When I read Gene Healy's column on "Why Politics Are Bad for Us" it reminded me of many of RAW's writings on tribalism and politics. I liked these lines:
Politics makes us worse because "politics is the mindkiller," as intelligence theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky puts it. "Evolutionary psychology produces strange echoes in time," he writes, "as adaptations continue to execute long after they cease to maximize fitness." We gorge ourselves sick on sugar and fat, and we indulge our tribal hard-wiring by picking a political "team" and denouncing the "enemy."
Healy's excellent book, The Cult of the Presidency, apparently is still available as a free ebook. I read it earlier this year.
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