Is our mentality country based ?

[mapuc]

After having read some of my American friends comment about us foreigners who seems to not know enough of what makes the Americans go.

This made me wonder-Are we different mentally based on where we were born and raised ?

Mental is a massive thing-It isn't so simple so I have shorten it down to how we work mentally when it comes to voting and our engagement in political issues-This generate next couple of questions
Are some people more aggressive than others mentally ?
And can you say that some countries has more aggressive voters than other countries ?

Markus

[Skybird]

Or is the country based on our mentality?


Or is it a mutal feedback, reinfocring certain trends in mentlaity foprmign, while supressing others?


Hshh, I tell you a secret. Its not linear, but its multi-factual. Feedback loops. Genetics (og, how politically uncorrect!). Environment. Indiviual biography, parents' educaton and birth lottery. Politcal and state influence. Needs and opportunities.



To cut it short. Clichées about other nations' inhabitants are mostly clichées, but not completely, every myth has a grain of truth at its basis. Weigh it like - I don't know. Clichée : Truth is 70:30 maybe. Or more, or less.

[mapuc]

They could be right when they say I do not know anything about American politics and how the American thinks.

The thing with how American thinks has made me wonder.

Mentally we are almost thinking the same.

I asked in our US-Politics thread how many voted by tradition family tradition and the answer I got was correct. It's not happening in one country only it's happening all over the world. This is also a kind of family based mentality.

I confess I do not know as much as I wish I had about American politics but I say that we think much alike.

There are some types of voters in every democracy where people can vote.
And they act and think almost the same.

A dedicated voter or a platonische voter are thinking almost the same wherever they live.

Markus

[Eichhörnchen]

Moira mentioned an interesting post earlier (on a friend's FaceBook antiquities group) detailing the many outside intrusions into our islands and the subsequent inbreeding - which has made us all who we are. I have Samoan ancestry, believe it or not, yet my father was a Welshman and my mother a Kentish lass. Wtf? But if this is who we are then our American brothers can only despair of finding out where they came from!

[Skybird]

What has happened to you squirrely genes?

[Rockstar]

Originally Posted by Eichhörnchen

Moira mentioned an interesting post earlier (on a friend's FaceBook antiquities group) detailing the many outside intrusions into our islands and the subsequent inbreeding - which has made us all who we are. I have Samoan ancestry, believe it or not, yet my father was a Welshman and my mother a Kentish lass. Wtf? But if this is who we are then our American brothers can only despair of finding out where they came from!

IMO this is where all the world’s problems come from.

25% Finland
25% Norway
25% Germanic Europe
11% Scotland
4% Eastern Europe and Russia
4% France
3% Baltics
3% Indigenous North American Indians

[mapuc]

Another thing when it comes to mentality and psychology is that you can put a dedicated vote and a fanatic football fan into the same box.

And it hasn't anything to do with where they were born-Fanatic football fan and dedicated voters are thinking mentally alike.

It's something I have observed throughout the decades.

Markus

[Skybird]

Loyalist party affiliation and football hooliganism and tribalism have indeed plenty in common.

No, I'm not joking.

[Sean C]

I think our mentality is indeed affected by where we live. In the video below (at 7m27s), the presenter explains that some cultures count and think logarithmically. If you show them a number line from 1 to 9 and ask which number is in the middle, they will answer "3". The reason is because 3 is three times larger than 1, and 9 is three times larger than 3.

The thing is, you'll get the same answer from a young child. Because that's the way our brains naturally work. We must learn to count in a linear way.

This is just one example of many which illustrate how our thought processes are affected by our environment. Another, which springs to mind just now, is the saying that "Americans think 100 years is a long time. Europeans think 100 miles is a long way."

[Rockstar]

It’s one of the laws of the universe called the Law of Causation.

[Commander Wallace]

Originally Posted by mapuc

Another thing when it comes to mentality and psychology is that you can put a dedicated vote and a fanatic football fan into the same box.

And it hasn't anything to do with where they were born-Fanatic football fan and dedicated voters are thinking mentally alike.

It's something I have observed throughout the decades.

Markus

Originally Posted by Skybird

Loyalist party affiliation and football hooliganism and tribalism have indeed plenty in common.

No, I'm not joking.

I don't agree at all. Party affiliation may be handed down in families. In my own family though, we thought and voted how we felt. Considering how contentious some issues could be, we simply chose not to discuss politics at family gatherings.

With sports like football and especially hockey, adrenaline fueled a lot of things. Getting into fights or having issues with opposing players goes hand in hand with Hockey. Fights are the norm. With politics, one should expect a small degree of civility. Most often, that's not the case.

[Skybird]

See polarised politics like in much of the US now, with no more common ground in the middile, or at least not sufficient to reach respectful behaviour and willingness to reach compromises. Instead, you have extremes left and extremes right, and both hack at the middle and kill it, and seek to destroy the other. Power at all and any cost, is the motto, and it means: at ANY cost. Compare to what the NZZ article said.

You have whole social classes (not only in the US, but in other countries as well), whole branches of professions that have strong tendencies for this or that party. Often they get educated into being so. German media insiders and the educaitons ector are xtrenmely mleft leanign since the 60s, and have been systantcially tunbre dinto beign that. The US military has a strong bias towards Republicans, by family traditions and habit. Entrepreneurs used to be often anti-socialist. And so on and on.

Being of this and that political opinion is by far not just a question decided on by reason and free will. We all are victims of our past, biography, circumstances, its our past that has brought us to where we are today. The secret rulers of our lives are - hormones, btw. And where we want to decide independent from these, its a fight for a lifetime. We can overcome the tyranny of hormones, but it really is an effort, and certain biological traits defining us as humans being and biological entities we can never overcome. It is no compliment to our ego, yes, but thats how it is, I think. A hormone-driven automat, hidden under a thin layer of "civilizationalism" and a concepot of free will that to significant degrees in my opinion is just illusory. Freud knew it, and he was right. And yes, I see links between the "unconsciousness", and hormones. The one may be an expression of the other, or a way in which it brings itself to effect. Its just names we attach to things.

I mentioned hooliganism, and intentionally so, since this is a very specific thing, coming from Britain, attached to football, and describing a certain fan culture with the focus on a tribal cult defining "identity", and that is where indeed "cult" is also playing strong. Its about "us" versus "them", it is about irrational attachmenet to claimed territory, streets and blocks, its about fight for what is claimed to be honour but indeed is just a fetish or totem. Last but not least: action. You know the film "Fight Club"?

I think the elements of free choice, reasonability, intellectual decision forming, get fundamentally overestimated in the going of politics. Politicians learn how to press buttons in people that are connected to much lower instincts needs and desires; they aim at making reason and logic and intellect ignored and bypassed instances, they instead appeal to the emotional levels in people. Some play the keyboard subtle, but not any less underhanded, others slam the keyboard angrily with both fists, and yell and scream and stomp their feet to it. Both is not the music I like, and I am also no instrument to be played by others. Hence my hostility to politics in general, and politicians in special. They appeal to the worst in man, manipulating him this way, and often enough bring out the worst in man, thta way turning him from a victim into an accomplice and making him one of theirs. In the end, and this I am convinced of ver ytrongly now at this pohas eof my life, every political activity and ambition sooner or later must and will turn the spocila order into that of fascist collectivism, it cannot be aovided, its like evertyhing that lives grows old and heads for its death.

[Rockstar]

Originally Posted by Commander Wallace

I don't agree at all. Party affiliation may be handed down in families. In my own family though, we thought and voted how we felt. Considering how contentious some issues could be, we simply chose not to discuss politics at family gatherings.

With sports like football and especially hockey, adrenaline fueled a lot of things. Getting into fights or having issues with opposing players goes hand in hand with Hockey. Fights are the norm. With politics, one should expect a small degree of civility. Most often, that's not the case.

I went to the voting place today. Contrary to what everyone was told to be very afraid of in the headlines. There were no, fights or arguments. In fact people were quite cordial.

When I left, I didn’t see any cars turned over, nothing was on fire, no vandalism. I didn’t see any fascists or nazis tearing down democracy or the constitution. No republicans and democrats were bashing each other’s heads in. Didn’t see any riots, no bands of roving thugs or hooligans. There were no armed guards or police patrols in riot gear. All the Qanon/Blueanon party fanboys and extremists we were told were everywhere must have the day off because I didn’t see them either.

Worst part of the day was when I forgot to stop at the grocer on the way home.

I did just learn of another catch phrase/slogan. Now we have be wary and afraid of “competitive authoritarianism”.

[mapuc]

What I meant by my last comment is-Here an example

Two football fan fraction is fighting each other in some forrest.
At a political demonstration many young men throw stones against the police and shop windows.

And that's what I meant-The young men fighting each other and the young men throwing stones is functioning with same psychological mechanism.

Dedicated voter could be a wrong word-A fanatic should be a better word.

Markus

[Eichhörnchen]

So how come the Aussies are all nutters?