Thursday, April 26, 2007

Charting the cultural abyss: the chasm between Left and Right

crossing-chasm(For larger image; from Otaku, Cedric's weblog)

The Ideological Animal

...We think our political stance is the product of reason, but we're easily manipulated and surprisingly malleable. Our essential political self is more a stew of childhood temperament, education, and fear of death. Call it the 9/11 effect.

Excerpt:

Most people are surprised to learn that there are real, stable differences in personality between conservatives and liberals—not just different views or values, but underlying differences in temperament. [Jost, Carney, and Gosling] have demonstrated that conservatives and liberals boast markedly different home and office decor. Liberals are messier than conservatives, their rooms have more clutter and more color, and they tend to have more travel documents, maps of other countries, and flags from around the world. Conservatives are neater, and their rooms are cleaner, better organized, more brightly lit, and more conventional. Liberals have more books, and their books cover a greater variety of topics. And that's just a start. Multiple studies find that liberals are more optimistic. Conservatives are more likely to be religious...

[It's not necessary to read the first four paragraphs; they are more color than texture...]


If this it true, and it seems plausible to me, coupled with "opium of the people" and the "addiction model", there is a low probability they will budge on the faith part and only slightly higher odds on the religion part.

I'm counting on time and attrition. More and more teens are leaving religion -- so many, in fact, that it's "shivering the timbers" of evangelical religion! Now is not the time to let up on the pressure!

Well?

(First posted at God is for Suckers!)

1 comment:

dr sardonicus said...

Mr. Luce seems weary of criticism that his message is overly alarmist. He said that a current poll by the well-known evangelical pollster George Barna found that 5 percent of teenagers were Bible-believing Christians. Some criticize Mr. Barna’s methodology, however, for defining “Bible-believing” so narrowly that it excludes most people who consider themselves Christians.

That's it exactly. Thom Ranier and George Barna wouldn't consider the kids attending Ron Luce rallies to be bible-believing Christians.

IMHO, the Christianists spend too much time fighting amongst themselves to ever mount a serious takeover of secular society.