Are "the backwash" more the product of a lack of education or a lack of intelligence?

[RadicalTexan]

I wonder about this a lot. I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but when I see some of the things I've seen recently, sprung from apparent thought processes analagous to ones I had at about age twelve, I really have to wonder.

I'm from a small town in East Texas. Both of my parents attended junior college but did not graduate. Most of my ancestors were sharecroppers, although two of my great-grandfathers were professionals, one being a district judge and one a state senator. My mother is a secretary and my father was in state law enforcement. I was raised in rented houses, and my parents are divorced. I worked all year in a convenience store to go to Europe summer of my junior year in high school, and I very much resent Sarah Palin's comment about not being from "that culture" in which kids travel abroad - I wasn't either, and I found a way to do it. I went to a semi-rural public high school, and graduated from our state university with the help of scholarships, crippling loans, and a 20-hour-a-week job throughout my undergraduate years. Then I moved to England in 2001 after the "election" and got a master's degree. I have worked a variety of jobs. I am not a professional now, despite my education, and I have little money or financial security. As far as I know, all of my relatives - with the important exception of my mother, who is apparently agnostic - are theologically illiterate born-again Baptists and Methodists, war supporters, and Bush supporters. Most of them are racist, and I have heard all about "scary" Obama from them.

Statistically, I should probably be Bristol Palin. I don't see how I am more intelligent than average, considering my family is pretty average, but the older I get the more I feel like most people are really, really stupid. My best friend - who also "escaped" from the small-town South -, and I often wonder how this happened. We came from the exact same background as these idiotic, warmongering, racist, homophobic, misogynist freepers. And, as a result, we don't have a lot of sympathy for them. How can they be adults and still think like that? How can we grow up to be modern, thoughtful people, yet they can't? What gives?

[elleng]

1. Interesting question,

the kind i'm sure psyches and educators have wondered about, too. Sorry I have no answers, but I've posted this elsewhere:

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/youve-got-to-be-carefully-taught/130793960

[Arctic Dave]

2. I don't think this is unique to small towns or the south.

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” —Mark Twain, 1857

Maybe this helps.

[honkydonkey]

12. A very powerful quote....

Mark Twain is my hero.

I know why he said this. I have said the same but not quite so eloquently. I live in an area where the majority of the people who are rabid McCain/Palin supporters have never left this area nor do they want to. They are afraid of the outside world and want no part of it. They think that everybody outside of their little bubble is a threat. I was just thinking about it earlier today and then I saw this quote. I'm going to use it on my webpage. Thank you!

[shanti]

15. and very wise, he was

getting out of your comfort zone is imperative to change. i know of people who brag about never having left the foothills here in nor cal....and don't care if they ever do. sad....

[BearSquirrel2]

20. Travel is no substitute for thought...

I think Mark Twain made these comments at a time when the view of the world were painted by whoring authors who spun yarns to sell newspapers. Well come to think of it ... they still are, except they use microphones now. That's besides the point.

Travel does give one the opportunity to learn something. You can lead a McCain to Iraq, but you cannot get him out from behind 300 heavily armed men.

What I mean to say is that McCain has traveled, and he's learned bumpkis. He wasn't in Iraq to find facts. He was their to reinforce his own preconceived notions. The bushie types could go on Safari for the rest of their lives, they bring their own bubbles with them.

[Arctic Dave]

24. I think that you are right in one aspect.

If you travel and never get out of your bubble, the chances of learning anything is extremely slim. But if this the case,is really traveling? It would be like travling across the country in a vehicle with no windows.

[panader0]

3. Education leads to intelligence

Cool about being one of "those" who found a way to go traveling.

[RadicalTexan]

4. One of "those" for "that one" !!!! WOOOOO!

Sorry.

[Juche]

5. Its neither intelligence or education

Michael Savage has a PhD from Berkeley, one of the planet's most elite universities. Alan Keyes went to Harvard and Cornell. Doesn't stop Savage from ranting about the homosexual mafia. Keyes is self explanatory. My dad is a pharmacist (has the equivalent of a M.S. degree from a good university) and a certified wingnut Ask him if Obama is the antichrist or is volcanos create more CO2 than industry.

If you want to understand conservative psychology there are 2 things you should read


"The Authoritarians" by Bob Altemeyer

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/


A scientific paper called 'Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition'

http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/07/22_politics.shtml

http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~hannahk/bulletin.pdf


Wingnutism can (my amateur psychology impression of it from what I've read at least) be described thusly:

People are terrified of internal and external threats and do not have enough internal resources to cope with them (people who in childhood seem more easily intimidated tend to grow up to be more conservative based on at least 1 study I've seen). They think the world outside is dangerous, unpredictable and scary. As a result they go into fear response which makes them see things in black/white and need a world full of certainty and routine. They also become highly dependent on established, external authority figures (military, nation, corporations, church) while also rejecting novelty or diversity to help them cope. You can see this in a lesser extent when Bush jr or Bush sr's approval ratings shot to 90% during Gulf war I or 9/11. They also feel society is on the brink of collapse at any second and we need to be aggressive to maintain it. As a result they become highly dogmatic, fearful of anything 'new', dependent and submissive towards authority (religion, the military) and overly aggressive towards anything they think is a threat (gay marriage, foreigners).


As far as a cure for wingnutism, Altemeyer talks about that a bit in his book but I can't recall all the specifics. One of the cures is being exposed to multiculturalism such as a college environment. I would assume building one's internal resources to deal with percieved threats would help too.

[RadicalTexan]

6. Interesting - thanks

I can't quote them, but I've seen several studies lately broadly under the topic of "why do people vote Republican" or whatever - and it seems to correlate with fearfulness, religiosity, and lack of exposure to alternatives.

I can buy that.

I want to give travel and university scholarships to every child in my hometown.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

7. There's also the "crab bucket" syndrome

People who are low achievers are jealous of high achievers or anyone who has the potential to be a high achiever.

The Nelson Muntzes of the world exert peer pressure (or outright persecution) against anyone who doesn't conform to the mediocrity of the environment.

Big cities are full of people who managed to escape from those environments.

[RadicalTexan]

9. Yeah - that's why I scoffed at Sarah Palin's praise of "small town values"

The small town values I saw were bigotry and hypocrisy.

:shrug:

[Hardrada]

18. Yah but some of this who have lived in Big Cities have

decided to avoid the traffic and have moved to smaller commmunities while not reverting to atavisms and anachronistic behaviour.

[Duer 157099]

8. Want to know what my theory is?

If so, then you already demonstrated what I'm about to describe.

Curiosity.

Yes, I believe that it is all about how curious one is.

I don't know what produces a curious person, though. I'm not sure whether there's a genetic component, whether it's a mutation of some sort, whether it has to do with one's amniotic environment, early childhood experiences, etc etc etc.

But I DO believe that is the key. Test it for yourself. Think about the most dogmatic people you know, and then think about their level of curiosity.

Am I wrong? I'm curious. What do you think?

[RadicalTexan]

10. I totally agree.

That's why I saved up and worked hard so I could go to Europe at age 17. And why Sarah Palin didn't.

I think about the "curiosity" factor a lot especially in light of my bafflement at my peers' complete swallowing of the "Christian" bullshit we get fed. As I've learned from the depressing site that is Facebook, many of my college-educated high school peers are Baptist youth ministers, Baptist college administrators, and Baptist McCain supporters.

Sigh.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. I think that's correct

When I was teaching on the college level, I thought about the ingredients that made for a good student, and here's what I came up with:

1. Curiosity, definitely, rather than fear of the new. I taught a lot of business students, and I required them to do a Japanese culture project every semester. The first time most of the business students came to talk to me about their projects, they said that they wanted to do something about Japanese business. They were always puzzled and annoyed when I said that they had to do their project about something outside their major.

2. A preference for complexity. When I introduced complex material, the good students saw it as a challenge. The mediocre students looked scared.

The mediocre students reacted to new or complex experiences with an automatic, almost reflexive, "That's boring."

They didn't even have to experience something to judge it "boring."

Another factor that distinguished the good students from the mediocre students was not caring about social popularity. Some potentially smart students never achieved what they were capable of because they were still buying into the high school ethos that says that studying is for losers. Instead, they joined in the party scene.

[BearSquirrel2]

21. My observation of struggling students ...

My observation of struggling students is that at some point they became jaded by education. They dropped behind their peers and so they harbor deep resentments for the material, the institutions and their peers who "got it" and received all that teacher praise. The coping mechanism is to devalue academics including everything and everyone involved in it.

[Raine]

19. I think that being curious is my best asset

when I was a kid I was always curious but I remember my grandmother (my mother's mother) who was a horrid person, hateful and abusive always putting me down for it and insulting my mother about my curiousity. My grandmother would always go on and on that "I was nosy and had to know about everything and where the hell did I get it cause no on her side of the family was so damn nosy". This was a way of putting my mother down too because my mother had the same curiosity as myself. My mother's sister was an ass just like their mother. x(

[Fumesucker]

32. Almost everyone starts out curious...

As almost any parent can tell you, "why?" is a big part of most kids vocabularies.. Up to a certain age.

There are some few of us who never quit asking why but a great many of us lose that sense of wonder fairly early.

I wonder why that is?

[illuminaughty]

13. I have family near Lufkin

And they all have that disease. Likewise my family in small town Louisiana. I think other posters have hit on something with the word "curiosity". There really seems to be a lazy, lack of intellectual curiosity which is contagious.

Dad worked for TWA and I left for Egypt at 18 by myself (and I'm female) To say I'm curious about what makes the world and its citizens tick is an understatement. I've always thought that if we could get the youth of this nation OUT of this nation, for even a short period time, it would be a real eye opener for them. Our country is so big and such a dumb ass bubble, but if you can escape and see it and the rest of the world through a new set of eyes it is life changing.

[TahitiNut]

14. I think it's "love of learning" vs. "fear of unknown."

Virtually every infant is born with an innate "love of learning" ... EVERYTHING is new and survival depends on learning. They're like sponges that become selective. The very first learning process involves attention focus and segregating the visual and audible stimuli ... focusing on that "parent thing" instead of other random visual stimuli, focusing on faces, segregating voice noises from street noises, segregating music noises from conversation noises, etc.

Thus, the fundamental of learning (and brain organization) is learning to choose what to ignore and what to focus upon. I, for example, have a hearing problem in that I'm not as able as most to segregate some sounds (e.g. voices) from some background sounds (e.g. bar noise). I've known this since my first party as a kid ... and, from what I'm able to gather, it has to do with very early childhood and not having the developmental experience that most have. It's apparently not unusual.

As we grow and learn, we encounter the approach/avoidance experiences that either nurture and develop curiosity, a sense of adventure, and love of learning or quell such normative drives. When curiosity isn't rewarded and nurtured, then the "learning" experiences (anything new, unusual, or strange) evoke stress and association with disapproval, punishment, etc.

So, in my hyper-simplistic world, it's all about early nurturing of a love of learning. I'm virtually certain that I'm a liberal BECAUSE I like meeting new people, visiting new places, having new adventures, exploring new experiences. I don't just 'tolerate' diversity - I revel in it. All manner of diversity ... people, food, places, etc. It's why, I believe, I'm NOT inclined to prejudge others based on their appearance and reject the notion of 'identity politics' (even as I fully recognize the pressures to do so) ... that's because I get to believe in the GREATEST diversity when it's not about groups and types, but about the far greater variety of each and every person's uniqueness.

Even when I was a wannabe 'wine aficionado' it was obvious and apparent that even with varietals the variety was huge and even within regions the variety was huge. It, in fact, added to my enjoyment of tasting wines rather than limited it or posed any frustration.

Love of learning vs. fear of unknown ... yup.
:shrug:

[BearSquirrel2]

22. I hear you ...

I have obscenely good hearing. But at the same time I have great difficulty picking out spoken voice from background noise. I can rarely understand song lyrics. And of course, I cannot hear shit in a bar.

What is frustrating is that I often have a hard time understanding people who slur words together. When I say I cannot understand, they speak louder and in even more slurred speach. This only hurts my ears and leaves them with the impression that I have a hearing problem rather then them having a speech impediment. ... maybe it's a bit of both.

[ColbertWatcher]

28. I want to recommend this. Please post as a new thread! n/t

[BeFree]

30. I am not going to ignore this

"...learning to choose what to ignore "

Some people ignore everything they can.

And some pay rapt attention to everything.

Between those two extremes lie most of us. We choose what we want to concern ourselves with and what we shall ignore. Some of you are ignoring my post. Some are trying hard to understand what is written.

I used to pay attention to most everything and in the process got scared silly. Mostly now I try not to think of some things that I learned. Am getting selective these days.

So, I wonder, is it a learned ignoration that is self-protective? Was I just wasting my time absorbing all of it and getting nowhere?

Or am I somewhere but am ignoring that reality?

[madmom]

16. I have often wondered about this myself, my brother and I are only

14 months apart in age, he being the oldest. We were raised in a small town in the east moved to Ohio when we were both preteens went to the same school, had a lot of the same friends, but we are so totally different. He is total repug, hates dem. I wondered what made us so different.

[Homer Wells]

17. I think it s more a lack of sophistication and reasoning skills,

along with a heavy dose of gullibility.

That and mental laziness.

[BuelahWitch]

23. My maternal grandmother had a 7th grade education

and was a staunch Democrat. My mother dropped out in 10th grade and was the same. They both had very hard lives (husbands who left, working hard, thankless jobs to get by).Both of them valued learning, however, and had me reading before I started school.

On the other hand my only wingnut boyfriend had a Republican father and Democrat mother. He got along with his mother much better, but took up his father's world view. He was an angry guy who blamed other people for the problems he caused for himself. So who knows.

Frankly I think these crazy winger pundits are all in it for the money. Whether or not they believe what they say is debatable. Those who do not must do alot of drinking and drug taking to try and get past not being true to themselves (I believe this catches up with everyone).

So I don't think it's as simple as lack of education or intelligence. Certainly in some cases, but not all of them.

[RadicalTexan]

25. Yes, this type of thing makes me think it's at least partly genetic / intelligence-related

Well, obviously it's intelligence-related, but how much can we affect the overall level of our society's intelligence?

It doesn't help that our public school system is, for the most part, fucked up.

As far as genetics, I think it's more than IQ, per se. It's that curiosity gene. Haha.

[NashVegas]

26. An Overabundance of Ridicule From Peers

If they even start to step out of line and follow their curiosity. Ask anyone who ever got the hell out of a small-thinking town.

[Greyhound]

27. Ms. Greyhound (Happy Day Darling!) & I have had this discussion

a few times. My POV is that, like you, we were subject to the same propaganda, the same bigotry, the same social demands of ignorance and conformity, yet we saw it for the BS it is and rejected it.

We came from very different backgrounds, her's is similar to yours while I was born into the real ruling class. Perhaps luckily for me, my mother "divorced" her family and we were poor. Had she not done this, I might well have been every bit as venal, grasping, megalomaniacal, and downright vicious as my relatives. OTOH, perhaps I would have turned out like John Robbins or my mother and done what I know to be right in spite of the personal price.

I tend to place most of the responsibility on the individual. We all reach certain junctures in our lives where we can chose to do wrong for personal gain or to the detriment of others, or to eschew the personal benefit to do the right thing. I believe these "backwash" have, with few exceptions, consistently done the wrong thing throughout their lives and spend most of their time trying to escape the consequences or their own conscience.

Ms. Greyhound is much more forgiving than I.

[OneGrassRoot]

29. Followers....

I was immersed in McCain-Palin country over the weekend. One repub family member has several college degrees and served in the military (actually, retired from military service...served in Vietnam and Reagan era).

Staunch republican, amazingly also a Palin supporter.

I personally don't think education level or "intelligence" level are pertinent; both are quite subjective.

I think it comes down to personality type: you are a follower or an independent thinker.

While there are follower types in the Dem party who don't think independently -- be it because of political/social family tradition or whatever -- I think the Republicans of the 90's and Bush Republicans are, in large part, comprised of followers. It is not a party of independent thinkers, quite intentionally.

All IMHO, of course. :)

[Orsino]

31. The product of a society that doesn't value intelligence.

This is the force that is bleeding public education dry, and which similarly drains the initiative of students and adults. It's the force that will destroy us.