The anxious conservative brain can clearly see 352 of the last 3 economic collapses, which can lead people to prepare food stockpiles and shiny pieces of metal - or at least rituals and shiny pieces of glass as a talisman to ward off the evil eye.

But many with the conservative brain, like my father, deal with this anxiety in a completely different way. There are many businesses you simply can't operate and invest for the future while constantly fearful of "the next great collapse". They put the fear away and through force of will, live in an eternally optimistic world with a golden future, confident they can deal with adversity, "like water off a ducks back" my father likes to say. The downside to this adaptation is in learning to ignore their anxiety in their business context they have also learned how to disregard actual danger in a business context.

So Dr Pangloss is the conservative brain with the eternally optimistic coping strategy while Dr Doom is the conservative brain with a different coping strategy. Ironically they often both call the other "the liberal".

In contrast my great-grandmother could easily accommodate change so would typically be called a "Liberal brain". She, spoke five languages, enjoyed varied cultures and easily coped with living in new cities. My grandfather and his brother were born in Moscow where their Swiss father now lived, and his sister was born Lausanne Switzerland. The three went to primary school in Paris.

In 1911 she saw the very real troubles increasing in Russia and Europe so easily made the decision to learn English as her sixth language and build a home in Hollywood CA where she enrolled her children in Hollywood High. For her this was great fun and adventure rather than a hardship. She and the kids went back briefly in 1914 after being away three years, but as WW-I broke out during their summer visits, she told her parents and her husband she and the kids were returning to California and to be sure and let her know when things had returned to normal - which they never did.

When much older whenever there was a black-out in West Hollywood she was convinced it was the work of the Bolsheviks, which might have led many to assume she was a classic reds under the bed 1950s conservative. What she was in fact was a liberal brain with PTSD from very real world events which affected her life, relationships and wealth. Her brother died in WW-I a pilot, her parents lost their 36 farms, and her bonds which provided most of her income became worthless.