Abortion and Ukraine
Most "right wing" conservatives say that they are "pro life". However, they oppose saving lives in Ukraine. They do not want U.S. dollars and weapons to help Ukraine beat Putin. Implicitly, these "pro life" conservatives would rather see Putin continue killing Ukrainians than helping a liberal and democratically elected government in Eastern Europe. They apparently want to support Putin's bid to "save" Russia and make Russia "great" again. Not surprisingly, these conservatives also support Trump's re-election campaign to "save" America and make America "great" again. What a pro-life coincidence!
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Putin and Trump are "liberating" the world.
Politicians are full of excrement and corruption in all political parties and sides. Typically, the more successful the politician, the more corrupt it is. All humans are storytelling primates. All humans lie and deceive to get what they want.
What do humans want? What do all animals want? If you are a Slap Consulting regular, you know the answer: enjoy pleasure and avoid pain.
Pain and pleasure
All animals, including humans, survive by seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. All your animal ancestors survived that way. Therefore, that pain / pleasure "trait" survived in you and all of us.
Imagine two groups of the animal of your choice (dogs, monkeys, humans, etc). One pack has a trait that makes it derive great pleasure from eating and from having sex. The other group derives pain from food and sex. Which group survives and procreates?
Obviously those who do not partake in food or "fudge", perish without procreating. The group with the trait of enjoying food and sex, survives and procreates. We descend from those animals who enjoyed food and fudge. We descend from the animals who derived pleasure from certain activities that contributed to survival. Their pain / pleasure traits or predispositions survived in us.
Everything we do--absolutely everything--is completely (100%) controlled by the pain / pleasure evolutionary algorithm of life. A tricky aspect with humans is that we can associate physical pain with mental pleasure, and vice versa. Another tricky part is diversity of thought. What is painful or pleasurable can vary from human to human, and can change over time in each human.
Storytelling primates
Humans are storytelling primates. All animals, and all living things for that matter, are organic computers or data processors. We are the supreme animal on Earth because we have the best data processor (brain).
After four billion years of trial and error evolution, our species inherited brains capable of imagination (i.e. running visual images) and storytelling. Imagination and communication abilities set us apart from all other animals.
Imagination
Imagination allows to create all sorts of stories. Our storytelling ability allows to rally the troops and form large groups of followers bound by the same stories. The social stories that we believe and follow as a group constitute our culture or operating system.
By running motion pictures in our brain, we create compelling imaginary stories. We are so good at creating stories that we created the fiction that we are not animals or even part of nature. Millennia ago primitive humans created multiple stories about gods ruling humans from above and here on Earth.
The gods
Initially, there were as many gods as people could imagine. Some gods were female, others were male, some had the power over this and others have the power over that. Eventually, tribes in the Middle East had the idea of consolidating all gods into a single male one. Then a clever guy framed the story of that man upstairs being our caring "father" sitting in heaven.
Some of the mythical and religious stories also included the concept of an afterlife. Some included afterlife places such as hell and heaven. Hell represents eternal pain whereas heaven represents eternal pleasure. Which one do you think primates prefer? Knowing that everything we do is controlled by the pain / pleasure mechanism of life, it is easy to see why so many people adopted religious beliefs to be entitled to a ticket to heaven.
Reality
In reality, no one knows anything about reality. We "know" what we believe in. We use confirmation bias to confirm the stories that we wish to believe to be true. If we believe in the gods or the man upstairs go, we find signs of everywhere. Religious stories are especially clever because they cannot be proven true or false, and must be believed by suspending reason and disbelief into the art of what is called faith.
No one knows what is really "out there". We simply "know" what our primate brains can project. For example, not even colors are really out there. Surfaces reflect different light waves that our brains project as blue, green, red, or subtle combinations thereof. If a surface reflects all three primary color waves, we see it as white. If the surface does not reflect any visible light waves, we see it as black.
The "reality" in our brains is made up of the stories that we believe in. These stories trigger our emotions, which in turn shape our pain / pleasure associations.
You are what you believe
If you believe in the fiction of an almighty male god (the "father"), you have specific emotional triggers that influence your pain / pleasure mechanism in different ways that if you believe in different stories. For example, you may be opposed to abortion believing that the "father" conceived a "sacred" embryo, and wants to force the woman to carry on with the full term of the pregnancy. Perhaps the father wants to punish her for having had sex or having incited a rape. Conversely, if you believe in different evolutionary stories that do not include sacred gods, you can have a different emotional reaction to the image of women killing cellular embryos.
If you believe that all life is "sacred", you may have an emotional reaction to people killing cute pigs and peaceful cattle just to eat them or to sell them to other hungry fat people. If you believe that only human life is "sacred", you may not give a dam about the animals slaughtered by humans.
If you believe that only American lives are sacred, you may not give a damn about saving Ukrainian and other non-American lives being slaughtered by Putin.
If you believe that only white Americans are sacred, you may not give a fudge about black lives because they do not matter to you.
Your beliefs control you.
If you believe that Donald Trump will "save" America or make it "great" again, the man owns you. Your beliefs shape your perspective. You may see what Trump and his supporters did on January 6, 2021, and you may see it a demonstration of free speech.
If you believe in white supremacy like Trump believer South African Elon Musk apparently does, you believe that twitter microphone be used to allow Trump to incite violence by using clever code words.
You are entitled to your beliefs.
Luckily, Trump's attempted coup to overturn the elections of 2020 failed. America is still a free country. Trump is still not Putin. You are entitled to your beliefs and you can reasonably disagree.
What do you think?
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