A fact of the human condition that baffles most people is that humans are believing machines. Belief is a vital part of human existence. In fact, you can’t have human society without the human trait of belief. It allows for the building of cultural institutions, which are the storehouse of human knowledge.

The natural tendency of humans to accept, on faith, what is told to them by their parents, other adults and even their peers is what allows us to advance in a material and evolve in a cultural sense. If everything your parents told you, for example, had to be proved to you before you would accept it, humans would not have got past hunter gatherer stage. We would never have climbed down from the trees.

Norse mythology developed over a long period of time, probably a 1000 years before the runic alphabet. Throughout human settlement, there is a similarity of belief. You have a pantheon of gods, creation myths, codes, explanations of the natural world and so on. It’s easy to see why these people believed in this stuff, but it is hard to figure why they settled on this specific stuff. Yet, they did and did so just about everywhere.

In modern times, belief is most on display when it comes to politics and culture. For example, Liberals believe the Red Team is evil. So much so, they oppose everything the Red Team supports. Liberals believe Christians and Southerners are evil too. That’s why they refuse to go to Chick-fil-A and WalMart. Lefty women were visibly spooked by images of Sarah Palin.

You see some of this on the Right, but it is less clear. Lots of non-Liberals watch ESPN and 60 minutes, despite the fact these outfits are run by lunatics. Still, you have a lot of non-Liberals convinced the GOP is the only answer, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary. Americans outside the liberal hive tend to be into conventional religions so maybe that’s why their political intensity is much lower.

Anyway, this was posted on MR  the other day. This bit from Thomas Sowell is is the inspiration for this post.

Sincerity is so central to the unconstrained vision that it is not readily conceded to adversaries, who are often depicted as apologists, if not venal. It is not uncommon in this tradition to find references to their adversaries’ “real” reasons, which must be “unmasked.” Even where sincerity is conceded to adversaries, it is often accompanied by references to those adversaries’ “blindness,” “prejudice,” or narrow inability to transcend the status quo. Within the unconstrained vision, sincerity is a great concession to make, while those with the constrained vision can more readily make that concession, since it means so much less to them. Nor need adversaries be depicted as stupid by those with the constrained vision, for they conceive of the social process as so complex that it is easy, even for wise and moral individuals, to be mistaken — and dangerously so. They ‘may do the worst of things without being the worst of man,’ according to Burke. (pg 59-60)

This is why it is best to look at our political tribes in terms of religion, rather than conscious philosophical outlook. What Sowell sees as a ranking of character traits, is best viewed as in-group/out-group signaling. The hive minded always assign the worst imaginable traits to those outside the hive or anyone they see as a threat. Paul Krugman’s hive puts purity of faith above all us, therefore those outside the hive lack faith or sincerity.

It’s why the concept of indifference is alien to the Left. Everyone is either inside or outside the walls. Everyone has had that weird conversation with a lefty about something like homosexual marriage. Shrugging your shoulders and saying you don’t care is not enough. You have to be either for or against. In the old days abortion was this subject. You could easily have lost friends over it.

For the hive minded, people are not just wrong; they are a mortal threat because they oppose that which gives the adherent a reason to exist. Early Greek generals started to figure this out while observing how their men fought differently on their home turf than on the road. Additionally, Greeks fighting other Greeks could feel empathy for their enemies when they saw how they defended their lands and families.

The remedy to this was to find ways to convince the fighters that the enemy was evil in some way that made them undeserving of sympathy. Plunder was simply not enough to motivate men to kill their neighbors. The solution developed over time was small unit training to build loyalty within the ranks. When the men saw one another as blood brothers, those opposed were blood enemies. It is why trench socialism is still a part of Progressive proselytizing, despite their own social chauvinism.

What is passed off as sincerity, is actually an obsession with piety. Inside the hive, public displays of piety are critical to reinforcing one’s place in the hive. Those who fail in their devotions are, in effect, personally rejecting the group. Pretending to be pious, but secretly rejecting the group is crime because it undermines the very foundation of the group. Therefore, assigning this quality to the enemies of the group is not a lot different than ancient soldiers hurling curses at their enemy before battle. It reinforces reasons for the group and motivates the adherents to make war on their enemies.