The Psychology of the Pollyanna and the Political Ponerology of Leftism

We all know pollyannas. They are more often women than men and the charm of these lovable ladies is in no small measure due to their openness to the positive in people and things and their seeming incapacity to discern the negative and evil. A most extreme example has come to my attention, one

. . . Natali Yohanan, “a 38-year-old mother of two, who never locked the doors of her house in Nir Oz, a kibbutz near Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip. There wasn’t even a key.” And then: “On Oct. 7, a Gazan woman walked through Yohanan’s unlocked front door and made herself at home for hours, eating, singing, and watching Netflix. Sometimes, the woman served drinks to armed terrorists who stopped by for a break from the massacre they were conducting outside.” Ms. Yohanan speaks of the impact of 10/7 on her in the 10-minute video below.

Watch the video and then ask yourself the question that I ask myself: how could an adult Israeli be so naïve, so trusting, so lacking in insight into human nature? The woman is not stupid; how then explain this blind spot? At one point Yohanan, a teacher, says that all children are good. Plainly false! Has this teacher never been on a schoolyard? Children can be vicious in a way that no animal can be vicious.  That is why they need to be socialized and, yes, indoctrinated, but in correct and ameliorative doctrines. (That 'indoctrination' is a dirty word is another piece of stupidity that you are well-advised in dropping.)

Yohanan is an Israeli. Surely she knows something about how her state came to be and why it came to be. Her kibbutz is right next to the Gaza Strip. Did she know nothing of Hamas and their genocidal intentions? They make plain their antisemitism and their anti-Zionism in their charter.  Does she know nothing about Islam? (See this excellent article by Raymond Ibrahim.) 

As I say elsewhere, homo homini lupus does not capture the depth of human depravity, and is an insult to the wolves to boot. Man is not a wolf to man; man is a demon to man. 

I am touching upon one of the roots, perhaps the deepest, of the delusional Left, namely the insane notion that everyone, deep down inside, is basically good. Not only is this conceit a characteristically leftist bit of delusionality, it also serves to distinguish conservative from leftist. No conservative accepts that crazy conceit.

And let's not forget that those who accept the crazy conceit that people are basically good refute their own false theory by being the most murderous of all. In the 20th century alone communist governments have murdered some 85-100 million people according to The Black Book of Communism.

Comments

[Joe Odegaard]

The polyanna-ism of the ladies is nothing new; it goes back to Eve believing the serpent.

And there is this passage, from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, published 1876:

"Injun Joe was buried near the mouth of the cave; and people flocked there in boats and wagons from the towns and from all the farms and hamlets for seven miles around; they brought their children, and all sorts of provisions, and confesses they had had almost as satisfactory a time at the funeral as they could have had at the hanging.

The funeral stopped the further growth of one thing — the petition to the Governor for Injun Joe’s pardon. The petition had been largely signed; many tearful and eloquent meetings had been held, and a committee of sappy women had been appointed to go in deep mourning and wail around the Governor, and implore him to be a merciful ass and trample his duty underfoot. Injun Joe was believed to have killed five citizens of the village, but what of that? If he had been Satan himself, there would have been plenty of weaklings ready to scribble their names to a pardon petition, and drip a tear on it from their permanently impaired and leaky waterworks."

From The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Chapter XXXIII. The Fate of Injun Joe

I note with regret that Tom Sawyer is politically incorrect now, and sometimes removed from the shelves. But is no use to deprive ourselves of Mark Twain's insights.

[Dmitri]

Bill I think you said all there is to say on the why question:

I am touching upon one of the roots, perhaps the deepest, of the delusional Left, namely the insane notion that everyone, deep down inside, is basically good. Not only is this conceit a characteristically leftist bit of delusionality, it also serves to distinguish conservative from leftist.

There is no deeper explanation than that at present. Despite the fact that millions of pages are wasted -- for thousands years of our wretched species history -- on trying to explain such phenomena.

[BV]

Hi Joe,

The Adventures of T. S. was assigned back at the Tech, as I recall. But I don't remember that highly relevant passage. The "sappy women" remind me of the idiots who are calling on Israel to stop their war against Hamas. Israel must not stop even if the operation takes another year.

And why is Sawyer pol. incorrect? Doesn't it have to do with Sawyer's use of 'nigger'? How bloody stupid can a wokeass be? That is the way people talked back then! And then there is the case of Flannery O'Connor . . .

Meanwhile, leftists have no trouble promoting porn and drag queen shows among children.

[BV]

Thanks, Dmitri.

But I think one can ask the further question: whence the widespread belief that people are basically good (but are rendered evil by contingent social arrangements which, being contingent, can be overturned by collective action) given the counterevidence?

[Joe Odegaard]

Hi Bro Bill

Yes, the leftist object to "nigger," which word appears a few times, and also the character of Injun Joe is objected to, because he in not a saint, I guess.

Signed, electronically,

"Catascomb" Joe.

[Dmitri]

"given the counterevidence": this further question presupposes a rational basis for holding the belief that Man is basically good until societal circumstances influence him for the worth. But this belief and disregard for evidence to the contrary (of this and many other beliefs) is not rational. I think we can rely on this evaluative judgment as it is strongly supported by the vast behavioural psychology research on cognitive biases that Kahneman & Tversky's let out of the bottle in the eighties of last century. People probably can be more rational but they aren't.

And now for the really strong part of the argument. Irrationality of Man and the innate ability to flow with crowd thinking and feeling regardless of the evidence is also supported by good poetry. I am with the wise and morally corrupt Bukowski on this who said the following in Lifedance:
the area dividing the brain and the soul
is affected in many ways by
experience –
some lose all mind and become soul:
insane.
some lose all soul and become mind:
intellectual.
some lose both and become:
accepted.

[BV]

Dmitri,

It is not clear to me what you are saying above. I am asking this simple question: why do so many intelligent people (the Israeli pollyanna, e.g.) believe that people are inherently good? As opposed to what? As opposed to what I believe and presumably you believe as well, namely, that while people in general are capable of both good and evil, their 'default setting' is not good, and not evil, but a capacity for both, and that their evil-doing (for an historical example consider the unspeakable atrocities committed by both sides during the Spanish Civil War in the '30s) cannot be explained as resulting from contingent and remediable social circumstances. If I understand J J Rousseau, the latter is his view.

[BV]

I don't know if I'd call Bukowski a good poet, but he is an interesting cat. I have most of his books. In which will I find "Lifedance"?

A lot of what Buk writes is trash, but I wouldn't say that about John Fante, his main inspiration.

>>the wise and morally corrupt Bukowski<< An arresting description. Raises the question: can one be truly wise and morally corrupt?

[Joe Odegaard]

". . . why do so many intelligent people (the Israeli pollyanna, e.g.) believe that people are inherently good?"

I think it is because they have not taken a flinty-eyed look at History.

But why didn't they do that?

Maybe their schools discouraged it. And I myself have heard this comment: "Why are you reading about all that horrible war stuff, Joe?"

A herd mentality is operating here in the 21st century. And WW2 is fas fading from living memory. I can only speak of it at one remove, from what my dad told me. At one time he said "Be glad you missed it." Those were his exact words.

[BV]

Right, Joe. Too many know no history and so have no SENSE of history. The generations after ours are pretty much hopeless in this regard. The mindless antisemitism on college campuses is largely due to historical ignorance.

And then there is the abdication of authority on the part of those who run the schools from the lowest levels on up. But it is worse than that because many of the admins really support destructive 'wokery.' The admins and the profs. Dersh last night claimed on Levin's show that 700 Harvard profs voted in support of the despicable, plagiaristic, wokeass Claudine Gay.

[BV]

In line with what Joe and I just wrote: Generation H(amas)

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/12/generation-hamas.php

Un-freaking-believable! We're screwed for sure. Me? I'm investing in precious metals in a broad sense of that term.

With a tip of the hat to Ingvarius Maximus.

[Dmitri]

Hi Bill

Info on Lifedance is here https://bukowski.net/database/detail.php?w=1853&Title=lifedance

To clarify my point: people, including intelligent people, hold many beliefs contrary to the evidence of their senses and contrary to elementary logic. This is a brute fact about our species -- we have no idea why this is so. So I just don't think that your question about the reasons for polyanna's disregard of massive historical evidence that shows the opposite of her belief has an explanation beyond platitudes like "Kropotkin wrote so" or, worse, "Psychologists say that babies are born innocent and nice" and similar.

The belief in natural goodness of human nature is just one of many irrational beliefs. Believing in goodness of governments is another. Belief that communism is good or can work is another. Belief in possibility of resolving any conflict in peaceful terms is yet another one. I am a mysterian on the subject of why this is so.

[Joe Odegaard]

Lest we forget. Burial at sea.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMWz10jaK0g

"Be glad you missed it." — Oscar Thomas Odegaard.