Charlie Rose

REMant  01/06/2009 04:48 PM Report

Okay, Obama spun us a narrative. So did Adolf. However, it wasn't deregulation that brought us to this pass, it was the permissiveness that has made this an insurance society - a welfare state, in fact - of which CDS's are just a small part. The main part has been the perpetual inflation policy of the central bank set up 100 yrs ago to do just that. Our greed has not been for a better mousetrap, or even for more money, but for more security, and since that has decided limits, our country turned into a giant Ponzi scheme, which is now about to run out. Deregulation may have afforded the opportunity for some to unfairly bilk the system, but it was the system itself that turned us into a debtor nation.

Rene  01/03/2009 08:59 PM Report

I should add that the need to belong, or at least to not be excommunicated from your community, is not the only reason for believing emotionally. Intellectual lazyness plays a part too and idealism not rooted in reality as well. All of these create strong beliefs which when challenged can create a cognitive dissonance that a few people actually enjoy, but most people will avoid like the plague. The truth might set you free sometimes, but often it just ruins your day, if not your life.

Rene  01/03/2009 11:12 AM Report

Matchbook, it is true that Westen's work in this area is "nothing new" in the sense that many people in sales, politics, etc. have been aware of these principles either intuitively or with various degrees of conscious awareness. For me, his experiments quantified and made explicit my general impression that most people are unthinking members of "the herd". Or more specifically, that their beliefs and opinions are derived from where they were born, the beliefs of the various peer groups they belong to (religious, political, social, etc.) and not to even the most cursory examination of the facts. The need to belong is so strong, that they are able to deny what is plain and right in front of them. Westen helped me to think about more specifically about the reasons why people are "sheep" and clarified for me that it has little to do with intelligence or education, but strong emotional needs.

kneegrowsrus  01/02/2009 05:32 PM Report

Weston's thesis turns everything on its head, so to speak. Right-wing conservatives are traditionally known for upholding the Constitution, a by-product of the Age of Enlightenment and classical liberalism, which stresses the importance of human rationalism (left-hemisphere brain activity). Left-wing socialist democrats have generally subscribed to moral relativism and polylogism - the idea that different classes use different logics, thus repudiating any common structure based on reason altogether and instead relies more on the discipline of psychology and emotion (right-hemisphere brain ctivity). As for fear campaigning and warmongering, that has been introduced more recently by the neoconservatives, which have their roots in the left.

A few other remarks on the talk:

12-point plans cannot automatically be equated to reason. They may very well have no rational basis and strong emotional appeal, or vice versa.

Barack's story that deregulation and the free-market "ideology" are what led us into the economic crisis is an incomplete one at best. Such rhetoric may successfully be used to play on anti-capitalist sentiment and lead to the further rape of whatever remains of our market economy. But it disregards the distortive effects of the GSE's, the Fed's inflationary monetary policy, and pieces of legislation like the Community Reinvestment Act which encouraged irresponsible credit-lending, followed by huge bail-out packages and moral hazards.

Matchbook  01/02/2009 04:51 PM Report

Rene, thank you for this background. I wonder about Mr. Westen's depth of expertise because he seems to be trading on well-established beliefs and presenting "nothing new". For example, I also know from doing speaking in a Toastmasters group that something like 15% of the quality that people perceive from a speaker has to do with the content of the words. The other 85% has to do with body language, tone of voice, etc., all emotional cues.

Rene  01/01/2009 10:36 PM Report

Before he came out with this book, his main point was that only 15% of the population based their beliefs and opinions on facts and reason and prescribed (without much conviction) that people should train themselves in critical thinking skills. He apparently quickly threw in the towel on that and now proscribes taking advantage of the emotional bumpkins by manipulating them. Sadly, since they are 85% of the population, he's right.

Matchbook  01/01/2009 09:29 PM Report

I haven't yet read the book, but my first instinct is, politely, "no kidding."

Mr. Westen is simply espousing the principles that every good salesperson understands, that every decision is emotionally based. A good salesperson is always much more concerned about the emotional dialog with the client than the particulars of the product being sold. The death of any kind of sales presentation is the enumeration of the product's features.

Recently, there was an article about a person whose brain had been damaged in such a way that it did not permit proper emotional responses, with the result that the person was incapable of making a decision.

I think that a more interesting question is the degree to which the nominal issues of an election actually matter. Everyone wants to believe that the person who is best able to marshal the issues at hand is the one who gets their vote. But really, people are in general incapable of understanding the myriad of issues at hand. So what happens? People use shortcuts and stategies, even though they may believe that they are being rational. This process is present in every sales cycle. Job interviews, product sales, and elections all share this dynamic.