Article: Conservatives may not like liberals, but they seem to understand them. In contrast, many liberals find conservative voters not just wrong but also bewildering.
One academic study asked 2,000 Americans to fill out questionnaires about moral questions. In some cases, they were asked to fill them out as they thought a typical liberal or a typical conservative would respond.
Moderates and conservatives were adept at guessing how liberals would answer questions. Liberals, especially those who described themselves as very liberal, were least able to put themselves in the minds of their adversaries and guess how conservatives would answer.
M: How hard is it to imagine that a saner person will not understand the thinking of a more insane person because he does not have the tools, whereas an insane person, having had to become insane, knows residually, what sanity is? And what if the insane give and interpreted the test? Let us see the test so we may judge our answers against the data and conclusions of others.
A: Now a fascinating new book comes along that, to a liberal like myself, helps demystify the right and illuminates the kind of messaging that might connect with voters of all stripes. The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt, a University of Virginia psychology professor, argues that, for liberals, morality is largely a matter of three values: caring for the weak, fairness and liberty. Conservatives share those concerns (although they think of fairness and liberty differently) and add three others: loyalty, respect for authority and sanctity.
M: So where do we see that conservatives care for the weak? And if fairness and liberty are seen differently, how is that even the same thing? And why is it not that liberals care about loyalty, respect for authority, and sanctity, but see them differently. We are being fed a bunch of words with no ability to form our own opinions. So far, I see only bull shit.
A: Those latter values bind groups together with a shared respect for symbols and institutions such as the flag or the military. They are a reminder that human moral judgments are often about far more than just helping others.
M: Really? How is a shared respect for symbols institutions and a flag or the military anything but sick values in Nazi Germany? Indeed immoral judgments are often about what is irrelevant and not about what helps people. And how can you help people if you are mentally ill?
A: Some of Haidts most interesting material is his examination of taboos.
M: Indeed, because the capacity to vomit up what may be poison becomes attached to ideas and these things can be inculcated into children by torturing them, making them feel disgust at themselves by showing them your own. Fold who feel disgust are dangerous. Poke them in their taboos hard enough and they may try to kill you. A mirror is a good way to do that.
A: His team asked research subjects pesky questions. What would they think of a brother and sister who experimented with incest, while using birth control? Or of a family that, after their pet dog was run over, ate it for dinner?
Most respondents were appalled but often had trouble articulating why; we find these examples instinctively disturbing even if no one is harmed. (One lesson of the book: If you see Haidt approaching with a clipboard, run!)
M: Hahahahaha, let us minimize seeing our selves as we really are and make a joke of it. The breaking of taboo is the justification we all seek to justify venting violence because we acquired our taboos by having them beaten into us. The instinct is the retch reflex, the rest is simply learned.
A: Of course, political debates arent built on the consumption of roadkill. But they do often revolve around this broader moral code. This years Republican primaries have been a kaleidoscope of loyalty, authority and sanctity issues such as whether church-affiliated institutions can refuse to cover birth control in health insurance policies and thats perhaps why people like me have found the primaries so crazy.
M: People like you may be confused because you lack introspection and self analysis, for fear of what you will find, but there is nothing about the above that is mystifying at all. They are all the ineluctable results of self hate, the pretense that one is better oneself that ones actual state.
A: Another way of putting it is this: Americans speak about values in six languages, from care to sanctity. Conservatives speak all six, but liberals are fluent in only three. And some (me included) mostly use just one, care for victims.
M: As I have said a thousand times and you won't hear it now either, there are two outcomes of being tortured as children, the Authoritarian Stockholm syndrome like effect of taking the side of the torturers and becoming one yourself, or rebellion against the torture and sympathy for the victim. Both are sick because both are based on hate, but hate of those who harm, in my opinion, is to be preferred over those who love to do it. However, in each case there is suppressed rage that will do damage when released.
A: Moral psychology can help to explain why the Democratic Party has had so much difficulty connecting with voters, writes Haidt, a former liberal who says he became a centrist while writing the book.
M: Where is the moral philosophy? I see only nonsense.
A: In recent years, there has been growing research into the roots of political ideologies, and they seem to go deep. Adults who consider themselves liberals were said decades earlier by their nursery-school teachers to be curious, verbal novelty seekers but not very neat or obedient.
M: And all these have roots that go deeper. Nobody wants to know what really happened to us.
A: Some research suggests that conservatives are particularly attuned to threats, with a greater startle reflex when they hear loud noises. Conservatives also secrete more skin moisture when they see disgusting images, such as a person eating worms. Liberals feel disgust, too, but a bit less.
M: Particularly attuned to threats is another way of saying having greater fear, but it's really fear of different things. Conservatives may gag more at the notion of deviation from normative rules, which makes them closet gays, etc, but liberals will go quite nuts at the thought of being controlled by inquisitional priests and religious fundamentalists.
A: Anything that prods us to think of disgust or cleanliness also seems to have at least a temporary effect on our politics. It pushes our sanctity buttons and makes us more conservative.
M: Of course, anything that threatens to awaken memories from childhood will bring our defenses to full capacity. Fear is very reactive. Fear is the essence of conservatism.
A: A University of Toronto study found that if people were asked to wash their hands with soap and water before filling out a questionnaire, they become more moralistic about issues like drug use and pornography. Researchers found that interviewees on Stanfords campus offered harsher, more moralistic views after fart spray had been released in the area.
M: Again, conservatism is hypocrisy, the pretense that one is better than what one really was made to feel. Conservatives sought safety by conforming. They are the shining warriors of morality, and it is thus they do all their sins. What is moral to them is what was inculcated at great threat.
A: At Cornell University, students answered questions in more conservative ways when they were simply near a hand sanitizer station.
M: Makes perfect sense. A hand sanitizer reminds you that you are unclean and, well, you know, there's no way in hell that we can admit that. So out comes the need to pretend.
A: Our ideologies shape much more than our politics. We even seek pets who reflect our moral outlook. Researchers at YourMorals.org found that liberals prefer dogs who are gentle but not subservient, while conservatives seek dogs who are loyal and obedient.
M: Dogs who????? Hehe Mine was uncontrollable and vicious.
A: In short, moral and political judgments are complex and contradictory, shaped by a panoply of values, personalities maybe even smells.
M: They are shaped my unconscious motivations, the need not to feel what we feel, the desire to control the world such that our fears are never felt.
A: Little of this is a conscious or intellectual process. Indeed, Haidt cites research that a higher I.Q. doesn'tt lead people to think through their moral positions in a more balanced, open way (although they are more eloquent in defending those positions).
M: And because so little is conscious or intellectual, so too do few people understand much of anything. I have made this point a trillion times here and the implications are instantly dismissed. You know nothing much at all about what makes you work because you do not want to.
A: Theres even extensive research finding that professors of moral philosophy are no more moral than other scholars.
M: No kidding, hehe. People do not seek truth but complex delusions that end their questioning. Everybody wants to figure everything out, box it up and put it on a shelf so we never touch our feelings.
A: And do you know what kind of books are disproportionately stolen from libraries? Books on ethics.
M: What better way for the unconscious to show us how worthless we really are because it's what we really feel.
The first time I met a man who knew something and could help me, when I paid him I pocketed his pen. And while I swore up and down to myself that I thought it was mine because it was identical to the one I had, he said that I was far far from the first to try that.
