155 - How Disgust Secretly Drives Your Behavior

Disgust. It determines what food you eat, how tolerant you are of other people, and which political party you join. So…who’s using it against you?

Before the Punic Wars, Cato the Elder convinced his fellow Romans that the foreign Carthaginians were untrustworthy barbarians who committed child sacrifices on the regular. In 1895, after Japan defeated China in the first Sino-Japanese war, Japan referred to China as the “Sick Man of Asia”...which they stole from the Tsar Nicholas who used the term “Sick Man of Europe” to bash on the Ottoman Empire. In every era of politics, encouraging a nation to feel disgust for another group is the playbook for driving a population to war. Disgust is the secret weakness we all share. It’s the ‘easy button’ leaders use to push us into hating. And at the time of this writing, MSNBC has posted a Youtube video referring to Republican tactics as “barbaric” and Fox has a video referring to liberal education as “a sick lie.”

On today's episode we attempt to identify and disconnect the ‘easy button’ in our psyche. We look at where disgust originated as an emotion. How it helped early man survive plagues and parasites by staying away from foreigners. Why it continues to help us avoid poisoning ourselves with bad food or spoiled meats. And, most importantly, we try to identify when the emotion of disgust is healthy, and when it’s being used against us to profit other people.

Science Links:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/27/magazine/disgust-science.html https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Ft12177-000

History Links: https://thewire.in/caste/caste-honour-killings-cases-laws https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/08/12/430075644/dining-like-darwin-when-scientists-swallow-their-subjects