All in the Mind

Steven Pinker, research psychologist and professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT and author of "Words and Rules", HERE asks :

"What is the missing ingredient — not genes, not upbringing — that shapes the mind?"
Anyone with some knowledge of astrology has an answer, though not one as to how the process works. Why not test a theory that broad astrological principles could be involved in the answer to that question? Astrologers, in cahoots with psychologists such as Professor Pinker, might discover something of value to both science and astrology.

Snip:

"If genes have any effect at all, it must be total. But the data show that genes account for about only about half of the variance in personality and intelligence (25% to 75%, depending on how things are measured). That leaves around half the variance to be explained by something that is not genetic........growing up in the same home — with the same parents, books, TVs, guns, and so on — does not make children similar.

So the variation in personality and intelligence breaks down roughly as follows: genes 50%, families 0%, something else 50%. As with Bob Dylan's Mister Jones, something is happening here but we don't know what it is.

Perhaps it is chance. While in the womb, the growth cone of an axon zigged rather than zagged, and the brain gels into a slightly different configuration. If so, it would have many implications that have not figured into our scientific or everyday way of thinking.... "

Extending those thoughts to the area of political mindset ~ a number of studies have found that biology may be linked with political orientation. Wikipedia has a page on the topic. David Sloan Wilson's article, posted in 2011, is an interesting read.

"Are Liberals and Conservatives Different Species? The Answer is Yes". The article left me feeling sad that astrology cannot command the $$$$$ required for an experiment such as the one he describes. If only more scientists would open their minds, experiments like this one could be modified to take in birth data so that it could be analysed by astrologers. Dream on!

A few extracts:

If men are from Mars and women from Venus, where do liberals and conservatives come from? They are so befuddled by each other that it is tempting to say different galaxies--or, to employ a biological metaphor, that they are different species. It turns out that the biological metaphor might be surprisingly close to the truth.

For years I wanted to study people in the same way that I am accustomed to studying beetles and fish--not just in the laboratory, but also "in the field" as they go about their everyday lives. I finally found my chance when I met Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the famous psychologist who is best known for his work on peak psychological experience (Flow) and who pioneered something called the experience sampling method (ESM).

The ESM is simplicity itself. People are outfitted with devices that beep at random times during the day, prompting them to fill out a short questionnaire recording where they are, what they are doing, who they are with, and a checklist of psychological states on a numerical scale....... We began with a multi-million dollar project that Mihaly had conducted with sociologist Barbara Schneider to examine how young people prepare to enter the work force. Thousands of American high school students had participated nationwide by providing extensive background information and being beeped for a week, for roughly 50 snapshots of their individual experience................

...Everyone in our sample was an American, a teenager, and belonged to the same major religious tradition of Protestantism. In these respects they were culturally uniform. But some belonged to conservative denominations such as Pentecostal and others to liberal denominations such as Episcopalian. As Ingrid combed through the data, which involved tedious hours in front of the computer, the differences that began to emerge were astounding. It was as if these conservative and liberal religious youth were--different species.

Imagine the priceless information astrologers could glean from being included in an experimental survey like that one !

Recent articles have taken the same kind of research further: two are by Chris Mooney for Mother Jones website -

From 2013 -
The Surprising Brain Differences Between Democrats and Republicans
Two new studies further support the theory that our political decision making could have a neurological basis

Snip -

Republicans were using the right amygdala, the center of the brain's threat response system. Democrats, in contrast, were using the insula, involved in internal monitoring of one's feelings. Amazingly, Schreiber and his colleagues write that this test predicted 82.9 percent of the study subjects' political party choices—considerably better, they note, than a simple model that predicts your political party affiliation based on the affiliation of your parents.

From 2014
Scientists Are Beginning to Figure Out Why Conservatives Are…Conservative
Ten years ago, it was wildly controversial to talk about psychological differences between liberals and conservatives. Today, it's becoming hard not to.

Snip

That's pretty extraordinary, when you think about it. After all, one of the teams of commenters includes New York University social psychologist John Jost, who drew considerable political ire in 2003 when he and his colleagues published a synthesis of existing psychological studies on ideology, suggesting that conservatives are characterized by traits such as a need for certainty and an intolerance of ambiguity. Now, writing in Behavioral and Brain Sciences in response to Hibbing roughly a decade later, Jost and fellow scholars note that:

There is by now evidence from a variety of laboratories around the world using a variety of methodological techniques leading to the virtually inescapable conclusion that the cognitive-motivational styles of leftists and rightists are quite different. This research consistently finds that conservatism is positively associated with heightened epistemic concerns for order, structure, closure, certainty, consistency, simplicity, and familiarity, as well as existential concerns such as perceptions of danger, sensitivity to threat, and death anxiety.

Astrologers might consider that a heavily emphasised Saturn, and/or its signs Capricorn and/or Aquarius = higher potential for a person to exhibit a more conservative mindset. Absent that emphasis there'd be plenty of leeway for a variety of other, more liberal preferences. There's obviously much more to it than that - still, it'd be a good place to start. Flowing from that, there'd be a possibility that time's cycles, mini-cycles, maxi-cycles and all between, as defined by planetary movement, in coordination with a given set of inherited genes, might incline the political mind of the newborn, when grown, to orient leftward or rightward.

(NEXT POST will be Wednesday's.)

Liberally Confused

A headline at Huffington Post the other day caught my attention : Paul Haggis: I Wrote 'Crash' To 'Bust Liberals'. Included in the piece is a brief video of an interview in which those words are spoken by Haggis.

At first I felt puzzled. I looked back to my own post about Crash and a couple of other Paul Haggis movies. :



Clip from my post of March 2013:

Crash, set in Los Angeles, puts the focus squarely on racism in the USA. The embedded message applies equally elsewhere, of course. Crash uses what I think of as "the tangled net" method of story-telling. A number of totally unconnected characters are introduced, and by the end of the movie we find they are linked in some way to at least one of the other characters, often to several. The Crash characters all have different ethnic backgrounds: African American, Middle-Eastern, Asian-American, Mexican, Caucasian, Latin-American (hope I didn't forget any). There is heavy stereotyping, and that is a drawback, but in this film it was necessary to get a point across in limited time. Each incident and reaction is drawn in extreme terms - cartoonish in fact. After I'd watched the film my first reaction was that it wasn't at all true to life, it was more like distilled version, keeping only the strongest flavours intact. It reminded me a bit of the way people sometimes train a puppy not to soil the living room carpet by rubbing its nose in the mess. Our noses were rubbed in the mess we sometimes make of relationships with others of different background from ourselves.

So as not to end on a completely negative note, Paul Haggis made sure that he did show that most characters though their bad traits were horrendous, had a decent, or even heroic, side too. Whether this was a cop out to stop audiences hating the movie I cannot say. I saw only one truly decent guy in the film - a Mexican locksmith.

I watched the video presented with the HuffPo article and confusion cleared. In the video Haggis clearly states, when asked, that he is "left of liberal" - which would have been my guess, though I wasn't 100% certain considering that most commenters to the Huffington Post article seemed to assume that Haggis is conservative, giving his liberal opponents a poke in the eye. I thought that perhaps those commenters knew something I didn't know. I was wrong.

People, or most, in the USA don't seem to get that there is a fair land left of liberal, and that liberalism, at least as it plays out in the USA, ain't always what it's cracked up to be. The kind of liberalism Haggis is pointing out is just a mini-step away from what I consider conservative-lite, and sadly there's a lot of it about.

Anyway, I did get a wry chuckle out of my own confusion, and the clear misunderstanding of those commenters who had obviously not taken the trouble to watch the video before making their observations.

Political Preference - Brain Differences? Astrology in there anywhere?

Humans seem to be naturally polarized politically, most remain entrenched in their views for a lifetime. Some research has been carried out.

Liberal? Conservative? Your brains are different, study finds , an article by by Andrew Duffy, at Vancouver Sun begins:

Liberals and Conservatives may have differences that go well beyond their opinions about what constitutes contempt of Parliament.

A British study suggests there are anatomical differences between the brains of opponents on the left and right of the political spectrum.

The study, published in the online edition of Current Biology, found people who identified themselves as liberal tended to have larger anterior cingulate cortexes, a region of the brain that monitors uncertainty and conflict. Those who identified themselves as conservative had larger amygdalas, a region that processes emotions related to fear.

Researchers say the physical differences reflect the nature of voters: Liberals tend to be more comfortable with uncertainty, conservatives are more sensitive to fear.

"Previously, some psychological traits were known to be predictive of an individual's political orientation," said Dr. Ryota Kanai of University College London. "Our study now links such personality traits with specific brain structure."

I began to wonder how this might pan out astrologically. Further light research brought me to a pdf file from Dept of Political science, University of Iowa Fear Dispositions and their Relationship to Political Preferences

Clip from pdf (click on it to see a bigger version)


So, where might we find correlation in astrology to this idea that fear drives conservatism?

Saturn and how it is positioned in one's natal chart, appears to be significant in the potential for conservatism. Coincidentally Saturn connects to fear as well.

For instance - just one example:

A person with Sun conjunct Saturn - part of the interpretation at Cafe Astrology says:

..... Generally, they come across as somewhat skeptical and pessimistic, cautious, and slightly reserved. There is a distinct streak of the conservative in these people. Some are rigid and strict, expecting others to live up to their high standards. However, most people with this aspect are simply very aware that life has its limitations.

More about the connection of Saturn with fear is set out in a piece by Beth Turnage, Saturn and Fear at Astrology Explored.

A little mythological background on Saturn

Saturn was the God Kronos, father of Zeus, who was known for devouring his offspring soon after being born. He did this because he feared that they would surpass him. But Zeus, who was protected by his mother, returned to face his father, and Kronos’ fears were realized through death. Similarly, if we clamp down on what we fear the most, eventually it destroy us. Saturn has been depicted as the punishing father, but also as the Grim Reaper, who cuts life short. Mortality is the ultimate restriction, and as Father Time, he is the wise one that inspires urgency in our quest to fulfill our life mission.
http://astrology.about.com/od/advancedastrology/p/Saturn.htm

In light of all of the above I'm wondering whether at some future date an enlightened statistician might include some astrological data in their researches on such topics as this. Assistance from a professional astrologer would be essential of course. When pigs fly......