Homo controlus.

69 comments:

Gagdad Bob said...

I just remembered a recent patient who was caught obtaining opioid analgesics from multiple doctors. He blamed his doctors for not asking whether he had other doctors. It's as if "the drugs just went in. My doctors should have stopped me."

mushroom said...

...putting a man on the moon is no better than putting a bone in one's nose

It's better. The bone is like recycled and everything.

julie said...

Heh. I remember a situation like that when I was about four or five. My mom walked into the room after I gave my brother a reverse mohawk, and when she asked me about it I replied, with perfect sincerity, "my fingers just did it, Mommy!"

As to homo controlus, I just saw perhaps the worst example in a cartoon short about the "Safety Patrol," a pair of self-appointed busybodies who run around acting like authorities and handing out tickets to other kids for being in violation of various regulations. In this case, it was snack violations: they flagged down one kid for eating a candy bar, and told her carrot sticks and celery would give her energy. Then "pulled over" another kid for trying to buy a soda, but told him juice was okay. And of course, the kids who were thus informed of their egregious wrongdoing were delighted to be corrected through public humiliation and coercion.

I let the kids watch it, but talked about how rude and bossy the characters were, and how they should learn to mind their own business.

mushroom said...

I understand temporary flare-ups of PS thinking: I hit my thumb with a hammer and fling the hammer across the yard. But I don't ever recall saying that the f'ing hammer hit my thumb. It is always, I hit my f'ing thumb with the f'ing hammer.

Tony said...

I pointed out some garbageousness of Obamacare to a lefty colleague who fancies himself reasonable, and his reply was to shrug, smile sheepishly, and say "we're figuring it out." You see, Obamacare just went in. We had nothing to do with it. We're trying to make it better!

Gagdad Bob said...

Mushroom:

That is an excellent point: PS is never eliminated, only transcended. It re-emerges under stress or psychological illness, and there can even be a healthy aspect to it -- for example, "objectivizing" women. That is not a bad thing to do, so long as it is not the only thing you do, i.e., dehumanize them. Most women are flattered to be thought of as a "sex object" (pity the one who isn't!) but not only a sex object. Also, on a more abstract level, I would add that PS is ultimately always in dialectic, as catabolism is to anabolism.

Gagdad Bob said...

Which reminds me of an article by a guy at Taki who says that male feminism is a beta-male reproductive strategy. Thus, it's a fundamental deception (including to themselves) that explicitly panders to women in order to implicitly dehumanize and objectify them.

mushroom said...

Do you give much credence to the alpha male/beta male stuff? I agree that some women do seem to drawn to idiots and jerks, but I always assumed that was more a function of family dynamics. I figure the Gamer boys are involved in a self-fulfilling prophecy. They are getting what they are looking for, and it's also related to where they are looking.

Gagdad Bob said...

I don't know if it's true, but it's funny, and that's good enough for me.

Anonymous said...

Because Hitler and other progressive thinkers ...

This particular bit of nonsense has been passed around between the deep thinkers of the right like Jonah Goldberg that I suspect you might actually believe it. But probably not, you aren't as stupid as you like to pretend.

I would find it offensive to the memory of the actual progressives who risked their lives to fight Nazism, if I thought it was meant seriously.

Gagdad Bob said...

Relax. We would never say all progressives, only that Hitler was one.

Van Harvey said...

aninnymouse said "I would find it offensive to the memory of the actual progressives who risked their lives to fight Nazism, if I thought it was meant seriously."

Perhaps you could help those of us stupid enough to believe that political movements are more defined by their fundamental ideas, than by the sentiments of their followers who are embarrassed by those associations... what do you define the fundamental ideas of 'Progressivism' as? How does it's view of Individual Rights, differ from those of the national socialists? Which tenets of 'Progressivism' would prevent it from taking the steps the nat'l socialists did?

I eagerly await your enlightenment.

Gagdad Bob said...

It's actually an interesting example of splitting and projection -- how the left has largely successfully been able to project its own treacherous past into contemporary conservatives who have nothing to do with it. Conservatives are opposed to the very principles that could even make a tyrant possible, let alone actual, whereas progressive principles are conceived in authority and thus imbued with the totalitarian temptation.

Gagdad Bob said...

Obama is such a textbook Homo controlus...

Gagdad Bob said...

And yet, it's never enough: he still wants more personal power and an even bigger state. What is the limiting principle for progressives? It certainly isn't the constitution.

Yesterday I was thinking of how they tax you for earning; they tax you for spending (9% here in California); they tax you for saving; they tax you for investing; they tax you for bequeathing and inheriting; and on and on. Why all citizens don't want to abolish the IRS I'll never really understand, but I suppose there will always be that 30% of Homo controlus progressives who are in love with the state...

Gagdad Bob said...

Yup: "What I don’t get is, why do people who don’t trust the federal government nevertheless want to give it more money and power? It is one of the central paradoxes of our political life."

I can explain it: an attack on linking.

Gagdad Bob said...

Then again, a significant percentage of those are more easily explained by low IQ.

Van Harvey said...

Lol, you beat me to the Razor.

julie said...

It's like the whole state of California has become the Company, and the only option is to buy from the Company Store.

I was talking to a young Californian recently, a young lady who slowly seems to be waking from the Progressive dream. She went on about how the State is running out of money, how poorly everything is managed, etc. ... then finished by saying something like, "but we could fix it if people would just man up and be willing to pay more taxes!"

Definitely an attack on linking in her case. She's very book smart, but never had to hold a "real" job or deal with real expenses of living, etc. Funny - I still think of her as a kid, but by the time I was her age I had already been married for three years.

Gagdad Bob said...

If we could just ban public employee unions, that would be a big step, but that's impossible, since they control party and electoral politics. There is zero conservative influence in the state, just as there is zero influence in failed cites such as Detroit. We just have to wait for the inevitable catastrophe.

julie said...

Oh, and to our pal Anonymous, meet the new Brownshirts.

mushroom said...

It won't count it's on Faux News.

The first thing I thought of when Anon talked about all the progressives that risked their lives to defeat Hitler were the Stalinists he double-crossed.

Anonymous said...

Yes, a private security contractor called Baptist Family & Children’s Services really sounds like a progressive fascist conspiracy to me.

Anonymous said...

The history of socialist and communist opposition to Hitler is extremely well known, and if you are ignorant it is readily available on the web. That assumes you are interested in the truth rather than reinforcing a system of bullshit, which I'm guessing is not the case.

Gagdad Bob said...

Ah, the the narcissism of small differences. What mischief it causes!

Gagdad Bob said...

Never mind that Stalin was even worse than Hitler.

Anonymous said...

Pretty fancy talk from a psychologist who apparently doesn't even have the most basic understanding of Freud.

Also wonder why you think that sort of argument would apply to socialist opposition to Nazis but not, eg, to your own opposition to Obama? Are you somehow immune to psychodynamics? Does your hostility emanate from a higher plane than those of normal people?

Van Harvey said...

aninnymouse said "...socialist and communist opposition to Hitler is extremely well known ..."

My first reaction, other than how juvenile it is to see that reply as having any substance at all, was to point out that opposition of parties hardly indicates disagreement on fundamentals... see most revolutions where once the throne is deposed, the victors actively eliminate their like-minded competition, or even take a look into the viciousness of how our Unions have gotten rid of competing unions, or Hilary vs Obama for that matter.

But then, it dawned on me, thinking back to your utter cluelessness regarding Freud, Rousseau & Romanticism, that this isn't simply witless obtuseness on your part, so much as a debilitating form of conceptual disability.

Poor dear.

You really can't see their conceptual similarities, can you? For you, the fact that they go by different team names, elevates what is merely a difference in varying positions, to entirely unrelated beliefs, isn't it.

I'll bet you even have to remind yourself that the Yankees and Dodgers are somehow related by what they do, don't you?

Poor aninnymouse.

Gagdad Bob said...

"Does your hostility emanate from a higher plane than those of normal people?"

Modesty forbids.

Jack said...

For example, why is it that the only females who believe there is a war on women are those at war with their own femininity?

This is a very helpful insight. Thank you.

Gagdad Bob said...

Men are also to blame for not cherishing femininity. Just as women are to blame for men devolving to wimps, barbarians, liberals, and anonymous commenters.

Anonymous said...

Quite true! Both the Nazis and the Socialists were political movements and parties, not musical instruments or plates of smoked salmon. So more alike than different!

Yakov said...

Concur: neither socialism nor communism are as good as smoked salmon.

Cousin Dupree said...

Not even as good as anchovies on pizza.

Jack said...

So masculinity and femininity form a reciprocal system, so to speak. When one side fails to uphold their responsibilities to the other, the system collapses.

And like all devaluation of social trust, one appears to be (or in many cases, actually is) a sucker for attempting to uphold one's side.

It's almost as if a dynamic equilibrium between the sexes that has developed over human evolution has been destroyed...for what?


USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

" In reality it is an intrapsychic process between parts of one's own mind. Which is why, as Bion put it, such a person cannot "learn from experience." Why not? Because they are not actually experiencing something outside their own head, for starters. Because of this, the process will simply be repeated ad nauseam, which is one reason why liberals never learn, and why the same mistakes must be made again and again."

Explains why they are closed fruit loops who are cuckoo for their own caca puffs.

Gagdad Bob said...

"It's almost as if a dynamic equilibrium between the sexes that has developed over human evolution has been destroyed...for what?"

For ideology, for beta males, and for unattractive females.

Jack said...

Or rather the ideology turns men into beta males and women into the unattractive.



USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Yesterday I was thinking of how they tax you for earning; they tax you for spending (9% here in California); they tax you for saving; they tax you for investing; they tax you for bequeathing and inheriting; and on and on. Why all citizens don't want to abolish the IRS I'll never really understand, but I suppose there will always be that 30% of Homo controlus progressives who are in love with the state..."

After Patti passed they even taxed her death, which shouldn't have surprised me since Washington is fast becoming like California.
There truly is no tax that democrats don't like (or feel any sense of shame of) except for maybe an abortion tax.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

Is History History?
Van's latest post is a good addendum to Bob's post.
Lefties obviously never learn from history but they don't stop there.
They wanna rewrite too, so they can feel even better about their own too-smart-to-learn duperior intellects.

Joan of Argghh! said...

In Mexico we were amused to learn that the language passively described a negative action such as "the glass fell itself on me" being the rough idea of, "I dropped the glass." It means the same thing but it reveals a world of distancing away from blame to assure the Self of its worth. Curious.

Tony said...

"It's almost as if a dynamic equilibrium between the sexes that has developed over human evolution has been destroyed...for what?"

My free birth control!

/Sandra Fluke

Anonymous said...

With the plethora of social ills in the world, why do so many Muslim/Christian priests become so preoccupied hating same sex sexual preference?

Van Harvey said...

Thanks Ben.

Van Harvey said...

Lol, looks like we've gotta work on those linking skills though Ben ;-)
Is History, history?

Fox Butterfield said...

Social Ills Rise Despite Increased Tolerance of Homosexuality

Anonymous said...

"Homo Controlus" = Priests

julie said...

Right, because priests totally have the legally-recognized power to use coercive force to get people to do what they want.

Uncle Joe said...

Oh? How many divisions do they have?

Anonymous said...

I have not noticed social ills decreasing in regions (e.g the Middle East) with a greater intolerance of homosexuality.


mushroom said...

Taxpayer supported birth control and abortion are just eugenics for the squeamish. Progressives never change.

Fox Butterfield said...

Social Ills Increase in Middle East Despite Polygamy, Female Repression, and Widespread Practice of Homosexuality by Sexually Excluded Males

Anonymous said...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_career_of_Muhammad

Old Fart said...

I love how, in the stunted mind of Anon, Christians and Muslims both define and respond to homosexuals in exactly the same way. Because preferring not to bake a cake for a "wedding" is exactly the same as throwing rocks at someone until he dies, most likely for admitting that now that he's an adult, he still likes to take it in the ass instead of giving it to little boys.

Anonymous said...

"Social Ills Increase in Middle East...Widespread Practice of Homosexuality by Sexually Excluded Males"

Priests = "Homo Controlus"

julie said...

Speaking of attacks on linking...

Tony said...

Gays are into "gay" sex because they're sexually excluded otherwise?

Anon, will you please get your story, ahem, straight?

Anonymous said...

"preferring not to bake a cake for a "wedding" is exactly the same as throwing rocks at someone until he dies"

After 200 years of secularization if a priest in the West were to urge people to burn or or stone homosexuals it would be they who would be arrested. It is called progress.

Anonymous said...

Gays are into "gay" sex because they're sexually excluded otherwise?

Anon, will you please get your story, ahem, straight?

It is not my story. Direct your, ahem, query, to Fox Butterfield.

Van Harvey said...

Hey aninny, is there a point to what you're pointing out, or would that be expecting too much progress from you?

Tony said...

why do so many Muslim/Christian priests become so preoccupied hating same sex sexual preference?

So Anon, have you stopped beating your wife?

Anonymous said...

"Hey aninny, is there a point to what you're pointing out...?"

It was being claimed that men in the Islamic world are obsessed with the dangers of female sexuality because of their own sexual impulses.

Given that homosexuals are a tiny minority of the population I was wondering if the obsession with (male) homosexuality amongst (say) some Roman Catholic priests had a similar explanation.

Since "Liberals" were being identified as "Homo Controlus" I was wondering if that could be extended to priests.

If you believe you have the "Word of God" you may not feel the need to "learn from experience" because you already have the answers.

In other words I was applying some of the criticisms of the "Liberal" mind to the "Religions of the Book".

Van Harvey said...

aninnymouse said "It was being claimed that men in the Islamic world are obsessed with the dangers of female sexuality because of their own sexual impulses."

I kinda figured it had more to do with you decided to hear, than with what was said or meant. Might want to go back and re-read. Hint: Context matters.

"Since "Liberals" were being identified as "Homo Controlus" I was wondering if that could be extended to priests."

I can understand your making this error, given that you are a leftist, and for leftists their politics are their religion (say, you have that in common with the islamists! Solidarity!), however for the rest of us, and most other rational people, political terms are not interchangeable with religious (or psychological) ones.

IOW, I wouldn't exercise a political right, such as that protected under our 1st Amdt, with an outburst during a religious service, and then on being shown that doors can be exited through the air as well as on foot, conclude that those of that religion were anti-free speech. Neither would being denied a vote in who is named as a church's pastor or priest is, be a denial of the legitimacy of voting, see how that works (I know you don't, but just nod & go away)?

Anonymous said...

"Might want to go back and re-read. Hint: Context matters."

Is that the best you can do? Why did you even bother to type that?

"given that you are a leftist, and for leftists their politics are their religion (say, you have that in common with the Islamists! Solidarity!), however for the rest of us, and most other rational people, political terms are not interchangeable with religious (or psychological) ones."

I take it you have not read the Bible.

"just nod & go away"

For somebody who claims to believe in the pluralism that accompanies a free society you seem to struggle with hearing alternative points of view.

Actions speak louder than words.

Van Harvey said...

aninnymouse said "Is that the best you can do?"

Yeah, sorry, I can't do it for you, you'll have to read it, and think about it all by yourself.

Sorry.

"Why did you even bother to type that?"

Because despite the base assumptions of the pro-regressive left, you do have a choice, and it's possible, however unlikely, that you might do just that.

Of course, what you actually did was a far better bet... but... ya coulda. Wish ya woulda. But it's up to you.

"...you seem to struggle with hearing alternative points of view"

Oh, no struggle at all. Hear them all the time. The problem is having any interest in hearing the same stupidity over and over again. Type 'Liberal Fascism' in the search bar for the blog, and see how much of what you're thinking of typing, has already been typed by many a ninny years ahead of you.

But hey, like a 'wup wup! and a poke in the eye, some things never go out of style.

Van Harvey said...

BTW aninnymouse, speaking of 'actions speaking louder than words', the fact that you (or any of your brethren over the last several years) have not, and likely cannot, address the questions I asked you above, and in essence back on your Freudian post,

"what do you define the fundamental ideas of 'Progressivism' as? How does it's view of Individual Rights, differ from those of the national socialists? Which tenets of 'Progressivism' would prevent it from taking the steps the nat'l socialists did?"

Your inactions speak far louder than your words.

But they're not nearly as funny... so there's that.

Gagdad Bob said...

From Vanderleun's sidebar:

I’m all in favor of rejecting the left-right model of describing political thought. That is nothing more than a tarted up version of the Left’s us-versus-them world view. It is how you end up with Hitler on the Right, alongside Burke and Reagan. Somehow we are to believe that the polar opposites are Hitler on one end and Marx on the other. The truth is that all of these sects are the sons and daughters of the marriage of Rousseau and Hobbes. The one thing I think he needs to explore more deeply is the Left’s impulse to destroy. He gets into it a little, but can’t seem to bring himself to accept that it is destruction for its own sake. The old 1960′s rallying cry of “burn, baby burn!” is instructive.

Gagdad Bob said...

This so-far excellent book, The Tyranny of Experts, sweeps aside Anon's retrograde worldview in the first 20 pages, e.g., how German emigres demolished "the conventional wisdom that Nazi and Communist totalitarianism occupied opposite ends of the right-left spectrum." Rather, "the relevant spectrum was the individual versus the collective," and whether it is a good idea to employ "violent coercion of the individual to serve collective ends."

Gagdad Bob said...

Hayek would recognize loathsome bit of newspeak, "the eternal complaint of the tyrant: 'My policies aren't failing. They're being sabotaged by seditionists in our midst.'"

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