Trump may be an idiot but he’s very certain, and that’s the only thing that counts for authoritarians.
The ‘sex on the wrong brain’ theory of human behavior goes a long way toward explaining Trump and his followers and the greed, fear, authoritarianism, racism, misogyny, and capacity for denial and lying.
Sex on the wrong brain is caused by mixing impatient reproductive urges for satisfaction with brain functions that need to be patient and objective.
The theory is based on ancient beliefs and modern science suggesting some brain functions are lateralized more to one hemisphere of the brain than the other. Emotion, creativity, and orgasm have been generally considered more right brained and math, problem solving, and logic more left brained.
The right hand is connected to the left hemisphere and the left hand to the right hemisphere.
For thousands of years eastern religions considered the left brain masculine and the right brain feminine but that may have resulted from sex on the wrong brain — see MISOGYNY, below.
Research using brain scans shows many brain functions involve both sides of the brain but it should be noted that many of those researchers use ONLY right handed subjects because of anomalies caused by including left handed subjects.
Before anyone screams about this theory of human behavior being based on ‘pseudo science’ I need to point out it comes from a science fiction comedy novel. And if you have doubts about left brain right brain generalization relative to recent media see NOTES ON BRAIN LATERALIZATION below.
On a large scale it may help explain why, for instance, Columbus and those who followed him were so much more brutal than the friendly trusting natives they met.
On an individual level it suggests Trump has a lot of sex on the wrong brain.
Here are some of the symptoms of ‘sex on the wrong brain’.
What happens when impatient reproductive urges for satisfaction are associated with or are used to fuel parts of the brain that quantify, compare and do mathematics? Would that produce an irrational urge for more, bigger, faster? Is that where capitalism comes from?
When impatience and the need for satisfaction get mixed up in logic and problem solving it creates a demand for premature conclusion, quick easy answers, and certainty. It wants the thinking to end.
Since the universe is infinite and life is complicated, unpredictable, and full of uncertainty, an irrational need for certainty can be expected to increase stress and fear.
Authoritarianism is sometimes measured with the Uncertainty Avoidance Index, or UAI. Authoritarians need certainty more than liberals.
From the important paper, “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition”, (Jost, Kruglanski, Glaser, Sulloway, Psychological Bulletin 2003, Vol. 129):
The core ideology of conservatism stresses resistance to change and justification of inequality and is motivated by needs that vary situationally and dispositionally to manage uncertainty and threat.
also from the same paper, with author references at bottom of diary:
A Dynamic Theory of Conservatism as Uncertainty Avoidance
Consistent with Tomkins’s (1963, 1965) and others’ emphases on affective bases of ideology and with the research on intolerance of ambiguity, Wilson (1973b) proposed a dynamic theory that treats conservatism as the product of (partially unconscious) motives and needs having to do with fear and anxiety. The central tenet of the theory is that “the common basis for all the various components of the conservative attitude syndrome is a generalized susceptibility to experiencing threat or anxiety in the face of uncertainty” (Wilson, l973b, p. 259). According to this perspective, conservatism is multiply determined by what Wilson (1973b) labeled genetic factors, such as anxiety proneness, stimulus aversion, low intelligence, and physical unattractiveness, as well as by environmental factors such as parental coldness, punitiveness, rigidity, inconsistency, low social class, and low self-esteem.
reducing uncertainty and creating certainty with order, control, and bigotry
Conservatives may deal with the stress and fear by reducing uncertainty and creating certainty.
From Jost et al, again:
Wilson (1973b) hypothesized a great many different sources of threat or uncertainty, including death, anarchy, foreigners, dissent, complexity, novelty, ambiguity, and social change. Conservative attitudinal responses to these sources of uncertainty include superstition, religious dogmatism, ethnocentrism, militarism, authori-tarianism, punitiveness, conventionality, and rigid morality.
Those responses impose order, control, and conformity. They make life more predictable. They’re used to simplify the complicated and help people judge with absolutes.
To reduce uncertainty and create certainty.
certainty is more important than truth
The ‘best’ authoritarian leaders are very certain. They are super confident and decisive. They can contradict themselves in consecutive sentences but are always right and never wrong.
They lead their followers to certainty. “Either you’re with us or against us.” They paint the world as good and bad, right and wrong, black and white. Usually they’re just leading their followers along well established thought patterns and rituals to reach reliable sources of certainty.
Chaos and fear increase demand for the authoritarian leader’s royal I’m-never-wrong certitude among certainty-worshipping followers. Certainty is the currency of power.
Trump can be an ignorant lying fool, but he sure is certain.
DENIAL and the pleasure of certainty
Accepting or creating certainty requires creativity to deny reality.
When logic enlists creativity to rationalize the illogical and irrational the starved pleasure centers associated with creativity get some of the reproductive energy they were missing.
Denial is rewarded.
The more ‘sex on the wrong brain’ there is the greater the need for certainty and the more sex energy there is for reward. There is a reward for being irrational and abandoning truth and logic to create certainty. There’s reward for lying and believing lies.
Authoritarian leaders and belief structures offer creative alternatives to help rationalize the denial and burn in neurological patterns that guide others to fear-easing certitude. They naturally cultivate and reinforce that circuitry, whether creating it themselves or following established patterns. Some of those leaders are just pretending but the most charismatic ones are probably in denial themselves.
Take global warming. The science is undeniable but the issue brings end-of-the-world scale uncertainty and fear. Believing it involves trusting scientists and environmentalists and contemplating complicated uncertainty-filled alternatives and change. It’s much easier to deny it outright. All authoritarian leaders like Limbaugh have to do is associate global warming with doubt and uncertainty — the scientists can’t even tell us when, they’re not sure what the effects will be, and we just got record cold and snow, etc. The scientists don’t know! They’re not certain!
That is why talk radio is so effective for selling lies and creating certainty. The lies and rationalizations can be repeated as long and often as necessary and they can be delivered with total certitude. It’s easier to be a king if you’re not looking into a camera and a call screener is protecting you from challenge, doubt, and uncertainty .
Extremism
The more reproductive energy that’s diverted to the ‘wrong’ side the less there is where it was supposed to go — for emotion, creativity, and orgasm. People who divert a lot of reproductive energy to the ‘wrong side’ may be starving the ‘right side’.
What kind of triggers do individuals and societies develop to reroute wayward sex energy to the ‘pleasure centers’ when they want to ramp up the pleasure? As the lack of balance increases, maybe by suppressing emotion and creativity, do the triggers have to get more extreme? What triggers might be needed to divert enough for orgasm?
Do drugs help trigger the diversion?
mysogyny, patriarchy
Women generally have less sex on the wrong brain for various reasons, including anatomical differences, although the book points out some complicating factors.
That contrast may cause some men and patriarchal societies to view them as sources of excessive emotion, uncertainty, unpredictability, intuition vs logic, etc.
Women become a threat that needs to be objectified and controlled and that might apply on individual and population levels.
racism
Judging someone for their skin color is irrational but with the right circuitry burned in it produces certainty and feels good. They’re either black or white.
High sex on the wrong brain populations vs lower sex on the wrong brain populations as caused by levels of sexual repression could play a part too, with skin color or other differentiating factors involved.
Have Humans been learning sex with the wrong hand?
It is well established that for most people the right side of the body is controlled by the left hemisphere of the brain and the left side of the body is controlled by the right side of the brain.
So, generalizing, the left hand is connected to/associated with the right/creative/emotional/orgasmic side of the brain and the right hand is connected to/associated with the logical/mathematical side of the brain.
Humans have been burning in long lasting associations that create problems that are often blamed on ‘human nature’, ‘lizard brains’, and testosterone. Blaming those culprits makes them inevitable and basically unavoidable.
‘Sex on the wrong brain’ can be reduced with simple sex education.
There is a great deal of variation and it would take an authoritarian mind to interpret this as suggesting ‘all right handed masturbators are authoritarians’. I’ll repeat from above:
According to this perspective, conservatism is multiply determined by what Wilson (1973b) labeled genetic factors, such as anxiety proneness, stimulus aversion, low intelligence, and physical unattractiveness, as well as by environmental factors such as parental coldness, punitiveness, rigidity, inconsistency, low social class, and low self-esteem.
That’s a bit harsh but who can deny Trump is an ugly ignorant man? Although what’s the cause and what’s the effect and what’s reinforcing what?
There are other variables such as frustration levels, sexual experience/associations, etc.
And regular use of right brained-associated functions like creativity and emotion, characteristics that liberals get associated with, keep that reproductive energy going where it’s supposed to go, reducing ‘sex on the wrong brain’.
I’ve been aware of the theory for years and it’s the closest thing to a unified theory of human behavior I’ve ever seen. It comes down to this question — does it matter what hand you learn sex with?
Science showing that particular hand movements activate particular parts of the brain, for instance, would suggest a NO answer requires more research.
If YES, then it is a dominant variable effecting a majority of the population.
historical factors. when did sex on THE wrong brain start?
Humans evolved in natural environments surrounded by uncertainty. Where does the irrational need for certainty come from?
‘Civilization’ generally means sexual repression and frustration and young humans face years of guilty, hurried, hidden masturbation with the sword and hammer hand.
Did the increase of ‘sex on the wrong brain’ reduce the occurrence of matriarchal societies?
When Columbus met the generally trusting peaceful natives of the Americas he was meeting people who were having sex at a relatively early age. They weren’t forbidden from having sex before marriage, etc. It probably didn’t help that the invaders were all men who had just spent a few months at sea without the opposite sex. It was big time ‘sex on the wrong brain’ vs little or no ‘sex on the wrong brain’.
Did some authoritarian leaders figure it out and use sexual repression to promote ‘sex on the wrong brain’ to build armies? Did it make things worse that children of leaders, the affluent, had more privacy while being protected from real sex with arranged marriages, etc?
Is the demand in the Koran that “man can only have sex with his wife and that which the right hand possesses” only refer to slaves and captives? What were options for the poor who couldn’t afford wives or slaves? Was that dynamic amplified with the fantasy of 72 virgins? How does that rule apply in modern times, where slaves and captives are no longer ‘acceptable’? Are there comparable references in other religions?
Were cultures that rewarded leaders with multiple wives knowingly or by default encouraging 'sex on the wrong brain' by increasing frustration levels in men?
Did the ‘free love’ hippie years lead to a reduction in ‘sex on the wrong brain’ on a societal level? Do certain drugs like cannabis reduce ‘sex on the wrong brain’?
Contrast that period with a society that sells everything with sex but screams with outrage when the Surgeon General (Joycelyn Elders) merely mentions the word ‘masturbation’.
Without proper sex education, strong democratic forms of government may be the only chance for human survival, and we’re not doing very well…..
cannabis
Do cannabis and other drugs ‘release’ or divert sex on the wrong brain to where it was supposed to go, or not go?
Do authoritarians have an instinctive aversion to cannabis? Are people smoking pot too tolerant of uncertainty and disorder?
Is that Jeff Session’s problem?
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Disclaimer: I’m not certain, even though I grew up right handed, but I do try to simplify.
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Notes on brain lateralization
The simplified ‘left brain’ ‘right brain’ separation of functions may have been exaggerated the last few decades and used to classify people as ‘left brained’ or ‘right brained’ for educational and commercial purposes.
Most functions involve the whole brain but some may be weighted more to one side than the other, including language in the left hemisphere and some aspects of sexual pleasure and orgasm in the right, for example. Lateralization varies widely individually and may even be reversed in some people.
Lately it seems conservatives may be developing an aversion to brain lateralization and their think tanks may be purposefully misinterpreting research to convince their followers that for certain there is absolutely and without a doubt no brain lateralization. That may be to arm their activists in the public school sphere to prevent ‘liberals’ from using the left brain right brain concept to help introduce yoga, ‘mindfulness training’, and meditation in schools.
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References from “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition”, (Jost, Kruglanski, Glaser, Sulloway, Psychological Bulletin 2003, Vol. 129):