Brexit and the idiocy it has provoked.

So I’ve been holding off writing about this, despite the urge to, because this blog is supposed to be (at least tangentially) about psychology, not politics; but a few things changed my mind.

-          Politics is psychology practiced on a national scale, things like “spin” and “demographics” are concepts created to manipulate people on a personal level towards an agenda that is presented by somebody in a position to dictate to others. When politicians say things like “Think of the children” they mean “I’m using your children as a psychological weapon to con you into agreeing with me.”

o   The amount of misinformation I have seen regarding this has been frankly; staggering. Seems everyone has forgotten how to fact-check and will blindly parrot things people shovel in front of them in order to feel better about themselves.

o   In fact it’s like everyone is in such a hurry to validate themselves they’ll proudly tie their flag to Freddy Krugars’s Childcare Co. provided it posted some dumb meme that makes them feel better about their life choices.

o   People seem to be clamouring for a simple solution to a complex problem: As a result amoral psychopaths are making a killing by providing them these “simple solutions” despite the fact these “solutions” are about as substantial as fart in an opera house.

-          The “Us vs Them” attitude I am seeing. Sometimes it’s Left vs Right, sometimes it’s Millennials vs Boomers, sometimes it’s even Communistsvs Fascists which is sadly indicative that those words have been overused to the point they have lost all meaning. The point is people are keen to use the old “If you’re not with us, you’re against us” rhetoric; Which is a politically damning statement that alienates everyone who has even the slightest doubt about your position and gears you up for inevitable bloody conflict, but so long as it’s other people who suffer in that conflict, people seem to be okay with this.

-          Every time you say “They just need to get on with it” you’re betraying a level of geo-political ignorance that is as good as stencilling “I AM AN IDIOT” backwards on your forehead so that it’s the right way around when you look in the mirror.

So, where does that leave us?

Well; let’s address my bullet points collectively, that seems to be the most sensible way of doing this without me succumbing to the looming pressure to jam pencils into my eyes and head-butt the table.

“Spin” Misinformation and Psychology.

In terms of Brexit, this is trying to tell people what they want to hear, while avoiding anything as dangerous as or complicated as a “solid fact” that might confuse your target audience. This was seen in “Project Fear” that predicted the economic hardships that we are currently enjoying, or the “350m a week on the NHS” bus which turned out to be so much tripe. The sad truth is that humans tend to cleave to displayed authority when faced with uncertainty, so when you walk in to a pub and say “Hey, how about you cast a vote on an extremely complex international treaty that effects almost every aspects of your day-to-day life and ensures the stability of the global market within this continental land mass.” People will start to look around for the person in the suit (or lab coat) to tell them which way they should go, and sadly the phenomenon of “anchoring” and “confirmation bias” means that even when presented with evidence that they made the wrong decision they will stick with their choice as stubbornly as a man drinking a turd milkshake after claiming it is chocolate. So we have a host of people all claiming to be experts, giving you little snippets of the truth while hiding the full picture so as to keep your interest, but not confuse you with anything so difficult as a massive international agreement between a dozen powerful nations and associated hangers on. I’d drop some truth bombs on you, but I’m not going to waste my time. If a person has made up their mind already they will stop looking deeper into what their told and just accept any tripe shovelled to them, and what’s more when things start to go bad, they’ll not take the responsibility and blame it on the other side, personal responsibility for their idiot ignorance complicates their internal narrative.

The rise of tribalism.

                During economic hardship (such as the 2008 recession that we are currently enjoying the fruits of) people tent to cling to what they have, and fear the outsider. To use an extreme Godwinnian example, Germany went from a broken and failed nation reeling from crushing debt and massive inflation following a global conflict which they lost, to an industrial powerhouse that literally took on the world over just a few short years by capitalising on this human behaviour. You point at the “other” say they are trying to take what little you have and then watch people rally and unify behind you to work hard to not only propel themselves forwards, but destroy the “other” that they now perceive as a threat.  During the current crisis we’ve seen a few people get scapegoated for political point-scoring, the disabled, “benefit scroungers” and of course Immigrants, despite the fact that almost all the immigrants from the EU (approx. 80%) are highly qualified professionals that contribute massively in tax revenue. If now you are thinking “Oh no, we meant those immigrants from those shithole counties, y’know, the brown people,” then kindly go into the bathroom and stencil the word “RACIST” backwards on your forehead.  

In fact, I’m gonna expand on this, as somebody who’s worked with first and second generation immigrants from warzones and third-world nations I feel like I can actually shed some light on this for people who haven’t. While a lot of people from “Shithole” counties do need a lot of support upon entering the UK, they pay it back in spades when they finally realize they can get a job where they get to keep the (taxed) money they earn, not be beaten for failing to meet quotas, and they know that when they get home there is a pretty good chance their families won’t have been victims of a local genocide, that sort of thing can really make a good work ethic when you’ve never had it before. What’s more, they hugely encourage their children to succeed academically, and work hard towards a better future simply because THEY never had that opportunity. On the whole immigration is a drop in the bucket of the UK’s budget and represents an “economic drain” in the same way that a house fire might represent a “global catastrophe” it probably feels that way if it’s negatively impacted you, but in reality it affects 99% of the people of the nation not at all. But of course, that’s not the point, the point is to get you to look at a scapegoat and unify behind your glorious leader and make [nation] great again, or whatever.

So here is your take-home: If somebody tells you that you have to be afraid of the “other” and you believe them having had no extensive first-hand experience with that demographic, then you are their patsy, and you’re falling for one of the oldest, and most well employed political tricks in the book.

Psycholijay looks at “Manspreading”.

Subtitle: Sometimes I think I must have already died and this is hell.

                Welcome back, sadly I’ve had plenty of things I’ve wanted to write about these past few months, but none of them have really justified a full on journal entry so I’ve blown it off, maybe I’ll do a garbage-bag of random topics at some point in the future. Regardless, let’s get onto the reason we’re all here.

                “Manspreading” is another in a long line of social blights that has been made all the more insidious by feminists; proving once more they are champions of equality and totally don’t hate men you guys, by finding a universally bad behaviour and sticking a male prefix in front of it to make it ultra-super double-plus bad! (see also: “manslamming,” “manturrupting,” “hepeating” “mansplaining” etc…) Oh, this also clears all women of this behaviour ever by omission. If only there was some sort of political movement that supported the removal of gendered words in order to better promote equality. Oh wait- there is! But only some words, y’know those neutral words or words that may hint at any kind of positivity! Those words gotta go!

                Regardless, for those of you blessed with the ignorance of this frankly embarrassing topic allow me to enlighten you. A few years back some idiots on Tumbler decided that they’d had enough of men siting with their legs apart on public transport and began a campaign to end this serious social blight! The term “manspreading” was coined and academics scrambled to legitimise this complaint by abusing my beloved psychology: The argument goes that men are prominently displaying their reproductive organs in order to pacify women in the same space and assert their dominance in a public area. Apparently this pose also raises testosterone levels which “make men feel more dominant and aggressive”… Though I am forced to ONCE AGAIN point out that testosterone is not an “Aggression hormone” it is a hormone that increased drive and focus, this can be sex drive, work drive, parenting drive, or any other focal need a man or woman has (yes, women have natural levels of testosterone too), while doing so it also increases a person’s ability to deal with those drives, granting a greater level of concentration and focus. Were testosterone truly some sort of PCP that sends men into a violent sexual frenzy then there would be a record number of assaults/sexual assaults from FtM trans folk, as it is their prominence in criminal databases hovers roughly around zero. Of course all this theorising boils down to “it’s subconscious” which is a psychology weasel word that has come to mean “I don’t have to prove this because it’s impossible to do so, ha-ha!”

                The reality is men have their reproductive organs on the outside, I know this may come as no surprise to some people but I’m slowly coming to the conclusions that people who come up with this garbage haven’t ever seen a penis outside their sock draw. It’s an organ of your body, much like your heart, lungs, or brain, and as such it requires a level of care that you’d give any other vital organ. The testicles especially are sensitive to increased heat and pressure, so a man can sit with his legs pressed together but it would begin to be uncomfortable after a short time; then painful if it is extended over a prolonged period. The closest analogy I can think of for those with their reproductive organs on the inside is wearing a bra that is a size too small, sure you can put up with it for a while, but the longer it goes on the more painful it gets.

                Now, I’m not going to pretend that there are no men out there who take this to an extreme, ideally your knees need to be about shoulder width apart to sit comfortably, and it must be a source of frustration to want to sit down but there is a guy taking up space on the seats either side of him by pretending he’s practicing for volunteering at a gynaecology exam. You may be forced at that point to do the unthinkable, and make contact with another human being and say “Excuse me, may I sit there?”

                Which is what this whole farce boils down to, how entitled do you need to be to believe that you shouldn’t have to open your mouth and speak to another human, they should just know that you want to sit somewhere they are? The reason I bring this up is because I use public transport twice a day five days a week or more. I have to ask a woman to move her bags/purse about twice a week, and it’s no biggie, they just move it and I sit down and continue my journey, had this whole thing not been blown out of proportion and used as a rallying cry to demonise men, I’d barely have thought it worth mentioning. So from my lived experience if you want a big social movement around taking up too much space, maybe educate people that bags go on laps or in storage, not on the seat next to you…. Or…

                Let’s abuse psychology some more and put it like this:

                Disclaimer: The following uses psychology like a toddler might use a gun. Yes it is all “broadly” true, but specifically and ethically it is demonstrably false. When you paint with a broad enough brush you can cover a lot of ground, and paint over any inconvenient facts that may block your narrative.

                “Shebagging”: Due to the innately high levels narcissism that women have when compared to men, their mind has to find ways to ensure that the world is made to cater to them to prevent cognitive dissonance occurring when they have to face the reality that they are not special or in any way discernible from their fellow humans. Therefore the subconscious must encourage ways for the woman to demonstrate to people that they are the most important being in the room. Thus women will often place their belongings in spaces that should be occupied by other people to send a clear message “I have a right to this space, you do not, I am more important than you.” Of course, this is an evolved response of “resource hording” a trait common in women to acquire as much as they can (including space) at the expense of other to ensure that they, and their offspring have the greater chance of survival.

Yes it did hurt me to write all that garbage, and part of me is actually concerned it will be quote-mined and used by some misogynist somewhere to justify being a woman-hating prick. Which is essentially what all this boils down to: People will believe what they want to believe, and hate who/what they want to hate, they’ll find any “science” that supports their narrative and dismiss anything else as lies or propaganda. This is why we have flat-earther, anti-vaxxers and climate-change deniers, all of them will wave scraps of “science” in your face and declare that they are right and you’re a sucker, when in reality they’re just self-righteous and can’t bear the thought that they are wrong. You may think “it’s about demonising men, it’s about uplifting women” but it may amuse you to know that if you ask a member of the KKK why they’re a member of a famously racist institution they say “it’s not about hating blacks; it’s about standing up for the rights of whites.”

So I’ll leave you with one thing: Go back and read the paragraph about “Shebagging” and imagine it was written in earnest, and published by prominent academics and scientists and it influenced society enough to make a law that targeted women. How would that make you feel? Does it make you mad? Are you saying “well it’s not the same?” are you looking for other information to discredit me? Do you think it’s funny but unrealistic? Or are you believing what you want to believe?