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Not the most encouraging study.
“Princeton University psychologist Susan Fiske took brain scans of heterosexual men while they looked at sexualised images of women wearing bikinis. She found that the part of their brains that became activated was pre-motor – areas that usually light up when people anticipate using tools. The men were reacting to the images as if the women were objects they were going to act on. Particularly shocking was the discovery that the participants who scored highest on tests of hostile sexism were those most likely to deactivate the part of the brain that considers other people’s intentions (the medial prefrontal cortex) while looking at the pictures. These men were responding to images of the women as if they were non-human.”
Currently reading Democracy Incorporated by Sheldon Wolin. He speaks of totalitarianism in a different form as opposed to that described by Hannah Arendt, but of what he terms inverted totalitarianism in which the state is hollowed out to serve corporate interests rather than those of the public. Thus quote originates from chapter 4 in which two ways in which nations can slip into autocratic rule.
“Tocqueville democrat comfortable with despotism and Hobbes’s free rationalist who opts for absolutism share an elective affinity. Tocqueville imagines a despotism made possible because citizens have chosen to relinquish participatory politics, which he and singled out as the most remarkable, widespread, and essential element of American political life. By abandoning their intense involvement with the common affairs of their communities in favor of personal ends, they, like signatories to Hobbes’s contract, have chosen to be apolitical subjects rather than citizens.
The contemporary moral to be drawn from our detour through Hobbes and Tocqueville is this: while it may prove possible to mobilize voters around the slogan “Anything to beat Bush!” it take more persistence, more thoughtfulness to dismantle Superpower and to nurture a democratic citizenry. The lesson of Hobbes and Tocqueville can be boiled down to a brief but chilling dictum: concentrated power, whether of a Leviathan, a benevolent despotism, or a superpower, is impossible without the support of a complicitous citizenry that willingly signs on to the covenant, or acquiesces, or clicks the “mute button.”
– Sheldon S. Wolin, Democracy Incorporated p.80-81.
Dealing with positive psychology and its converts can be most irksome at times because, like religion, they don’t smell the bullshit they are peddling. Let’s look at the concise way Chris Hedges sums up this toxic phenomena in his book Empire of Illusion.
“There is a dark, insidious quality to the ideology promoted by the positive psychologists. They condemn all social critics and iconoclasts, the dissidents and the individualists, for failing to surrender and seek fulfillment in the collective lowing of the corporate herd. They strangle creativity an moral autonomy. They seek to mold and shape individual human beings into a compliant collective. The primary teaching of this movement, which reflects the ideology of the corporate state, is that fulfillment is to be found in complete and total social conformity, a conformity that all totalitarian and authoritarian structures seek to impose on those they dominate. Its false promise of harmony and happiness only increases internal anxiety and feelings of inadequacy. The nagging undercurrents of alienation and the constant pressure to exhibit a false enthusiasm and buoyancy destroy real relationships. The loneliness of a work life where self-preservation is valued over authenticity and one must always be upbeat and positive, no matter what one’s actual mood or situation, is disorienting and stressful. The awful feeling that being positive may not, in fact, work if one is laid off or becomes sick must be buried and suppressed. Here, in the land of happy thoughts, there are no gross injustices, no abuses of authority, no economic and political systems to challenge, and no reason to complain.
Here, we are all happy. “
– Chris Hedges, The Empire of Illusion, p. 138 -139.
“We now live in two Americas. One—now the minority—functions in a print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other—the majority—is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. To this majority—which crosses social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected—presidential debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade reading level. In this “other America,” serious film and theatre, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of society.”
-Overview from the Empire of Illusion, by Chris Hedges
I’m currently reading this book and gosh oh boy, am I ever glad that we don’t have a connected TV anymore.
“It is because society tells us that women are objects, not subjects, that when society is presented with a case of male violence or sexual abuse, everyone looks at it from his point of view: “Oh, he must have been provoked to have done that,” “He was a nice man who just snapped,” “He must have been confused by her signals,” “Maybe he’s been falsely accused, how terrible to have to go to jail for that.” With every victim-blaming, rape / violence apologist comment, society reveals through whose eyes it looks, and the answer is invariably the man’s. It is because society tells us that women are objects, not subjects, that even good men, when speaking out against violence against women, tell other men to imagine her as “somebody’s wife, somebody’s mother, somebody’s daughter, or somebody’s sister,” it never occurring to them that maybe, just maybe, a woman is also “somebody”.
It is frightening to consider just how deeply entrenched objectification of women really goes. We must certainly combat sexual objectification, but the battle will not end there. Women are objectified in more profound ways than we realise, and we must tear down every entwined shred of the patriarchy, in order to achieve our modest goal of being recognized and treated as human beings.
”
— Source: The Objectification of Women – It Goes Much Further Than Sexy Pictures
If you have not checked out Captain Awkward, I command you to do so now. CA is a great place to learn about the difficulties people encounter in life and how to deal with them/help others deal with them. From the Darth Vader is tricksy Hobbit thread I gleaned this quote:
“One of the most heartbreaking truths is that feeling love, hearing all the words you’ve ever wanted to hear someone say to you about love, having the most intense sexual chemistry, being able to stay up all night and have long, deep, intense conversations about the things in your heart do not necessarily mean that you can build a happy life with someone. They do not necessarily guarantee that the person who generates all those feelings will be kind to you and treat you as you deserve. ”
Ouch. But then again, who said reality was all fun and games?
“Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice … you don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own, and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls.” — George Carlin
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
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