Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Why can’t our political leaders work together?

--> December 12, 2012
Brookville Democrat

Did you know that your genes help to determine whether you are a Democrat or a Republican? In a new book, “The Righteous Mind – Why People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.”  Jonathan Haidt identifies two important genes that predispose (but not predetermine) human political ideology, Haidt, a moral psychologist, reviews six major moral foundations which reside in our unconscious mind and from which we intuitively create our own personal and innate political narratives.

Briefly these moral foundations include Care/harm, Fairness/cheating, Liberty/oppression, Loyalty/betrayal, Authority/subversion, Sanctity/degradation. Liberals tend toward Care and Fairness foundations and while the conservatives also include these, they are likely to give greater emphasis to the remaining four foundations – Liberty, Loyalty, Authority and Sanctity.

Haidt says each of these foundations act to both bind and blind us. Each foundation confirms our own particular moral foundations and makes it difficult for others to convince us that we are wrong. Liberals often have difficulty of seeing how Liberty, Loyalty, Authority and Sanctity moral foundations have anything to do with morality.

People whose DNA causes them to get special pleasure from novelty and variety while simultaneously being less sensitive to signs of threat are more inclined toward a liberal point of view. Conversely, if your genes incline you to be uncomfortable with new experiences and sensitive to threat from unknown danger, you are more likely to be a conservative.

In the midst of the continuing political gridlock in our country I was delighted to read that the author’s analysis concluded that these two political perspectives were like yin and yang. Quoting John Stuart Mill he notes that liberals are experts in care; they are better able to see the victims in existing social arrangements, and continually push us to update these arrangements and invent better ones. Haidt believes that liberals should continue to restrain corporations, and that some big problems really can be solved with regulation. Conversely he believes that conservatives provide a crucial counterweight to liberal reform movements. He believes that conservatives’ support and faith in the market is indispensable. Working together they can check and balance each other.
 
For many years I have wondered why some people are liberals and others conservative. Now I have some clarity. I no longer think that liberals by themselves have the total answer. We need the best of both parties. The author notes that these six distinct moral foundations have evolved over the past five hundred thousand years. They have allowed us as a species to adapt and survive.

Perhaps Haidt’s greatest contribution is in humbling us by destroying the myth that humans operate mainly from their conscious and rational minds. Haidt does this by using a metaphor of an elephant and a rider. The elephant is used to represent the ninety percent of our unconscious mind while the conscious and rational part of our mind, the conscious rider, is a puny ten percent. Haidt’s research should help us replace self-righteousness and intolerance with greater tolerance and humility when discussing politics.

John Adam observed that Thomas Jefferson rarely gave public speeches and instead took copious notes for legislative committee meetings. Adams, speculating about this peculiar Jefferson trait, was known to say, that like Jefferson, he knew of no instance of a legislator readily changing his opinion simply after listening to a colleague’s contrary opinion. This suggest that a person’s political persuasions are hard wired at the unconscious level and very rarely given up. Has this not been your experience?

Just as your genes help to predispose your moral foundations, developmental and other significant environmental experiences also contribute. After reading this book, for example, it was clear that my genes were such that at birth I was constitutionally a conservative. By nature even today new experiences make me anxious and I am often sensitive and quite frightened of danger and the unknown. Thus my DNA is that of conservative.

Why then have I never felt any thing else but a liberal? At my birth in 1935 the Great Depression was just ending. I learned early from my working class parents that  President, Herbert Hoover was to blame for all the suffering my family had gone through the past several years. During the depression my parents migrated/hitchhiked to Texas to find employment but found no work there. My family returned to Indiana and my dad and other World War I Veterans marched to Washington DC to try and get their bonus early. Instead President Hoover ordered General McArthur to destroy their tent city and drove them out of Washington with tanks and the calvary.

My family story also involved President Franklin Delano Roosevelt who after his election soon created the Civilian Conservation Corp and Works Progress Administration. Only then did my dad get job. Soon afterwards Roosevelt created the Fair Deal including unemployment compensation and Social Security.

Few evenings at our dinner table did I not hear how thankful my parents were for the Democrats and for AFL/CIO labor unions which together had helped my parents to get out of poverty and find a secure job and a happy life. While my conservative personality and temperament has still not changed, I now know it has been my familial and environmental history that has most influenced and shaped my politics. My DNA and life experiences has shaped my moral foundations, and made me believe what I believe. 
             
The moral psychology research also supports the view that when engaged in a political discussion we rely predominately on our subconscious and our intuition. After all, it is in the subconscious mind that our sacred moral foundations are found. Strategic reasoning always comes after our intuitive response and usually takes the form of providing more evidence to support and justify our political argument. Recent research suggests that our conscious rider response is always intended to support and keep safe our moral reputation.

Perhaps the best way for Americans citizens to help break this partisan gridlock would be for each of us to read this book and familiarize ourselves with our own political genes and how we characteristically use our innate foundational narratives to make our case. Insights gained from this book can also help us to listen for and hear the others moral arguments. You will find that once you have been introduced to the true nature of your political genes and moral foundations they will become immediately recognizable --- both for you and the other. I predict that if you do, both of you will appreciate and respect each other more.

William R. Benedict blogs at: danecountyalmanac.blogspot.com