Sunday, September 25, 2011
Percy, Freud, Co, Li
Walker Percy was the last of the secular prophets. In 'Love in the Ruins' he perfected the visions of Huxley and Bradbury, and saw modern America coming 40 years away. From 1971 he could see Barack and Michelle Obama driving a Toyota Prius.
Old Doc Percy observed something about liberals and conservatives (in the old temperamental sense, not the modern partisan sense) that echoes Freud to some extent. Conservatives are constipated, liberals are diarrheic. This is the physical expression of the basic emotional difference. C is a saver, L is a high-rolling gambler. C wants to keep things steady, L wants to send missionaries into all the world to forcibly convert everyone to his own personal way of thinking.
Given the new findings on intestinal bacteria controlling our mood, perhaps the causation is backwards! Perhaps conservatives are determined by a subvariety of E. coli that is more inclined to stick around and enjoy its surroundings**, and liberals are determined by a subvariety of E. coli that is more inclined to swarm like termites, inclined to spread itself through the world.
= = = = =
** In other words, it takes a villus to raise a bacillus.
Old Doc Percy observed something about liberals and conservatives (in the old temperamental sense, not the modern partisan sense) that echoes Freud to some extent. Conservatives are constipated, liberals are diarrheic. This is the physical expression of the basic emotional difference. C is a saver, L is a high-rolling gambler. C wants to keep things steady, L wants to send missionaries into all the world to forcibly convert everyone to his own personal way of thinking.
Given the new findings on intestinal bacteria controlling our mood, perhaps the causation is backwards! Perhaps conservatives are determined by a subvariety of E. coli that is more inclined to stick around and enjoy its surroundings**, and liberals are determined by a subvariety of E. coli that is more inclined to swarm like termites, inclined to spread itself through the world.
= = = = =
** In other words, it takes a villus to raise a bacillus.
Labels: Grand Blueprint
¶ 8:30 AM
