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Stephen Diamond's avatar

I deal with the distinction between the general and the abstract and the relevance for construal-level theory in (newly posted) "Self-inducing far-mode: Approaches to preliminary outlining" — http://tinyurl.com/mopet68 .

Hope it's not too late for Robin's book.

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Stephen Diamond's avatar

The whole near/far thing seems a bit handwavey and speculative to me, to be honest.

Inclusiveness is prima facie far--you get an inclusive view from a distance.

You got it wrong: race, etc. are near. The relevant dimension isn't general versus specific but abstract versus concrete. There's nothing more concrete than the color of a person's skin. That's why even most current rightists despise race-haters more than class-haters: race is near, class is far, at least if conceived as Marxists do as "relationship to the means of production." A Marxist doesn't usually hate someone just because he's a member of the enemy class. That's because far-mode is detached, near-mode emotionally volatile. (Sex is near; love is far.) That applies also to positive emotions, like compassion, accounting for your other data.

Not only cultural progress but intellectual progress in a culture too involve the progressive increase in the use of far-mode. Consider, for example, the Flynn Effect in IQ testing. One reason for the increase is that the population produces increasingly abstract (far) answers, which are (rightly, in my opinion) scored higher.

Those who want the political parties to be even more near-mode are asking for even more narrowness and conservatism (perhaps at the same time combined with ultrafar goals, which distinguishes your approach from traditionalism).

My application of construal-level theory to political ideology is at "A taxonomy of political ideologies based on construal-level theory" — http://tinyurl.com/6pt9eq5 et. seq.

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