How robotically minded do YOU think the average American is?

[sibelian]

Are Americans so astoundingly stupid that they simply CAN'T see the benefits of socialised programmes or are they just uneducated or is there some other reason that things other westernised democracies take for granted like abortion rights, publically funded healthcare and a stable welfare state can't be had by Americans?

[Jackpine Radical]

1. I think they have very strong, unreasoned response patterns

that are the result of decades of specialized messaging and psychological conditioning. They respond on the basis of what their guts tell them rather than what their cognitive brains tell them. We will not win until our messages elicit an automatic, positive response from the average person. It's a matter of signs and symbols, not strictly content.

[RKP5637]

3. I was trying to say that in #2, but you said it far better!!! n/t

[GliderGuider]

18. Humans evolved to make rapid, unconscious decisions based on emotional triggers.

In the presence of incomplete information, it is a strong evolutionary advantage to make immediate decisions without using a time-consuming analytical process. Emotions are also what give our decisions and actions a sense of urgency. Purely logical decisions tend to take longer and don't produce as strong an incentive to act. Symbols speak directly to the unconscious parts of our brains, and have a direct impact on our decisions.

Most people most of the time use reason simply to justify and rationalize decisions that have already been made on an emotional basis.

Good marketers and politicians have an intuitive understanding of this phenomenon, and also of the main drivers of group behaviour: group cohesion, group security and status.

It's not just an American pathology.

[Populist_Prole]

20. Hey excellent post!

Mind if I quote it for future reference?

Really though, I've never seen it explained so concise and yet so condensed.

I notice this same dynamic time and time and time again in ignorant people who don't think critically: Not because they're stupid, but because they're mentally lazy and biased. While trying to discuss pretty much anything with these types; I know I'm in for a big pile of frustration. They'll start out OK, pretending to be non-partisan with their "throw all the bums out" type mantras, but press/engage them just a bit, and they immediately bark up the wrong tree as to who is at fault. Press them further and they build redoubts surrounded by sandbags. Press them further yet and they start hurling brickbats at you, figuratively speaking.

[GliderGuider]

21. Thanks, yes quote it all you want.

My ideas are all stolen to begin with anyway...

Yes, you've described the standard reaction when people are face with ideas that conflict with their established beliefs. Some accommodation is possible in casual conversation, but attempts at conversion - even reasonable, data-backed attempts - are generally met with retrenchment. We all operatie out of our beliefs most of the time, and beliefs are by definition not rational.

I don't even think it's mental laziness. Most people are are capable of some degree of critical thinking in some areas, just not in the areas where their beliefs ruin the deepest. IMO it's just the way we're wired.

[Jackpine Radical]

22. What you're describing here

is one aspect of what Daniel Kahneman called "System 1 thinking." Check out his book Thinking: Fast and Slow for a summary of his and Tversky's Nobel Prize-winning work.

[GliderGuider]

25. Yes. It's also what researchers like Benjamin Libet have been investigating

And it's the foundation of evolutionary psychology as well.

[RKP5637]

2. To me, many Americans are robotic, delusional, naive and easily brainwashed. Some toil in

endless ruts complaining, but often not taking effective action to change things, for example, paying attention and not simply voting for what TV ads say, or not voting at all.

Far too many have never really suffered and lack empathy. And many wear blinders.

And IMO many are simply uneducated (an individual with a PhD can still be very uneducated, for example), hence lacking the knowledge and/or ability for discriminative and critical thinking to see the difference between candidates. Hence, some in the worst of situations fall hook, line and sinker for the rhetoric spewed by those serving them the least, and they go vote for them.

I think this applies to R, D and I.

[flamingdem]

4. In areas where Fox news dominates I'd venture to say

the populace is socialized to have a Fox philosophy towards politics. Add that to an anti-intellectual, quasi libertarian sensibility, a me first mindset, and an "I feel better when "they" are kept down" mindset and you have Republican voters.

[tabasco]

5. No moreso than any other humans

Propaganda works and Americans are subject to non-stop right-wing propaganda.

[PumpkinAle]

6. Not so much can't as won't or don't want to

........ many Americans are not only very selfish, they refuse to think that they too might someday be in the same position of those they denigrate. And the GOP/Right Wing mouthpieces play into this perfectly.

I have to wonder if the post-world war II (on onward) parents did a dis-service to their children, giving them what they wanted, when they wanted and refusing to say no and that their offspring are the most special and will always get what they want.

I see this in the way people talk about "others not deserving anything because they are...(fill in the blank), while these people have a good job, healthcare and a pension (thanks to a Union btw, which they also denigrate).

[wyldwolf]

7. kick

[redstatebluegirl]

8. They have been brainwashed to believe

that all "entitlement programs" are for the black woman in Detroit driving an Escalade. The truly believe, because they are told over and over again on Fox and Talk Radio, that the only people who benefit from those programs are minorities in big cities.

When they begin to move away from that thinking in any way, the republicans pull out abortion, gay marriage and guns to distract them from the real mission.

Are a lot of Americans small minded, yes, are they uneducated, somewhat but I think the fear of people not like them is the thing that drives them most of all. They want 1950 America back and they know they aren't going to get it anytime soon so they fight.

It isn't over by a long shot.

[valerief]

9. Religious indoctrination makes Americans more accepting of "magic" results.

Logic is something to be prayed away.

[Zorra]

10. The RW MSM controls their minds, and created the foundations of their belief/thought processes.

They are the robot servants of the 1%.

Generally, only gut wrenching personal tragedy can wake them from their eternal sleep; the brainwashing cannot be undone with words.

[WorseBeforeBetter]

11. I think their brains are rotting via Corporate Media.

Especially some of the 20-somethings I work with. Many had no clue as to what fracking was, but they're all up on the latest pop stars, reality TV, YouTube hits, etc. Many didn't even know about the mid-terms. In North Carolina, for God's sake, with control of the Senate at stake. And candidate signs EVERYWHERE.

I, along with a couple of older coworkers, tried to get them to vote, but they just weren't interested. And it's not for lack of time; some of the women I work with will sit 5 hours in a chair getting their hair and eyelashes done. (For what it's worth, ladies, the eyelashes look ridiculous... like little caterpillars!). For the guys, Saturdays and Sundays are spent indoors with hours and hours of televised sports. If they have time to study stats, fantasy leagues, etc., surely they have time to give a little time and attention to voting, eh?

[RKP5637]

12. USA, marching forward into total "Idiocracy!" n/t

[WorseBeforeBetter]

16. Yep, that's exactly it.

I'm wondering if any of them are getting a full nights' sleep -- they are THAT addicted to their smartphones.

[RKP5637]

23. I had always wondered who would eventually want to be synaptically wired to the Internet with

brain implants. In my R&D days I thought that was just a fantasy, but now I see it will probably become a reality in my lifetime. Of course for medical devices it is done, but I'm thinking along the lines of recreational usage.

[hfojvt]

13. benefits for whom?

And you don't think propaganda has an impact?

28% of voters have more than $100,000 in income. Those voters already have good health care, and do not need a welfare state. Much the same could be said for the other 21% of voters who have income over $50,000. Socialized medicine and a welfare state both mean that they, themselves, will be paying more to provide benefits for others. Some are generous and magnanimous, many others are not.

Also, the average voter is pounded with propaganda, pushing "lower taxes, fight government waste". Heck, much of the money Democrats spend is to convince voters that "Me too, I, the Democratic candidate will also cut taxes and fight government waste".

Ever since Bill Clinton, Reaganomics has basically ruled the airwaves. Clinton promised a "middle class tax cut" and attacked Bush for raising taxes.

[woo me with science]

14. North Korea has nothing on our entrenched propaganda state.

Watch American teevee for a few days, and you will see.

One would think other westernized democracies don't even exist.

We are marinated in schlock, glitz, corporate propaganda, and cruelty. "Politics" in America is an entrenched lie, a rallying into sham Red and Blue teams and fomenting of rabid loyalty, to give the illusion of democracy while deliberately detaching team loyalty from actual policies.

And the only countries we are ever encouraged to compare ourselves to are the most oppressive places on earth.

Most Americans have no idea of the life or working conditions of the average Swede. We are taught to hate and dismiss our poor as lazy parasites and to be proud that we aren't like North Korea.

[BlueJazz]

15. Emotions that are childish. Like a person falling in love with mostly the wrong person.

[wyldwolf]

17. kick

[MineralMan]

19. More rhetorical questions?

I'm not even sure there is an "average American." Who do you think that average American is? Answer that, and I'll answer your question, even though I'm sure you already have an answer for it.

[woo me with science]

24. Americans deserve credit because, even in the corporate, bipartisan propaganda state,

they/we consistently show strong support for policies that actually help human beings when they are presented as viable options. In poll after poll, Americans support actual policies well to the left of those shoved down our throats by the bipartisan corporate oligarchy. Our passivity results from careful conditioning, not stupidity.

That is why the corporate Third Way and corporate Republicans work so desperately to immediately marginalize and silence any dissenting voices that do arise, before they have a chance to catch fire and be considered as actual possibilities in the mind of the electorate. Chomsky summed up the MO:

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....”
― Noam Chomsky, The Common Good

When Perot ran as an independent and started to point out the corporate corruption in the system, and when he garnered much more support from voters than anyone expected him to, the two corporate parties IMMEDIATELY joined forces to change the rules to make it harder for independents to compete, so that that would never happen again.

Also remember that when the two corporate parties seized control of debate access and formats, the League of Women Voters withdrew from sponsorship of the debates, saying that they would not be complicit in this duping of Americans.

Amazing how the remarkable unity of the parties on such things is never highlighted by the corporate media.

[VanillaRhapsody]

26. Stockholm Syndrome en masse

[immoderate]

27. Everbody likes social policies; they identify with Republicans.

--imm

[Odin2005]

28. The PTB have turned psychological manipulation and propaganda into a science.

And that is not exclusive to Republicans, look at all the manipulative techniques used on this very site by the DLC shills to portray Hillary as "inevitable", a common one is to say that nobody else is running, forgetting the fact that she hasn't declared, either.

[SoCalDem]

29. Advertisers have used our lizard-brain triggers for decades

Last edited Mon Nov 17, 2014, 08:51 AM - Edit history (1)

to turn us from needers to wanters..

Politicians use the same techniques to blur the line between intellect and instinct

Humans evolved to react to stimulus, whether real or perceived. That instant flush of adrenaline we get when we just THINK we have lost our wallet/child/job, is something we cannot control even if we try..

We tend to be gullible, as a species, because history tells us over and over, how easily we line up behind charlatans, prophets & con-men.. and yet we continually fall prey to their schemes.

We (as a species) look for symmetry and beauty, even if they are insincere and shallow.

We often accept what we feel, over what we know or think.

We are an odd species, indeed

[GliderGuider]

30. +1 Marketers and politicians have used those triggers for millennia, not just decades.

The triggers are part of our evolved biological wiring, after all, so we have had them since before we were even Homo saps.

[SoCalDem]

31. True, BUT it's really only been since mass-media

and visual mass media in particular, that we have been profoundly conscripted...

before there was a vast system of public schooling, many people could not read and write, so the reach of the vagabond snake oil salesmen was not nearly as pervasive and what we now have..

Radio reached many people and did have an impact, but once most people had the visual combined with the spoken word, we were all pretty much "doomed"...

You do not need to be educated or literate to be taken in by what you hear & see..

What was once the purview of the preacher/priest, expanded to anyone with something to sell and the money to promote it.

[LanternWaste]

32. I don't subscribe to the bumper-sticker that the average American is dumb.

I don't subscribe to the bumper-sticker that the average American is dumb. I do however, believe that political and corporate branding is that good.