Embedded Files
( - previous issue - / - next issue - )
AR 22:23 - Today's "modern outrage culture"
In this issue:
CULTURE - has moral relativism morphed into moral pluralism?
Apologia Report 22:23 (1,343)
June 15, 2017
CULTURE
"Differently Moral" by Ted Olson, editorial director for Christianity Today -- begins by reporting that the "moral relativist" has pretty much passed into history. "Many Christian preachers, apologists, evangelists, and writers have taken heed of the declining numbers....
"If anything, today we live in an era of constant moral indignation" which Olson later describes as a "modern outrage culture, especially in its most performative social media outlets. ...
"Recently, researchers have asked: Do conservatives really have a more robust moral mindset than liberals?
"The answer has been a qualified yes. Jonathan Haidt's influential The Righteous Mind [1] argued that liberals and conservatives really do have radically different moralities and ways of weighing loyalty, authority, sanctity, liberty, care, and fairness. Conservatives embrace all six but emphasize the former ones, he said. Liberals are 'indifferent at best' to the first three. Haidt (a self identified liberal <www.goo.gl/VYEEKw> who believes there is no 'one true morality') argues that conservative moralities are more persuasive because they are broad; liberal moralities, he said, are impoverished. ...
"It isn't that conservatives and liberals have shrugged off transcendent ideas of right and wrong. Rather, they each appeal to a different transcendent moral foundation. We are not in [an] era of moral relativism but moral pluralism. ...
"It's even hard to have a conversation when we view each other as immoral. ...
"In our conversations with unbelievers, we owe them the respect to try to understand their moral commitments and frustrations. They very well may be motivated to look for answers, especially as they find their best moral efforts frustrated. The fields are ripe for the harvest.
"Our culture's moral indignation offers opportunities to proclaim Jesus' saving grace and direct people tot he one who is truth, beauty, and goodness." Christianity Today, Apr '17, p24. [7]
Haidt's book has been surprisingly well received. Of the first 29 reviews of Righteous Mind that were listed using the Academic Search Premier database from EBSCO (available online for free from many public libraries), 62% were pro, with 21% con, and 17% mixed. Some random observations:
The journal Society (51:686-91 - 2014) gives a concise description of the arena: "Politics today is a debate about what is truly Sacred for society - the conservatives' traditional sacred realm of family, religion, and nation-state, the libertarians' sacred individual liberty, or the liberals' sacred care for those who are harmed by society." [14]
The December 2012 issue (p110) of Foreign Policy named Haidt one of their 100 "Top Global Thinkers" for his advice on avoiding political prejudice. "Haidt argues that we form political opinions not through simple reasoning but based on moral preferences humans have developed to reinforce ties to larger groups or tribes. ... [H]e offers hope that we can achieve something more - a wisdom that transcends brute moral emotions." [10]
The December 2015 issue of Commonweal (p44) calls the book a "masterwork of descriptive moral psychology" in which "Haidt narrates, in part, his own journey of coming to understand people whose moral reasoning differs profoundly from his: social conservatives." He reports that western culture has "very limited modes of moral reasoning. ... The explanatory power of the book is enormous...." What of Haidt's conclusion? "Hint: successful methods don't usually involve argumentation." [8]
The American Spectator described it as "the hottest book this summer" (Sep '12, p58). [5] A review in Dissent (Fall '12, p108) laments that "Some of us, especially on the left, believe that class inequality, poverty, greed, corruption, prejudice, orthodoxy, and ignorance divide us no matter how hard we try to see the other person's point of view." [9] The Jesuit magazine America (206:13 - 2012, p2) finds that "What is missing in [the book] is a sense of moral development, of growth and conversion in moral attitudes, of differences in moral perceptions that are rooted in differences in worth." [3]
Scientific American (22:6 - 2012, p69) notes: "Understanding that our emotions are in control, Haidt believes, will help bridge the gap between groups with conflicting ideas. ...
"Understanding that our feelings guide our behavior and that political adversaries have different emotional triggers, he writes, will help both groups come to terms with each other. ...
"Haidt argues that religions are ultimately less about believing in a higher power than about forming bonds with others and being part of something larger than oneself. ...
"Though at times highly philosophical, Haidt's book is a must-read if you want to understand how conflicts arise - and how we might prevent them." [13]
The Journal of Moral Education (42:1 - 2013, p134-6) begins: "Jonathan Haidt is arguably today's most influential moral psychologist....
"Haidt's proposed inclusivity is a disguised form of liberal guilt and insists that feelings of disgust and in-group/out-group loyalty are best understood as the lower if not more obsolete denizens of our moral sensibility. ...
"While these criticisms are, hopefully, worthy of some attention they should not distract from Haidt's larger goal: to inject today's especially acrimonious political culture with some non-partisan understanding and dialogue. It is in this regard that the book is largely successful. He has certainly convinced me of the importance for moral educators to pay more attention to the elephant. ...
"Many may not like all of the contours of the portrait he paints, but that might just be the point. Helping us to see ourselves as we are, rather than how we like to present ourselves, may be one of the most important benefits of his book." [11]
We read in the New York Times Book Review (Mar 25 '12, pBR12) that "what [Haidt is] really after is enlightenment. He wants to open your mind to the moral intuitions of other people. [S]tep outside your neighborhood or your country, and you'll discover that your perspective is highly anomalous. Haidt has read ethnographies, traveled the world and surveyed tens of thousands of people online. He and his colleagues have compiled a catalog of six fundamental ideas that commonly undergird moral systems: care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority and sanctity. Alongside these principles, he has found related themes that carry moral weight: divinity, community, hierarchy, tradition, sin and degradation.
"The worldviews Haidt discusses may differ from yours. They don't start with the individual. They start with the group or the cosmic order. They exalt families, armies and communities. They assume that people should be treated differently according to social role or status - elders should be honored, subordinates should be protected. They suppress forms of self-expression that might weaken the social fabric. They assume interdependence, not autonomy. They prize order, not equality.
"These moral systems aren't ignorant or backward. Haidt argues that they're common in history and across the globe because they fit human nature. ...
"You don't have to go abroad to see these ideas. You can find them in the Republican Party. Social conservatives see welfare and feminism as threats to responsibility and family stability. The Tea Party hates redistribution because it interferes with letting people reap what they earn. Faith, patriotism, valor, chastity, law and order - these Republican themes touch all six moral foundations, whereas Democrats, in Haidt's analysis, focus almost entirely on care and fighting oppression. This is Haidt's startling message to the left: When it comes to morality, conservatives are more broad-minded than liberals. ...
"Haidt applauds the left for regulating corporate greed. But he worries that in other ways, liberals dissolve moral capital too recklessly. Welfare programs that substitute public aid for spousal and parental support undermine the ecology of the family. ...
"Another aspect of human nature that conservatives understand better than liberals, according to Haidt, is parochial altruism, the inclination to care more about members of your group - particularly those who have made sacrifices for it - than about outsiders. ...
"The hardest part, Haidt finds, is getting liberals to open their minds. Anecdotally, he reports that when he talks about authority, loyalty and sanctity, many people in the audience spurn these ideas as the seeds of racism, sexism and homophobia. And in a survey of 2,000 Americans, Haidt found that self-described liberals, especially those who called themselves 'very liberal,' ... don't understand conservative values. And they can't recognize this failing, because they're so convinced of their rationality, open-mindedness and enlightenment. ...
"From 1976 to 2008, the proportion of Americans living in highly partisan counties increased from 27 percent to 48 percent. The Internet exacerbates this problem by helping each user find evidence that supports his views. ...
"Traits we evolved in a dispersed world, like tribalism and righteousness, have become dangerously maladaptive in an era of rapid globalization. A pure scientist [or future algorithm? - RP] would let us purge these traits from the gene pool by fighting and killing one another. But Haidt wants to spare us this fate. He seeks a world in which 'fewer people believe that righteous ends justify violent means.' To achieve this goal, he asks us to understand and overcome our instincts. He appeals to a power capable of circumspection, reflection and reform.
"If we can harness that power - wisdom - our substantive project will be to reconcile our national and international differences." <www.goo.gl/CVIiM>
A second, earlier review in Society (50:86-88, 2013) begins: "It is not often that a prominent academic psychologist is attacked by a Nobel prize-winning economist in the New York Times. But this is what happened to Jonathan Haidt after a speech <www.goo.gl/TwFdCE> he delivered at a meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, in which he claimed that social psychologists discriminated against conservatives, a group significantly underrepresented in their ranks. Portrayed in unflattering terms in the research literature (fearful, close-minded, and not very bright), conservatives experienced a hostile environment in the academy, Haidt charged. ... Haidt was arguing that the lack of political diversity in social psychology led to the same kind of narrow-mindedness that is feared to result from a lack of racial diversity. [His speech] makes for an interesting case study of some of the central themes of Haidt's book: that righteousness exists because emotion has primacy over reason and that reason is employed to justify entrenched political positions and moral values rather than to dispassionately weigh evidence. ...
"[E]mbedded in this readable, witty, and thought-provoking discussion of the science of moral reasoning is a personal narrative of Haidt's transformation from an atheistic, liberal, life-long member of the Democratic party into a moderate post-partisan who finds value in religion and in political views he once scorned. ... It is a powerful and affecting story. Interweaving his own narrative with in-depth analysis is a brilliant way to challenge the reader to engage both personally and intellectually with the author's exploration of human nature, and it gives Haidt's arguments more immediacy and force. ...
"I think that there is a great deal that is correct in Haidt's thesis, although I also find it deeply unsettling. [I]t will be very hard to overcome profound ideological differences. Haidt considers this an unfortunate consequence of human nature, but the necessary cost of our unusual and profound capacity for altruism. ... Haidt recommends heavy doses of empathy on the theory that it is hard to hate someone if you feel compassion for them. ... In a globalized, technological civilization far removed in many ways from the limited world of small group living in which our ancestors evolved, we need more than tribal instincts to make good moral decisions. ...
"Haidt avoids tackling moral relativism head on and much of what he has to say about it is buried in footnotes. As a social scientist, he believes his work should be purely descriptive; prescriptions are for philosophers and religious scholars. Although he endorses a form of utilitarianism, he limits its purview to public policy. ... This latter position, whatever its virtues, is itself prescriptive and seems to open the door to moral relativism. Even more than the diminished role given to reason in Haidt's model, I found this apparent openness to moral relativism to be disquieting, although it seems to be the product of Haidt's liberal conscience (the part that values diversity) rather than of the socialintuitionist model itself. ... I did hope that Haidt would at least start to wrestle with the nature of the good - the good society and the goodness of individuals - with more than an appeal to diversity. His failure is particularly frustrating since it is clear that he does not, in fact, personally endorse a purely relativistic point of view. ...
"These concerns aside, this book remains an ingenious and eloquent work that provocatively addresses the origins and psychological underpinnings of the most basic human values. If there is still any doubt about whether you should read it, know that Haidt largely delivers on the promise of his title. ... Those who are honest with themselves will also come to understand a great deal about their own prejudices and allegiances. ... Haidt's own relentless pursuit of truth and his courage in challenging members of his own tribe of secular liberal academics is itself an inspiring example of what is possible. ... This book may not be the last word on how to allay righteousness, but it is an excellent start." [14]
American History (47:4 - 2012) interviews Haidt, who "argues that humans can 'respect, and even learn from those whose morality differs from our own,' as a positive leap towards reducing animosity and divisions in society." The interview includes:
"Why do you argue we'll stay polarized as a society until we try to understand the opposing side's moral point of view?
"... Moral psychology, anthropology and history can all help people see that their particular morality is just one branch of a large tree with other branches. Knowing that can open the way to understanding and even respecting those who differ from us.
"How can one find out about another person's morality?
"You could go live among another group, but I believe it is possible to do it just by reading. ...
"As a self-professed liberal, what did you learn to like about conservatism as you researched the book?
"The great insight that I've gotten from conservatism is the need for constraint, structure and order. ... It's no coincidence that having children makes people more conservative. ... I say in the book that I think the great blind spot of the left is what I call moral capital. ... And if you understand the other side better, you'll tone down the demonizing.
"How does religion help and hurt American politics?
"... American communes organized along religious lines lasted much longer than communes founded along secular (usually socialist) principles. Only 6 percent of the secular communes lasted 20 years, compared to 39 percent of the religious communes. Religion, like morality, binds people together, but in the process it blinds them to evidence and arguments that contradict their sacred values. I would just add that *ideologies work like religions.* [emPHAsis mine - RP] Communism, capitalism, deconstructionism, egalitarianism, any set of beliefs that is used to bind people together into a team, to fight other teams, is going to lead to blindness, intransigence and polarized beliefs." <www.goo.gl/OTr9jw>
In The American Conservative (Jul '12, pp49-51) we read: "'Western philosophy has been worshipping reason and distrusting the passions for thousands of years,' the University of Virginia psychology professor writes. 'There's a direct line running from Plato through Immanuel Kant to Lawrence Kohlberg. I'll refer to this worshipful attitude throughout this book as the rationalist delusion. I call it a delusion because when a group of people make something sacred, the members of the cult lose the ability to think clearly about it.'
"Intellectuals confuse a more ideal state of affairs for the way things actually are - reason is more often than not rationalization, a justification for ideas developed not in the brain but in the gut. ...
"Intelligence is a virtue. So are prudence, integrity, humility, and courage. People who possess the first trait, but lack the latter ones, tend to downplay the importance of their weaknesses and inflate the importance of their strength. ...
"Haidt points out, 'but if it's your belief, then it's your possession - your child, almost - and you want to protect it, not challenge it and risk losing it.'" [4]
The Anglican Theological Review (95:3 - 2013, pp548-9) notes that "Jonathan Haidt is a liberal Jewish atheist academician who is accounting for the broadening of his own thinking. ...
"Gods are best understood not in negative Freudian terms of a projected father-complex, but as the symbolic representation of transcending values key to our evolutionary success. The book concludes with a cursory examination of American political gridlock. What distinguishes the current political climate from the recent past is the breakdown of friendships across the aisle, together with the rigidification of ideologies on both the left and the right. As a general rule, across the board, we are increasingly less able to appreciate the moral foundations of those we see as opponents. It does not occur to us that they are pursuing worthwhile moral ends instead of selflsh self-interest. The solution to this dilemma is not pledging to speak more civilly, but developing friendships which allow us to hear those who differ from us. ...
"This book will frustrate readers unwilling to reconsider their well-rehearsed views of why other people are wrong. Correspondingly, it will be immensely rewarding for those open to being challenged to rethink moral psychology from an informed social-scientific base. ... Liberals may find it especially helpful in understanding their predictably more conservative congregations whose values they cannot comprehend positively." [6]
From the Chronicle of Higher Education (58:22 - 2012, ppB6-B10) we learn that "Haidt (pronounced like 'height') made his name arguing that intuition, not reason, drives moral judgments. ...
"'He, over the last decade or so, has substantially changed how people think about moral psychology,' says Paul Bloom, a psychologist at Yale University. ...
"Haidt works in a field so left-wing that, when he once polled roughly 1,000 colleagues at a social-psychology conference, 80 to 90 percent classified themselves as liberal." Their focus? "[I]t's not left-right so much as it is the big powerful interests who control everything versus the little people. ...
"Though he's an atheist, he lambasts the liberal scientists of New Atheism for focusing on what religious people believe rather than how religion binds them into communities. And he rakes his own social-psychology colleagues over the coals for being 'a tribal moral community that actively discourages conservatives from entering' and for making the field's nonliberal members feel like closeted homosexuals.
"'Liberals need to be shaken,' Haidt tells me. They 'simply misunderstand conservatives far more than the other way around.'" ...
"Another example Haidt uses to underscore the tribal psychology of political sacredness is the 1960s research of the liberal sociologist Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Harvard professor and public-policy expert. In a famous report to President Johnson, Moynihan used the phrase 'tangle of pathology' to describe the black family, arguing that some of its problems stemmed from high rates of out-of-wedlock birth, not just from racism. That made Moynihan a pariah; other Harvard professors wouldn't let their kids play with his. As Haidt tells the story, Moynihan committed 'the cardinal sin': 'blaming the victim, where the victim is one of your sacralized victim groups.' He points out that sociologists are now gingerly saying, 'He was right.' ...
"In The Righteous Mind, Haidt attributes his own ideological shift to an intellectual awakening. He came to appreciate the right's insights about social cohesion after reading Conservatism, an anthology edited by the historian Jerry Z. Muller [2]. But he also credits another factor: the end of George W. Bush's presidency. Haidt hated Bush. He couldn't shift his views until that animosity disappeared - until he was no longer an angry partisan fighting another team 'for the survival of the world.'
"In other words, his intuition ruled. ...
[NOTE: The online version of this article (URL below) ends here. It didn't at first. Did the following testimony influence content removal?]
"In support of his ideas, Haidt pointed to 'taboos and danger zones,' subjects that turn on the moral 'force field' and prevent researchers from exploring 'the full range of alternative hypotheses.' He offered as one example the controversy that engulfed Lawrence H. Summers, a former president of Harvard, after he speculated that innate differences might partially explain why men are overrepresented in mathematics and science departments at leading universities.
"'We psychologists should have been outraged by the outrage,' Haidt said. 'We should have defended his right to think freely.' ...
"One young psychology professor feels that Haidt painted an accurate portrait. It's a measure of the sensitivity of this topic that the professor, a conservative who contacted Haidt to express her gratitude for the talk, declined to let The Chronicle publish her name. She fears that exposing her political leanings could cause friction with her colleagues, and she also worries that going public could sabotage her career, damaging her ability to win tenure or preventing her from getting hired by another college.
"The professor, who earned her Ph.D. from a major public research university on the East Coast, recalls frequent jokes about Republicans. One conference presenter, she says, discussed the need to mold undergraduates into liberals while their minds are malleable.
"'It makes you feel not welcome,' says the professor, who now teaches at a Christian university in the South. 'They basically hold an attitude that conservatives are racist and full of hate and stupid.'" <www.goo.gl/HCzTys>
Also see <www.goo.gl/fMxKOu>
The New Scientist (213:2854 - 2012, pp30-1) interviews Haidt as well, including: "You argue that the key to the partisan nature of US politics today is to understand the concept of 'righteousness.' Why is that?
"In its original meaning, righteous means just, upright and virtuous. I'm using the word in a colloquial sense: self-righteous, judgemental, moralistic. I believe our minds evolved to be moralistic. This may sound lamentable, especially to those of us who think we should be less judgemental. But the evolutionary story I tell in my book is one where judgementalism - the ability to create moral matrices and punish, shame and ostracise those who don't behave rightly - was in fact the great breakthrough. We wouldn't be talking on the phone now if we didn't have righteous minds. We'd be like chimps, brilliant individuals who are poor at cooperating and collaborating. ...
"Dividing into groups increases social capital and trust, it's generally a good thing. But when it crosses the line from 'we disagree with you' to 'you are evil', then people begin to believe the ends justify the means and all hell breaks loose.
"That's where we are now in the US where politicians and their consultants will do all kinds of devious, underhand, sometimes illegal things to help their party win and to damage the other party. They think that if you're fighting Satan, it's OK to break the rules.
"Where can we see this demonisation in action?
"In the US, something called Oppo Research, or 'opposition research', is a huge business, and some of it is illegal. You go through dumpsters, tap phones - try to get anything that will destroy careers. This is terrible stuff. Who would want to go into public service now? There are lots of highly paid people trying to destroy you, and if they have to lie or make up stuff to do it, they will. But these people think they're ultimately doing good.
"What's the solution? Understand the moral motivations of the other side?
"Yes. In my moral psychology class where I work with students for 14 weeks, I always find that the students don't change their politics - they don't become more centrist - but they stop demonising others and actually become interested in listening to the other side. ...
"Many conservatives believe the Democratic party has been the anti-karma party since the 60s. It's the party that says, you got pregnant? Don't worry, have an abortion. You got addicted to drugs? Don't worry, we'll give you methadone. It's the party that absolves you from moral irresponsibility. ...
"Has your research changed what you think about politics?
"I got into this as a partisan liberal, who was trying to help Democrats overcome decades of cluelessness on moral psychology. While trying to understand conservatives and libertarians, I've realised they are right about a number of things. So if you just let one team - liberals, conservatives or libertarians - run everything, they're going to screw up because they don't have a full tool kit. My highest hope for my book is that it will help people get some perspective on moral disagreements. We're all morally motivated (apart from 1 per cent who are psychopaths). Each side sees truths about how to run a good society which the other side can't see, so we need everyone's insights." [12]
In the last chapter of the book itself, Haidt mentions a study he did (p287 in ISBN 0307377903) to see "how well liberals and conservatives could understand each other. ... The results were clear and consistent. Moderates and conservatives were most accurate in their predictions, whether they were pretending to be liberals or conservatives. Liberals were the least accurate, especially those who described themselves as 'very liberal.' The biggest errors in the whole study came when liberals answered ... while pretending to be conservatives."
On page 294, Haidt writes that the Left "tends to overreach, change too many things too quickly, and reduce the stock of moral capital inadvertently. Conversely, while conservatives do a better job of preserving moral capital, they often fail to notice certain classes of victims, fail to limit the predations of certain powerful interests, and fail to see the need to change or update institutions as times change."
Haidt's last chapter is titled "Can't We All Disagree More Constructively?" In America, our public interaction has grown increasingly counterproductive. Rather than moral pluralism, it has become a contest of moral exclusivism. In this way, will our righteous anger lead us all, marching together, into distopia? Some are indicating that virtue signaling has escalated into social justice warfare. <www.goo.gl/vnzi0v> and <www.goo.gl/Vk2xRW> We desperately need to see this trend turned around if we intend to communicate with each other.
-------
SOURCES: Monographs
1 - The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt (Pantheon, 2012, hardcover, 448 pages) <www.tinyurl.com/7kjfrhh>
2 - Conservatism: An Anthology of Social and Political Thought From David Hume to the Present, by Jerry Z. Muller (Princeton Univ Prs, 1997, paperback, 464 pages) <www.goo.gl/8RHp8w>
---
SOURCES: Periodicals
3 - America (Jesuit), <www.americamagazine.org>
4 - American Conservative, <www.goo.gl/8Hxezg>
5 - American Spectator, <www.spectator.org>
6 - Anglican Theological Review, <www.anglicantheologicalreview.org>
7 - Christianity Today, <www.christianitytoday.com>
8 - Commonweal (non-conservative Catholic), <www.commonwealmagazine.org>
9 - Dissent, <www.dissentmagazine.org>
10 - Foreign Policy, <www.foreignpolicy.com>
11 - Journal of Moral Education, <www.goo.gl/PjNjsv>
12 - New Scientist, <www.newscientist.com>
13 - Scientific American, <www.scientificamerican.com>
14 - Society, <www.goo.gl/aLtZvf>
------
( - previous issue - / - next issue - )
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse