Political Ideology, Epigenetics, and the Amygdala

Some may wonder why the book spends time on epigenetic effects. It includes epigenetic effects because that will ultimately end up being one of the prime motivators of a culture’s ideological bias.

One of the things which I have seen first hand is the slowly corrupting nature of resource excess and peace. This doesn’t happen all at once to a culture, but rather creates a slow, perceptible slide from generation to generation. When I began martial arts training, I rolled with a club that was full of vets fresh from the Korean war. These guys were hard men, in a way you don’t really see today in civil society. The lead instructor had left the Special Forces in the Army, and you knew it within minutes of meeting him. He wasn’t scary, so much as you instinctually sensed that he was the immovable object and the unstoppable force. He could break a 2.5 foot 2×4 leaning against the wall with an inside stomp kick, while in cowboy boots – something he would often note was a very effective way to deal with the outer front of an opponent’s knee in a clinch, if you set it up right.

He was a really bad dude in ways I would never have imagined, had I not actually met and known him, but so were the other vets at the club. They didn’t just do one martial art. They were as proficient with firearms and blades as their hands, and they had a mental quality that is tough to describe, but which would instantly put “normal” people today on edge around them. These were men for whom the study of being able to destroy other men physically was almost a religious duty. You could have dropped these guys into the hardest prison in the nation, and there would be no doubt that the worst, most violent men in those prisons would have instinctually given them a wide berth. I just don’t meet guys like that today all that often, yet in my travels, I found they were relatively common back then in a few circles.

As I continued to study the arts I noticed something. Violent men, simply dedicated to learning how best to hurt others, began to give way to a more gentle, less threatening, more fun-loving variant of human. Vietnam era guys were tough, but they didn’t have that cold, violent, ruthless edge. Later generations gradually became more and more into fun than they were into the art of hurting people. Even today, I am pretty sure most martial artists would freeze up if they suddenly had a dead body at their feet to dispose of. That first group I knew wouldn’t have even blinked. They’d have instantly started running through a list of potential dump-sites they had made note of in their travels, as they mustered up some 12 mil plastic sheeting and shovels.

Today, I feel kind of funny writing about these guys, as if nobody would believe they could exist. I write that last line in the paragraph above, and I wonder, “Does even claiming to have known guys like that make me look crazy? Will readers today even believe guys like that existed in this country in any numbers, or will they blow this article off as fantasy?” But those guys were exactly like that, and they were different for a reason. Their eyes lit up describing the sky going bright at night, with the white phosphorus artillery shells even illuminating where they were, which was presumably pretty far afield behind the official front lines of the war they were fighting.

Even as I marveled at their steely fierceness, they came from even harder WWII era stock that was forged during a time when evil so threatened the world, we could have ended up enslaved if just a few things had gone differently. In that war, we flame-throwered Japanese to death on a regular basis, bombed civilians like it was a video game, and God have mercy on anybody who objected to any of it, or had any sympathy for anyone outside of our American in-group. Our very species was fundamentally different from the fun-loving, peaceful people of today.

If you view this article through that prism, you will begin to see why epigenetics is so important to politics. What is being altered in the mice epigenetically, in the study (full paper here), is the ease and degree of amygdala reactivity and conditioning to a specific encountered stimulus the parents were exposed to – in other words, the ability of the amygdala to learn to perceive and respond to a threat stimuli indicative of future harshness. Although the article references a specific gene for an olfactory receptor possibly being affected, there are genes for neurotransmitter receptors which affect amygdala reactivity and conditioning (A specific gene for this type of neurotransmitter receptor has been associated with ideological predispositioning.), and it would be surprising if the expression of these genes was not affected by epigenetics as well.

That is what I beleive was different in my old, Korean War vet friends. Experience had taught them that violence comes and when it does you don’t screw around – and for some reason, they seemed to have learned the lesson particularly easily. That is the foundational mechanism of political ideology too. As we don’t experience harshness, our society loses this ability to train our amygdalae to recognize various problems in the offing, and our debt bubble becomes no concern, our military is just fine with a gay/lesbian/transgender core force, and 80 lb elderly lesbian women make great Generals, so long as you don’t call them bossy if they snap at you.

The change described in that study on mice is not being done through genetic selection altering allele ratios in the population over time, or through the dopamine desensitization which occurs in an individual due to copious, prolonged, endogenous dopamine release due to pleasure and ease. Rather, the change that study noted is occurring through stress application to the parents, which is altering gene expression in the offspring. The offspring get the same gene sequences as the parents, with the same promotors and repressors, but their body is less able to read some genes, or more able to read others, or some combination thereof, due to changes made to the DNA molecule’s peripheral parts, or other accessory structures altered, added, or removed, all courtesy of the parent’s biochemistry.

A similar study done in humans, might say that repeated exposure to threat stimuli followed by the infliction of harshness, would produce humans whose children would learn to associate threat stimuli with subsequent harshness, faster than their parents did. In other words, the amygdalae of the children would more quickly learn to predict the onset of harshness based on an analysis of current conditions. They would probably also exhibit increased amygdala volume, and better structure their behaviors and decision making to avoid harshness later. This will be no surprise to those who read the book, and saw the research examining how epigenetic effects would affect the expression of an r or K-selected reproductive strategy in mammals. This is just yet another piece of confirming evidence.

Those Korean vets I knew came from parents who, (based on a cursory examination of the traits their kids carried), probably sliced a bloody swath during WWII through a place where the threat of their own violent end at the hands of a brutal enemy was ever present. Next thing you know, I’m sparring with guys who would have put the fear of God into a bar full of PCP-laden Hells Angels.

Take away the threat stimulus of war and shortage, and decades later I’m laughing, as I fight, at the ridiculous comedic antics of a twenty-something goofball opponent, who I couldn’t imagine ever killing anyone. For decades I marveled at that phenomenon as I watched it slowly play out in front of me, long before I ever knew why it was happening. It wasn’t genetic – it was too fast, and there weren’t enough people dying, or enough selective breeding. It wasn’t an endogenous bio-chemical desensitization, it was too gradual, over generations and decades. Epigenetics is the only mechanism I am aware of which fit what I observed, and I have no doubt, that is what it was. And the mechanism I saw there is the same one I see playing out in our politics as the decades pass, and each new generation seems to lack something the previous generation had. Today, as I look out on the nation, I see a rapidly growing cadre of imbeciles, totally blind to the economic destruction and national and cultural failure that each election brings us closer to. This is why those imbeciles are out there, and why they are growing in number.

Note that this would also indicate that if Republican leaders became confrontational, aggressive, demeaning, and willing to engender a conflict-filled environment when dealing with Liberals, they would not only shift the population towards the right today. They would make it easier for the next generation of Republicans to condition American amygdalae with conflict and promote a more Conservative ideology in the populace then too. Of course, given what is coming economically, that will occur sooner or later anyway.

Nothing in the book is there by accident, and I am pretty sure that there is very little to add of any meaning. It is at least fifty years ahead of its time, if not more. After the book finally catches on one day, it will be funny to watch people who hate it, grudgingly admit that all along, it was the one-stop-shop for understanding everything about the political battles which have molded our civilizations for eons.

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Heywood Jablome
9 years ago

… if Republican leaders became confrontational, aggressive, demeaning, and willing to engender a conflict-filled environment when dealing with Liberals, they would not only shift the population towards the right today. They would make it easier for the next generation of Republicans to condition American amygdalae with conflict and promote a more Conservative ideology in the populace then too. Of course, given what is coming economically, that will occur sooner or later anyway.

A truthful statement, but Republican leaders will not become confrontational, aggressive, demeaning, or willing to engender a conflict-filled environment when dealing with Liberals. They are liberals. The disease called progressivism has metastasized throughout both parties, the media, most mainline churches, and popular culture.

Conservative GOP leaders like Ronald Reagan are exceptions to the squishy rule. Barring an Article V convention, we’re headed for either a societal collapse, major federal government repression, or both.

evilwhitemalempire
evilwhitemalempire
Reply to  Heywood Jablome
9 years ago

“They are liberals”
——————————-
Well, not exactly.

They are yesterday’s liberals.

There was once an age when their policies/practices were considered far left.

While something even tougher existed on the far right back then.

Todays liberalism will become tomorrows conservatism.

If that day comes something even more ‘liberal’ awaits on the far left.

And that something will be looked at total aghast by todays liberals.

Bob Wallace
9 years ago

I think we should take into account that whatever the prevailing dominant paradigm is, women will follow it.

As Robert Briffault wrote: “…afford no evidence that the influence of woman has ever been exercised in the direction of extending sexual restrictions and tabus, and of imposing chastity on men….Feminine morality consists in unquestioning assent to established estimates and usages….Feminine conservatism defends polygamy and sexual freedom as staunchly as it does monogamy and morality.’

If men make it r, women will follow r. If it’s K, women will follow K. Ultimately, men lead and women follow.

Heywood Jablome
Reply to  Bob Wallace
9 years ago

Unfortunately, modern women can vote.

evilwhitemalempire
evilwhitemalempire
Reply to  Bob Wallace
9 years ago

If men make it r, women will follow r. If it’s K, women will follow K. Ultimately, men lead and women follow.
———————————
And so long as there’s plenty of food for runts to thrive it will be r.

r men form coalitions against the stronger K men.

That’s the reason we have the ‘prison industrial complex’ we have today.

Ray
Ray
9 years ago

Hey Anonymous Conservative, is there anything to the whole “Dim Mak” Korean “death touch” thing? Did these Vets you knew know about that?

Good Blog by the way.

Ray
Ray
Reply to  Anonymous Conservative
9 years ago

Thanks, I have the vague feeling that it is not really true (Dim Mak), but who knows.

General P. Malaise
General P. Malaise
9 years ago
Max Wylde
Max Wylde
9 years ago

When I went to US Army Flight School at Fort Rucker, Alabama, one of my instructors was a 50+ year vet, an Master Warrant Officer 5, named Mr. Whitaker. He flew in the Korean War in the distinctive OH-12 helicopters that you see in the TV show M.A.S.H., and he had done two tours in Vietnam before being made into an instructor, then went on to fly UH-60 Blackhawks in Desert Storm. He was the only guy I ever knew who was allowed to smoke cigars on the flightline; nobody, not even the brigade commander, ever dared tell Mr. Whitaker to put it out. I think even the aircraft were afraid of bursting into flames because it might disappoint him.

One of the first things he said to us newbies was, “There are two kinds of helicopter pilots; those that have crashed, and those that have yet to.” He went through six helicopter crashes, one of which he immediately got out and got into a fresh chopper to go back out into the fighting in Vietnam. He said, “I envy you all; the first time you crash you’ll learn that it’s not so bad, so you’ll grow a lot from it.”

I remember one session where I flew with him, and he had me hover in place for an hour, smoking his cigar, and I kept wondering if I’d ever get to be as bad-ass as him. True, he was a pilot, and pilots have a deserved reputation for being a bunch of joking flakes, but Whitaker oozed bad-assery in his stride.

He was right about crashing. I survived two crashes in my service in the Army, and one other as a commercial pilot. The first time, yes, it’s jolting; I found myself looking for my seat cushion. But nobody was badly hurt, and I walked out of it, and was flying the following Monday morning. The second time I suffered a broken wrist, but that was the only serious injury, and I found I didn’t think it was too bad. The third time was a little hairier; a seagull slammed through the windshield and we dropped 20′ to the ground, but I found that I did the right thing, keeping my hands on the cyclic and collective and doing the proper maneuver to get us to the ground safely. I killed the bird afterward, to put it out of its misery. Afterward, my flights got a lot more relaxing.

Karl Eaton
Karl Eaton
9 years ago

Been researching the effects religious involvement and spiritual experiences have upon the brain (and vice versa) and came across this statement in one of the many blogs;

“Historically, Christianity has usurped traditions that belonged to other religions and cultures, by a process George Thundiparambil aptly calls Christian scavenging. Ironically, many traditions such as yoga (and its intrinsic aspect of meditation) are incompatible with Christianity. Recent researches in neuroscience make it clear that if one were to be faithful to Christianity, a contemplation on the Christian god results in rumination, which activates the limbic system and the amygdala, producing an undesirable fight-or-flight response, unlike Hindu meditation, which activates the anterior cingulate and causes bliss. This is why it is all the more important not only to recognize the Hindu roots of the practices such as yoga and meditation but also to highlight why they are incompatible with Christianity. ”

– Any insight?

Karl Eaton
Karl Eaton
9 years ago

“It would all fit with the material here. Personally, I’d prefer having an Evangelical Christian as a foxhole buddy in a war, to some hippie-like meditation addict who just wants the whole universe to fill with love and harmony.”

This is odd. Why in your mind is meditation associated with hippieness?

“On yoga/meditation, there is research indicating that practitioners may be adapting their brain to turn off the negative sensations produced by the amygdala as they train themselves to relax, and this may be shrinking the amygdala. ”

References?

Karl Eaton
Karl Eaton
9 years ago

Thanks for the links