On a Neurological Level, Can Liberals Adapt?
Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to adapt and develop both structure and function in response to sensory experiences.
Liberals are lacking this capacity to form new neural connections partly because they have diseased brains; one manifestation, as the Wall Street Journal recently opined, is that their climate change obsession is a mental disorder.
Hardly illuminating, their neural transmitters are inhibited by intolerant insulators as they cocoon themselves in stultifying safe spaces.
I’m often struck by the lackluster liberals’ laziness and lack of curiosity. Too often, the closed-minded blabber-mouths come across as brainwashed bots whose intelligence is indeed artificial. Their presentations are wearisome, especially by those in these fields: academia, legacy media, labor unions, swampy bureaucracies, dehumanizing DIE resources, environmentalism, and psychology. It’s evident they don’t function in a dynamic environment that elicits active neuroplasticity. They aren’t malleable, but are imprisoned in their own brains even as they try to imprison President Trump on flimsy indictments.
Conservatives, by contrast, are more evolved. It is appreciated that “youth is wasted on the young,” and eventually, they wise up, generally becoming more conservative concomitant with increased responsibilities. As they evolve, gaining independence from the suffocating grip of academia and granny-state bureaucracies, they can finally thrive by learning useful skills. In fact, exercising mental agility to contend with the contingencies of a stimulating environment may agitate the formation of new cells. That’s a process known as neurogenesis, proponents of which describe it as a mechanism that excites new brain neuron formation.
Neuroplasticity is related, but not quite as magical. Nevertheless, it is still illuminating as it encompasses the brain’s ability to form new pathways and dynamically assemble new neuronal networks in response to ever-changing environments. But many liberals operate in intolerant, stultifying settings where pathways are blocked. In liberal-dominated social sciences, for example, the “publish or perish” paradigm elicits untrustworthy methodologies that predispose an outcome favorable to social activism. Rarely challenged with contrarian proposals, the purveyors wither mentally in intellectually incestuous incubators. There is no false consensus bias – they really all do think alike, and there are few opportunities to adapt to new, or old, truths.
Examples of social science research that potentially block new neuron connections abound. Here’s a very recent case of extreme academic negligence by a professor concocting dubious racial bias studies. Not much neuroplasticity going on there; I’m afraid his synapses may have short-circuited. At least in this case there were consequences (he was sacked), but many professors with “neuro-rigidity” are still tainting the ivory towers. As American philosopher Richard Rorty observed, “[t]ruth is what your contemporaries let you get away with saying.” In liberal circles that’s called “truthiness.”
Peer reviews for academic journals don’t assuage the confirmation bias, which impacts innovation and limits neuroplasticity. Indeed, this article from the “Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine,” concludes that peer reviews for all science papers are deeply flawed. One reason is that, “[t]he editorial peer review process has been strongly biased against ‘negative studies’…”
For example, null values that contradict a liberal mindset often don’t see the light of day, skewing social science literature towards leftist tautologies. Worryingly, in social sciences many studies are so flawed that they can’t even be reproduced. That wouldn’t go over well in the business world where robust data analytics are integral to incisive decision-making, the kind that’s symbiotic with neuroplasticity. A well-earned cliché is that “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” No wonder someone like Dr. Thomas Lifson, a doer, describes himself as a “recovering academic.”
In the real world, where conservatives tend to roam, interactions are more fluid, presenting more opportunities to rejigger one’s thought patterns in response to varying stimuli. That’s likely one reason why small business owners trend conservative. Furthermore, more than 69% of America’s top executives are Republican supporters . Operating under pressure from stakeholders and shareholders, they need to think critically and creatively to thrive. They may not create perverted art, but they do create products, markets, and jobs. With their enhanced neuroplasticity comes nimbleness to navigate complex business environments.
Meanwhile, in the mind-numbing uniformity of postmodern ill-liberalism, there’s not much going on upstairs. Just about everyone in Biden’s administration is dim, and it appears their brains are slow to birth new neurons. Let’s focus on Lina Khan, for one example, the unqualified head of the FTC who keeps losing her anti-trust battles.
Khan graduated from Williams College, where zero percent of the students associate with the Republican Party. Nada! She was also brainwashed at Yale, where contemporaries let you get away with saying anything – as long as it denigrates conservatism. Indeed, Yale’s intellectual diversity is almost as rotten, with 7% of students associating with the Republican Party – but only 2% describe political beliefs on campus as conservative.
With little real-life business experience, Khan flounders from one ignominious defeat to another while imposing an abusive regime. Judging by her testimony about her court losses before the House Judiciary Committee, it appears her brain is hardly lit up with enlightening electrical signals. Indeed, Lina Khan might have achieved more enlightenment had she attended the online Khan Academy. They even have courses about capitalism, regulation, and monopolies vs. competition. That ought to fire up those neural pathways that lay dormant after her highfalutin indoctrination.
While stick-in-the-mud liberals endure neuro-idiocy wrought of intellectual complacency, social and economic conservatism has attained the highest levels in a decade. Good for them. In addition to enriched environments that promote greater neuroplasticity, they may even be experiencing a genesis of ideas – a neurogenesis, perhaps.
Of course, there are exceptions, but most conservatives operate in a realm where neuroplasticity is vibrant. Just look at the productive occupations they tend to gravitate towards. Frankly, the new wave of conservatives identified by Gallup are simply more evolved. They have achieved a heightened sense consciousness as their brains’ neurons animatedly reassemble in response to vivid stimuli, thereby upending the lackluster liberal mindset.
On a Neurological Level, Can Liberals Adapt? - American Thinker
