The following is from a former congressman from Oregon, Jim Weaver. I think it explains a lot about power, empathy—even the desire to eat meat and give animals “rights”. I used the quote from Genesis previously as a text some people use to justify opposition to birth control, excessive logging of forests, over fishing, and cruelty to animals. But if one searches hard enough, one can usually find a phrase in any religious text to justify ones own preexisting predilections.
Jim Weaver is a great human being, lives in Eugene, and is retired from politics. He has written a book several years ago, Two Kinds: The Genetic Origin of Conservatives and Liberals.
His theory is that all people are genetically inclined to become either hawks or doves — conservatives or liberals, ethnocentrics or empathics, Republicans or Democrats — and it's a matter of random selection rather than hereditary. Identical twins are invariably similar in their politics and attitudes, but other siblings are often opposites.
Doves have, to one degree or another, the power of abstraction and a heightened sense of imagination. The mind of a hawk tends to be egocentric and ethnocentric and less imaginative," he writes in his book. "I do not mean to imply that doves are more intelligent than hawks. Both are capable of reasoning. They simply view things differently."
Doves are revolutionaries, he writes, standing up against tyranny, but "Hawks want power, and they have the innate aggressive urges that help them achieve power. Sensitive, empathic doves are less likely to fight their way into positions of power. People in positions of authority are thus far more likely to be unempathic, ethnocrentric hawks.
"Polls taken throughout the Vietnam war showed that the American people were roughly divided between hawks and doves, with a slight bias to the hawks. The extreme hawks and doves were each exactly 25 percent of the population, and their minds never changed."
Weaver goes on in his book to describe the many variations and combinations that make up the middle 50 percent of the population, including "stinging doves" who will fight back fiercely if attacked, and "chicken hawks" who will back down if their attacks are challenged.
He says his theory explains a lot about human nature, such as why tyrants can always find murderers and torturers to do their dirty work, why some people naturally support the environment and social services, why liberals are always squabbling among themselves, and even why some people succeed in business. Give it a read if you care, I think it is still in print.
