The ability to remember past experiences and project future experiences occurs only with the
development of the prefrontal cortex (the neurological name for the Thinking Brain). See Y. Yang and
A. Raine, “Prefrontal Structural and Functional Brain Imaging Findings in Antisocial, Violent, and
Psychopathic Individuals: A Meta-analysis,” Psychiatry Research 174, no. 2 (November 2009): 81–88.
Jocko Willink, Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017),
pp. 4–6.
Martin Lea and Steve Duck, “A Model for the Role of Similarity of Values in Friendship
Development,” British Journal of Social Psychology 21, no. 4 (November 1982): 301–10.
This metaphor essentially says that the more we value something, the more unwilling we are to
question or change that value, and therefore the more painful it is when that value fails us. It’s like if
you think about the different degrees of pain between the death of a parent versus the death of an
acquaintance, or how emotional you get when someone insults or questions one of your favorite music
groups from when you were a kid versus when you’re an adult.
Freud called this the “narcissism of the slight difference,” and observed that it is usually groups of
people with the most in common who feel the most hatred for one another. See Sigmund Freud,
Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. David McLintock (1941; repr. New York: Penguin Books, 2002),
pp. 50–51.
Tomasello, A Natural History of Human Morality, pp. 85–93.
This idea is known as “cultural geography.” For a fascinating discussion, see Jared Diamond,
Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1997).
Tomasello, A Natural History of Human Morality, pp. 114–15.
Or, as military theorist Carl von Clausewitz famously put it, “War is the continuation of politics by
other means.”
Real Isaac Newton’s Laws of Motion also sat collecting dust for about twenty years before he dug
them out and showed them to anyone.
Chapter 4: How to Make All Your Dreams Come True
Gustave Le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1896; repr. New York: Dover
Publications, 2002), p. 14.
Jonathan Haidt calls this phenomenon the “hive hypothesis.” See Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous
Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Vintage Books, 2012), pp.
261–70.
Le Bon, The Crowd, pp. 24–29.
Barry Schwartz and Andrew Ward, “Doing Better but Feeling Worse: The Paradox of Choice,” in P.
Alex Linley and Stephen Joseph, Positive Psychology in Practice (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons,
2004), pp. 86–103.
Adolescent brains continue to develop well into their twenties, particularly the parts of the brain
responsible for executive functioning. See S. B. Johnson, R. W. Blum, and J. N. Giedd, “Adolescent
Maturity and the Brain: The Promise and Pitfalls of Neuroscience Research in Adolescent Health
Policy,” Journal of Adolescent Health: Official Publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine 45,
no. 3 (2009): 216–21.
S. Choudhury, S. J. Blakemore, and T. Charman, “Social Cognitive Development During
Adolescence,” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 1, no. 3 (2006): 165–74.
This work in identity definition is the most important project of adolescents and young adults. See
Erik H. Erikson, Childhood and Society (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1963), pp. 261–65.
My guess is that people like LaRouche aren’t consciously exploitative. It’s more likely that
LaRouche himself was psychologically stuck at an adolescent level of maturity and therefore pursued
adolescent causes and appealed to other lost adolescents. See chapter 6.
The dialogue here is approximate based on my recollection. It was fifteen years ago, so obviously I
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