Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Book could help loosen political gridlock

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THE CAP TIMES
Books of the Times by William Benedict
Wednesday, February 13, 2013

While members of the new Congress have now been sworn in many citizens remain worried that the political gridlock and mistrust will likely continue or even get worse in the months ahead.  Until late last year I too was pessimistic that this partisan divide would not get better. Then I discovered a book by social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt: “The Righteous Mind – Why Good Peopled Are Divided by Politics and Religion.” Before reading this book, I wondered what made me so convinced that my political party was right and the other was wrong?  

Haidt posits that 20 to 30 percent of your particular political persuasion is determined by only two genes which are handed down to you in the form of six unconscious moral foundations which predispose you toward a particular political ideology. The remaining 70 to 80 percent of your political predisposition is provided through your family history, life experiences and the times in which you live.

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

Haidt says each of these moral foundations act to both bind and blind us. Each colors our own particular moral persuasions and makes it difficult for others to convince us that we are wrong. Liberals often have difficulty seeing how the Liberty, Loyalty, Authority and Sanctity moral foundations have anything to do with morality. It is these four that best help us to understand the richness and depth of conservative thought. All moral foundations have evolved over the past five hundred thousand years, and they have allowed us as a species to adapt and survive.

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 then are more likely to be a conservative. By these definitions, this writer remains constitutionally a conservative.

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 much of the suffering my family had gone through the past several years. During the depression my parents 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 traveled to Washington DC to try and get their bonuses 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 a job. Soon afterwards Roosevelt created the Fair Deal including unemployment compensation and Social Security.

I often heard at our dinner table 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 both my familial and environmental history that has most influenced and shaped my politics. In spite of my more conservative DNA moorings, my family’s economic circumstances and the times we live in have shaped my strong political ideology and made me believe what I believe.
             
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.

Neuropsychology research also supports Haidt’s view that when engaged in a political discussion we rely predominately on our unconscious and our intuition. After all, it is in the unconscious mind that the roots of our 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 response is always intended to support and keep safe our moral reputation.

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. Haidt notes that while liberals are more apt to see the victims in existing social arrangements, and continually push us to update these arrangements and invent better ones. He 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 and that conservatives and liberals working together can check and balance each other.

Perhaps the best way for American citizens to better adapt to this period of 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. I predict that this can help all of us appreciate and respect each other more.

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