Glad to hear you got out of bed...
...this time
In an interview with PsyPost, lead study author Jesús Adrián-Ventura said that he and his team found that right-wing authoritarianism was associated with lower grey matter volume in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex — a "region involved in understanding others' thoughts and perspectives," as the assistant Zaragoza psychology professor put it.
So subscribing to "right-wing" beliefs (they merely describe it as adhering to conservative or traditional values) literally makes you less able to understand others. So even the brain shows signs of a lack of community and mutuality between people. While it doesn't surprise me that right-wingers are less understanding, it's intriguing that there seems to be a visible change in the brain. What I'm curious about now is if this can be reversed.
The left-wing authoritarians of the bunch — we don't know exactly how many, as the results weren't broken down in the paper — had less cortical (or outer brain layer) thickness in the right anterior insula, which is "associated with emotional empathy and behavioral inhibition." Cortical thickness in that brain region has been the subject of ample research, from a 2005 study that found people who meditate regularly have greater thickness in the right anterior insula to a 2018 study that linked it to greater moral disgust.
Ok so... left-wingers, according to this study, are less empathetic and more impulsive...
Kidding aside, if we take the article at face value, I think it'd be safe to say that we all need to mediate more and go on as we are. Still, more research would be nice. Hope they don't stop with this study.
I mean, we all agreed the next Pope would be worse, so...
Pretty much, yeah.
[...] but can never be truly free
Life doesn't have any meaning all by itself. The only thing that can give your life meaning is yourself. To do that, however, you need security and stability in your life, which is something you need to be able to afford. In our societies, we need to earn a lot of money for that to work. So I guess what I'm saying is that capitalism is the reason life has no meaning, and the only way to fix this is revolution.