The Righteous Mind - The Self-Righteous Mind

Jonathan Haidt begins his book, The Righteous Mind, with the late Rodney King’s famous quote, “Why can’t we all get along?” Haidt then goes on to explain quite the opposite phenomenon; the uniquely human capacity for people to form large non-kin groups and work together in more or less harmony to achieve common goals.

According to Haidt the key that unlock this capacity for cooperation are humankind’s evolved ability to create moral systems which he defines as “interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, and technologies that mesh well with evolved psychological mechanisms and thereby enable the community to suppress or regulate selfishness and make cooperation possible.” Humans have evolved a set of intuitive moral reflexes or appetites that help us to jointly protect our mutual and individual interests so we can get along in groups and collectively protect ourselves from other groups. There are three aspects to this theory.

First, moral judgments arise from innate instinctive reflexes; they are not derived from reason.  In fact reason is almost always used to create post hoc rationales for the moral decision we have already made.

Second, these innate moral intuitions or appetites seem to fall into six categories, care/harm, fairness/cheating, freedom/subjugation, community/anarchy, authority/insubordination, and sanctity/degradation.  Different groups tend to value these moral appetites differently. Haidt points out that, universally, liberals put far more weight on the appetites of care and fairness whereas conservatives give more balanced weight to all six appetites.

Third, moral appetites evolved not only to motivate individuals to protect self-interest, but also to motivate individuals to respond to threats and protect group interests. Haidt calls institutions that support these moral appetites moral capital.   They are particularly morally compelling because they give us the opportunity to become part of something bigger than ourselves. They almost exclusively fall into the category of community (Support the troops), authority (Respect the president), and sanctity (respect the flag). 

Haidt acknowledges that conflict can arise within groups (liberal vs. conservative Americans) or between groups (secular humanist west vs. Islamist middle east), but, for the most part, he attributes these conflicts to differences in emphasis on the various moral appetites.  He implies that if we understood these differences more completely we could all get along a lot better. He concludes the book with the following hopeful advise.

“We are deeply intuitive creatures whose gut feelings drive our strategic reasoning.  This makes it difficult – but not impossible – to connect with those who live in other (moral) matrices which are often built on different configurations of the available moral foundations.

So the next time you find yourself seated beside someone from another (moral) matrix, give it a try. Don’t just jump right in. Don’t bring up morality until you’ve found a few points of commonality or in some other way established a bit of trust.  And when you do bring up issues of morality, try to start with some praise, or with a sincere expression of interest.

We’re all stuck here for a while, so let’s try to work it out.”

However, if one looks a little more closely at conflicts both within and between groups these conflicts are far more intransigent and morality is precisely the problem.

Alexis de Tocqueville pointed out in Of honor in the United States and in democratic communities from volume II of Democracy in America that conflicting values can arise within groups when a set of rules is implemented as a means of suppressing one group to advance the interest of another. He doesn’t call this a moral code but instead uses the term honor which he defines as, “ . . . the aggregate of those rules by the aid of which . . . esteem, glory, or reverence is obtained.” 

In aristocratic, that is hierarchical societies a small group of people at the top of the hierarchy had to maintain power over those they ruled. They created this particular form of morality so that their class could maintain power over all others.

As de Tocqueville puts it, “A class which has succeeded in placing itself above all others, and which makes perpetual exertions to maintain this lofty position, must especially honor those virtues which are conspicuous for their dignity and splendor and which may be easily combined with pride and the love of power. “

De Tocqueville sees morality in more conventional liberal terms. The basic function of this system is to bring people together and is based on care and fairness. “It is the general and permanent interest of mankind that men should not kill each other . . .” He further notes that  “It often happens that these two standards differ; they sometimes conflict” as when;

“Some actions have been held to be at the same time virtuous and dishonorable; a refusal to fight a duel is an instance. “

“To debauch a woman of color scarcely injures the reputation of an American; to marry her dishonors him.”

Nonetheless, this honor code “at the periods of its greatest power sways the will more than the belief of men . . .” That is, it precisely fits Haidt’s definition of moral thought; it is a . . . deeply intuitive . . . gut feeling that drives strategic thinking.”

If what de Tocqueville calls honor then is a value system evoking the same emotions and the same neural pathways as morality, then what it really is is morality by another name but used for other purposes, namely as a means to separate people for the purpose exerting power over them.

DeToqueville believed that as society became more egalitarian this brand of morality would gradually disappear and this for the most part is true.

However, this same dynamic takes place when we consider conflicts between groups.  Furthermore, it is probably far older, stronger (hardwired), and more prevalent today than the moral conventions that separate class. Where this value system has been rampant throughout history is in religion.  It is in fact codified in western monotheistic religions where Jews, Christians, and Muslims have some variation of, “Love thy neighbor as thy self.” (Binding Morality) and “Though shalt have no other God but mine.” (Honor/Separating Morality)

As a result, you love your neighbor as long as they do or don’t believe in the pope, do or don’t believe God gave the land to you, or do or don’t ever print pictures of the prophet. In all those cases you kill your neighbor. 

While religion has been the conventional system for creating lethal group distinctions for most of human history, eliminating God doesn’t solve the problem and the lack of a God may only exacerbate the problem.  Nazi’s killed millions and communists killed 10’s of millions in the name of racial and ideological purity respectively.

Where a value system is invoked to separate rather than bring people together the moral stand is one that is based on either authority or purity and very occasionally community. The point of invoking this value system is to exert power over another person or group.  I can harm you, cheat you, take away your freedom, or exclude you from my group because you are immoral on grounds of either authority (who you do or don’t revere) or purity (you don’t adhere to rituals that defines my group).

However, eliminating moral appetites based on authority and purity would be both impossible (like eliminating taste and touch) and harmful. As Haidt points out in the third part of his book it is in the cultivation moral capital that man finds meaning in shared group practices.  It gives man the opportunity to become part of something bigger than himself and can motivate him to some of mankind’s highest endeavors. Gandhi, Mother Theresa, and Martin Luther King created meaning for themselves and the world, motivated by their adherence to their values of authority and religious ritual (purity).

On the other hand the quest for meaning through adherence to exclusionary authority and ritual can lead to the worst excesses of human depravity. We see it today when thousands young men and women, sensing the culture they live in bankrupt of moral capital, leave their comfortable lives in the west and travel to the middle east to commit the most heinous moral atrocities in the name of well - morality.

As Haidt comprehensively makes the case, morality is the answer to why we can get along at all.

Unfortunately, it is also the answer to the question, “Why can’t we all get along?”

Geoffrey Berg MD

References:

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion,

Jonathan Haidt First Vintage Books 01/2013

 

Democracy in America Volume II section 3 Chapter XVIII Of honor in the United States and in democratic communities Alexis de Tocqueville,

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/ch3_18.htm

A summary of Food for Thought up to now

My previous entries have fallen into the following four categories:

1.     Caveats

2.     Economies and Government

3.     Capitalism and democracy

4.     The modern world blessing or curse

Caveats

I started on a cautionary note about what we know and why we accept what we know.  Often what we profess to be true we believe to be true because “they” said it.  In addition and probably more importantly we believe certain things because of our emotional predisposition.

The take home is to be humble (as he dishes out platitudes) about what we think we know and why we are so willing to accept those “facts”. As an example of this, in a recent book discussion, I, being a hopeless romantic, came to a very optimistic view of the prospects of the protagonist at the end of the book. Another reader who is well known to be a hopeless, heartless cynic came to a very different conclusion.  My first reaction was to dismiss that person’s view because of course it was distorted. However, after further consideration of that point of view and realizing my own propensities, I changed my view to one that was much more guarded.  By taking a minute to consider the point from a different predisposition I got a fuller understanding of the reading.

Economies and government

Economies start when people barter and trade. As soon as that happens they have make/buy decisions. As economies mature people decide to buy much more than they decide to make.

Governments start as a means of protecting property.  Property is life liberty and physical possessions. When people form governments they trade freedom to (do as they please with their life liberty and physical possessions) for freedom from threats to their life liberty and physical possessions by others.

At first those “others” are people in other groups but as groups get bigger they need protection for their life liberty and physical possessions from people within the group. As a result laws, standards, and regulations are promulgated to protect property from others in the group.

The take home is that as labor divides and each person becomes more specialized, we overwhelmingly make buy decisions over make decisions.  As the system fosters this specialization we resort to a massive regulatory system to give us freedom from having to decide if the transactions we are making are fair – from the weight of a loaf of bread to the safety of the toaster we use. Subjecting ourselves to (and paying for) the laws, standards, and regulations of government we liberate ourselves to use our life liberty and physical possessions as we see fit within those constraints.

Capitalism and democracy

The economy is the game we all play and government makes the rules by which we play. At the current moment of history capitalism is the name of our game and democracy is the structure of the government that does the rule making. Most public policy debates revolve around how strictly should government call the game. Since its democracy, we all have a say in who gets to decide and enforce the rules. 

The take home here first is capitalism is not the problem.  Capitalism is descriptive of how people respond to property as soon as they start to barter and trade. Capitalism is never unbridled because it always operates within the constraints of government.

Problems arise when certain players either make the rules or can pay people to make the rules to favor them. Hereditary governments and communism are both inherently flawed in this respect because the rule makers are always in a position to make rules that favor themselves.  Democracy should theoretically be able to solve that problem because at least theoretically we all ought to have equal opportunity to make the rules or influence the selection of the people who will be making the rules for us.  Unfortunately, as it is practiced in the United States, the process is flawed because the more money you have the more you can pay to have the game called in your favor.

The modern world blessing or curse

In the last 250 years there has been an exponential spread and growth in the material wealth of mankind with most of this coming since the last half of the 20^th century.  This is clearly the result of capitalism providing markets for new technologies powered almost exclusively by fossil fuels.  This has created unprecedented wealth for unprecedented portions of the world’s population. In addition, because we no longer have to earn our bread by the sweat of another man’s brow or in most cases by anyone’s sweat, slavery and male gender domination are no longer normative behavior as they have been for most of human history.

For all the prosperity and refinements civilization has to offer, we feel something is oddly amiss.  In the time before history when we lived as hunter/gatherers we were more connected to our clan and to nature although we were much more likely to be at war with the clan or tribe that lived nearby.  We had a sense of agency that everything we did made a difference and the differences mattered because they were often the difference between life and death.  It has been suggested that since this is the way we had lived for most of mankind’s existence, perhaps the epidemic of depression, suicide, drug addiction, and child abuse we find ourselves in today is because we have not evolved as quickly as our cultural patterns have changed.

For most of human history man evolved while living on the brink.  Surviving on the brink gives man a sense of meaning even today.  According to Victor Frankl the search for meaning is man’s principle driving instinct.  And where did Dr. Frankl come to this revelation; living on the brink in Hitler’s concentration camps for more than four years.

“Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson Self-Reliance

The take home is that we have spent the last ten millennia moving away from the brink and we have in the last 2 centuries been wildly successful at it and we are not going back in large numbers, voluntarily, any time soon.  If for no other reason moving from the brink promotes survival with which we have also been wildly successful. That said meaning is important if not essential to life and finding it in the midst of our prosperity can be difficult and may explain some of the bizarre choices we see people in civilized society making.