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Republicans, Democrats, Tea Party, Conservatives, New
Democrats, Liberals, Anglicans, Mennonites, Mormons . . . the list of groups
into which we’ve divided ourselves could fill this page, if not an entire book.
Coexistence of unlike-minded groupings is—as a general rule—not a problem but a
listen to question period in the Canadian House of Commons, news of the bloody uprising
in Syria or rancorous politics in the USA, an historical survey of the
splitting-up of church denominations over a variety of issues through the
centuries all remind us that there are times and occasions when coexisting
groups easily become conflicting groups.
Jonathan Haidt is the Thomas
Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of
Business. (A great introduction to Haidt’s thinking on the psychology of
morality can be found by clicking here: Jonathan
Haidt TED address)
In The Righteous Mind, Haidt concerns himself primarily with the
liberal/conservative divide in our view of the world and are essential moral
stances. His analysis rests on a number of assumptions, and I’d like to
summarize the book by focusing on these:
1)
Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning
second. Based on a variety of (mostly university-based) studies, Haidt
begins with the assumption that we don’t find our way to a particular moral
stance through logic, but through a more intuitive route. He uses the imagery
of an elephant and its rider, where the elephant is intuition and the rider is
reason. In practice, the elephant is the first to lean this way or that, to
choose a course left or right. The rider’s role is not so much to steer the
elephant as it is to justify the elephant’s choices.
“Nobody is ever going to invent an ethics
class that makes people behave ethically after they step out of the classroom.
Classes are for riders, and riders are just going to use their new knowledge to
serve their elephants more effectively (p. 90).”
2)
The human mind at birth is not a blank slate
as regards moral thinking. Just as an infant seems prepared at birth to
learn language, it comes prepared to learn to distinguish between harm and
care, to recognize sanctity, to incorporate fairness principles, etc. A
year-old bird builds a nest in the exact manner that her parents built the one
in which the bird was hatched . . . without ever having been instructed in (let
alone without ever having observed) nest-building technique.
3)
With time, the growing-up environment
produces a “morality matrix” in us. Haidt’s central thesis revolves around
the existence of liberal and conservative matrices, how they develop,
how they differ and why both are legitimate, although different.
4)
There are at least five major components of
any moral matrix: Harm/Care, Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal,
Authority/Subversion, Sanctity/Degradation. Individual morality results from
the emphasis or de-emphasis of one or more of these components: liberal
morality results from the emphasis of Harm/Care and Fairness/Cheating while
conservative morality emphasises the other three above the first two.
This is simplified, but if it
turns out to be a viable set of assumptions, the implications become obvious.
Unless one insists that one matrix is wrong and the other right, they should
help us to see members of other groups in a new light; they are what they are
for very good reasons and in the end—because we have developed successful,
multi-group societies—it may well be that like Yin and Yang, the differences are conducive to balance and
progress. In other words, it’s right that the Conservatives under Stephen
Harper exist, because without them, our culture would over-emphasize social
welfare and neglect the appropriate emphases on loyalty and patriotism, respect
for authority and the sacred aspects of being.
Haidt visualizes human moral
behaviour as 90% chimp and 10% bee. Depending on our moral matrix, the
independent, whatever-is-good-for-number-one part (the chimp; chimps
demonstrate very little empathy or altruistic behaviour) or the all-for-one
& one-for-all part will come to the fore in approximately the proportion of
9 to 1. Without putting too much faith in the proportions, it seems about right
that we concern ourselves with our personal interests most of the time, but can
be moved through circumstances to become hive dwellers. People who dedicate
themselves to “green issues,” like Greenpeace, for instance, have “hived” in
order to do together what can’t be done individually.
Hives are typically in
competition with other hives. The application of this can lead us to a number
of observations, including how one gets strangers to come together and form a “hive”
in order to fight a war: marching and uniforms play a role for certain.
At the centre of The Righteous Mind is the persuasive
argument that a conservative, libertarian or liberal outlook is neither wrong
nor right, but that both are natural developments in individuals and in the cultures
to which they belong. As a consequence of failing to credit this, we often do
the exact wrong thing when conflict threatens a desired unity. Haidt closes
his book with an admonition that seems a bit naïve, but may just sum up the “right”
way to be with each other:
“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 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 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 (p. 318).”
For some of us, the calling in
life may be to be vocally liberal, to stand ready to ensure that the poor are
fed, the ill are given medical care, the rich made to pay their fair share,
etc. For conservatives, the calling may be equally strong to ensure that
individualism and the emphasis on individual human rights never reaches a
degree that makes us unable to cooperate when cooperation is essential. And for
libertarians, the calling may be to hold up the possibility that there may be
times and situations in which governments should butt out and leave matters to
unfold through the ebb and flow of independent initiative.
What is certain in Canada
today is that we could use a reality check; our current government finds it
really hard to cooperate with the Opposition, so much so that parliament is
repeatedly held in contempt. The Opposition, for its part, would do well to
take Haidt’s advice and stop loading their questions to the government with pejoratives that simply serve to heighten the animosity and make cooperation
impossible.
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