(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Why MAGA? Maybe because... [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-06-17 I’ve always had some sympathy for people encountering future shock, and being left stranded when all the choices they had to learn to be comfortable with growing up were thrown into chaos by new information, I just didn’t understand what the mechanism was that caused it, and kind of assumed that eventually people would learn to cope with it, and then get on with their lives. I hadn’t yet run into MAGA. Yes, there have been a multitude of cults over the years, but none that have mushroomed to quite the degree that one has, from my viewpoint, and for the last few years a good part of my mind has been trying to figure out just what’s going on. And I think I just did, but I’m going to have to go at it in pieces, because that’s how it’s coming up. The more complex the world gets, the more options are open when you need to make a choice. At the same time, older options close off, or seem to. The more diverse a society gets, the less it’s possible to go through life believing that “There Is Only One True Way.” The more we actually know about how the universe works, the less we can get away with believing it can make exceptions for us because of some philosophical or theoretical property that is unique to only a few. Faith and belief are complicated, and our beliefs about faith and belief are a whole other level of complication. Belief gets in the way of knowledge Belief can simplify choices, though not necessarily outcomes The more information we have, the harder it is to make new choices to replace the ones that aren’t working any more, if for no other reason than it takes time to process, and we may not have the time. The more bad information we have, the harder it is to even think about new choices. Past a certain level of information to be handled, we need new paradigms for decision making processes, and/but the paradigms to be replaced are/may be some of the most solidly protected of the ones we use. One major difference between Conservative and Liberal appears to be the amount of trouble encountered in shifting decision-making paradigms when the old ones aren’t working. If we can’t shift to a workable paradigm, we tend to panic, because too much of living involves being able to make new decisions to fit new situations. The first response to that panic partly depends on just how severely it presents itself. In order of best possible response to those situations, from my viewpoint, are the following: Throw yourself wholeheartedly into the new situation, and pick up the new information until you have enough to make sense of it. Being able to do this usually requires either emotional or physical support while you’re taking a deep dive into the information, or both. Being young and relatively unstressed otherwise is also helpful, but unfortunately not always a choice. In the absence those conditions, playing for time — i.e., stalling off making any major choices until you get used to the new conditions — is useful. Sometimes you can. In the absence of time to come to terms with the situation, accept that you will make mistakes in at least some of your choices, and try to make them in ways that hold out the possibility of making other choices, later on, acknowledging any original mistakes, and without regretting abandoning them. In the absence of any of those options, live in fear of change; find a group that will affirm your current choices and enable you to ignore the new information; build a bubble in which the new information does not impinge. find someone to follow whose decisions you feel you can trust, for whatever reason. try to destroy those institutions and persons from whom the new information is coming. MAGA is at 4.1. to 4.3. Trump is at 4.4. As Democrats, a lot of what we do it to try to provide new choices, and new reasons and methods for making new choices. This works to add to the panic experienced by those people currently stuck in the fourth category, who for whatever reason are afraid to test their old methods of making choices, or even see their behaviors as choices they can make. Remember also that very few people (maybe none?) are totally free of these prohibitions; simply, some people keep them confined to only certain parts of their lives, and have no problem with dealing with most day-to-day events. It should probably be regarded as a spectrum rather than an absolute, like so many other propensities of human beings. I don’t have any simple solutions. If this is a useful description of the problem, it may lead to some workable solutions presenting themselves, over time. This is an invitation to see whether this description sparks anything in the community here, in whom I have a fair amount of faith. I do note that, in category 4 above, if and when any of those choices lead people into situations that scare them more then the original panic levels did, their choices can reverse themselves incredibly swiftly, at which point almost anything is possible, though negative outcomes are not excluded. And that’s what I have so far. Thanks for reading. Apologies to anyone who looked at this and said TL;DR, and congratulations to those who didn’t let that stop them. ;) [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/17/2247126/-Why-MAGA-Maybe-because?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/