Politics and r/K Selection – A Graph

People who dislike linking reproductive strategies and politics will always run into one problem. The problem is that this concept is so explanatory. One small concept which suddenly causes everything in governance to make sense.

We’ve said for a while that the K-strategy arises spontaneously in response to signals of resource shortage, such as economic downturn, threat to safety, or war. We have also said that K-wolves in a K-society will compete and produce success, and this corrupts, by creating an r-environment with lots of resources. This generates r-strategists, who then multiply, collapse the society, produce a K-environment with K-signals like war and threat, and that produces K-strategists, who start the whole cycle over.

This is kind of like seeing the leaders, the environment, and their effects, all in one graph. (The graph minus the comments is from the article in the WaPo here.”

A few things strike me.

War seems to be associated with large increases in Conservatism, but only when it presents a plausible threat to the individual citizen, and stimulates the amygdala. 9/11 produced a spike, Iraq did not. One war relieved a stressed amygdala right after economic uncertainty, direct threat, and a violent attack on our soil. One war discomfited a comfortable amygdala, as the economy hummed along nicely and everyone felt safe. Conservative foreign interventionists who favor wars without direct, tangible threats to the populace likely damage the Conservative brand immensely, and hasten the entrance of Socialism domestically, even if they mean well strategically. In pursuing war to protect the nation, they may damage it even more than any potential attack could.

Both Bush’s had economic problems at the ends of their terms which began a clear trend shift prior to their successor assuming office. These shifts are not related to elections or the ideology present in DC, as the linked article alleges, but rather due to economic/resource factors, combined with peace, comfort, and no combativeness from Republicans.

Reagan was actually bad for Conservatism, despite being a brilliant orator and first rate leader/intellect. Success, free resources (such as massive infusions of money into the economy from national debt, especially), and copacetic safety causes Conservatism to evaporate, even with an excellent communicator, if there are no signals of threat or combativeness to stimulate the populace’s amygdalae. That is a natural, biological adaptation to what the organism reads as a more r-environment.

After about twelve years of the national debt being fed into the economy, Conservatism seemed to be precipitated ever more easily, possibly due to the adverse effect that service payments have on resource availability. The bigger the debt grows, the bigger the share of the produced resources that must evaporate to service it. After the initial rush of free money, that interest owed, artificially restricts resources, even when times are good. This shifts things towards K. Fixes like quantitative easing are apparently cosmetic, and have no effect on the underlying mechanism, which is the size of the tangible reward you are allowed to enjoy, for X amount of effort. How much money is in your pocket is meaningless, if it doesn’t buy enough dopamine/pleasure.

Clinton’s first term was not a hard threat of war or Carter-esque shortage, especially by the end (Bush’s mild recession was actually ending as he took office), yet Clinton precipitated a war-like level of Conservative shift. This is likely partly due to Reagan’s and Bush’s debt withdrawals, and service payments restricting resources. Republican combativeness under Gingrich and Delay probably helped.

Clinton’s dot-com bubble should have produced a real collapse in Conservatism since it was, in essence, copious free resource availability during time of peace, but it didn’t. It just stalled the rise. Again, a steady back-wind, pushing the nation towards K was growing, and people seeing huge 401K’s didn’t have nearly as large an effect. That is our debt.

It seems as if that Conservative force is growing exponentially today. Obama is seemingly precipitating a WWII-sized increase in Conservatism, despite there being no war, efforts to provide free resource availability from “the rich,” and copious pleasure from video games, cellphones, plentiful food, 3D movies, and the like.

There are three possible causes for this. We are waging a WWII scale war today that we don’t know about. A fat and happy populace has suddenly begun to embrace the K-strategy for no real reason at all, at an ever increasing rate. Or, there is much more economic pain out there and we are being deceived about its severity, though they can’t hide its psychological effects in graphs like these. It kind of puts an ominous face to the reason for all the AR-15 and ammo purchases, as well as the open carry movement at protests.

Today, the Healthcare debacle is going to stimulate threat, fear, further resource restriction, and uncertainty. That will fuel an increase in the rate at which that line rises, as events play out. That issue is yielding a real mortal salience stimuli conjuring the threat of death, such as war or starvation would, and we know how Jost said that precipitates Conservative shifts. Republicans should play that threat up.

I would not have my money in the stock market for long, and I would operate on the assumption that there will be capital controls at some point. Whatever will happen, given how that line is rising despite no tangible physical threat, whatever happens is going to be epic, and the populace will probably not take it nicely.

Which raises the question, what will happen to that graph if the global economy suddenly comes to a catastrophe that can’t be contained? What if every nation has a graph like that, and we begin to see K-strategists begin to war, even merely amongst countrymen, such as in the Ukraine? A sudden spike in crime should the EBT/gimmedat system go down could also have the same effect. All are amygdala stimulants, just like working hard and not having comfort, not having reasonable access to choice and control in healthcare, feeling pushed around by the government, and not having easy resources. All will turn the dial towards Conservatism.

I find the graph kind of worrying, despite the fact that it indicates that Conservatism is rising. I’m not sure a heavily K-populace, led by r-strategist elites in both parties who are desperate to hold on to control for themselves, is a formula for peaceful domestic tranquility. Such a situation may not be prone to peacefully transition back to K. The surges in dopamine lately may even be exhibiting a plateau effect after all these decades of bubbles, like an addict who needs even more dope to stay happy, but can’t get it, and begins to get crazy.

It really feels like something horrible is lurking behind those curves. Unless this work gains ground, leaders accept it as sound, and they astutely adjust their own leadership to respect the reproductive strategy of the populace they want to lead, this could get ugly, fast. Continue to screw with healthcare, try to disarm people under threats from crime, demand higher taxes, and seize more control of people’s freedoms, all as that graph trends up, and anything could happen. States trying to secede, civil war, violent protests, even assassinations. K’s fight, it is in their blood once they emerge.

If I were Allen West or Ted Cruz, I would keep my eyes open, because from that graph, it is looking like the perfect Conservative storm may be brewing, just as we will need the perfect Conservative leader to quiet the anger of the K’s, and restore our greatness and success. Timing is everything.