Fight Like An Animal

In our last discussion, Joshua described cross-species uniformities in responses to traumatic experiences, and how he works to help people access their evolved capacities for recovery. In this episode, we discuss why  our society sees such escalating levels of psychological distress and the utter discontinuity between innate human needs and the structure of the modern world. We discuss our species...

Unlock the entire episode at https://www.patreon.com/biologicalsingularity  The year is 2050, and I have been making this podcast for 30 years. In this episode, I continue with the themes first developed in the Biology of the Right-Left Divide, using the revolutions of the mid-2030s to illustrate how social conditions amplify innate differences. We focus on two ways the social-technological trajec...

We use religious cults as an example of extreme group psychology to make generalizations about the group dynamics that determine sociopolitical possibility. We investigate the relationship between ingroup cohesion and outgroup animosity, the oxytocin-laden war rituals of chimpanzees, the unique human developmental biology associated with social cognition, and the general neurobiology of the repeti...

Joshua Sylvae practices and teaches Somatic Experiencing, an approach to trauma recovery based on a cross-species understanding of behavior and its evolutionary foundations. Proceeding from the observation that many species routinely encounter mortal peril without long-term traumatization, SE facilitates the innate recovery processes that our culture of restraint impedes, placing an emphasis on th...

We continue to describe extreme aspects of group psychology, delving into phenomena like death from social exclusion. We examine cross-species similarities in the drive for sociality for its own sake,  discuss how certain varieties of evolutionary theory cannot account for the behaviors we observe, and how they also contribute to a culture war regarding evolutionary explanations. We look at result...

How scientific is science? In this episode, we further the argument that "science communication" about the ecological crisis is based on an unscientific understanding of what motivates people. Having described some of the innate components of an ecological worldview in the last episode, in this one we look at the raw empirical reality of public perceptions of climate change, the incessan...

Here, we try out a somewhat dreamlike new format. We will describe a problem in terms of the present day, but we will also describe the resolution of that problem from the perspective of this same podcast 30 years in the future. For the present day portion, Arnold tells his friend Evan about the failure of science communication as a strategy for saving the world, and the rich psychometric landscap...

We begin a series on evolved psychological mechanisms for group participation, evaluating the wild variation in behavior and belief that groups exhibit. We'll start with dancing epidemics, divine madness, possession states, culture bound syndromes, and a host of other particularly idiosyncratic forms of social contagion. We'll discuss the (unnecessary) tension between 'cultural&apos...

In these difficult times, it is important to remember that no matter what we do, it should be entirely based on what the Very Powerful Magi wrote on the Ancient Scroll that they entrusted to the Nine Elders. 

Movements for climate and ecological survival have largely eschewed talk of taking CO2 out of the sky. For good reason. We don't know if it will work and it shifts the focus away from ceasing the damage. However, if we have already crossed climate tipping points, it's probably a good idea to begin looking at our options: the uncertain, the dubious, and the overtly evil. Here, we examine...

Start by reading climate plans, then write your own. Get a zoning map, change it in Photoshop, and release it to the media. Blockade something. Establish parallel institutions. In this episode, we will use an oil train blockade in Portland, OR to illustrate some principles of fighting for ecological survival which can be applied in diverse contexts. 

Elephants are changing. The various traumas of extermination—witnessing the deaths of their companions, developing in atypical social structures—are making elephants more aggressive. In this episode, we discuss the relationship between resilience and adverse experience, the developmental plasticity of thresholds for aggression, and the notion of an envelope of stress tolerance. Faced with a panopl...

"Climate denial" has the specific connotation of outright denial such a thing exists, but what about all the other forms of denial? The human mind has a general tendency not to come to terms with overwhelming input. The institutional and grassroots political responses to climate change, in most cases, are also forms of climate denial. Here, we examine the psychology of confronting unbear...

Academic constructs, valid or otherwise, tend to diffuse into our culture at large. How has this impacted social and political conflict? Quite a lot, and mostly badly. In this episode, we look at climate activism, movements against police violence, and the book White Fragility to illustrate the huge range of contentious issues which are still burdened by the legacy of 20th century social sciences...

In this episode, we trace the journey of 20th century social sciences through innumerable versions of the nature vs. nurture debate, talk about how the denial of human nature led scientists to torture baby monkeys, and do a blow-by-blow analysis of Noam Chomsky and Michel Foucault's famous 1971 dialogue on human nature, describing how the reasoning Foucault employs is the precursor to many of...

Because anthropology describes the observed range of human variation, as well as constants in human life, it is inextricably linked to the project of describing what is possible for a revolution to achieve. This episode examines cross-cultural universals, technological thresholds, and hierarchies. We assess the notion that small, egalitarian societies are such because they consciously subdue the i...

What kind of societies are ultimately possible (i.e. within the range of variation our biology allows)? Why are social movements so prone to division and self-annihilation? These questions may seem unrelated, but both imply a journey into the social sciences of the last century and the ideological conflicts that defined them. This series will examine how different political outlooks are the result...

A CIA counterintelligence chief once described his world as a wilderness of mirrors. In this episode, we ask how ecological and egalitarian movements can navigate this wilderness. The internet is opening information warfare possibilities to non-state actors, Cambridge Analytica is influencing elections, and Western media is striving for ever-greater hyperbole about the influence of Russia. Is it t...

We've looked at some of the psychological traits that correlate with ideology, but what about those that don't? Considering the tendency for systems of power to behave the same regardless of their overt ideology, what should we know about the psychology of power? We look at scales of empathy (or lack thereof), manipulativeness, sense of connection to the world, and more.  

Having described innate psychological tendencies associated with other political perspectives, in this interview we examine what makes an environmentalist. Ken Ward describes his path through professional environmentalism and direct action, the values he encountered among liberals and leftists, and how they are in conflict with ecological survival. We discuss the different forms of intelligence fo...

Having described the right-left spectrum in psychological terms, we will now examine the psychology of the liberal, an entity sometimes described as moderately left who has no real counterpart on the right. We will ask why the violence-nonviolence binary has proven so consistently psychologically seductive but also so destructive to social movements. We will talk about the book Why Civil Resistanc...

Here we conclude our discussion of the biology of the right-left divide. We discuss how developmental delay shaped human evolution and how aggression and its correlated traits map elegantly to right-left politics. We also talk about the problem of self-referentiality and the capacity for hyper-technological societies to amplify cognitive bias, setting a foundation for future discussions of what th...

Having described the idiosyncratic collection of traits associated with variation in political outlook in humans, we will now look at the biology of aggression, and how it is correlated with a very similar set of traits. This will lay the foundation to ask the question: is political difference a reflection of differences between people in the biology of aggression?

We will explore the science of political difference, the cross-cultural durability of the right-left divide, the idiosyncratic collection of traits that correlate with ideological difference, and lay the foundations for a theory of where political conflict ultimately comes from.