No need to apologize Natalie, I don't think you or anyone on this forum is smug or egotistical. Though I can see how easy it would be for most of you to unconsciously come across that way since the majority of you are psychically gifted (I'm not one of you guys). Marley was much more articulate in expressing/translating what I really meant to say, basically that we are all children of God/Goddess.
Zoron - Yes, I'm sure there are studies, and if I wasn't laid up with a nasty rhinovirus I'd go track a few down for you. I know that in The Psychopath Test, Ronson discusses both the research that shows actual physiological differences and also the distribution of psychopathology around the world. It's a fascinating book, he even ventured to speak to some psychopaths - in jail but also functioning within society. Spoiler alert: all those people who like to do big game hunting for trophies? Yeah, psychopaths. From what I recall, the number of people with psychopathology has increased BUT has remained a relatively constant figure when expressed as a percentage of population (sorry I don't recall that figure).
Gigi - your point is very valid. I don't think we're saying that anyone is better than anyone else, just that it's exhausting to constantly be at the mercy of people who are different in ways that are harmful to others. And yes, you're right, it requires empathy and diligence to NOT go down the path of eugenics. In my opinion, it's important to acknowledge these differences and encourage research to find way to ameliorate them in ways that benefit everyone. You can't blame someone for a genetic or physiological difference, but you can blame them for their behaviors when and if they are made aware of how the differences are affecting their behaviors and harming others.
Bottom line - if it became possible to heal genetic or brain differences that cause harmful behaviors, we as the the more enlightened or "adult" humans owe it to the world as a whole to try to make that happen.
I agree with you all that it may be too complex at this point to generalize.
Back in 2006 I listened to a psychology lecture where the professor maintained that the difference between liberal and conservatives was their relative tolerance to dirt.
He said the research found this one big difference: that conservatives were more easily disgusted by physical dirt, while liberals were more tolerant of it.
I figured it had more to do with a more basic underlying trait involving tolerance for disorder or chaos or organic flow versus a need to keep things more concrete, clean, and orderly. Neither of these traits is inherently good or bad. In fact we need both ends of the spectrum in our lives.
But there is clearly much more going on these days than simply tolerance for disorder or dirt. There's a level of brain washing via the media (including social media) that has further divided people into two camps.
I am most confused when people I really really love turn out to be Trumpers. One relationship nearly ended because I tried to educate the other party. He would have none of it. So it was either I shut up or put up.
Today, my right wing friends and I steer clear of these sensitive subjects out of respect for our love for each other. There's no use in trying to educate them. To them, it feels like I'm striking them. I feel the same way when they try to educate me.
Agreeing with Gigi, Natalie, and I think everyone here that the important thing is that we don't dehumanize each other. We don't know where the other person is coming from. We don't know the lens they are looking through. Clearly it's not the same lens as ours. When someone tells me they support Trump, I can get crazy in my head. At that moment, I have to separate my friends' views from of all the pain I feel that man has inflicted on us and on future generations.
One of the most staunchly rigid conservative people I know once expressed compassion for people who don't have access to a higher education. He actually sobbed when he told me about a philanthropist who offered to pay for the college of every kid in an impoverished all black elementary school he'd attended as a child. Yet this same person loves Trump, Paul Ryan, and Betsey Devos who want to cut education to smithereens. He's intensely clean by the way, even cleans under the hood of his car.
My parent and family were Cuban refugees who eventually settled in Miami, which is were I grew up. The entire community of Miami Cubans were extremely right wing -- the original tea party. Even before I understood what it meant to be a liberal I knew I was one, even though I was surrounded and raised by people who were totally retrograde in their beliefs. They were also good, hardworking people, and I loved man of them. I had to be tolerant because there was no other choice, I had to learn to live among people whose political beliefs were abhorrent to me, mostly by practicing constant forgiveness about their cluelessness. I always noticed that there was a LOT of fear behind they way they behaved, and once I got older I realized so many of them were traumatized by the experiences that made them refugees. I see now that most of them probably had PTSD over what they experienced trying to get out of Cuba and trying to survive in a strange land. So, to make a long story short, you can love people and hate their beliefs. The authoritarian mindset is a damaged one. My own parents were socialists in their youth. Trauma turned them into right wingers. That said, there is probably no reasoning with this type of belief system. The solution is to organize and defeat not the people, but the belief system.
My father was born and raised in Havana Cuba. At 18 he left for the former soviet union to study engineering. This is where he met my mother who was a Russian. I grew up in Canada surrounded by my parents friends from the Spanish speaking world and the Russian speaking one, I don't remember politics playing a big role in my childhood. My step mother was also brought up in Cuba (in Santa Clara) but she had family that fled the Cuban revolution and settled in New Jersey and Miami. Nowadays my dad and step mom live next to her Cuban relatives in New Jersey, so I've gotten to know that culture quite well. There is an enormous difference between Cuban Americans the descendants of refugees and Cubans who grew up in Cuba. I've visited Cuba many times and know that it is an ethnically diverse population and that many people there support socialism (even if there is a lot of private grumbling against the regime). Cuban Americans largely descend from the upper classes of pre revolutionary Cuban society. They are overwhelmingly white (Just look at Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz) and right wing. My father who leans conservative thinks that Cuban Americans have lost their minds. My step mother has a very hard time with the fact that her American relatives voted for Trump. For a long time I've viewed Cuban American's conservatism as a mark of their previous social class and status, they still subconsciously yearn for the privilege they had before and so have a hard time empathizing with other groups. I get along really well with my step cousins, they know my political leanings but they don't challenge me on it (I think they know I'd roast them), instead we talk about other subjects and get along just fine. Lynneventura your life sounds fascinating, I'd love to visit Miami, I now have family there too.
Miami Cubans are a breed apart. NJ has a large Cuban American population, but they are far more moderate. As for the diaspora being mostly upper class, yes and no. The rich Cubans left first, but the middle class followed. Cuba had the largest middle class in Latin American pre-revolution. I grew up in a pretty homogenous Cuban American community and there were no rich people, or formerly rich people, among us. Latin America had (and has) very distinct class stratification, and the rich would not have been caught living among the middle/working class. You are right about race. Most of the folks who left Cuba, especially early on, were white, or considered themselves to be. Not sure Jeff Sessions would agree, but they were "white" by Caribbean standards, and this gave them a lot of privileges in American society.
I have family who studied in Russia, and I have a cousin whose mother is Russian, and uncle who speaks Russian. It would be fun to compare notes about our lives Natalie. Rather than bore everyone else with stuff that isn't about predictions, feel free to email me off list if you'd like, at lynnventura10026@gmail. It is a small world, right?
All of these Cuban relatives sound positively enlightened next to what we've got going on in Missouri; clearly the true source of the "Ice Age gene." As reported today in the Huffington Post:
Roy Moore, whose December defeat was a shocking upset, announced Monday his endorsement of Courtland Sykes, who is attempting to unseat Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a top target of Republicans in this year’s elections. He praised Sykes as “a man of impeccable character, courage, and Christian faith” and “a leader who will do what is right!”
Sykes says he opposes “career-obsessed banshees who forego home life and children and the happiness of family to become nail-biting manophobic hell-bent feminist she-devils."
Yup, you are right. All my female relatives, including my mom, worked outside the home. No one was called a she-devil. :)