Are political views ingrained and related to fear?

perseus

perseus

Active member
A study shows that political views may be an integral part of our physical makeup. These findings may help to explain why voters' minds are so hard to change. They run deep because it's a reflex, it's not something you can change tomorrow, the depth of that may be something of an asset in figuring out why people are so stubborn in their political beliefs

People who are sensitive to fear or threat are likely to support a right wing agenda. On the other hand, you have people who are more supportive of pacifism and who advocate gun control - and there are lots of areas where people who are less sensitive to threat would project those kinds of feelings into the political arena."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7623256.stm
 
It is an interesting study and it does explain a few points but I don't believe it explains the rural/urban or the economic variances.
 
This is common sense, I don't need a scientist to tell me that my political views are a product of my experiences and genes. And I take the results with a grain of salt. I strongly favor capital punishment, a strong military, and enforcement of immigration laws, but I also think most recreational drugs should be legal and that the government has no place deciding anything about abortion. It's not about threat levels - it's all about personal freedom and responsibility. If you're not harming anyone other than yourself, no one should have a right to bother you. But if you cross the line, expect swift punishment. Punishment, not correction.
 
major liability said:
This is common sense, I don't need a scientist to tell me that my political views are a product of my experiences and genes. And I take the results with a grain of salt. I strongly favor capital punishment, a strong military, and enforcement of immigration laws, but I also think most recreational drugs should be legal and that the government has no place deciding anything about abortion. It's not about threat levels - it's all about personal freedom and responsibility. If you're not harming anyone other than yourself, no one should have a right to bother you. But if you cross the line, expect swift punishment. Punishment, not correction.
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What about also including better government controls on the US financial markets or have you missed something lately?
 
That too. I didn't really want to enumerate my political beliefs, just provide a few examples. Science is great for the tangible, but I really have no faith in most psychology. It simply varies too much from person to person for someone to come out and make a sweeping statement like that.
 
Funny thing this thing about fear.
If you live in the real world and you have no fear of anything, someone's probably not told you something pretty important.
 
the_13th_redneck said:
Funny thing this thing about fear.
If you live in the real world and you have no fear of anything, someone's probably not told you something pretty important.
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How so?

I can not honestly think of anything my country or myself has to fear right at the moment, I see no point in fearing the unknown based on "might's" and "what if's" because if we start going down that path we will inevitably fear everything and that just isn't healthy.
 
MontyB, in general. I'm not talking about politics only.
It's like a kid who's motivated at school. Yes, there must always be a great degree of personal motivation in terms of ambition or whatnot but there's always the fear of not being able to make the right grades.
Personally I think people who deny the presence of fear in all aspects of their life are simply in denial and are just dying to prove that they're somehow different from everyone else.
 
AikiRooster said:
Huh? Folks who commit murder, the govt charges them with murder.
Abortion is murder.
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I second Senojekips and secondly; what is murder exactly in your opinion? There is a stage in child development were is hasn't got a beating heart and no developed brain. So the fetus is in cardiac arrest and brain dead a.k.a. plain dead. You can't murder the dead!
 
the_13th_redneck said:
MontyB, in general. I'm not talking about politics only.
It's like a kid who's motivated at school. Yes, there must always be a great degree of personal motivation in terms of ambition or whatnot but there's always the fear of not being able to make the right grades.
Personally I think people who deny the presence of fear in all aspects of their life are simply in denial and are just dying to prove that they're somehow different from everyone else.
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I don't agree, in my opinion motivation through fear is very unhealthy method of getting a job done.

If some people are to be believed I should be fearing Russia, China, Islamists, Communists, Liberals, Japan and the list goes on... Now I can certainly understand that each of these groups given the opportunity could generate fear but the chances of them getting that opportunity are less than the chance of me getting run over in my living room hence I put them at the bottom of my list of things to be frightened of.

One of the interesting things about fear is that it has to be based on something real and above all it has to be something that can be implemented and it is this aspect that people who use it as an election tactic fail to understand.
 
All I'm going to say is that every time something traumatic has happened, at least in my life, it's been because I didn't expect it to.
 
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