Saving Democracy with Circles Theory

SDCT0019: “In a democracy,” it is said, “people get the government they deserve.” The strength or the weakness of a democracy lies in its voters — the quality of the government reflects that of the voters. But government doesn’t reflect the quality of ALL voters — only those that win. The winning voters get the… Continue reading The Most Gullible Third of Voters is Every Democracy’s Greatest National Security Risk: ‘We Must Know Who They Are, We Must Not Hate Them, But We Must NEVER Vote On...

SDCT0018: The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that isolated systems move toward a state of disorder. Human minds and groups become isolated systems to varying degrees when they reject their external environments, thus failing to benefit from outer error-correcting information that distinguishes right from wrong regarding thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. There are three external “answer… Continue reading The Psychotic, Irrational, and Antisocial Styles of Small Circle Politics:...

SDCT0017: Science is supposed to be value-free — it’s not supposed to make moral judgments. In the eyes of science, things are just as they are; they’re neither good nor bad. But, can science form a systematic definition of morality? Moral judgments of good and evil are important to the human mind, so why shouldn’t… Continue reading A Scientific Definition of Evil: Excess Extroverted Assimilation Directed at the Social Environment

SDCT0016: The single most basic question for citizens and their government alike is this: How big is your circle of family? Is it just you and your own children? Does it include anyone outside of your own home? Can a circle of family contain your entire country? Can it extend beyond your nation’s borders to… Continue reading The Big Circle Left vs the Small Circle Right: How Big Is Your Circle of Family? A “Tiny Bubble” Political Party Rips Babies Out of the Arms of Mothers and Tears...

SDCT0015: This episode compares synecdoche (whole substituting for parts or vice versa) to three types of attention deficit disorder, and to two standards of academic achievement. Minds that focus too much on the whole will focus too little on the parts. Applied to politics, this suggests a government that overvalues public interest and undervalues the… Continue reading The Golden Mean Bell Curve: Maximum Good is the Balance Between Selflessness and Selfishness, Between Valuing a Nation’s...

SDCT0014: This episode continues the theme of synecdoche, which is a cognitive tendency to substitute parts for the whole or whole for the parts. A nation, as a whole, is greater than the sum of its parts, which are the individual citizens. The freedom of the whole is different from the freedom of the parts;… Continue reading The Public has a Duty to Support the Rights of Citizens, and Citizens have a Duty to Support the Rights of the Public. If the Public Shirks its Duty, Citizens are...

SDCT0013: Small circle thinkers, the kinds of minds that are most attracted to the small circle far right edge of the political spectrum, tend to focus on individual units of information, and not on complex groups, interrelated factors, or systems of information. As a result, small circle thinkers often don’t recognize that there’s a critical… Continue reading Synecdoche: A Cognitive Weakness in Small Circle Thinking, Where a Part is Easily Switched for a Whole, or a Whole is Easily Switched...

SDCT0012: We can construct a modern scientific technology of government by connecting themes that are firmly established in cognitive science with what we know about the left and right wings of the political spectrum. And we must do so; the future of our species depends upon it. In an age where Donald Trump unilaterally tears… Continue reading Zooming Out and Zooming In: Synthesis and Analysis, Holism and Reductionism, Inductive and Deductive Reasoning, Merge with Big Circle Politics on the...

SDCT0011: This episode gives a brief overview of the book that Daniel Dodge is writing, and presents a few of his thoughts about the characteristics of a perfect psychological or political theory. When a theory is fully simplified and developed, it would have an elegance that allows it to reuse many of its same terms,… Continue reading A Theory as a Poem: When Most Elegant, an Ideal Theory Has a Repetition and Symmetry that Resembles the Telling of a Poem

SDCT0010: The first ten episodes of this series describe the basic themes of Circles Theory as applied to politics. In this final introductory episode, we explore a mirror symmetry between political selflessness and selfishness. Individuals that are “selfless” are committed to serving the common good, which is a big circle of social accommodation on the left… Continue reading The “Sugar-Salt” Conflation: Mixing Up Selflessness And Selfishness, Making it Hard to Achieve a Good Balance in...

SDCT0009: Authoritarianism and libertarianism, two kinds of far-right “tiny bubble” politics, are both antithetical to democracy. They both describe government that only accommodates to king-like individuals — a single central king in authoritarianism, or a multitude of lesser household “kings” in libertarianism. Democracy, in contrast, is a “big bubble” form of politics, where the majority as a… Continue reading King George III’s 1776 Focus Group: How to Avoid the American Revolution By...

SDCT0008: Bridging individual and social psychology, we discuss what it is that binds individuals together into social groups: shared circles of accommodation. Some groups have small circles of accommodation toward one individual, a “strict father” authoritarian-type person. That individual-sized circle could be visualized as a “tiny bubble”. In authoritarianism, an entire nation accommodates to a… Continue reading Tiny Bubbles on the Far Right: Authoritarians are Just One Tiny Bubble,...

SDCT0007: The small circle cognitive style, which focuses on “shards and swirls” — individual fragments of information not assembled into “the big picture” — is the starting place for the human species, as well as for individual members of our species, and for governments throughout the world. Our DNA baseline prefers this small circle style of… Continue reading Look Both Ways: The Big Circle Left Defends the Majority from Individuals; the Small Circle Right Defends Individuals from the...

SDCT0006: Democracy is a form of government that involves a big circle of social accommodation embracing the majority of a nation’s citizens. It upholds the will of the majority, unlike its right-wing counterpart, which counterbalances the majority by upholding the will of an elitist minority, or of powerful individuals, or a set of laws such… Continue reading Big Hearts and Big Minds: Simple Cognitive Frames for the Big Circle, Pro-Democracy Left

SDCT0005: This episode discusses the pure cognitive states of excess accommodation, excess extroverted assimilation, and excess introverted assimilation, and applies these concepts to politics. Minds that are too accommodative are gullible, too trusting of external information, failing to question what they hear with what they already know. Minds with excess extroverted assimilation are too distrusting of… Continue reading Going Too Far: Blind Trust, Blind Distrust, and Blind Self-Absorption

SDCT0004: Discussing excesses in the human mind and in politics. Excess accommodation leads minds and political parties to become overly passive, too trusting of the RLS environment. Excess introverted and extroverted assimilation both result in disorder, and in wasted efforts that cause more harm than good. The left-right political spectrum is placed on a bell… Continue reading There Are No Villains in the Human Mind, Only Excess.

SDCT0003: Review of the 2×2 grid that describes cognitive adaptation, introverted assimilation, and extroverted assimilation (learning, thinking, and acting — or input, processing, and output). More discussion of a Venn diagram that resembles an eye, and exploration of what it means to have a small “pupil” or circle of accommodation that blocks out most of… Continue reading Building on the Basic Concepts of Circles Theory

SDCT0002: Understanding the cognitive psychological concepts of accommodation (“learning”), introverted assimilation (“thinking”), and extroverted assimilation (“acting”), and visualizing these terms using Venn diagrams that resemble the parts of an eye. The “pupil” is the circle of accommodation, the “iris” is the zone of extroverted assimilation, and the “white of the eye” is the zone of… Continue reading Basic concepts of Circles Theory

SDCT0001: An introduction to Circles Theory, and how it describes the left-versus-right-wing political spectrum. I argue for applying science in a way that doesn’t sound scientific, but that uses populist language of good versus evil. Music in these episodes: “Going Home” from Music For Podcasts by Lee Rosevere.