Harmonic Resistance
Understanding the biology of political conditioning, defeating tyranny through song
None of us see the world the way it is: There is no such thing as “objective” reality. We see the world through our models and ideological filters. We act and react based on those.
The U.S. political landscape has splintered into opposing worldviews—different epistemic realities. Under Trump, the authoritarian Right no longer responds to the old tools of debate, reason, or persuasion, as it tramples over Constitutional protections and denigrates the rule of law.
The divide between Right and Left is not just a minor disagreement over facts. According to researchers like Jonathan Haidt and George Lakoff, the divide is rooted in fundamental differences in neurological structure, biology, as well as moral intuition, and how we weigh different factors.
Those of us on the progressive or Left-ish side of the divide need to move beyond the belief that the antidote to disinformation is simply better arguments or reason. I admit this was my mistake when I was writing my books. I naively believed it was enough to say something properly, to provide a coherent and reasonable argument to support a radical new idea: People would read the book, get the point, and then adapt to the new information. In retrospect, I was wrong.
Clearly, an approach based essentially on reason has failed. Fox News and other Right Wing media such as X has hammered away at people’s capacity for coherent thought and made them hyper-reactive and hyper-tribal. As Trump guts climate protections, removes vaccination programs, pours banned chemicals and pesticides into our shared physical environment while building dozens of concentration camps, scrapping nuclear weapons treaties, and threatening endless wars and invasions, this has become an existential threat for all of us.
For progressive/Left messaging to triumph, I suspect we must find a new framework and communication strategy based on cutting-edge neuroscience, integrating insight into the underlying mechanisms—biological, psychological, spiritual—that construct ideologies and beliefs. One approach that has been proven effective is “Harmonic Resistance,” which we will discuss below.
I have many discussions, these days, with friends who have toggled toward the Right. I find it very frustrating. In a sense, what I am hoping to explore here is a way to defuse my anger at the situation by finding a workable path to effective communication and strategy.
At the biological level, scientists now believe that political orientation is intrinsically linked to specific brain architecture. Research into the biological roots of ideology suggests that individuals with conservative leanings frequently possess a larger right amygdala, a region of the brain highly sensitive to threats, instability, and violations of established order. This creates a physiological predisposition toward what Lakoff, a linguist, describes as the “Strict Father” model of leadership: “The Strict Father model begins with a set of assumptions: The world is and always will be a dangerous place, and it is also a difficult place to live in because there is competition... The world has an order, a moral order, and that order must be maintained.”
Lakoff posits that people tend to envision their nation as if it were a family and the government was a parent. Our political views are structured by two competing models of the family. The Right Wing/Strict Father archetype tends to focus on punishment and discipline. “If you are disciplined, you can become self-reliant. If you are self-reliant, you can become prosperous. Therefore, prosperity is a sign of discipline... To the strict father, the lack of discipline is a moral failure.” In Moral Politics, Lakoff notes: “The father’s responsibility is to provide for the family and protect the family against the dangers of the external world... He is the authority. He must be obeyed. He must be the one to set the rules and enforce them.”
On the other side, the “Nurturant Parent” model (or “Nurturing Mother”, although it can be gender-neutral) is based on the premise that children are born good and can be made better through care and empathy: “The Nurturant Parent model is based on the idea that the world should be a nurturant place... the job of the parent is to nurture the child and to teach the child to nurture others.” Those on the left often exhibit more activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, which facilitates the processing of complexity and the management of ambiguity.
From this basis, the primary moral imperative is empathy and social responsibility. Lakoff explains: “Nurturance has two dimensions: empathy and responsibility. If you have a child who needs to be nurtured, you have to be able to feel what that child feels. You have to have empathy. And you have to be responsible for that child’s well-being.” While the Strict Father’s focus is discipline through punishment, the Nurturant Mother seeks to create obedience through love, respect, and education. This translates to a political model where “the government’s job is to care for its citizens and to provide the conditions under which they can thrive.”
Lakoff suggests these archetypes are not just metaphors but “conceptual frames” that sit deep in our unconscious. He observes: “We all have both models in our brains. We are all ‘biconceptual’ to some extent... The question for politics is which model is being activated by the language we use.” In Don’t Think of an Elephant, he discusses how the Right gains power by framing issues in instinctual terms that bypass rational considerations and get stuck in our Psyche, whether we agree with them or not (“partial birth abortion” is one example). The result is that progressive politicians often sound like policy wonks, while Right Wingers seem rooted in deeply held moral beliefs.
Differences in brain structure may reveal a biological basis for our political schism. But the divisive tribalism we see today has been deepened by technologies that exploiting inherent vulnerabilities in evolutionary psychology to maximize engagement. Digital platforms profit from a business model that prioritizes strong emotions, particularly fear and outrage. These emotions directly stimulate the amygdala. The “outrage machine” of social media ensures that angry, divisive content travels faster and further than more nuanced or conciliatory approaches.
We’re seeing how constant overstimulation leads to epistemic exhaustion or burnout: When the cognitive burden of discerning truth from deception becomes too difficult, the mass mind starts to collapse. People retreat into simplistic tribal narratives. This is why Steve Bannon’s strategy of “flooding the zone with shit” is so incredibly effective. When there are too many outrages to process, people tend to shut out the assault altogether, which normalizes it.
As the late philosopher Bernard Stiegler observed, technology is a “Pharakon” that can heal or destroy. Our contemporary technical / media environment acts as a “pharmacological” force; it has the potential to connect and elevate us, yet in its current form, it functions as a poison that fragments collective attention and degrades the “long circuits” of deep reflection necessary for a functioning democracy.
When political messaging ignores the biological underpinnings of moral choice and ideology, it fails to connect with the deep-seated instinctual needs of the electorate.
On the Right, we find that higher education or intellect do not lead to better evidence-based approaches on subjects such as the environment. In fact, advanced cognitive development can be weaponized to reinforce tribal membership. This phenomenon is known as “identity-protective cognition.” Someone with high intelligent and education is more cognitively adept at rationalizing their position. For instance, highly educated figures on the Right use intricate and complex arguments to suppress or deny the danger of accelerating global warming or environmental pollutoin.
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has called this the “Smart Idiot” effect. There can be a decreased trust in scientific or social consensus if that consensus threatens one’s ideology or belief. Haidt notes: “the human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor.” If the story of one’s group is under threat, the logic can be thrown away in favor of the story. Obviously, this works in both directions. On the progressive side, the Left’s ideological belief that gender was purely a social construction led to support for transitioned individuals born biologically male to compete in women’s sports. Unfortunately, this provided one opening for the Right to attack ideological blindness on the Left.
According to Haidt, while progressives prioritize the moral foundations of care, fairness, and equality, they often neglect the moral structures of loyalty, authority, and sanctity. For a message to resonate across the cultural divide, according to Haidt, it must address the full spectrum of human moral intuition rather than dismissing these broader values as irrational. Haidt thinks that conservatives operate on a six-foundation matrix, while liberals often operate on only two or three. When the left speaks primarily of fairness and equity, it alienates people who give authority, sanctity and loyalty more moral weight.
The recent conversion of much of the tech elite to techno-fascism reveals these dynamics. Many in Silicon Valley started to see the democratic process as an inefficient method of social organization, one that obstructs innovation and technological progress. This perspective fueled the rise of the “Dark Enlightenment” or neo-reactionary movement, which seeks to replace inefficient or chaotic democratic processes with optimized corporate top-down systems. Thinkers like Nick Land and Mencius Moldbug wrote about the “Cathedral”—the legacy systems of media, academia, and government—as a parasitic entity that must be dismantled to unleash technical efficiency. This movement combines high-level technical expertise with an authoritarian framework. Many of its adherents follow the convenient ends-justify-the-means philosophy of Effective Altruism, bypassing traditional liberal discourse entirely.
In the past, we’ve seen that the calling up of the people’s greatest capabilities, like moral courage and solidarity, can be an effective counter to Right Wing populism and Authoritarian violence. This is what happened during the Civil Rights era in the 1960s. Martin Luther King and Gandhi are obvious examples of charismatic leaders who were able to galvanize their followers to go beyond limited or short-term self-interest, or the instinct of self-preservation. Interestingly, we are seeing something similar in Minneapolis today. It is even more impressive that this has happened without the focus on a particular leader who expresses the collective gestalt. This does suggest an evolutionary shift, which is something magnificent to see in this otherwise very dark time.
Tim Hjersted, the director and co-founder of Films For Action, notes that the biggest objection to non-violent resistance—that it fails against opponents who lack a conscience—rests on a basic misunderstanding of the strategy. As history demonstrates, from the American Civil Rights Movement to the collapse of the Soviet bloc, nonviolent movements do not need to incite a moral epiphany in the oppressor. Instead, they operate by making tyranny unsustainable. This happens through a combination of economic disruption, the withdrawal of institutional cooperation, and the defection of “pillars of support” like bureaucrats, police, and business elites. When the costs of repression exceed the regime’s capacity to impose it, the system becomes ungovernable.
This structural reality of power means that even the most amoral regime requires the cooperation of the ruled to function. Through general strikes, boycotts, harmonic protests, and mass non-cooperation, a nonviolent movement can grind the machinery of governance to a halt, regardless of the leader’s avarice and cruelty. This approach converts moral force into material pressure, “changing balance sheets when you cannot change hearts.” Victory is achieved through the organized refusal of the populace to provide the resources and compliance the autocrat needs to rule.
I just learned about the Estonian Singing Revolution from a friend. Between 1987 and 1991, hundreds of thousands of Estonians utilized choral songs to stage a non-violent rejection of Soviet occupation, gathering to sing banned national hymns and protest songs. This “spiritual power against military power,” as a popular Baltic proverb put it, helped dissolve an authoritarian regime without a single shot being fired, leading to the restoration of Estonian independence.
Activists in Minneapolis have adopted this diatonic tactic—specifically through collectives like “Singing Resistance”—to confront federal enforcement. The idea is to surround ICE facilities with harmonic vigils instead of aggression.
