and fucking and partying. Others drive toward power. These are the most
dangerous Clown Cars, as their Thinking Brains set to work justifying their
abuse and subjugation of others through intellectual-sounding theories about
economics, politics, race, genetics, gender, biology, history, and so on. A
Clown Car will sometimes pursue hate, too, because hate brings its own odd
satisfaction and self-assurance. Such a mind is prone to self-righteous anger,
as having an external target reassures it of its own moral superiority.
Inevitably, it drives toward the destruction of others because it is only through
the destruction and subjugation of the outer world that its endless inner
impulses can be satisfied.
It’s hard to pull someone out of the Clown Car once they’re in it. In the
Clown Car, the Thinking Brain has been bullied and abused by the Feeling
Brain for so long that it develops a sort of Stockholm syndrome—it can’t
imagine a life beyond pleasing and justifying the Feeling Brain. It can’t
fathom contradicting the Feeling Brain or challenging it on where it’s going,
and it resents you for suggesting that it should. With the Clown Car, there’s no
independent thought and no ability to measure contradiction or switch beliefs
or opinions. In a sense, the person with a Clown Car mind ceases to have an
individual identity at all.
This is why cultish leaders always start by encouraging people to shut off
their Thinking Brains as much as possible. Initially, this feels profound to
people because the Thinking Brain is often correcting the Feeling Brain,
showing it where it took a wrong turn. So, silencing the Thinking Brain will
feel extremely good for a short period. And people are always mistaking what
feels good for what is good.
The metaphorical Clown Car is what inspired ancient philosophers to
warn against the overindulgence and worship of feelings.^20 It was the fear of
the Clown Car that inspired the Greeks and Romans to teach of the virtues
and, later, the Christian Church to push a message of abstinence and self-
denial.^21 Both classical philosophers and the Church had seen the destruction
wrought by narcissistic and megalomaniacal men in power. And they all
believed that the only way to manage the Feeling Brain was to deprive it, to
give it as little oxygen as possible, thus preventing it from exploding and
destroying the world around it. This thinking gave birth to the Classic
Assumption: that the only way to be a good person is through dominance of
the Thinking Brain over the Feeling Brain, the championing of reason over
emotion, duty over desire.
For most of human history, people have been brutal, superstitious, and
uneducated. People in the Middle Ages used to torture cats for sport and take
their kids to watch the local burglar get his nuts chopped off in the town