I have been hesitating to make this post. It’s vaguely horrifying, but I think true.
I recently listened to Jordan Peterson’s excellent course on personality. I bought it at a discount, but it would likely be worth full price for most working professionals.
He referenced a study. I think this is the one: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0062275
Here is the core thesis: “According to a “parasite stress” hypothesis, authoritarian governments are more likely to emerge in regions characterized by a high prevalence of disease-causing pathogens.”
Paper was published in 2013. You connect the dots. Done? I hope that didn’t take long.
I will offer further commentary.
Politically, Conservatism–which I don’t think he really defined, but which functionally might be defined as clinging to the old and known–is particularly correlated with Orderliness, which is one facet of the personality trait of Conscientiousness. Orderliness, in turn, seems to be correlated with Disgust. This research was done by Jonathan Haidt.
Conservatism, then, broadly speaking, is correlated with an elevated capacity for Disgust.
Pathogens breed disgust, which brings about a passion for order, which leads naturally to authoritarian regimes that are relatively fixed and closed in all ways.
Liberalism, which I think he used broadly speaking as synonymous with the way self identified “liberals” see themselves, and as they used to be, are characterized by Openness. Openness in turn splits into two categories which are, roughly (I may not be using his precise terms), intelligence and creativity. Intelligence is of course broadly understanding and capacity for abstract work. Creativity is artistry of all sorts, including entrepreneurial activity.
On this reading, it is natural that most academics and much of Silicon Valley are “liberal”. “Liberalism” suits their personalities.
Here is the point I would make on this score, though: for many years propagandists of various sorts have been seeding disgust into what has become the Left. They have been telling them that ideological Others are disgusting, which has been triggering in them a latent and previously deprioritized need for Order.
In other words, true Liberals have been becoming Conservative, while retaining the outer veneer of “liberalism”. Conservatism, on this reading, is more or less just stasis, just doing things a certain way because that is how they have always been done.
Now add COVID, an actual disease, to this mix. Obviously, the disease itself enabled the triggering of Authoritarianism around the world, which was GROSSLY excessive to the dangers of the actual disease. We know now that the lockdowns killed or will kill 3 or more people for every one saved from COVID. They will die of suicide, missed cancer or other disease diagnosis, drug or alcohol abuse, or just stress, construed broadly.
I was citing the Big Short in 2020 about how every 1% increase in unemployment leads to 30,000 or more deaths annually. Well, unemployment went up a lot, and Johns Hopkins ran the numbers. I’m sure I’ve posted that link.
So no possible rational, scientific, or humanitarian justification motivated the lockdowns. Mass Formation Psychosis was offered as a justification. That may have played a role. But the obvious hypothesis is that the DISEASE WAS INTRODUCED TO SUPPORT AUTHORITARIANISM, AS A PRIMARY GOAL.
And here is what happened: the Left–again, a group made sick with disgust, and becoming unconsciously conservative in the ways that matter–was induced to yet further disgust in response an ACTUAL pathogen. It wasn’t just conservatives themselves that were polluting their society, but actual GERMS.
What does this do? Induce an obsession with cleanliness, which is to say ORDER. Wear your fucking mask or else. Get your fucking shot or you are UNCLEAN. Do what you are fucking told or you are an ILLNESS in the body politic. You are an unwanted worm, vermin, a rat, an infestation.
Do you see how all this ties up the loose ends nicely? How someone like Bill Gates could have read this thesis not quite ten years ago and had an “AHA” moment?
Just put the germ out there and the PEOPLE will virtually demand authoritarian rule.
All this is very sick. The illness is in the minds of the people pushing all this.
Humanity has problems. Less people on the planet would be good. Better energy solutions would be good. But we have no true emergencies, and no true problems that could not be solved rationally, honestly, and directly.
What is dangerous is emotionally undeveloped and even insane people thinking they not just can, but have a positive moral obligation to, manipulate the world into directions which have only been discussed among a very homogeneous group of people, all of whom have the same blind spots, all of whom are genuinely insane in the same ways,, and none of whom will suffer in any way from their criminal plans.