According to Nicholas D. Kristof, whatever I might have thought about my political convictions has been profoundly wrong. New studies (I just love how there are "studies" to prove any kind of stupidity nowadays) demonstrate that being a conservative is inscribed in my "neural responses."
So what are the indicators that finally revealed my well-hidden (even from myself) conservative nature? According to Kristof, it's the fact that I wouldn't beat up my Dad and my tendency to feel disgusted by public washroom faucets. Another tell-tale factor is that I would never drink from an acquaintance's glass and would hate if anybody drank from mine.
So this is it, my friends. We can stop asking people about their stance on important issues such as abortion, gay marriage, torture, the economy, etc. in order to find out their political convictions. Just ask them how often they hit their fathers (I guess, beating up their mothers or siblings does not have an equally strong political dimension) and try to force them to touch bathroom taps. Every father-beating bathroom-faucet-licking individual is necessarily a liberal. See how easy this is?
4 comments:
Please forgive me, but after reading the original piece I must tell that your reaction actually proves one of the points the guy is making - that people, both liberals and conservatives, seem to react to new information based on how it fits their preexisting ideas about how life is.
You reacted to his ridiculous example about slapping one's father (which is indeed ridiculous - if I am uncomfortable slapping anybody, including father - what does that make me, conservative or ultra-liberal?), and ignored everything else there was in his paper...
V.
Of course, it's true that I do not expect to be enlightened by The New York Times. Especially an article that follows this tired model of quoting some quasi-scientific "study" and then explaining said study according to the sometimes pretty limited capacities of the journalist.
It's true that what people love the most is hearing what they already know. It is silly, however, that anybody would need a website called www.yourmorals.org to prove this unoriginal idea.
Funny post.
My cat's a liberal - who knew? (cat drinks out of bathroom faucet, perhaps merely to annoy the humans)
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