"Scarier still for those who have never supported Trump is that he just might colonize their brains, too."
— Konnikova, Maria (b. 1984)
Author
Work Title
Date
January/February, 2017
Metaphor
"Scarier still for those who have never supported Trump is that he just might colonize their brains, too."
Metaphor in Context
Scarier still for those who have never supported Trump is that he just might colonize their brains, too. When we are in an environment headed by someone who lies, so often, something frightening happens: We stop reacting to the liar as a liar. His lying becomes normalized. We might even become more likely to lie ourselves. Trump is creating a highly politicized landscape where everyone is on the defensive: You're either for me, or against me; if you win, I lose, and vice versa. Fiery Cushman, a moral psychologist at Harvard University, put it this way when I asked him about Trump: "Our moral intuitions are warped by the games we play." Place us in an environment where it's zero-sum, dog-eat-dog, party-eats-party, and we become, in game theory terms, "intuitive defectors," meaning our first instinct is not to cooperate with others but to act in our own self-interest--which could mean disseminating lies ourselves.
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
Maria Konnikova, "Trump's Lies vs. Your Brain" (January/February, 2017). <Link to politico.com>
Date of Entry
01/24/2017
