are liberals crazy?

part I: lib-splaining mental illness

Welcome to the series!

1. This is Part 1 of “are liberals crazy?”

2. Are Liberals Crazy? Part II: neuroticism and conscientiousness.

3. Are Liberals Crazy? part III: leftism is a group evolutionary strategy.

4. Are Liberals Crazy? part IV: there’s no such thing as “mental illness.”

5. Are Liberals Crazy? part V: are religious people crazy?

6. Are Liberals Crazy? part VI: how sadistic are liberals?

7. Are Liberals Crazy? part VII: how woke are jews?

8. Are Liberals Crazy? part VIII: do childless catladies have worse sex?

9. Are Liberals Crazy? part IX: conservatives hide their mental weakness.

10. Are Liberals Crazy? part X: why don't conservatives trust therapists?

11. Are Liberals Crazy? part XI: do anxiety and depression help us survive?

12. Are Liberals Crazy? part XII: mental pain helps us survive.

Bonus:

1. Are Conservatives Crazy?

2. conservatives are mentally ill (fat and obese)

Part 1: Are liberals crazy?

In this 13,000 word, 13-part series, I will provide explanations for why leftists appear to be more mentally ill than conservatives. This series is a response to three of the most intelligent HBD right-wingers: Joseph Bronski, Edward Dutton, and Emil Kirkegaard.¹ They defend the thesis, broadly, that:

1. Leftism is a product of mental illness.

   1. Leftist art and architecture is ugly.

   2. Leftists are more neurotic, depressed, anxious, narcissistic, and Machiavellian.

2. Ugliness, low-intelligence, and mental illness correlate with one another.

   1. Leftist men have lower muscle mass and lower testosterone.

   2. Leftist women are ugly (blue hair and tattoos).

   3. Leftists have greater facial asymmetry and left-handedness, which is a sign of mutational load.

3. Following Nietzsche, “spiteful mutants” resent their betters and morally justify transfers of wealth and power from the well-off to the worse-off.

In my rebuttal, I will explain:

• Leftism as a personality type; religious strategy; and group evolutionary strategy;

• Neuroticism, anxiety, and depression as group-selected traits;

• Differences between white and non-white leftists in mental illness;

• Why whites and Jews are more neurotic, anxious, and depressed than non-whites;

• Mental illnesses as mental strategies;

• and mental illness as a side effect of genius.

Today’s article, Part I, will be a qualitative introduction to the subject.

Why does the left seem mentally ill?

Conservatives see BLM hysteria and modern art as “mental illness.” Leftism is a status game which confuses, annoys, and frustrates conservatives. Due to this frustration, conservatives interpret the shifting rules of status games as evidence of mental instability.

Christ washing the feet of the disciples, a humiliating act.

While manic participation in self-effacing rituals may not be rational from an individualistic perspective, it is no more “irrational” than a martyr sacrificing themselves for their religion. When a religion, or ideology, is able to compel its followers into “irrational” acts of martyrdom, the collective fitness of the ideology increases.

A woman who goes on TikTok to scream about losing democracy is extreme, and likely mentally unstable. But it does not seem more extreme than, for example, nailing yourself to a cross, as occurs publicly every year in Filipino religious celebrations. It does not seem more extreme than human sacrifice, or swinging a chicken around your head.

I am not meaning to degrade Christianity or Judaism; rather, I am attempting to point out that successful religious strategies always include acts which, in isolation, appear utterly insane. When Christ washed the feet of the disciplines, this was considered scandalous in itself, let alone the possibility that “feet washing” is a sexual euphemism in Levantine culture. When Jesus commanded the disciplines to “eat my body, and drink my blood,” this was a feature, not a bug. All religions throughout history have force their members to commit unusual acts in order to demonstrate their commitment to the faith.

Circumcision is an extreme act, but Judaism is not alone in prescribing it. Many cultures of the world prescribe ritual scarification, burning, and female genital mutilation. It is hard for me to imagine taking a razor blade to a little girl’s vagina, but this is what 98% of Somalians did as recently as 2020.

Source: equalitynow.org/fgm_in_africa/

Leftism, like all religious practices, has disturbing elements to it, but these elements help to reinforce leftism via the phenomenon of sunk cost. The more ridiculous, unusual, or extreme an act becomes, the more psychological attachment must be invested into defending the associated ideology. Therefore, the ritual becomes a reinforcement mechanism for belief.

At this juncture, it is common for the right to attack my argument on the semantic grounds that “leftism is not a religion.” This is a very weak and tired argument, and addressing it fully is outside the scope of this series. For my purposes here, I will simply say this:

Even if leftism is not a religion in full, because it lacks certain aspects (a belief in God or Gods, a belief in the transcendent, a cozy sense of togetherness), it is a religion in part. It at least imitates religions psychologically.

leftism can be cynically rational.

Clearly, leftism can be deleterious for the individual. When Rachel Corrie allowed herself to be crushed by a bulldozer to halt Israeli settlements, she sacrificed her life for a quasi-religious moral mission. Right-wingers can laugh at her death, or the self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell, but it is hard to imagine that these were not “true believers” in the cause of anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, human rights, and the liberation of oppressed peoples.

But in many cases, expressions of leftism follow cynical self-interest. It is rational to mouths leftist talking points within academia, because this makes professors more likely to grade students more favorably; it is more likely to result in peer-to-peer social and sexual payoffs; it is more likely to result in promotions for professors. All of this applies, to a lesser degree, in the corporate world. Within urban environments, or any environment where people are more likely to have post-secondary education, leftist signaling is generally a net positive for individuals.

Obviously, when I say “leftist signaling,” I do not mean screaming in your car and posting it to TikTok. I mean introducing yourself with She/Her pronouns; putting BLM in bio; calling yourself an ally; and opposing Trump and Republicans. Since leftists reward signaling more than conservatives punish it, leftist signaling is rational.

Leftism is not an illness in the same way that a flu or broken bone is an illness. Leftism is a gambit where dignity and common sense are exchanged in favor of moral and social status.

Leftism is not evidence of genetic deterioration, but a social strategy with benefits and trade-offs.

context matters.

Credit: x.com/plethonist/status/1869089055839068363

Using she/her pronouns in a wilderness survival situation would be pedantic and useless, but in a hyper-urban internet empire, it can benefit the individual. Conservatives like Ted Kaczynski view this as superficial, because wilderness survival strategies are “more real” or fundamental than social signaling strategies.

Ted Kaczynski is an extreme conservative, but more mainstream conservatives claim that “GDP growth doesn’t matter because America doesn’t make anything. The economy is fake.” The talking point that “the economy is fake” has been a rallying cry of paleoconservatives and libertarians since Nixon left the gold standard.

Trump and Pat Buchanan represent the paleoconservative position on trade, that an industrial economy like Russia or China is superior to a FIRE economy, based on finance, insurance, real estate, and entertainment. As a result, they see a society based on moral signaling as inferior to an economy based on physical, biological, industrial, or military power.

But humans aren’t the only ones to signal status. Animals also engage in sexual signaling without direct survival benefits.

leftism as costly signaling.

This tail has no utilitarian benefit outside of signaling fitness.

Conservatives criticize leftist language games, saying that “only smart people could deceive themselves with such mental gymnastics!” If that were true, then leftism is a form of intelligence-signaling. Like the peacock’s tail, it costs time and energy, but it ultimately is functional as a social signal.

Rob Henderson calls leftism a “luxury belief” because it is a costly signal. But the term “luxury” implies that only very wealthy societies engage in costly signaling, which isn’t true. Primitive tribes rip the skin off children’s penises and vaginas with rusty blades. They burn themselves, cut themselves, stab themselves with tattoo needles, stick bones in their noses, and rings around their neck.

If Henderson’s theory was correct, we should expect billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg to tattoo a swastika into their foreheads. That would be a true costly signal! It would prove that those billionaires are above the rules, and cannot be held to normal standards. But nothing of the sort occurs. Instead, Elon Musk is on Twitter threatening to go to war against racism. Is this costly signaling? Or is Elon engaged in rational, pro-social signaling to his fellow billionaires?

In relative terms, within a society, costly signaling can be considered a luxury. But this doesn’t mean that increasing the total wealth of a society will result in more costly signaling, or that forcing everyone to be dirt poor will remove costly signaling.

Poor people are capable of engaging in costly signaling. Contra Henderson, wealth does not increase costly signaling.

Conservatives engage in their own costly signaling, with superstitions and conspiracy theories. Setting aside extreme examples of Christians electrocuting their gay children, or Catholics inducing “death by exorcism,” there are also dangers that come with being a “normal conservative:

• Normal conservatives are more likely to claim that colleges are a waste of time, even though data proves that college degrees pay for themselves with increases in lifetime cumulative income.

• Normal conservatives are more likely to valorize blue collar work, which has a higher rate of mortality.

• Normal conservatives are more likely to become police, soldiers, or firefighters, which have higher rates of mortality.

• Normal conservatives are increasingly likely to avoid vaccines, which results in higher morality.

hating the game.

Conservatives have difficulty with paradoxical or contradictory symbols. For example, when Jordan Peterson references the archetype of a dragon, Richard Dawkins gets stuck on the semantic point, saying, “but dragons don’t exist.” Dawkins is demanding a straight-forward interpretation, and Peterson is unable to convey the utility of myth. Similarly, conservatives obsess over the material reality of sex differences without seeing the individual nuances and benefits of non-conformity. They label anything they don’t understand as “mental illness.”

Conservatives condemn moral signaling as unfair, unproductive, untruthful, narcissistic, or evil. This prejudice may sometimes result from low social or emotional aptitude.

People who are bad at math hate being forced to do math. People who are weak and uncoordinated hate being forced to compete with jocks. People resent being forced to compete in games where they have a disadvantage. Conservatives are no different in this respect. For conservatives, conformism to self-effacing language games is humiliating and annoying.

Leftism is not a flaw in need of a cure. Religious ambiguity is the disease, and fanatical leftism is an attempted cure. Attacking leftism for its excesses, while tolerating religious ambiguity, is a recipe for agnostic nihilism, and could result in dangerous alternatives, like fascism, Naziism, or eugenics.

Some mentally ill, lost, or confused people are attracted to leftism because it is the only legitimate attempt to confront an incoherent post-Christian meta-narrative. Leftism is attempting to salvage the moral core of Christianity and reconstruct a racial and sexual religion around that core.

Conservative personalities have advantages in practical settings. However, practical reality, or economic reality, is downstream of religion. Society cannot exist without religion. That was true 12,000 years ago, and it remains true today. Conservatives can engineer or tinker within an existing religious structure, but they are unable to deal with the crisis of the 21st century at the most fundamental level. You can’t STEM your way out of mythological collapse.

conclusion.

In Part II, we will discuss the traits of neuroticism and conscientiousness, and deconstruct definitions of mental illness.

1. I apologize if I spell his named incorrectly as “Kierkegaard” somewhere, it’s a habit from philosophy.