Saw an paragraph on Forbes.com the other day, thought it might be interesting to some of the multitude of people who stop by here every day, although not all of them, but since this is, according to the FAQ, a blog dedicated to the election of Democrats, I thought I'd put it up and maybe learn something from the semi-pro political analysts here.
True, it was from a Newsmax story, but it wasn't the usual blatantly biased fantasy, rather a report of Bill Clinton's current "reaching out" to the hard right wing financiers and media backers. I wondered what the motives and effects of such contacts might be, or whether the report was true.
Instead, I received a blast of negativity and presumption of spying and trolling for my curiosity, along with paranoid fantasies that my questions on other subject were in truth expression of covert racism, sexism and anti-Semitism.
Well, shit happens. It's a big blog, and bound to be home to a few folks who feel they have to protect the delicate Reputation of Daily Kos, and save its more naive members from any evil burrowing unbeknownst into their skulls. Nanny bloggers would be the gestalt I'm getting at. I'm not even interested in trying to do more than think about it out loud.
I'm not new to Daily Kos, just new to talking out. I usually post elsewhere, about psychology and propaganda, and while I was reading Paul S. Griffiths on "What Emotions Really Are" in chapter five on defining and differentiating higher cognitive emotions, it struck me that I was experiencing the results of four of the "lower" automated emotions, the ones that use a path for actuation separate from rationally derived emotions like love. The acronym, derived elsewhere (I don't remember the source) is SADC, for the order in which they often occur: Surprise, Anger, Disgust, and Contempt.
I was trying to figure out what it is about the way I asked the questions and fielded the comments, answers and further questions, that elicited what seemed, in too many cases, programmed responses of hatred and rejection, based on what couldn't have been much more than the most minimal of evidence, expressed as my questions about politics and human relations.
The net effect was to discourage me from further questions, and I suspect that was the intent of most of the respondents who took that tack. And yet, some other commenters seemed to understand what I was getting at, so I wondered a bit about what the difference is between those who actually read what was written and presume it's an honest question, and those who jump to conclusions based on trigger words and concepts.
Griffiths mentions that among the many emotional modules (which are triggered through the same inputs as rational emotions, but have effects not moderated by rational processes) are surprise, anger, disgust and contempt. He pointed out, however, that these four emotion reactions can be learned at a subconscious level through cultural conditioning, such as the atmosphere that might develop over time here.
Works for me. I know my approach to things can be surprising. People tell me that all the time, and people are often angry when surprised, and lash out any way they can. Perhaps there's been a lot of cultural training here to be disgusted rather than curious when a new concept is introduced, and contempt, expressed with droll recipes and calls for banning seems to be a reaction of a significant group of people, who, instead of spending some time thinking about the question asked, dig into past diaries and impute dark motives to other questions.
Thanks for listening. I'll forgo the tip jar. It seems to be a way to mark down a poster on a peeve. I know what I think. The questions I ask are for the purpose of learning what the sophisticated political analysts can tell me. This is more an apologia pro vita sua.