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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