An Explanation Better Than 42 (Part 4)

Leftists are more concerned with sustainability than exploitation.  It is no coincidence that social innovations such as universal health care, pensions, and unions are seen as leftist undertakings; their existence is predicated on protecting the interests of the common man/woman as well as the weak and marginalized.  Leftists are in an ongoing battle to keep the right from skewing the social contract to their advantage.  Where the right clamours for the marketplace to determine the distribution of goods and services and to allocate wealth, the left seeks to keep society on an even keel by advocating for equality in wealth distribution.

Our basic social nature dictates that we derive affirmation, not from goods but from interaction and relationships.  The difference between the left and the right is that the left reaches out to the world and the right insulates itself from it.  The xenophobia of the right wing is a direct outgrowth of their fear and distrust: because they are so invested in their material goods (and because many have so much conspicuous wealth), they guard their hoard like the dragons of myth.  At the same time, they are extremely loyal to their friends and families and display a patriotic zeal for their city, province, state and country.  

There is basis in brain research to bear out the fact that the left and right don’t just appear different but are physiologically diverse.  Recent brain research purports to be able to identify conservative and liberal individuals, with about 70% certainty, solely on the basis of their brains’ physiology.  It seems that conservatives have a noticeably larger right amygdala whereas liberals have a more developed anterior cingulate cortex (ACC).

An oversimplification of the function of these two structures would be that the Amygdala is your survival brain.  One of it’s primary responses is fear because fear keeps you safe.  When we first encounter something new or surprising, we don’t know whether to eat it or run away lest we be eaten (the famous ‘fight it, flee it, or fuck it’ response).  That’s the amygdala at work: determining, with a shot of hormones, that something is very wrong and we have to respond.  In this way it is easiest to think of the amygdala as a car alarm that has a hair trigger.  What it needs, in order to resolve the nature of the ‘threat’ is a rational input from the cortex to say, ‘It’s okay to switch off; it was just a gust of wind” or, “keep wailing because there is someone breaking into the car and I need you to scare them away.”  That’s what the cortex is for.