On Mon, 18 Oct 2004, Doug Henwood wrote:
> Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>
> >Doug replied:
> >> Or, in the words of a dead theocratic reactionary: "Humankind cannot
> >> bear very much reality."
> >>
> >
> >I am not talking about preferring illusions to reality.
>
> Nor am I. But "reality" is full of messiness and contradictions. We
> all have our systematic blind spots that help us make sense of
> reality, but some of us are more likely to filter out contradictions
> and textures than others.
>
> Doug
I can't resist pointing out the psychological research on this: there is a moderate positive correlation between measures of political conservatism and need for certainty. Bush is an extreme case study, but he illustrates the trend: the more conservative you are, the less comfortable you are with complexity and uncertainty, and the more you filter out "inconvenient" facts. (I won't even try to untangle cause and effect here--)
Miles