Comment by scottlocklin

5 years ago

I read the bits you listed, then had to scan back to figure out what "RWA" means. Correct me if I am wrong, but this book seems to have recycled the ridiculous Theodore Adorno/Frankfurt school nonsense pathologizing Christian Western civilization. The entire idea that people who go to church on Sundays and have world-normal psychological responses, rather than the defective WEIRD[0] emotional pattern that literally only appears in some fraction of highly educated Westerners seems .... a bit questionable. I'd posit that "RWA" is a contradiction in terms in the sense it seems to be used.

I mean I get where Adorno was coming from: a bunch of seemingly normal people had just massacred a bunch of his cousins. That doesn't mean I have to take his insane response seriously; particularly when current year WEIRD non-authoritarians so casually massacre members of neurotypical civilizations[1]. The persistence with which people cling to this nonsense indicates it must scratch some psychological itch. It is, however, nonsense.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WEIRD#WEIRD_bias

[1] I dunno, nobody seems to give a shit we've been blowing up "barbarians" in the middle east for the last 20 years in hopes of making them more .... tolerant.

15 comments

scottlocklin

082349872349872 5 years ago

Adorno sounds familiar, so you're probably right about the source influence. I recall RWA being distinct from "people who go to church on Sundays and have world-normal psychological responses", so I'll check that later and leave it here in an edit.

Agreed on the middle east situation, but I've written elsewhere on HN about the catch-22 that I believe has produced a Baptists and Bootleggers dynamic in what Orwell would call the disputed territories.

Edit: the RWA score is from a survey on pp11-12.

    1.  The established authorities generally turn out to be right about things, while the radicals and protestors are usually just “loud mouths” showing off their ignorance.
    2.  Women should have to promise to obey their husbands when they get married.
    3.  Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us.
    4.  Gays and lesbians are just as healthy and moral as anybody else.
    5.  It is always better to trust the judgment of the proper authorities in government and religion than to listen to the noisy rabble-rousers in our society who are trying to create doubt in people’s minds
    6.  Atheists and others who have rebelled against the established religions are no doubt every bit as good and virtuous as those who attend church regularly.
    7.  The only way our country can get through the crisis ahead is to get back to our traditional values, put some tough leaders in power, and silence the troublemakers spreading bad ideas.
    8.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with nudist camps.
    9.  Our country needs free thinkers who have the courage to defy traditional ways, even if this upsets many people.
    10. Our country will be destroyed someday if we do not smash the perversions eating away at our moral fiber and traditional beliefs.
    11. Everyone should have their own lifestyle, religious beliefs, and sexual preferences, even if it makes them different from everyone else.
    12. The “old-fashioned ways” and the “old-fashioned values” still show the best way to live.
    13. You have to admire those who challenged the law and the majority’s view by protesting for women’s abortion rights, for animal rights, or to abolish school prayer.
    14. What our country really needs is a strong, determined leader who will crush evil, and take us back to our true path.
    15. Some of the best people in our country are those who are challenging our government, criticizing religion, and ignoring the “normal way things are supposed to be done.”
    16. God’s laws about abortion, pornography and marriage must be strictly followed before it is too late, and those who break them must be strongly punished.
    17. There are many radical, immoral people in our country today, who are trying to ruin it for their own godless purposes, whom the authorities should put out of action.
    18. A “woman’s place” should be wherever she wants to be. The days when women are submissive to their husbands and social conventions belong strictly in the past.
    19. Our country will be great if we honor the ways of our forefathers, do what the authorities tell us to do, and get rid of the “rotten apples” who are ruining everything.
    20. There is no “ONE right way” to live life; everybody has to create their own way.
    21. Homosexuals and feminists should be praised for being brave enough to defy “traditional family values.
    22. This country would work a lot better if certain groups of troublemakers would just shut up and accept their group’s traditional place in society.

Responses given on a -4 to 4 scale, and after scoring the possible results are 20 to 180.

Page 14 states: "Introductory psychology students at my Canadian university average about 75. Their parents average about 90. Both scores are below the mid-point of the scale, which is 100, so most people in these groups are not authoritarian followers in absolute terms. Neither are most Americans, it seems. Mick McWilliams and Jeremy Keil administered the RWA scale to a reasonably representative sample of 1000 Americans in 2005 for the Libertarian Party and discovered an average score of 90. Thus the Manitoba parent samples seem similar in overall authoritarianism to a representative American adult sample. My Manitoba students score about the same on the RWA scale as most American university students do too."

(as to church-going, about 400 of those 1000 sampled probably go to church on their relevant day of the week.)

scottlocklin 5 years ago
Yeah, see, I don't think any of this has a single, solitary thing to do with "authoritarianism." It's just testing for normal human attitudes, rather than urban WEIRD attitudes.
I'm doing "that internet guy" again, but it's necessary here; from m-w[0] the definition of "authoritarian"
1: of, relating to, or favoring blind submission to authority had authoritarian parents
2: of, relating to, or favoring a concentration of power in a leader or an elite not constitutionally responsible to the people
There's nothing about our forefathers, homosexuals, feminists, theism, women, sexual preferences, pornography, sinfulness or any of the other bullshit in those questions that has a single, solitary thing to do with the definition of authoritarianism. Until the 1990s, most Americans, indeed most Westerners outside of (maybe) Holland and Sweden would have been considered "authoritarian" by those lights. Do you believe Westerners were "authoritarian" for all of human history until ... say, 1997 or whatever? I was alive back then: it was very obviously less authoritarian on almost every level. And mind you, I score fairly "non authoritarian" (aka not so conservative) on this test.
Anyway, I appreciate your constructive engagement, but I am extremely allergic to bullshit which dehumanizes normal people. I mean, we decided as a society that dehumanizing gay people and feminists was bad: the reality is people who are don't think the last 10 years of modernity is an amazing success are not particularly authoritarian, but dehumanizing them absolutely is.
[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/authoritarian
- 082349872349872 5 years ago
  
  You're welcome. Thank you as well.
  I'll write more tomorrow, it being wee hours here. In the meantime, please consider that:
  > I score fairly "non authoritarian" (aka not so conservative) on this test.
  means you (or for that matter any normal conservative) neither have a high RWA score nor are the subject matter of the book.
  Edit: compare https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24795611
- 082349872349872 5 years ago
  
  From bottom to top:
  Last 10 years of modernity - as said last night, you are obviously not high RWA. A very high RWA person might agree the last decade has not been an amazing success, but would not limit themselves to that perception, and instead might claim things took a wrong turn with the Enlightenment[1], and people who behave as they ought not deserve lashing[2].
  Also, the author has been using the RWA scale since the 1970s, the main primary papers he recommends are from (p.6) the 1990s, and most of the examples he gives in what I have reread are from the younger Bush period. So I doubt he's talking about 1997 and especially not anything more recent than 2010.
  (Finally, I haven't a clue if you mean something specific by mentioning this decade? Over here, not much has happened in the last ten years, the last notable event before the pandemic having been the 2008 financial crisis.)
  Dehumanisation — IIRC, the author doesn't dehumanise high RWA groups (otherwise he might be advocating pushing them out of helicopters instead of simply giving them the opportunity to meet, or even engage in shared tasks with, the Other.) If you could point out a dehumanising passage in the book please do.
  Other bullshit in questions - see the footnote (p.39) discussing question 16:
  “God’s laws about abortion, pornography, and marriage must be strictly followed before it is too late, and those who break them must be strongly punished.”
  the operative parts of this question are neither abortion, nor pornography, nor marriage, but strictly followed, too late, and strongly punished.
  Definitions - I was also alive last century[3] and believe the m-w definition is fine for its purpose, but although it shares a strong correlation, it's not the RWA[2] definition the book uses (which, the author takes pains to point out, can, and has in the ex-FSU case, applied mutatis mutandi to politically left wing authoritarian followers[4]).
  Another last-century example, beyond the cousin posts: high RWA 1990s beliefs led to Srebrenica.
  Normal human attitude - It's easy to argue that "Burn the Heretic!" has been normal for much of the last 6'000 years and probably tens of thousands, but I think in the west[5] it started going out of style after the wars of religion[6]. For some pre-1997 evidence, consult https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24785596
  [2] (p.52) "Since followers do virtually all of the assaulting and killing in authoritarian systems--the leaders see to this most carefully--we are dealing with very serious matters here. Anyone who follows orders can become a murderer for an authoritarian regime. But authoritarian followers find it easier to bully, harass, punish, maim, torture, “eliminate,” “liquidate,” and “exterminate” their victims than most people do."
  [3] although I am in an area that's historically been so strongly catholic (our idea of a cocktail party is centred on bread and wine) that people here are far more interested in following the Golden Rule than in making a tribe of their religion (our muslims also enjoy these same cocktail parties). YMMV.
  [4] as a literary left wing example, the dogs in Animal Farm are a high RWA group, being content to be servile to the pigs as long as they get to be arrogant to all the other animals.
  [5] pace twentieth century literal exceptions, and under the caveat: only between "us" westerners
  [6] which did more to determine who was left than who had been right.
  
  9 replies →
jfengel 5 years ago
It feels weird that they'd pay any attention to the 100 midpoint. These questions feel like they're written to make the authoritarians look unreasonable. Which I feel they are, too, but the way it's written the only way to give the more authoritarian answer would be to be either truly delusional or performing as if one were.
That doesn't mean it's useless, but it does mean that the midpoint is arbitrary. If nobody scores above 100 it says more about your test than it does about people.
- 082349872349872 5 years ago
  
  We might both think that giving the more authoritarian answer would be performing as if one were delusional, but the "high RWA" population he writes about evidently think it's correct.
  A mean score of 90 doesn't imply nobody scores above 100, just that the ones below overbalance the ones above. I'd guess (it may be time to hit primary sources?) that when he says "high RWA" he doesn't mean as low as 110, either.
  There are footnotes on pp.36-46 discussing the design of the scale. They include why he believes Adorno's design was flawed (it gave high scores to people who simply agreed with every statement), as well as:
  (p.43) > "What is a “high RWA”? When I am writing a scientific report of my research I call the 25% of a sample who scored highest on the RWA scale “High RWAs” with a capital-H. Similarly I call the 25% who scored lowest “Low RWAs,” and my computer runs wondrous statistical tests comparing Highs with Lows. But in this book where I’m describing results, not documenting them, I’ll use “high RWAs” more loosely to simply mean the people in a study who score relatively highly on the RWA scale, and “low RWAs” will mean those who score relatively low on the test."