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