Thread: Connection between testosterone-related behavior, Nietzsche's Master Morality and Conservatism?

Conservatives are more attached to their method or tradition, they are the preservation side of evolution, the troops on the ground who follow their training without asking questions, the Apollonians. Liberals are more aware of their surroundings and adaptable, they are the scouts that learn the tactics and figure out the best course of action, the Dionysians.

Well spake brother Omnis!

I wasn't even going to bring the whole Apollonian/Dionysian dichotomy in, figured it would just make people scratch their heads, and this was already complicated enough seeing as it consists of 3 parts. But I completely agree with you.

I've had a couple of thoughts that help clarify a couple things about the potential Testosterone connection.

Since I've already said that I;m mainly thinking about testosterone-type behavior rather than actual hormonal level, it's only one simple step to say "Conservatives tend favor traditional masculine behavior in their men". Once you put it that way, I don't think anybody would argue. They also favor traditional feminine behavior from their females.

So, what's at the root of traditional masculine behavior? What else... our friend testosterone. Makes you strong, aggressive, confident, sexually potent etc.

Now, testosterone levels can change according to certain things. About 10 years ago I was pretty seriously into weightlifting and that raises testosterone significantly. During this time, people used to tell me pretty regularly that I was an asshole. I thought they were full of shit - I just thought I was being funny and they were a bunch of losers. But lo and behold - I injured my shoulder and had to stop lifting, and pretty soon, I assume as my testosterone levels were dropping, I could see what they meant... I WAS being an asshole! My jokes were actually insults - some velied some not so much. And I didn't even realize it - I literally just thought I was being funny. But as I was in transition back to low-test me v 1.0 again, I could see it, and after a while I no longer made those asinine jokes and didn't feel compelled to.

I must say though, I felt fantastic at the time. My muscles were always sore, but I felt really good inside and had soaring self-confidence. So I can say from experience that when my personal testo level was raised I did behave in more traditional masculine/conservative ways.

Another situation that raises testosterone levels - guys, think about when a hot girl shows up among you and your friends. If she's a real go-er, know what I mean? Nudge nudge wink wink.
Suddenly friends get extremely competitive. The rut is on. lol and think about that in conjunction with it - rutting animals. Yeah, testosterone is responsible for aggressively masculine behavior alright!!

Really though, when you break it down like this none of it is surprising. I think I just came at it from a weird angle with the testosterone thing rather than starting with "Conservatives obviously favor masculine behavior in males". As soon as you put it that way it all falls into place.

alright, well, I'm glad we had this little discussion!! Personally I feel I've learned a few things, or cleared a few things up for myself anyway.

Testosterone plays a significant role in this dichotomy because it causes people to be more self-confident, and thus less cautious and less aware of their surroundings. In certain situations, you need that purposeful confidence because you need to complete the task at hand. The sperm that stops to see if the coast is clear doesn't get to the egg faster than the sperm that just goes for it with abandon. Much the same way, your soldiers won't take any ground if they're too afraid to take a couple bullets on the way. This is a metaphor for the mind. It all comes down to shitting or getting off the pot. Use your awareness to make decisions, but complete those decisions as though you could not fail.

Resurrecting my old thread to add some new info. Heh and no, I don't actually think about master/slave morality a lot, though it might seem like it! Was just reading a bit about Nietzsche which sparked it up again, and that led me to this PDF file comparing his philosophy to that of Ayn Rand.

Very clear and well written, and it really helped me to understand Nietzsche as well as (more importantly) providing an alternative that's a lot less harsh. What I mean by an alternative is - it was Nietzsche's master/slave morality that explained a lot to me about different kinds of people and their motivations in life, but his ideas connected to it are extremely harsh and brutal - he sees only these 2 extremes with no common ground or compromise in between, and in his view they are always locked in mortal combat and can't co-exist peacefully. Rand agrees that the extremes do exist, but she has a much less brutal viewpoint in which they actually get along cooperatively and in fact need each other for survival - after all, what is a leader without followers, and Nietzsche's masters are of course leaders (politicians, military and religious leaders, business owners etc) and his slaves are the huddled masses of ordinary folk - the alphas and the omegas if you will.

I don't know if anybody else around here is interested this stuff like I am, but I highly recommend reading the PDF file I linked at the top if you are. Fascinating if you ask me. I love finding stuff like this that suddenly makes things click together and make sense.

I have met some open-minded liberals, but they are exceptions and not the norm. Most of them are chronically angry, hyper-judgmental even in casual conversations that are not even about politics, and about as narrow-minded as it gets. There are a lot of conservatives like that too, but I have always had an easier time getting along with conservatives who disagree with me than with liberals who disagree with me. About half of the liberals I have known hated me on a personal level for disagreeing with them about anything.

I am a libertarian, so in American politics, I'm a half breed. That puts me in an interesting position for analyzing the common liberal and conservative mentalities. Something that has cracked me up since I was a teenager is that both liberals and conservatives tend to be so caught up in their opposition that they think anybody who disagrees with them on any broad issue is automatically part of the other side. Conservatives have always called me a liberal, and liberals have always called me a conservative. That is a manifestation of tribal thinking that goes way back in human evolution. I have had liberals lose their minds while talking to me and calling me a conservative after I agreed with them on 20 issues but then mentioned that I don't support gun control or that I think the invasion of Iraq was necessary (which I have changed my mind about since then). When conservatives find out that I think all drugs should be legal, they immediately label me a "liberal," overlooking the fact that I think the federal government needs to be drastically shrunk and that the welfare system has got to go. What I am getting at here is that I don't think the masses on either side tend to be open-minded about political issues, though I have met a fair number of individuals who are. They also tend to be very resistant to changes in political beliefs.

This is where things really get bizarre. In 2014, I think it's no longer the case that Democrats and liberals are the same or that Republicans and conservatives are the same. The two major parties are just big government parties that support almost all of the same stuff, but to slightly different degrees. As far as I am concerned, the Democratic and Republican parties are just big cults. Their members tend to put their parties before anything else. Democrats were so gung ho against sexual harassment in the 90's until Bill Clinton got sued for flashing one of his former employees. After that, sexual harassment was no longer a trendy issue for liberals. Republicans at that time were fanatical about shrinking the size of government and majorly reducing spending, and their mantra was, "Get government off our backs and out of our lives!." So what did they do when Bush II signed the Patriot Act and drove the national debt up several trillion dollars? They praised him as a patriotic hero.

My message here is that levels of open-mindedness and willingness to accept change are just a matter of what liberals and conservatives talk about and what Democrats and Republicans talk about. When it comes to what they actually do, in most cases, they side with their cult... no matter what. Politicians are very aware of that, and they use it well to their advantages. I think that is the root of dysfunctional politics and the downfall of the United States.

Completely agreed. I started this thread when I was only beginning to become somewhat politically aware, and I now understand things very differently than I did then. I now realize there's very little difference between today's republican and conservative parties. The democrats use civil rights issues to make republicans look bad, but their actual policies don't help any of the disenfranchised people they want to be seen to support - it's all just to present themselves as the party who stands for the oppressed when really it's all a show - the democratic leaders use it only for political gain and exploit the people they pretend to be helping. And today's republican party seems to just support the wealthy and pay lip service to Christianity and what they consider traditional family values, but again it's really just a false travesty of it. They're both ridiculous caricatures who seem more intent on gaining political power and destroying the other party than on anything real.

As I think many people do, when I first became somewhat politically aware I considered myself a liberal - and the only thing that made me take any interest at all in politics was that idea that there's a liberal and a conservative brain - it played to my interest in brain science. I've since come to realize it isn't true at all - it was liberal propaganda just trying to make liberals seem smarter than conservatives, which works on the unwary because scientists mostly tend to be liberal atheists and conservatives today tend to be Christian fundamentalists (broadly speaking at least). But as soon as you realize these are just broad generalities and that the parties themselves are jokes now, the illusion falls apart. I think the truth is there's a moderate and an extremist brain. It's the moderate brain that can tolerate ambiguity and weigh alternatives non dogmatically. Though I do believe there are tendencies that make people fall into either the liberal or conservative camp, i.e. to subscribe to either master or slave morality. But neither of those are inherently 'smart' or 'non-dogmatic'. I think the smarter, less dogmatic people are the ones who see through the party lines.

As to what you said about liberals actually being more dogmatic and pissed off than conservatives, I've seen that too. I think it has a lot to do with what both Nietzsche and Rand said - to the effect that slave morality tends to breed repressed resentment and hatred. It's an underdog mentality; the huddled masses; the Omegas (aka the losers) massing together and pointing the finger of righteous indignation against the Alphas (the winners) who tend to be wealthy business owners and leaders. Personally I'm an Omega, not an Alpha. I've always been aware I'm a much better follower than leader. But I refuse to buy into the spiteful democratic party line that tries to take advantage of that to make me a mindless clone in their clone wars, because rather than respond emotionally and viscerally I can think about issues.

Incidentally I think these ideas fall in line neatly with a thread I made recently about the Frankfurt School, a socialist think tank that designed ways to bring down a modern liberal democratic capitalist country by playing the 99% against the 1% through a strategy of convincing most people that they've always been oppressed, though ironically they've managed to convince everyone that it's not the 1% that oppressed them but anyone who's not a member of their own special victim group that deserves revenge. And if you can give people simple catch phrases that fire them up emotionally and give them what seems to be a legitimate enemy to blame all their problems on you can use the resulting hatred to manipulate them. This "let's blame everything on straight white males" attitude has unfortunately become the democratic party's battle cry.

Man, if you just started becoming politically aware 2 1/2 years ago, you went a very long way fast. You hit the nail on the head.

The Democratic Party is very much about class warfare and other forms of social warfare. They talk about peace, love, open-mindedness, compassion, and tolerance, but they are really a shit stirring organization that thrives on creating hate and plotting social groups against each other.

^ well said. Of course that's the politicians themselves, and as has been said on other threads, the people who tend to make it in politics are often sociopaths or something similar. I suspect a majority of democratic voters are mostly unaware of this behavior and take it all at face value. They buy into the love and compassion angle and don't see or are willing to ignore the more vicious stuff underlying it. In a lot of democratic voters I can see a wounded child inside very close to the surface, who loves fluffy bunny rabbits and wants to save trees because they identify with underdogs and hate 'exploiters' (because they feel like they've been exploited - they were the kids getting beat up in the schoolyard by the future republicans). Wow, that came out really harsh lol!! I don't mean that's what all democratic voters are like, just a certain group of them. The politicians, especially the more unscrupulous ones, know this makes them easy targets, people like this can be manipulated through emotion quite easily.

I remember when I was reading up on the ideas about a republican brain and a democratic brain I kept seeing that republicans are supposedly the more emotional, while the democrats tend to be scientific and logical, but I see a lot of democrats whose eyes well over with tears of emotion as they wail "But what about the Chiiiilllllldreeeeeennnnn??!!!!" or some such, willfully ignoring the fact that the policies enacted by their leaders don't actually benefit the children or anybody except for the leaders themselves in their careers.

And meanwhile republicans get bent out of shape about a supposed war on Christmas and the evils of pot smoking and gay marriage. Now if only I understood the mechanics of how such ridiculous pseudo-parties happened, and why so many people are willing to buy wholesale into their platforms without ever examining them..

Come to think of it I guess that's the way the majority of the population has always been - not wanting to think too deeply into anything but just go with what they like. Join whatever group they feel an affiliation with and then shout the battle cries as loud as they can to show their allegiance. No wonder most people weren't allowed to vote in the beginning!

You expressed several of my views on American politics. It was as if I was reading a post I wrote.

A large percentage of liberals and Democrats think the way they do because of feelings of personal persecution, and those usually come from experience with being persecuted. That gives them underdog mentalities, which give them the view that a political group or party that supports major success and power of individuals is a party that supports persecution because the persecuted saw their persecutors as successful and powerful. That means they have a prejudice, which is ironic because they put so much into opposing so many forms of prejudice. They make an exception with rich people and anybody who supports the rich, including conservative poor people. They will go on and on about how much they care about the poor but then turn around and say that anybody who disagrees with them is a backward ass, ignorant, trailer trash, hillbilly, redneck moron. That mentality involves extreme prejudice against a faction of poor people. It's some of the most bizarre hypocrisy there is.

One of the big problems with liberals and Democrats is that too many people in that wing make such an extreme assumption that their views on what methods should be used are correct, and as a result, they assume that anybody who doesn't agree with their methods doesn't agree with their goals. For example, I really believe that the welfare system keeps masses of people down and exacerbates poverty instead of reducing it. Because I am anti-welfare, I have been accused of wanting people to starve to death. A huge chunk of the left thinks that way. They can't take in the idea that I want to end poverty too but have a different view on how that can be done. Another problem with a big portion of liberals and Democrats is they assume that if somebody is against the government forcing people to do something, the person is against its being done at all. I very much believe in charity and have given charity, but that doesn't mean I am in favor of the government forcing people to give to charity. A lot of liberals and Democrats think my lack of belief in such force proves that I am against anybody giving charity at all. A statistic that I think inadvertently makes a mockery of that view is that the average Republican gives more in charity than the average Democrat.

The downfall of conservatives and Republicans is the stuff you mentioned about war on Christmas hysteria and their fixations on pot smokers and gay marriage. If they would accept the fact that religion, sexual preference, marriage, and personal vices are not the business of the government, they would win over millions of people they have alienated. I think their nonsense on those issues is one of the major forces that drives people to being liberals and Democrats. Fortunately, I think the right is catching on to that. There is a lot of pressure in the Republican party to move toward libertarianism, and a lot of people who call themselves conservatives have joined the Libertarian Party. That gives me a lot of optimism. If conservatives and Republicans would give up their position that the government should be our parents and the idea that the U.S. is the police force of the world, they would win over a lot of people, including me.

I don't know much about Libertarianism, but then I guess there isn't much to know - small government, keep them out of our business, no taxes… did I miss anything? In principle it sounds good, but it seems pretty extreme. I am definitely a Ron Swanson fan though:

Most libertarians believe in taxes. I think we need them, but I think we should switch to a small sales tax instead of an income tax. Ron Paul, who is a libertarian in Republican clothing, thinks we should have other forms but not an income tax. A lot of anarchists call themselves libertarians, but only with a lower case "l." The Libertarian Party is not an anarchist organization. We are a Constitutionalist organization. We support very strict interpretation of and adherence to the Constitution, while the Democratic and Republican Parties seem to think it's just a set of suggestions. We are much more liberal than most Democrats on social and foreign policy issues and much more conservative than Republicans on economic issues. We are also against all forms of gun control.

Platform | Libertarian Party

Well worth the read to anyone interested in politics; and in my opinion one of the most politically enlightening debates ever recorded:

Elliot: Virginia Debates on Ratification of Constitution

It is advisable to read through the US constitution first and the bill of rights, as well as the articles of confederation, though not absolutely necessary to understand the discussion.

Perhaps I will have something to say regarding this thread later, but I have not read through all of the posts yet.