Via Secular News Daily, word of a study that links religious belief and right-wing politics as mental “schema” that react to coincidence:
These schema can be useful, because they speed up mental processing. By employing grand, simple rules of thumb they save mental effort – but at the expense of accuracy.
By employing this schema, the brain can move on from chewing over things that may not have any survival benefit. The results may not be accurate, but they may be good enough not to be actively harmful. One consequence, however, could be illusions and conspiracy beliefs. (Emphasis mine)
Regular readers will recognize this as one of the main themes of this blog. An entire culture now exists to enclose the human mind in right-wing paranoid “schema.” An example from StreetsBlog:
Unless you are a member of the Tea Party or a United Nations historian (or you followed the 2010 Colorado governor’s race), you’ve probably never heard of Agenda 21. But this obscure 1992 resolution of the United Nations figures prominently in a conspiracy theory that is being used to undermine community planning efforts around the country.
Last month, Tea Party members stormed a regional planning meeting in rural Maine, demanding to know what, if anything, the local volunteer commissioners knew about this “socialist central planning directive.” (Emphasis mine)
See, it’s not that communities need to plan for a future beyond peak oil, in which inner-ring suburbs and urban centers get denser along transit corridors (as is actually happening in America). The problem is that an international conspiracy(!) is secretly maneuvering(!) our local planning commissions(!) to install “socialist central planning,” a name tea parties give to any policy they don’t understand (which includes most policies). It’s all in the word “planning,” you see.
I’m actually a bit surprised that Gadsden flag-waving “patriots” haven’t picketed stores for selling Sim City games. What could be more “socialist central planning” than laying out your own city grid with mass transit and services?
