What Conservatives Can Learn from Psych 101
Ultimately, conservative principles must take an understanding of human nature and psychology as their starting point.
Conservatism is always strongest when it relies on facts. Thus, when scientific data is available to support conservative claims, our vision becomes nearly unassailable. Fortunately, scientists are steadily proving that many conservative assumptions about human nature are correct. Anthroconservatism is a new version of conservative ideology stressing a scientific perspective on human nature. It is based in particular on recent advances in anthropology and evolutionary psychology. The basic concept of Anthroconservatism is that politics and society should be based, as much as possible, on human nature as it was formed by evolution. This means, above all, that human psychology took shape during the Stone Age, when families and small communities dominated the human social universe, and leftist bureaucracies and redistribution schemes were literally inconceivable.
A key tenet of Anthroconservatism is that the human mind is not ruled unproblematically by the natural instincts. Sly and ambitious individuals, by manipulating rhetoric and the faculty of reason, are able to redirect the values and beliefs of the masses, thus replacing elements of human nature with their own, ultimately self-referential interpretation of what it means to be human. Today, leftists are laboring to convince ordinary people that their natural instinct for property ownership should be subordinated to the leftist demand for ever more regulation and ever higher tax rates. Leftists are also trying to redefine the nature of the family, and in some cases water down family values in favor of a “globalist” ethic. Leftists continually trample on the rights and prerogatives of communities and states in favor of a more powerful central government. Finally, leftists assert the sameness of men and women, against a rising tide of evidence to the contrary.
Anthroconservatism is a call to arms and a reminder that, ultimately, conservative principles must take humanity, and human nature, as their starting point. Instead of blindly accepting whatever version of conservatism we are taught, we should use the tools of science to discover what makes us human, and what humans by nature believe in. Only in this way can we breathe new life into the conservative movement, which threatens to be subsumed by petty politicking.
To find out more about Anthroconservatism, visit The Anthroconservative Beacon.