This is long, but it’s worth watching.
Jonathan Haidt: On The Moral Mind.
It’s not very often I find something like this, that describes so well why I hate talking politics with people. Because to have good honest political discussion is impossible if people cannot grasp what this guy is talking about.
And because, so often, so sadly often, I hear both sides screaming the same exact things about each other. And they’re both right.
Well . . . I’m going to have to watch that later on when I can get myself a little peace and quiet. Wish me luck.
A little peace and quiet.
I vaguely recall moments like that. Once. Long ago. In my dim, distant past.
I watched it and I’ve been thinking about it and I need to watch it again. I really liked the fact that he is trying to look underneath the psychology of our dual party system. I like that idea. And I like where he went with it. I lean toward Buddhism, philosophically, so his conclusion made real sense to me.
I keep getting stuck though. It seems to me that he was saying that conservatives are more moral, mathematically speaking, that liberals. That was the shocking hook of his argument, right? That is what was supposed to really grab our attention. I saw the graph and I heard the argument. And I keep getting stuck there.
Is that right? Conservatives are more moral than liberals? Because that premise doesn’t jive with his conclusion. If we are all moral people, if we all believe we are right, if we all want to do well, but if conservatives simply have more values than liberals…. huh? That just doesn’t make sense to me.
I suspect, this research has a conservative bias. I wish he had said that up front, either way. And I do need to watch it again. Did I miss something?
I think he was saying that both liberals and conservatives are Moral People, but that they exhibit it in significantly different ways. It was really eye-opening for me when he talked about how conservatives are hung up on purity regarding sex, but liberals exhibit purity regarding food. In both instances, it’s a Highly Organized Value System of What We’ll Put Into Our Bodies or Do With Our Bodies, but using two different substances.
And those graphs showed that both liberals and conservatives value fairness, but in different ways, in different degrees.
In my own mind, the way I’ve always seen this play out is this: In a broad-spectrum generalization, it can be said that the majority of liberals are pro-choice but also support gun control, while conservatives are more pro-life yet staunchly against gun control. (I know, I know, I’m making Very Broad Generalizations Here. I’m just trying to make a point. Bear with me.)
So, in a sense, liberals scream for freedom to control their own bodies while wanting to do away with freedom regarding the right to bear arms. And the conservatives scream for the freedom to bear arms, but want more than anything to control the freedom women have regarding their own biological functions. And these two issues very often have polarizing effects in any given election, whether on a local or national level. Both sides want freedom, and both want to reign in freedom. It’s just the issues that flip-flop. And both sides will often scream at each other the same exact phrases and mantras regarding freedom and patriotism, and then turn around and accuse the other side of wanting to abolish freedom and rights of others.
The value of Freedom is held in highest regard by both sides. But they argue it on polarized issues.
Does that help?
Does it even make any sense?
That is interesting to think about. And thank you for posting that video and being willing to talk about it. I’ve been wishing for a place to talk about it, outside of my own real life social circle.
I think liberals wish to drastically limit the freedom of handguns and automatic weapons and weapons for criminals. I’ve never heard of a liberal who wanted to limit shotguns and rifles for hunting. And, when I was living in Texas and friendly with a passel of republican women it became clear to me that most republican women are pro choice. I think most people are pro choice. Notably, BARBARA AND LAURA BUSH are pro choice. I think only a very small religious group keeps the whole question of choice on the table.
And the whole food/sex analogy was fascinating! It made me gasp. I loved it. But it would work a lot better for me if the food thing were consistent over time. Our food supply is, in fact, so criminally dirty in so many ways. And kept that way through atrocious money mongering politics. And all bodies need to wake up to that, imo, for the health of our bodies but more over because of the environmental damage of industrial farming. So it seems to me, a valid concern, and not a democratic concern of even 3o or 40 years ago – hardly even 20 years ago.
I know that doesn’t change your argument, though. Just interesting to note…
I think both parties are most fundamentally concerned with resources. And I was told, in high school of all places, that natural resources will disperse in any natural community in a pattern consistent with a bell jar. Generally speaking, of course. So there will always be a few with lots and lots and lots, most with enough, and a few with almost none. I think democrats seek to level that out by taxing and redistributing resources – even with the knowledge that that practice of management will waste some resources. And conservatives see, in the bell jar, a natural and inevitable pattern and wish to let it run its course – just like natural selection. The thinking there being not to throw resources at ones who may naturally squander them anyway, I think. But also, that it is somehow unfair to take from those with lots and lots, for any reason, never mind what is done with resources after they are taken.
And when I look at that pattern, I am more drawn to the democratic way of managing resources. But what that video helps me see, is that my democratic choice doesn’t, necessarily, make me more moral than a conservative… I guess. Even though it feels more moral to me. It feels wrong to me, to run a party on the notion that folks should be left to fend for themselves, even when we all know it is an absolute fact of natural law that some will always be at a very real disadvantage. And also, that many who have so much got it all through unfair advantage or simply by a natural and inevitable pattern. Someone HAS to have lots and lots. Its a natural phenomenon, but that doesn’t suggest entitlement to me.
Getting clear on the underlying premises of the parties really helps me wade through the rhetorical muck. Pondering who is more moral, is a good point. And I think it is most helpful to reiterate that everyone believes they are good and right. No one is trying to be selfish or wasteful or stupid. People do, generally, try to be good. Right?
(Except for McCain. heh heh. Sorry. Couldn’t resist.)
Ok, the food thing touched a nerve. But check this out today in the paper:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/10/03/milk.melamine.australia.ap/index.html?eref=rss_latest
“Duque said 28 other products, including M&M chocolate candies, powdered milk and yogurt have been cleared for sale and 200 more were being tested. Additional results may be released early next week.”
Just in time for Halloween, poison candy. How much of our food comes from China anyway? And this is but one infinitesimal drop in the food problem bucket…. But I’m no food prude…. I am such a food prude! Ack, help, I am a prude. Hi, I’m Katherine and I’m a prude.
Sigh.
Katherine… LOL!!!!!!!
I’m a food prude too. I freely admit it.
I agree with you that many Republican conservative women are pro-choice. I’m not sure how much of a majority they have over prolifers because I haven’t looked up the stats lately, but there are quite a lot of prochoicers. That was one of the major causes of George Bush Sr’s defeat: he was forced to come out and say he was prolife by Pat Buchanan, and all the prochoice republican women ran for cover and voted for Perot.
However, on gun control, I’m pretty sure one could argue that conservatives also favor drastically limiting criminals’ access to weapons. I think both liberals and conservatives agree there. The disconnect happens when the method of how to do that infringes on the 2nd Amendment. Conservatives freak out on that one.
And me personally, I just don’t get that argument. If the justification for reducing the Bill of Rights is so that “criminals won’t have access to guns” then I’ll have to side with the conservatives, because I just can’t see a bunch of criminals sitting around planning a heist and when they talk about which guns to use, one of them whipping out a copy of the new Constitution and sayin’: “Well semi-automatic rifles are OUT. Did you see that new law? We’ll have to use tasers, I guess.” I imagine it would be more likely that criminals would ignore changes to the Constitution and just go out and buy a bunch of illegal guns on the black market. Which renders changing the 2nd Amendment on the basis that it will keep guns out of criminals hands useless.
Which brings us back to the starting point: Yes, we need to find a way to keep guns away from criminals, but at the same time, we can’t let fear make us Keep Handing Our Rights Over To The Government. (sigh)
As for the bell jar, I like that. I think I’ve natural selection theory that talks about how everything organizes itself into the bell curve. It’s a fascinating analogy. And it raises fabulous questions about manmade changes to the curve. Like in the long run, is it even possible to do that? And how long is that long run? Even with man’s impact on climate and the planet and its resources, doesn’t it all even out into the bell shape again at some point? Isn’t that what global warming is doing? Trying to bring balance back to that shape?
Am I even MAKING any sense here?
This is what happens when we’re stuck at home all day because we’re having the furnace replaced and the kids are playing nicely and giving me more than a few scant minutes at the computer.
When I was typing out that whole bell jar thing I was thinking, OH Shit! If it is all truly a natural cycle of resources and no one can alter the pattern then maybe the republicans are right. After all, no one LIKES paying taxes. But that’s just exactly where all those pesky morals come into it for me. If we are human and if we have choice and if we can do things like wage billion dollar wars over seas and put people on the moon and make the internet and create so much food we even have Unfood such as gummy worms and whoppers, if we can do most of the things we set our minds too, Can we not decide to mandate health care and help for the poor and such? Can’t we do that, since we are so cool and human? I mean, isn’t it all exactly a moral issue?
Gun control isn’t one of my hot button issues, personally. I grew up around shotguns. But when I was living in England, where hand guns are illegal, they were AGHAST that handguns were legal here. People used to ask me all the time, “aren’t you afraid of getting shot?” And I was 15 and I was all like, “Huh?!” But even the Bobbies only carried billy clubs. I know it seems odd. And I’ve heard the whole “if guns are illegal then only criminals will have guns” theory. But in cold hard fact, not very many people ever get shot in the UK. More people die in the US of accidental shootings, and most of those are children, than in all of the UK for all gunshot deaths combined. So, the gun thing is probably really fucking stupid of us. And who conceals a shotgun, for crying out loud? No one. No one sneaks a shotgun to school. But I should say, my stats on all that gun stuff is twenty years old now. Not sure of the current stats.
Anyhow, thanks for the chat. I always enjoy talking to you.