Left Or Right: A Matter Of Hardwiring In The Brain?
Harold Hark
10 April 2003

Hard-faced bitch Janet Daley, in a column for the Daily Telegraph, London, So, will the Left apologise? complains that a certain British MP "now seems to be amending the forecast of millions of children killed to millions of children traumatised, a sad enough notion, certainly, but a mite different from the one that was being bandied about by the more hysterical anti-war lobby a week or two ago."

Her article is not so much full of praise for the Imperial Army's easy victory in Iraq than of a spiteful, "I told you so" hatred of the Left. Ms D. may be crowing too early, though.

Another Janet (Australia's own hard-faced bitch), Janet Albrechtsen begins her commentary Battle for freedom, not religion with a quote:

Those bombs are music to my ears. They are like bells tolling for liberation in a country that has been turned into a gigantic concentration camp.

'So wrote Iraqi dissident and intellectual Kanan Makiya in his war diary in The New Republic when bombs began to fall on Baghdad.

"One is not supposed to say such things in the kind of liberal, pacifist and deeply anti-American circles of [Academe], in which I normally live and work," he added. "The truth is jarring even to my own ears."

'The truth is jarring. If coalition forces can deliver on their promise to construct a democratic post-war Iraq, they may set off other welcome sounds across the Arab world ­ the sound of anti-American, anti-West myths exploding. Plenty of myths are ripe for detonation. None more so than the lie that the Iraqi war is a war on Islam.'

Janet A. wrote the above before the jubilation at Saddam's demise commenced in Baghdad last night. She will no doubt parrot Janet D. in her next column.

Then there is Miranda Devine, from the Sydney Morning Herald, whose column The joke is on the pacifists prophesies the irrelevance of the anti-war brigade. She raves about "a tiny unelected cabal of influential left-wingers who have infiltrated the media, universities, newspapers' letters pages, and Simon Crean's brain. They all share a common hatred of John Howard and a sense of cultural superiority, more akin to the French than the Americans". But nary a word about the huge, unelected cabal of influential right-wingers who own the media and have a whole hell of a lot in common with the Americans, and the Soviets before them. She's right about the academics, though. People with educations never support the dumbed-down Right. As for the letter writers, there are as many of them on the Right as their are pro-war protesters. Nearly none.

What interests me here is not so much a refutation of what these columnists have written--Janet D.'s triumphalist support of aggression, or Janet A's naïve assertion that the Christian Fundamentalist regime in Washington is not out to neuter Islam with its prayer-based corporate democracy, or Miranda doing a Dr Mengele on the Left--but their intense, vitriolic hatred of the Left.

To be fair, the Left hates the Right just as much, but, with the exception of "Left-wing fascists" like myself (yes, I have been called such, can't imagine why), the Left eschews viciousness for a broader picture, one that encompasses a much vaster set of consequences for any given action.

When the action is war, both sides will stand together if it is a just war, that is, in defence of the state against an aggressor. In the invasion of Iraq, the first of its kind from a so-called democratic nation, the Right has turned a blind eye to the difference between just and unjust. It has simply accepted the slaughter of innocents as an abstract consequence of its goal. A goal, I might add, that most supporters of the invasion are unaware of. Many think this war has been waged for the liberation of Iraq.

By contrast, the Left considers first and foremost the consequences to real people's lives of such an undertaking. Putting oneself in another's shoes is not easy, but for the Right it is impossible. ("A sad enough notion, certainly," is how Janet D. disposes of the horror.) The Left then examines the motives for aggression. When 9/11 happened, every Leftie in the world wanted to know why. The Right simply wanted vengeance. As Osama bin Laden receded into the unclutchable shadows and Saddam Hussein was resurrected as the villain, as the means to an end already decided years ago, George W. Bush became impatient with the United Nations for its reluctance to commit the world to war. But the Left knew that Bush had never seriously considered the UN. Their last minute inclusion backfired when the bickering dragged on and on. Bush wanted war at all costs, while the Left continued to insist that other solutions be found, and there were many, that would not lead to war.

I have said before that the difference between the two sides could be summed up thus: The Left believes that "we're all in it together." Meaning that no matter where we are born, or to what religion we belong, we all share the same basic life experience, with death as the final act. The Right looks at life discretely, as a series of the short term experiences. This leads to a credo of "for me and mine and to hell with everybody else." The bottom line for the Left is compassion, the bottom line for the Right is a solipsistic individualism.

The difference is staggering.

So, what is it that makes one person regard Michael Moore as a hero, while another regards him as "an ignorant scumbag"? Or, why do some people believe that the invasion of Iraq is humanitarian or just, while others see it as nothing less than a cynical exercise in state murder for corporate profit?

Is it cultural? Hardly. Each nation, each culture produces the same divisions between Left and Right. Some, like America, are more militaristic than others, but that is just an "accident" of rule. Look at the difference between the Germany of the 1930's and the Germany of now. Centuries come and go, but we are basically the same people. If we allow ourselves to be led by the psychologically disturbed, the Right ascends. Conversely, when nations are governed for the people and not for the rulers, the Left is dominant.

Is it hereditary? Can it be attributed to parental influence, to the abundance or lack of nurture during infancy? This is possible, yet history is replete with compassionate people whose childhoods were anything but nurturing, while many of those who were coddled and made secure grew up to commit heinous crimes.

Or is it physiological. The development (or impairment) of the frontal lobes, perhaps, or, in the case of those on the Right, a dependence on the archipallium or primitive brain for interpreting the world.

Indeed, it seems sometimes as though we are two entirely separate species. We look alike, but the resemblance stops there. It's as if the part of our brains that allows us to relate in three dimensions to The Other were hardwired to a different schematic. Some tangible, measurable part of the brain that has yet to be discovered, but which divides us as surely as if, as Dr John Gray said, some of us were from Mars and others from Venus. Only, in this case it is not a gender separation. Some men and women are from Mars and some are from Venus. We are the same species, yet we are diametrically opposed on basic human values. For the Left they are real; for the Right, they merely "look good on paper".

(A final possibility is none of the above, but the possibility that it all has to do with coming into this life as an old soul. You know, reincarnation, karma and the like. Intriguing as that is, I won't go there, except to say that such folks would probably have their brains hardwired accordingly.)

Research needs to be done on this subject, if it hasn't already. Research into the reason or reasons why human beings can be so completely different in their fundamental, almost cellular regard to life.

As for the Two Janets and a Miranda and other Right Wing parrots, you can be sure they are sharpening their beaks and claws as they await instruction from Washington on who to attack next. The words will be the same, only Saddam Hussein will be replaced with a Syrian or Iranian or North Korean name. The Janets and a Miranda flourished in George Orwell's 1984, just as they are flourishing in George Bush's 2003.

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