4 ms·

I do believe that most people are basically decent. However, we are also gullible and prone to conforming to dominance hierarchies.

bleepblorp 6y ago
About 40% of humans are predisposed, either through biology or upbringing, to blindly follow socially dominant people. This is why authoritarianism happens. A disproportionate percentage of socially dominant people are sociopaths who are unfit to lead. This does not matter to authoritarian followers, however, and this is why things like Naziism happen.
- wahern 6y ago
  Do you have a citation for such a figure, or is it something that appeared self-evident, like sticky electoral support for historical, authoritarian leaders?
  - arethuza 6y ago
    The Milgram experiment or its variations might come up with such a figure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment NB I don't know enough about the area to discuss the validity of the experiment, just that it might be a source of such a figure
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    I'm not the original poster, but there have been studies on the authoritarian personality type[1] in psychology going back nearly seven decades years or so. A certain subset of the population is inclined towards displaying authoritarian traits, and those traits are about 50 percent heritable[2]. Regarding contemporary Americans, about 40 percent of Americans are in favor of non-democratic forms of government and about 52 percent support a strong leader without checks and balances from Congress or elections[3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_personality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_personality [2] https://psmag.com/news/authoritarianism-the-terrifying-trait-that-trump-triggers https://psmag.com/news/authoritarianism-the-terrifying-trait... [3] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/03/13/is-public-sentiment-shifting-toward-support-of-authoritarianism-not-really/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/03/13/is-public-s...
  - bleepblorp 6y ago
    In addition to the links provided by heavyset_go, the go-to popular source on authoritarian followers is[0], or the updated TLDR[1]. [0] https://theauthoritarians.org/Downloads/TheAuthoritarians.pdf https://theauthoritarians.org/Downloads/TheAuthoritarians.pd... [1] https://www.theauthoritarians.org/ https://www.theauthoritarians.org/
disown 6y ago
> I do believe that most people are basically decent. If most people were basically decent, the natives and aborigines would still have their land. Entire continents of people were brutally exterminated and entire continents were stolen not so long ago really. Everybody was more than happy to participate in the genocide and theft. People are selfish and behave in a system according to their selfish interests.

bleepblorp 6y ago

About 40% of humans are predisposed, either through biology or upbringing, to blindly follow socially dominant people. This is why authoritarianism happens. A disproportionate percentage of socially dominant people are sociopaths who are unfit to lead. This does not matter to authoritarian followers, however, and this is why things like Naziism happen.

wahern 6y ago
Do you have a citation for such a figure, or is it something that appeared self-evident, like sticky electoral support for historical, authoritarian leaders?
- arethuza 6y ago
  The Milgram experiment or its variations might come up with such a figure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment NB I don't know enough about the area to discuss the validity of the experiment, just that it might be a source of such a figure
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  I'm not the original poster, but there have been studies on the authoritarian personality type[1] in psychology going back nearly seven decades years or so. A certain subset of the population is inclined towards displaying authoritarian traits, and those traits are about 50 percent heritable[2]. Regarding contemporary Americans, about 40 percent of Americans are in favor of non-democratic forms of government and about 52 percent support a strong leader without checks and balances from Congress or elections[3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_personality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_personality [2] https://psmag.com/news/authoritarianism-the-terrifying-trait-that-trump-triggers https://psmag.com/news/authoritarianism-the-terrifying-trait... [3] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/03/13/is-public-sentiment-shifting-toward-support-of-authoritarianism-not-really/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/03/13/is-public-s...
- bleepblorp 6y ago
  In addition to the links provided by heavyset_go, the go-to popular source on authoritarian followers is[0], or the updated TLDR[1]. [0] https://theauthoritarians.org/Downloads/TheAuthoritarians.pdf https://theauthoritarians.org/Downloads/TheAuthoritarians.pd... [1] https://www.theauthoritarians.org/ https://www.theauthoritarians.org/

disown 6y ago

> I do believe that most people are basically decent. If most people were basically decent, the natives and aborigines would still have their land. Entire continents of people were brutally exterminated and entire continents were stolen not so long ago really. Everybody was more than happy to participate in the genocide and theft. People are selfish and behave in a system according to their selfish interests.