Liberals like to say that conservatives are behind the times...but 3,000 years behind? In a way, that's what the Daily Kos blogger who calls himself "waterstreet2013" asserted on Wednesday.
The starting point for "waterstreet2013" was a theory proposed in 1976 by psychologist Julian Jaynes, who argued that until about 1000 BC, people routinely experienced and acted on auditory hallucinations that they took to be commands from their dead ancestors, earthly rulers, or gods. The Kossack contends that today's conservatives are in a sense throwbacks to those pre-conscious humans (emphasis added):
As with the Tea Party listening to Rush Limbaugh and the television evangelists, this Jaynes Model predicts strong social cohesion, submission, and a willingness to work many hours to achieve group goals...
A charismatic leader 7,500 years ago did not have radio or television. But if Jaynes is right, this leader could plug in to the populace's hallucinatory voices and sell a big part of that community on a claim to personal godliness...
Being a god can be very, very cool. Ask a Roman emperor. Or a pharoah. Ask Ted Cruz...
In a nutshell, this is how you get a Tea Party. This is how you influence people to worship a loon such as Sarah Palin. This is how relentless ad hominem and rude name-calling at our American president are disguised as patriotism. Jaynes's auditory hallucinations are echoed by RWNJ [right-wing nut job] "Message Discipline" and a well defined set of hoaxes...
Between the auditory hallucinations inhabiting AM and FM radio and putrid run off from the Citizens United out-house, it is no wonder that a fourth of Americans believe swill...
Fun fact: until 1990, Jaynes taught at Princeton, which means he overlapped there for a couple of years with, yes, Ted Cruz.
