The Forces Exerted By r and K-Selection Effects Mold the Ideological Inclinations of Societies – How Resource Availability Determines Destiny

Here is another graphic supporting the contention that Conservatism is actually a K-selected reproductive strategy, designed to arise under conditions of resource scarcity, and Liberalism is actually an r-selected reproductive strategy, designed to arise under conditions of free resource availability.

A reader pointed to the Economic Misery Index. There is a huge infographic at this link, which will be appended below this post. It points out the relationship between the Economic Misery Index, and violent revolutions such as the Arab Spring. If you increase economic misery (ie. restrict resources), you will get violence, aggression, and demands for freedom and free competition, among other traits. Those are K-selected behavioral traits that confer advantage under conditions of resource shortage, and their emergence under such conditions is no coincidence. Those Conservative psychological traits are designed to emerge when resources are scarce – when a wolf-like competitive K-selected strategy is the best way to survive.

What the Misery Index measures is resource restriction. Since we maintain that the K-strategy and Conservatism are one and the same, we predict the Misery Index should relate to the population’s expression of the K-selected reproductive strategy of Conservatism.

Above we laid a line graph showing the Conservative Policy Mood in the US (from this article at the WaPo’s website), over a bar graph of the Economic Misery Index in the US. On the right is the scale for the Misery Index, and on the left is the scale for the Policy Mood.

There are a few interesting points. First WWII caused a skyrocketing of Conservatism, and this artificial elevation of K-strategy generated a very low Misery Index once the war was over. K-strategists are hard workers, bent on winning. Not many vets came home from the kill or be killed battlefield of that war, looking to slack, craving a government to handle their every need, and wanting a destruction of the traditional family unit. Not coincidentally, they took action and produced copious resources. Notice how the low Misery Index readings rapidly eroded Conservative psychological traits in the populace, and how that raised the Misery Index, as the population adapted to the resource abundance by adopting a more r-psychology, designed to exploit free resources, rather than work hard to produce them.

Early on in the graph, a sudden jump in misery would either stall a decline of Conservatism, or produce a jump in the rate of Conservatism, usually within the space of a year (interestingly, crime (violent competition for resources by those less able to compete otherwise) has also been noted to jump within about one year of sudden rises in the Misery Index).

Vietnam obviously produces a jump in Conservatism, despite relatively low Misery Index readings, as does 9/11, validating war as a K-stimulus. Additionally, the end of the war in Vietnam, the abatement of threat from 9/11, and the end of WWII all served as r-stimuli, indicating that the removal of threat/war stimuli serves to produce increases in r.

Carter sends Misery and Conservatism stratospheric together (quite an accomplishment), only to have Reagan open the debt spigot, and flood free resources into the environment, crushing both Misery and Conservatism. This release of free resources through debt rapidly shifts the population towards the r-selected reproductive strategy of Liberalism, even despite Reagan’s brilliant oratory, political theater, and complete victory in the Cold War. The best leader, with the best arguments, in the most powerful position possible, succeeds in every regard, and yet he is no match for the corrupting effects of free resource availability.

The first Bush term is a bit confusing. The Misery Index rises slightly, and maintains a level which should provoke a K shift, yet the K-shift is somewhat slow in coming. One possible explanation is that just as war can propel the Conservative Policy Mood sky high with a very low resource restriction, a continued rush of borrowed cash flooding the ecosystem could temporarily drive Conservatism lower than it would otherwise go, despite a mildly elevated level of misery.

A second explanation is that the effects of the Misery Index are likely based upon relative levels of Misery. In the graph above, Misery had just dropped significantly under Reagan. If the Misery had been very low during Carter, the populace would have acclimated to that low level of Misery. Once acclimated to low Misery, any sudden rise would tend to provoke a K-shift, even if the rise were less than you saw at the end of Reagan’s term. However, having acclimated to a misery index of the magnitude that Jimmy Carter produced, that same level of Misery would be perceived as quite nice by comparison, and thus release more dopamine, elicit less anger, and be and thus be far less likely to trigger a K-shift.

One must remember, that the Misery Index is, loosely, an inverted measure of societal dopamine activity – dopamine activity similar to the effect of illegal drugs like cocaine. When Misery plummets, societal dopamine release will rise, however when Misery rises, dopamine activity will drop. Just as an addict eventually requires substantial quantities of drugs just to feel normal, it is possible that coming off of Carter’s misery level, the nation as a whole suddenly felt euphoric, even without pushing the Misery index to a significantly low level, and this served to foster an extended r-shift. Deny a family food, and then feed them, and they may change psychology towards r. However, take a well fed and very technology-supplied family, acclimate them to that level of comfort and entertainment, and a mere cable outage might provoke a K-shift, even as they ate heartily. Indeed, many K-shifts occur either concurrently with, or immediately after, sudden spiking of the Misery Index, the main exceptions being conflict stimuli such as Vietnam and 9/11.

If the effects of Misery are indeed relative, I suspect today’s youth, who are from birth acclimated to every comfort, technological accessory, and delicious taste in their freely availble food, are like dopamine addicts whose baseline pleasure requirements are quite high. They need those dopamine highs, just to feel normal. If economic conditions change, and suddenly everyone doesn’t have unlimited data plans, free Apps, social media, unlimited bandwidth, delicious food, free and easy college loans, the ability to acquire healthcare for themselves and their loved ones, and jobs given to anyone (even Womyns Studies majors), they may quickly, from a psychological standpoint, begin to make our most hardened WWII vets from the Pacific look like gay pansies. It wouldn’t surprise me if there was blood.

Also, during that post-Reagan period, a decades-long, constant threat stimulus was eliminated. One moment we were a superpower locked in a never ending struggle with the evil empire of the Soviet Union. The next moment, Communism collapsed, our enemies were gone, and the news was filled with experts pondering how we would now manage as the lone Superpower in the world. That was an enormous threat stimulus suddenly removed. Who were we competing against? A subtle question that I think is enormously important to our human natures and our motivation to compete and produce.

Finally, I think we underestimate how perceptions of political conflict stimulate a K-shift. Had Bush I approached politics more like Tom Delay or Ted Cruz, and constantly demonstrated how leftist policies were destroying the economy, and portrayed Leftism as an enemy to be fought, I think that a K-shift would have begun much sooner. However, being essentially a Northeastern Liberal, Bush I operated as if there was no real fight with the left. Even worse, those Conservatives who were still standing saw their own President ban guns, raise taxes, and fight pointless wars to rescue some Kuwaiti oil princes, or some ungrateful Somalians who would later kill our own military members. At every turn, from lack of loyalty to his own, to support for governmental control and oppression, Bush I fought to weaken Conservatism through wimpy acquiescence to, or embrace of, the left. Judging from the graph, he won, aided by free resources and diminished threat.

There is a lesson to the Political Conservatives in that. Better to take a wimp out by letting him lose in the General Election, than let him infest your movement for four years, erode any K-shift, and drive that curve downward. We probably dodged a real bullet with Romney.

Two years into Clinton’s term, the Misery Index drops suddenly, and the graphs suddenly diverge, with the Misery Index apparently suppressed on a fairly constant basis, even as Conservatism rises aggressively. I suspect that drop is due to the changes in the CPS, which were enacted in 1994, redefining how it measured unemployment, and thus altering what the Misery Index measured. (Overnight, a reading of 1.1 million unemployed was cut by 600,000 (over half), simply due to the change in methodology instituted in 1994).

Still, if you follow the curves after that drop, they do roughly rise and fall together, as would be expected since the index was still a rough measure of relative Misery from year to year. I suspect the rise after September 11th was more due to the attacks than economic misery, but misery probably played a part as well given that the dot-com bubble had just burst.

Of most interest is the growing divergence between the graphs. After the changes in 1994, it seems that Conservatism is now rising faster than the Misery Index is. What changed? There is a possible answer for this at this link. If we are failing to count the unemployed sufficiently, and the number of uncounted unemployed increases over time due to the changes in unemployment measuring implemented in 1994, that might explain some of the increasing disparity between the two curves, starting around 1994. That might also imply that the Conservative Policy Mood could be used, in some fashion, to model general economic conditions, if the government’s numbers prove to be unreliable.

This figure linking ideology to both the Misery Index and warfare, is why this entire blog exists, and why a whole book was written, amassing reams of support for this seemingly strange, obtuse subject. Everything you see utilized tactically in politics today has little to no effect on our political outcomes, by comparison to these r and K-forces. While everyone runs around endlessly debating the same old issues in the same old ways, while Liberals try to infiltrate academia and the media to execute some grandiose plan, while Conservatives debate whether Mitt Romney could have won if something was done differently, they are all ignorant of the real picture. There is a silent, unstoppable force, deep within our species’ psyche, effortlessly moving mountains of our history while we sleep, and it doesn’t really care about any of the things we normally focus on.

It is this force which controls our political destiny – more than any issue, more than any party, more than any political event, and more than any leader or individual – indeed, more than all of that combined. This force is why Ronald Reagan’s debt spending created an onslaught against our gun rights at the end of George H. W. Bush’s only term in office, and why we got an assault weapons ban passed in 1994 that could never pass today. It is actually why Charleton Heston lofted a musket above his head and bellowed, “From my cold, dead, hands!” as well as why that was a brilliant presentation of a conflict stimulus designed to provoke K-mindsets. It is even why that theater signaled the beginning of the end of attacks on our gun rights. It is why we elected a reprobate of uncommon immorality to the highest office in the land in 1992, and it is even why we will almost certainly wage large scale wars in the near future, as that Conservative Policy Mood graph skyrockets under assaults on our healthcare, increasing crime, and an impending economic collapse of unimaginable proportions.

Even more amazing, by the nature of our world, and our own evolutionary history, this force was perfectly designed to be taken by Conservatives, and used as a weapon to enormous effect. Any Conservative leader can introduce aggressive, confrontational, threat stimuli into an environment by being belligerent. However no Liberal, in the face of such stimuli, can remove that stimulus, or reintroduce tranquility, if we don’t want them to. At the end of the day, we call the shots, if only we will choose to.

The real engine which powers this hidden force is actually our world’s reality, so the force is almost useless to Leftists. Until reality can be replaced with fantasy in the real world, Leftists can do no more to stop our wielding of this weapon than they can do to stop gravity. They are helpless before us, and ply their political strategies only with our willing acquiescence to their evil and our passive acceptance of their fantasy.

The day major Conservative strategists grasp the force at work in the graph above, from the macro-level effects down to the effect on dopamine receptor gene transcription within neurons, is the day our battle ends, and our species begins a stratospheric ascent to levels of technological and societal advancement that we can only dream of.

That is why all of this research exists. The moment this becomes widely accepted as truth, is the moment our political battles will become infinitely easier to wage and win.

Misery Index

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Heywood Jablome
10 years ago

The Misery Index might have stopped being an accurate statistic in 2009, once the BLS started monkeying with the U-3 unemployment rate under Emperor Barack the Magnificent. Who’s to say they haven’t fudged the U-6 numbers, too? Perhaps the Employment-Population Ratio can be merged with inflation somehow to create a Crapulence Index worth analyzing.

What data goes into that “policy mood” statistic? It sounds a bit squishy and not very quantifiable. It has no units, after all.

Bob Wallace
10 years ago

Nearly every time I read your site the movie “Idiocracy” comes to read. And the story, “The Marching Morons,” too.

Bob Wallace
Reply to  Anonymous Conservative
10 years ago

“The artist is the antennae of the human race.” – Ezra Pound.

Stilicho
Stilicho
10 years ago

“Any Conservative leader can introduce aggressive, confrontational, threat stimuli into an environment by being belligerent. However no Liberal, in the face of such stimuli, can remove that stimulus, or reintroduce tranquility, if we don’t want them to. At the end of the day, we call the shots, if only we will choose to.”

A minor quibble: Liberal politicians do tap into the power of this phenomenon somewhat with their constant refrain of fear “the conservatives are coming to put an end to your gravy train of free resources”. This causes the rabbits to rally around their Liberal tribe if only for long enough to vote for the leader of their warren. Now, I don’t think this is a move towards k-selected traits by the rabbits. Rather it is more of an r-selected defense mechanism to huddle together in the warm, rabbity stench of the warren while they think that the big bad wolf is prowling outside.

Stilicho
Stilicho
10 years ago

“Unfortunately, todays Repubs are rabbits too, who run for the warren at the first sign of conflict, rather than angrily demeaning their Democratic partners on live TV. So we’ll just have to wait for the collapse.”

All too true. Of course, they are doing their part to hasten the collapse, so they’ve got that going for them. Democrat and Republican politicians are like competing carnival barkers at the same circus who get together at the end of the day to compare their respective profits and to laugh at all the rubes they fooled.

will
will
10 years ago

Do you consider the high-birth rate of conservatives and the highly religious as k-selection?

After all K-selection is high quality offspring at the expense of quality offspring in contrast to r-selection.

will
will
Reply to  will
10 years ago

One last question. It seems the K-selected Robertsons marry their women off at 15-16 years of age while in america in general the age of marriage continues to climb:

http://perezhilton.com/2013-12-30-duck-dynasty-phil-robertson-marry-15-year-old-girls/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/31/duck-dynasty-star-phil-robertson_n_4522254.html

will
will
Reply to  will
10 years ago

And ancient societies married off the females as soon as they hit puberty at 12-13 years of age. Would you consider that r-selection or K-selection?

will
will
Reply to  Anonymous Conservative
10 years ago

Nope. My only quibble was this point. So your point is that even if the age of marriage and the coming of age is just at puberty for both boys and girls as it is in ancient and tribal cultures it will still be k-selection provided the norms and chastity as well as high-investment in offspring.

I agree with all your other points but I wondered if early age of sexual intercourse in a monogamous marriage nullified the fact that it was k-selection.

Joe Huffman
10 years ago

If resource depletion causes a strong shift to K-selected behavioral traits then why doesn’t this always happen in other countries? It appears to me that they frequently turn communist.

K-Wolf
K-Wolf
Reply to  Anonymous Conservative
10 years ago

Machowicz, in his book “Unleashing the Warrior Within,” described the process of attack. There are three things: (1) Target, (2) Weapons, and (3) Movement.

Your Target determines your weapons. Your Weapons determine your Movement.

What is the Target? The r amygdala, their social context feeling a part of the rabbit crowd. Attack their social connection to the rabbit crowd to blast their amygdala to pieces.

What are our weapons? We use their own rhetoric they use against K types. Because if they are individually attacked and picked off one by one by being seen as a racist or a bigot, or any other r destroying connection, they will sense being removed from the rabbit crowd and be psychologically destroyed.

Weapons determine movement. So the weapon is rhetoric. The movements? Figuring out which image to use in the rhetoric to make the rabbit feel be has been ejected from the rabbit social world. This can be KKK white sheets and burning crosses, racist attacking blacks, sexists attacking women, Nazis, etc. Associate the rabbit to any of these images, assault their amygdala, and do not let up on the assault until we see terror in their eyes from feeling they just got removed from the rabbit crowd and they are alone (to be eaten by wolves). It may take a person with a dash of the sociopath to make this type of social assault, but I think the guys in the manosphere are perfectly capable of doing this effectively if well-trained for the assault. Many are already trolling feminist sites as Agent Provocateurs.

By the way, thanks for your research and the book.

K-Wolf

K-Wolf
K-Wolf
Reply to  Anonymous Conservative
10 years ago

AC,

Good topic for strategists to explore. So, leftists, being rabbits, look for protection from other wolves. So, not only can we terrorize rabbits with the fear of being removed from rabbit society, but we can terrorize rabbits with turning the other wolf groups against them.

So, the rabbit strategy against wolves is to turn one wolf group against another to duke it out while the rabbit plays in the fields of grass. Going back several years, during the Abolitionist Movement, those rabbits sought to incite a slave rebellion by getting blacks (wolves) to kill white southerners (wolves). They have used this same strategy since then and AC has exposed it for what it is: turn a minority that the rabbits already see as inferior against a strong white opponent and let them duke it out while the rabbits play in fields of grass. So, Ivy League rabbit masters of strategy have been doing this for a few hundred years and getting away with it. Busing in the 1960’s was putting blacks and whites together, in the hope that blacks would kill whites or vice versa. Integration was the same thing. Affirmative action is the same thing: stir up hatred among two groups of people, let then duke it out, while the Ivy League rabbits play in fields of money and grass. Illegal immigration is another such strategy. Ivy Leaguers hate black people and would prefer not to hire them as servants, preferring Latin Americans to do their house work. Thus, they will swamp the country with Latin Americans, destroying any hope of black people getting work. And, they let blacks and Latin Americans duke it out in gang warfare in California, not giving a damn, just as long as the Ivy League rabbits can play in fields of grass and money.

So, AC has exposed the rabbit Ivy League strategy, as Mencius Moldbug has exposed the long history in factual lists. Moldbug did the factual research, and AC has put forth the convincing theory.

Now, it is time for strategists to take advantage of the research and take power away from the rabbits, and even punish them for the long years of devastation and death they have caused because they were cowards in the first place. Let’s unleash the wolves on the rabbits.

So, gun control is an instrument of hating black people. Rabbits wreck the black family, causing tons of violence, and then take their guns away! Why? Because they hate black people and want to keep the black man down! Gun control is racism and hatred!

Illegal immigration is an instrument to keep the black man down! Why? Evil rich white liberal Nazis hate black people and want to replace them with Mexicans! They do not want black people cleaning their houses because they hate them! Illegal immigration is racism and hatred of black people! Latin Americans will take the jobs from the black man and the black man will starve or end up in prison and get gang raped by white supremacists! Supporters of illegal immigration are racists and hate black people!

Gay marriage is racist! Everybody knows most black young people are in prison. How do you control blacks in prison? White racists will ass-rape them! Gay marriage will make this all easier to control the black man because nobody will care after sodomy and gay marriage are legal. Gay rights is so white racists can gang rape black people and keep them under control of those liberal white Nazi racists!

95% of blacks vote for democrats? Why you say? It is because of white racist liberal terrorism! If you were black, you would be scared to death of voting Republican because those racist whites will gang rape your daughters in retaliation! A black man who votes for Republicans is a dead man and is scared to death of his sons in prison getting gang raped in retaliation if he does not vote Democrat! Liberals are terrorists! Liberals will kill blacks who vote republican! It is Stockholm Syndrome!

So, let the wolves feast on the rabbits…

K-Wolf

Stilicho
Stilicho
Reply to  Anonymous Conservative
10 years ago

Communism is often an example of dominant groups (the party leaders, etc.) employing rabbits for their own purposes. Stalin wasn’t a typical rabbit, although he played one for the masses’ consumption. Democracy often works the same way. The rabbits may gain power, but require alpha-rabbit leadership to hold it. I would not call these coney commanders “k-selected” because they are not in any way I understand it from your writings. However, they are leaders and likely fall into a category you would describe as an extreme narcissist. Current examples include leftist politicians like Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer and leftist financiers like George Soros. Their underlying psychology may be pure rabbit, but they are also effective leaders and abusers of their fellow rabbits. Other rabbits see that crazy, narcissistic gleam in their eyes and think “I’ve got to get me some of that!” It’s as if the rabbits understand on some level that they are lacking k-selected traits that are essential to survival, so they substitute their own ersatz version. Thus, we have the phenomenon of the crazy leftist dictator/autocrat who is supported and often adored by the leftist masses he abuses.

K-Wolf
K-Wolf
10 years ago

I have been thinking about the r/K theory and how to formulate effective attacks on the enemy’s amygdala that will drive them nuts. I think it comes down to rhetoric and attacking them on issues that they save for attacking K-types. If we can call them racists, sexists and bigots and blast the hell out of their psyches, I think this may work. The problem is making a convincing assault, and not stopping the assault until the victims are psychologically destroyed. The following are some examples I think may bear fruit.
—–
K: Democrats are racists.
R: ha ha, a retard!
K: Democrats are racists and they hate black people.
R: uhhh…
K: The Democrats are run by the KKK.
R: huh. What the heck…
K: Robert Byrd was a Klansman, and he ran the Democratic party for decades until 2010. Therefore the leader of the Democrats was a racist who hated black people.
R: …
K: The leader of the Democratic Party wore white sheets, burned crosses, and terrorized black people. Democrats hate black people. Racists are evil people, and I will not tolerate any racists near me! Are you a racist? I hate racists, I despise these nasty excuses for a human being!
K: The Democrats are also sexists who hate women.
K:Bill Clinton raped a woman and got away with it.
K: So the Democrats are racist, sexist raping pigs.

Constant assault. No let up. Drive the assault until the target is destroyed.

trackback
10 years ago

[…] ConservativeJanuary 16, 2014The Forces Exerted By r and K-Selection Effects Mold the Ideological Inclinations of Societies – H…[It’s a pleasant thought but I’m not convinced of this conclusion even though I’m mostly […]

AM
AM
10 years ago

I would like to point out that of all the islands in the Caribbean, only Cuba has good farmland. Of all the nations in the world, Russia’s mineral wealth is mind boggling, and while China may be the least resource rich of Communist empire, its historic role in trade is a key to prosperity.

The common theme I see in the “misery index” isn’t a scarcity of resource, but a market scarcity of resources. Something that stops the natural flow of trade and market liquidity. And I think that the common man “K-strategist” gets fed up with mismanagement and becomes willing to fight for someone who has a vision of prosperity.

Communists are all about selling a dream. They can only deliver equal misery but they can sure sell a beautiful dream. I think it is ironic that the biggest source of market lockup is government uncertainty (source David Smick, “The World is Curved.”) and yet that breeds the conditions for the ultimate in uncertainty, revolution.

Stilicho
Stilicho
10 years ago

This is interesting when reading it from an r/k perspective: http://www.velociworld.com/Velociblog/Oldvelocity/004086.html

…and thanks to you, r/k theory is always in the back of my mind when examining anything to do with society these days.

WesternMan
2 years ago

The two links to the Misery Index infographic no longer work (the site died), but you can replace them with this link: https://web.archive.org/web/20140106040355/http://www.financedegreecenter.com/misery-index

or this link directly
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