I’ve just returned from an enjoyable, plush cruise during which I was visously attacked by a Keynsian liberal, undeservingly. I merely dissagred with him. The attached both myself and my innocent husband.
Why are Liberals so Emotional??? Direct verbal attacks used to be considered unacceptable in polite sociely. The attacker was an educated man in his early 60’s who had studied some economics in college. His major was accounting after a first year in electrical engineering.
Many (most?) peoples’ beliefs are based on emotion rather than reason, justice and consistency, e.g. people who have less money than others must be sad which makes me sad so they should have more money so I feel better. Their philosophy is not “Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you” but rather “Take from others what you would like given to you”. Otherwise they’d be sad.
They believe people who are wrong are deserving of anger/punishment.
“2.” is the statist philosophy after all, so it shouldn’t be that surprising. These are people who are typically incapable of seperating cause from effect. They are as a person emotional hotbuttons blind to how they are controlled. Lacking the ability to internally ponder issues and emotions is an effect of abuse/trauma. People who have adopted ideology as a religion have turned their beliefs into their personality. If you undermine their ideology, they fear their personality. It is a sign of massive insecurity.
To build upon what Nielsio said, people who are so highly emotional are typically lacking in critical-thinking skills. Years of public schooling and more subtle forms of statist indoctrination have made them “unlearn” their inborn ability to think critically.
This might help (and his whole Bomb in the Brain series). To lowball it, neurological studies show that political beliefs are largely ABOUT emotion. When people are given facts that contradict their prior beliefs, they simply ignore it and get a rush out of it.
I agree that they are emotional, but so are most who claim to be conservative today too. Try (like I have) telling one of today’s conservatives (or neocon if you like) that you are against war and aggression and you will be dealing with a highly emotional argument there as well. I think the left is perhaps a bit more emotional but that’s debatable. The key is to hold the high ground and don’t become an emotional wreck yourself. It’s easier said than done especially (as others have alluded to) if you lack a good sound argument and the means to back it up. It’s better just to say “I’ll get back to you on your point with a counter argument later” than to simply stoop to their level and become emotional. I’m not trying say you did any of these things, I’m just giving warning to others (like myself) who have fallen into heavy emotional arguments only to later look back and feel mildly ashamed for acting foolish. Sometimes it’s just best to keep quiet if you don’t have enough bullets in your intellectual gun and especially if you are bringing a knife to a gunfight.
I’ll tell you why. Because it is always uncomfortable to hear the truth. It’s like hearing about your abuse in a childhood that you’re trying to forget from some random stranger. It is scary to them. How can someone know this, they probably think, how dare this savage to say that my reality is actually a delusion imprinted since the childhood?
I just got from similar conversation… When I told that State is very similar to mafia I was cursed, I was called drug addict (yeah), I was called a fool, all such names in one sentence, even when I tried to stay civil and polite. So yeah, they are all emotionally attached to their delusion (world view).
Everybody is emotional. Just take a look at this forum there are always emotions brewing in all sorts of topics. I’m glad Lew Rockwell is emotional about economics. To label people with a certain set of views as more “emotional” than another takes a lot of ego and emotion in the first place.
I think a better question would be, why do people identify with ideas as their sense of self? The reason these “liberals” get angry is because they take attacks on their viewpoints very personally as if without them they wouldn’t be who they are anymore, like a part of them would “die”. For me, seeing people as who they are, which is more than just their ideas, lends itself to people actually wanting to engage in educational discussion. But if I think “this person is a communist” as if that’s a permanent state of their being then I can’t possibly expect any changes.
While I agree that we are all emotional, that isn’t OP’s point. At least, it isn’t mine. Some people are more attached to their ideologies than others. Some can differentiate reality from fiction and debate politely even in controversial issues, some do not. Some explode as soon as you mention that their world view is false and EXPLAIN it step by step.
If I think I am right and I see obvious crackpot, I don’t start shouting at him and cursing him for his ignorance. I can be sarcastic a little bit, but usually I am not interested in a debate (with creationists, for example).
So no, we are not just some crackpots for a statists. We actually expose the true nature of man and that’s what hurt them. They don’t wanna hear it.
Yeah I agree, some people are definitely more attached than others- but I think this goes for people in every category, libertarians, liberals, conservatives, whatever the label is. But I think to expect everyone to have the same level of detachment to ideas as oneself is a bit much. Personally when I see someone get highly emotionally reactive to something I said, I try to look at myself and the manner in which I projected my ideas, the culprit is usually arrogance on my part.
I argued with one dude who rejected the invalidity of formal logical fallacies and argued purely based on emotion. I told him that I felt that his argument was wrong and that, therefore, he was wrong. (He didn’t get the sarcasm.)
People choose ideologies based on what makes them feel good. If they choose an ideology that is actually wrong, it will make no difference. I could work really hard and try to be objective, and wind up supporting Ron Paul or maybe even no one in elections, and the outcome would be the same as if I had blended in and voted for Obama. I’ll feel a lot better if I vote for Obama because there’s the social support and good feeling of winning and doing something.
Did you mean to say validity? I actually practice for these situations constantly. It’s a running dialogue that I keep in mind to cover various scenarios. I try and cover all possible objections or counter arguments, but there is simply no substitute for actually arguing with someone with a different or radically different ideology.
If anything, conversations like these help to combat those ideas in the future. After a while, you can practically make a list of items that are almost always brought up in conversation over a particular topic.
Hmm… maybe validity was the wrong concept. I pointed out the logical fallacies in his argument; they were hasty generalization, non sequitur and circumstantial ad hominem. He replied that I was missing the much more bigger and emotional meaning of his argument.
I honestly don’t see that as a valid stereotype anymore. The left comes in all stripes, and seems to have no more particular emotions than other political sect. That said, if such a dichotomy can actually exist between “emotional” and “rational”, there is nothing intrinsically superior in any state of being. There is no reason in itself to choose to be “more rational” than “more emotional”.