Look how far we’ve come… apart
I have an essay in today’s NYT on America’s growing polarization. Marc Hetherington and I show what’s happened over the last 50 years, not just in Congress but among citizens, in 3 simple graphs.The first one is below, from McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal. It shows that things were really polarized in the late 19th century, after the civil war, then they got much less polarized, but it’s been a rapid climb upwards since the 1960s. We talk about why.
The next 2 graphs were made by Hetherington, and they are just as depressing. Click here to read the essay.
But we end on an optimistic note. There really are so many changes we could make to roll things back, perhaps to the level of polarization in the 1990s, which was much lower than it is today. But only if we push our leaders to make the changes. They will not make the changes themselves, because each change will probably favor one side or the other, so the disadvantaged side will fight like hell. But extreme pressure from outside, for a comprehensive package of reforms — a kind of good-government-Simpson-Bowles — might do it.
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Post-script: see Pete Ditto’s call for “domestic realpolitik” to be realistic about how we’re going to get things done.
From the full article: “Democrats hold steadier; they seem to identify “government” less with the presidency than Republicans do.”
I have wondered if Democrats and Republicans actually mean different things when they use the term “government.” For Democrats, it seems to mean government as the one who helps meet the needs of the poor and downtrodden, equalizer of income inequality, mitigator of civil rights impingements: government as helpmeet, of and for the people. The Civil Rights Act. Social Security. For Republicans, it seems to mean government as the multi-headed hydra of excessively complicated bureaucracy that makes life difficult (for no good reason) for the little guy: government as administrative system, of and for the bureaucracy. The way a visit to the Department of Motor Vehicles can turn into a visit to the seventh level of hell. It seems possible to me that Republicans might be more enthusiastic about the concept of “government” when their person is in power because they believe that person is controlling, mitigating, even destroying the bureaucracy. Or at the very least that person will say they dislike it as much as they do, so that it feels like there is someone on their side.
I know Democrats who strongly abhorred Bush, but could still feel okay about the government because they perceived positive aspects of it that were not under his control. Other than the branches of government associated with national defense and the military, I don’t see Republicans having that perception.
I have great sympathy for the apparent good-will of a man [Haidt] who seems to have been both surprised and to some extent dismayed by his own research findings; and, for the effort he is subsequently putting into trying to reestablish some level of social and political concord despite his natural political leanings.
But frankly, from a small “L” libertarian perspective, what’s my interest in things “getting better” – better meaning more convergent – rather than pushing things even further apart?
I mean, what’s to save with compromise? The seedbed of moral bondage? The social management and redistributive schemes of an oppressive, intrusive, and annoying works-program bureaucracy that knows no limits? The replacement of positive and constitutional law by administrative law … or whim; and the principle of traditional freedom with schemes of positive liberty? The physical comforts of a howling Democrat Party client class raised up on an ideology that posits self-government ( in the micro sense) as a form of debilitating inhibition and a lack of “authenticity”; and, the moral-self as a metaphysical delusion?
Compromise for what? How can you compromise when what the other party wants *in principle* is the recognition of a legally unlimited ability to appropriate and manage your productive life, and sees the coercive power of the government as the tool of social restructuring and property redistribution?
What’s the benefit, other than the same benefit one might realize in temporizing with a enemy before the outbreak of open hostilities?
There isn’t one long term because there’s no reciprocal relationship there as a basis for compromise. What the first party [the progressive] wants in appropriations from and management authority over the other, the other does not want from the first party.
It’s like laboring to preserving a marriage to an incurable neurotic, or a social relationship with a pick-pocket who cannot be brought to respect physical boundaries or see what he is doing is wrong.
Modern liberals on the one hand, and conservatives and especially libertarians ( large or small “L” both) on the other, have profoundly different and in fact incompatible and antagonistic ideas of what it is that constitutes a worthwhile and rewarding and respectable human life.
Their most foundational notions of what constitutes a meaningful and satisfying life are at odds.
They don’t even agree on what human beings are, and whose [in the possessive sense] life we are talking about, much less how they should behave and cooperate.
DNW, we don’t really know how much wealth-sharing and burden-sharing Americans really want. If we took away most forms of this, then we might have a better idea.
So, what you say is true if there’s a clean break between two sets, without overlap, between those who want to redistribute wealth and share burdens, and those who want to keep all they earn and go it on their own and take all the risks.
But I am highly skeptical that the dichotomy is as neat and clean as you suggest. I think that right now, some or even many folks want less sharing. But again, they might change their minds when the end of the sharing trimmed their bottom line.
That’s why I think we need compromise. Not for its own sake, but as an authentic remaking of bargains that we can all live with. The only other alternative is to remain deeply divided and let things crumble due to inaction.
Brian,
We’re broadcasting on different wavelengths here.
I am not paralleling Mitt Romney on the percentage of Americans who may be empirically determined to pay or not pay Federal income tax; and what number of cross-over or blurring there may be between the two classes.
I am referring to two sets of ideas – possibly genetically driven or generated if we accept Jon Haidt’s hypothesis – of what constitutes individual well-being, and the relationship of those ideas to the instrument of the state and its coercive power.
This is not simply a matter of “sharing”, since as far as I know there are no statutes prohibiting you or anyone else from individually or collectively engaging in the voluntary if sacrificial sharing your surplus, or of your substance, or of your very life itself, with whomever and to whatever extent you wish.
This is not about anyone sharing per se, so much as it is about the supposed moral or ethical predicate for compelling others to share on the basis of a none too clear, in fact mysterious, major premiss.
Or perhaps there is no such predicate after all, and what we are confronting is the mere urge of some to have free access to the productive lives of others.
In any event, the question then quickly reduces to the nature of the state, and its legitimate limits and sway, if any, and what if anything the nature of man, or of some men, implies about that.
Now, in the case of progressives, I think that the question of this relationship between “natures” was practically decided in recent times well before Professor Haidt began to (re-)suspect that humans might after all have what could be called a human moral nature; albeit of a kind or kinds that not all humans possessed precisely in the same way or to the same degree.
The philosophical implications of this kind of partitioned essentialism within the universal term, we can forgo discussing here.
Sufficient to note for dealing with the situation at hand, is that progressives have a history of ideologically viewing human nature as non-existent or highly malleable, and that therefore, on their view, any deductions from the nature of man in the form of derivable stipulations as to the rational boundaries or limits of state commands – the whole negative rights thing – were held by them to be in the form of specious deductions drawn from a fictive premise.
The upshot?
‘Well, you don’t like being placed in harness? You can be educated to like it. Or bred out of the population if that proves difficult. In the meantime let’s talk of caring and sharing and the beauty of collective responsibility, as if they really were objective moral facts or imperatives – which we as progressive know they really are not.’
In the end then, those who are demanded of by progressives, find themselves confronted by a strangely deconstructed version of the self-same men who then go on demand that they be shared with as fellows even to the extent of irrational self-destruction. And while they, these progressive men, seem to couch their demands in terms of traditional moral concepts, it’s clear that they do not believe that these concepts have much in the way of an objective reality.
What can that operation properly be called other than a cynical gambit?
With the final reduction it becomes apparent that there is not really any rational argument even going on in this area: since the primary assumptions – and perhaps our inherent tastes or natures – are at odds.
Haidt as done us all a favor by reminding us that his project is methodologically descriptive only, and that “right” and “wrong” as he uses the terms should be viewed as instrumental judgment labels only: relative to a phenomenon that cannot in itself be subject to a Gods-eye evaluation.
Perhaps, at some point his investigations will cause him to modify that view somewhat, at least at the “lower” levels, and enable him to persuade us all that his yin yang principle of social and ideological complementarity is more of a reality than just the consoling if wan hope of liberals that they will one day discover that conservatives need them, as much as they obviously need conservatives.
Till then, it is rational for libertarians and conservatives to cast a coldly calculative eye on the demands of the progressive-other as it inveigles for advantage using a moral language it doesn’t even believe in.
Nothing you say remotely convinces me that progressives don’t believe in their language. Nor do I believe their views are no more than a cynical gambit. I’m sure you’ve convinced yourself of this via practice, so let’s agree to disagree there.
OF COURSE you can rationally cast a cold calculating eye on the whole enterprise. What you fail to address is whether everyone else falls neatly and cleanly on one side or the other of this very clear divide whose existence you declare and describe at great length.
I don’t think our human ideas about well-being and governance and morality easily cleave into two distinct sets of non-overlapping ideas as you seem to suggest. And I’m just trying to quickly describe things, so please don’t parse that too closely. Main point is, in a democracy, you view can’t carry the day if most folks don’t see it as you do.
I could not really care less about any argument as to whether “liberals need conservatives as conservatives obviously need liberals.” You seem to take great pride or perhaps consolation in declaring that liberals badly need you and other conservatives, while you don’t need them.
Being neither a progressive nor a conservative myself, it’s more amusing than anything else. It all seems like a very long and well-articulated and rationally fortified version of “they are the bad guys and we are the wronged victims.”
IMO, as long as we endure as a democracy, we’re stuck trying to counterbalance liberty and equality. Because most folks value both in some measure. I do know that libertarians like to say that they value equality simply as equality of opportunity. And that’s a fair and reasonable point. My take is that many Americans value a little bit more equality than that, enough to provide some minimum level of security about the most basic needs.
Cheerfully granted, many such folks seem to think they deserve much more than we seem to have the resources to provide. And also granted, that pisses off quite a few folks, for good reason. But I don’t think that means that all these pissed off folks want drastic rollbacks.
Brian:
Do you host a blog? If so, please provide link. If not, please
consider doing so. We need your voice ampflied. Thanks.
Thanks Mike, nice of you to say. I used to blog at a group blog called Riseofthecenter, which is currently making a transition to a new name and isn’t ready yet.
If you want to friend me on facebook or friend either solomon kleinsmith or riseofthecenter on facebook, you’ll be able to find out when the new blog gets up and running,
There’s also a facebook group called knights of the center, which is pretty new and at this point not that well focused.
Or you can try donklephant.
Brian,
This reply will stand outside the series lest the sentences be chopped up into four word segments.
You say,
“Nothing you say remotely convinces me that progressives don’t believe in their language.”
It probably occurred to you, your language indicates it, that I was not trying to persuade you of it. In fact, progressives probably do believe in “their language”. Again, that was, “their language” not “the common language” or the “audience’s language” which they readily deploy when they think it convenient or useful.
It’s just that in their language, the language of moral relativism and instrumentally defined good, moral terms have different meanings than in the traditional language of the people toward whom they are directing their political rhetoric. And they are well aware of this gap.
I was making that assertion, based on my analysis of “progressive” anthropology, and of what their use of traditional moral language therefore implies. Any of us who have studied Marxism, or Marxist ideology in depth, would recognize the truth of the proposition immediately. Anyone who has lived long enough to have seen American progressives play with the term “democracy” in their rhetorical deployments meant for public consumption, probably would not need much persuading. And finally anyone who has grasped the significance of Jon Haidt’s forthright stipulation that he is using the terms “good” and “bad” instrumentally, probably would have no trouble grasping the significance of what I am saying if they encountered a progressive of the same intellectual school as Professor Haidt’s arguing before a group of traditional Americans on behalf of “the common good” or a “justice” which they personally define in relativistic or instrumental terms.
The conclusion I draw therefore, is a conclusion drawn from taking what progressives themselves say about the condition of the human organism or the world, and holding them to those propositions, fixing them under the very lens they use, when considering the meaning and intent of their publicly delivered moral rhetoric or utterances.
I expect that they will cease this practice or tactic proportionate to their becoming more confident of their ability to politically coerce, rather than persuade the compliance they seek.
“I could not really care less about any argument as to whether “liberals need conservatives as conservatives obviously need liberals.” You seem to take great pride or perhaps consolation in declaring that liberals badly need you and other conservatives, while you don’t need them.”
By the way, and since you are using quotation marks, what I actually wrote was: ” … the consoling if wan hope of liberals that they will one day discover that conservatives need them, as much as they obviously need conservatives.”
Now, I can understand why you could not care less about the argument if you imagined that as an injured libertarian I presented the notion as a bit of emotionally compensatory compensation or wish fulfillment. However you might be expected to have some interest in the truth or falsity of the proposition since half of such an argument’s conclusion has already been mooted by Professor Haidt himself.
Obviously, there are some rather significant logical (and social) implications should it turn out that the yin and yang of dependency turns out to be only the yin.
In any event, and assuming that you are interested as much in facts as in feelings, you should probably refer to Professor Haidt’s own speculation as to the long term viability of a society composed purely of persons having liberal moral sensibilities. That would be more profitable than trying to deduce whether I “take great pride or perhaps consolation” in the fact.
Hope this helps.
Thanks DNW.
I’ve lived long enough to see folks all along the political spectrum “play” with the word “democracy” for political advantage. [IOW, not just progressives, and not progressives moreso than conservatives, not in my personal estimation. So presumably our mileage varies there, and you seem much more certain than me of the matter, since you seem to imply that you’re quite confident in the scoreboard you’ve crafted.]
My sense is that such behavior is the rule, not the exception. There are different ways to account for why this might be so. I find Jon’s explanation for this very compelling: that we have a fairly visceral reaction based on how we currently lean, and tend to use reason in a post-hoc fashion. The frequency of open-minded searches that might generate either confirmatory or nullifying data for our hypotheses seems to dwindle pretty quickly as we stray from hard science into things like “progressive anthropology,” “Marxist ideology,” or indeed most any ideology that has sacralized a core set of tenets as articles of faith.
That’s certainly a good idea for anyone who thinks we are in any sort of danger of liberal moral sensibilities carrying the day and washing away other views. I sure don’t. And as a pluralist myself, I think that’s a good thing, that a variety of views will continue to contend.
Any future interest I might have in the truth or falsity of the proposition would hinge on your ability to define it much, much, much better. My sense is that you believe it at this point as an article of faith, and that what you mean is that progressives function as parasites and takers that the rest of us would be much better off without. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
Any serious discussion of the matter would necessarily require you to explain what you mean by “need” in this context. My guess is that you mean it solely in the sense of production of concrete resources. Or maybe you mean to say that there is no sense whatsoever in which progressives contribute anything of any positive value to the world that we wouldn’t still have if we could just erase them.
But I could be way off again, as you seem to think I have been the first two times. Feel free to explain further.
Brian,
Thank you for your comments as well.
It appears however that we are fated to talk past each other. Probably because our intentions aim in different directions.
You say regarding the question of the reality or extent of a liberal/conservative societal “yin-yang”,
I am not trying to persuade you to take an interest into the various propositions and implications concerning the liberal sensibility mooted by Professor Haidt, but simply pointing out that they are there, and have been placed there by Professor Haidt.
You earlier say that,
What you seem to ignore is that Haidt proposes that the viscerality of this reaction, these leanings, are the result of evolutionary processes which have had a great deal to do with the survival of those possessing these particular sensibilities.
Imagine if you will the survival prospects of someone born with no sense of dis-gust. How long do you imagine a human carrion eater would live?
Are those with the sense, somehow obligated or morally enjoined to enable the ongoing behaviors of one without it?
In any event, my point is that you seem to have assumed your moral conclusion from the present state of affairs, while having no real proof that it is either sustainable or distributively beneficial or necessary. Whereas there is good historical evidence that the libertarian point of view – tempered by some social conservativism, did work … at least for those with enough health or foresightedness and discipline to participate in such a system
But to each his own interests and projects, eh?
And what’s my moral conclusion, as you call it? That pluralism can be beneficial? Or something else?
What do you mean that it “did work?” By what measure? Presumedly, during whatever period and location you’re discussing, folks were demonstrably better off by whatever value or values you think are most important. But what are the units on your measuring stick? GDP? Life expectancy? Self-reports of happiness? Moral character? Balanced budgets? What? At least take a stab.
I understand now that by your own admission you’re not trying to persuade me. But I’m trying to better understand your description of ” the consoling if wan hope of liberals that they will one day discover that conservatives need them, as much as they obviously need conservatives.”
My presumption here, based on your use of the word “wan” is that personally, you don’t really think there’s any chance that conservatives will ever discover any worth in the contributions of liberals.
The basic gist I am getting from you is that if we erased progressives, nothing of any real human importance would disappear. In other words, libertarians would get along fine without liberals/progressives. Life would be undiminished.
So come on, you said it. Explain it. What are the units on your measuring stick? I’m not trying to trick you or catch you. I want to know. You’ve done a fine job analyzing what I’ve said, allow the lens to turn onto you for a bit.
While I think that research like this is important work that brings us data we need to know, Dr. Haidt’s conclusions are pointing in the wrong direction — we don’t need to find ways to come together, we need to find a way to come apart.
When you have (at least) two side who take basic things like “fairness” as two very different very different concepts: equality or proportionality, it’s time to realize you have mutually incompatible systems. More to the point, I think it’s time to recognize that America really is a multi-cultural society that does not share a common conception of right & wrong, culture, or even what is perceived as reality. Recently in the New York Times:
What it says is that we are no longer a nation that shares a common blood, common values, or a common culture.
Liberals, conservatives, libertarians, and progressives can either continue the current pissing match of trying to dominate each other, or we can accept our mutual incompatibilities and work out a way to break up.
By “break up” I don’t mean take one sovereignty and dissolve it into many. Rather we could have a light version of a society like in that old novel The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.
America is already kind of set up for such a thing since we have a separation of powers between federal and state governments. We could hand more power to local governments so that people could create communities more congenial to themselves.
In this hypothetical United States of Diamond Age America, we could have liberal state like California where gays can get married, health care is run by the government and tax-payer subsidized marijuana is handed out free at the border. In conservative states like Utah, drugs would be illegal, guns could be carried openly, gay marriage would not be recognized but covenant marriage would and there would be a church on every street corner. Libertarian states like Texas would allow guns and drugs and gays but everyone would have to pay for it all themselves… with gold of course. Chartered communities could further specialize and cater to individual tastes. Conservative communities restricted to specific religious beliefs could flourish next to liberal communities created to accommodate both the cisgender and transgender bisexual mix-racial Americans who all want to stay away from those nasty Republican bigots.
Free migration between the states (but not communities) would allow people to move where they like and be around those they agree with. The federal government would be reduced to do only the basic protection of our civil liberties and protection from foreign threats.
America has already been migrating by politics, by IQ, by marriage, and by culture. So let’s just recognize it, embrace it, formalize it, and break up.
It’s sure tempting to reach that conclusion sometimes, isn’t it? I know I do sometimes. If there’s a mainstream remaining, feels silted and broadened, lacking depth and becoming so wide as to make the idea of a “main” stream a bit meaningless.
When I think like this, it takes some effort to remind myself not to make big conclusions based on a media data stream comprising selected anecdotes that have been chosen to excite, anger, and frighten. We seldom see a fair survey of personal views on the world that is not framed in some way by partisan viewpoints on issues.
I recall more than 1 recent Pew Center study which suggests that on most issues, there’s a broad middle of 3/5 to 3/4 of Americans that rests comfortably to the right of progressives and comfortable to the left of conservatives. I looked, but regrettably, I am unable to provide an on-point link.
On top of not seeming necessary to me, that sounds very unrealistic in a multi-level government system of representative democracy. For this to happen, we’d have to have some sort of sweeping victory for one ideology. I see three potential paths:
• Progressives enjoy overwhelming victory over the course of 3 or more election cycles and are able to impose governance that precisely suits their policies and goals.
• Conservatives enjoy overwhelming victory over the course of 3 or more election cycles and are able to impose governance that precisely suits their policies and goals.
• With successive election cycles, one side or the other is able to muster the support of 51-55% percent of the population. This is just enough time to make one medium-sized change that falls short of their ideals. These actions erode their slight majority, and the pendulum swings the other way.
I find this 3rd path BY far the most likely. So if you want to cynical about it, then we must acknowledge that we need one another because there’s no viable exit strategy.
Not unless you wanna go all
Which strikes me as absurd.
I explicitly said in my first post that I wasn’t talking about creating multiple sovereignty’s. We already have a federal system separating power from the federal and state governments. Allowing local governments to create more specific policies (like some areas drugs are legal, some are not), and allowing people to create gated communities based around values and culture rather than wealth requires no blood being spilled.
George said,
At first reading, I thought George was responding to an observation I made regarding our fading Dual Federalism; but which didn’t, I thought, take.
Apparently it didn’t, and he wasn’t.
My thrust had been that we had in theory something of such a system as he had envisioned, but that it has been steadily whittled away over the years, principally by the courts, but also by legislative action.
My principle objection to his proposal therefore – if it could even be called a real objection – is not so much to the sensibility it represents, as the likelihood of successfully implementing such an idea in the face of the in principle no-limits, centrally planned human and social evolution impulse of the people we nowadays identify as members of the left.
However, if the existing cultural divergences become even more pronounced in this country through formalizing political acts, and the notion of a meaningful “America”, as a way of life, becomes even more problematical, then things may fall into place the way George suggests, more or less on their own.
I could see for example, California going its own way eventually. Who’s to stop it? An army of Manhattan liberals? But that would be a politically acceptable and therefore “allowable” change. Not so likely that any conservative area with direct access to the sea – even through the Gulf of Mexico – could be conceded such a potentially competitive and possibly antagonistic independence.
But in general, the division problem is more finely parsed in the same way as the problem confronted by those who the progressive blogosphere derisively refers to as desiring to “go Galt”.
The progressive conceit is that such efforts are inherently quixotic and doomed. Whether that conceit of the progressive is true or not, you can’t very well “go Galt” anyway if your non-cooperation, after being bureaucratically noted and recorded, is legally disallowed, and if you will as a result be say, “fined” as a recusant (strike any recent chords there?) for refusing to participate.
Can you imagine trying to go “off grid” in an age of Google Earth?
Hell, and speaking of recusants, and being beyond reach, wealthy Catholic families in 16th and 17th century England couldn’t even manage to hide a few priests in their manors.
So, you modern non-conformists pay your poll-tax/recusancy fines to the IRS, until either economic stress or civil disabilities force you to join the established church of the left. What’s next for those few who hold out and fail to have or to report a legally taxable income? the requisitioning of their labor through corvee? A little socially compensatory “public service” roadwork?
I believe that ordinary conservatives and sometimes even libertarians, consistently underestimate the drive of the left to universalize and totalize their regime, and especially their will to go to any lengths or distance in order to do it. That universalizing, totalizing, collectivist impulse, is however pretty much what defines the political left.
The everyday things we are fighting about are just the individual bricks in the larger wall they are always building.
I’m sorry, but really just another example of not being able to understand the issue because the truth doesn’t fit the liberal (American Style) paradigm.
Let’s see…we have the one culture under attack by multiple other cultures which have made a concerted effort to import or otherwise increase the the total membership of the multiple culture group who all agree on just one thing…destroying the one culture.
Wonder why there’s so much division and polarization?
It’s simply a matter of too many cultures fighting for dominance in one space. Sure, the polarization will end, just as it always has in the past.
Separation and, after a period of chaos and conflict, new nation states will form representing each individual culture.
DNW:
Do you host a blog? If so, please provide link. If not, please
consider doing so. We need your voice ampflied. Thanks.
Is my first comment really still in moderation? It’s got nothing dirty, I promise!
To the Independent Whig,
I do not maintain a website and am not really sure that I have anything unique to say. If there is a particular angle in all of this that especially interests me, it’s the mystery of how liberals imagine that their prescriptive pronouncements follow in any way from what generally constitute their descriptive worldview, or non-metaphysical “metaphysical” assertions. [to say that questions concerning the general or ultimate nature of reality are de-legitimated by that reality , is itself a metaphysical assertion]
In fact, their anti-metaphysical (and here I obviously also mean it strictly in the philosophical sense and not as a euphemism for supernaturalistic or religious) views, their notions of arbitrary socially constructed realities, the overarching relativism, the strident nominalism and rejection of real, or even moderately real essences or natural kinds, makes it difficult for me to understand how they even purport to get from their worldview-there to their moral dicta-here.
Even to say “we” then … “We”? What could that possibly mean?
And, it’s probable I think, that more and more of them have begun to accept that it cannot in fact be done, given their starting points.
We’re not just talking the implications of that famous fact-value dichotomy here for the liberal’s values; a famous case wherein their deconstructive acids became available for throwing back in their own rhetorical faces.
We’re recently talking something more profound than that, if possible: An emergent perspective (in formal philosophy) I was not even aware of until a couple of years ago. And that’s the shrugging embrace by a growing number of mainstream liberal theorists and philosophers of a thoroughgoing post modern moral nihilism, one that doesn’t even purport to believe that the universe is ultimately intelligible, but which is, in its nihilism, admirably consistent with their view of “reality”.
It’s not just Richard Rorty’s admission that from his point of view his attempts at indoctrinating the younger generation share the same ultimate status in nature as a Nazi’s attempts (though Rorty likes his arbitrary values better than theirs) but the developments in eliminative materialism; which dispose not only of teleology, but of all intentionality per se. (See Edward Feser’s blogspot on Alex Rosenberg and others for extended discussions of this topic during the last 10 months or more.)
Now, no ultimate purpose in the world? Ok. No intrinsic ends? Ok. No objective right or wrong? Ok. Not even any form of real personal intentionality? Ok. And how about this too: that the universe is fundamentally unintelligible as well? OK.
I grant Mr. Progressive, that you assert all of these things and that you believe in them and order your life along these lines at the deepest level. But now, what is my interest in making concessions to you? In aid of what, exactly? Your appetites? Why should I give a hoot about them?
You may of course Mr. Progressive say that it is your will that I shall have to confront them, and that because you insist and will not relent, that I will have to “deal” with your admittedly ultimately pointless urges. But that, as we both probably admit, reduces to another kind of matter altogether. One of your annoyingness at best, and your dangerousness and untrustworthiness at worst.
Yet, typical progressive intellectuals still insist on pitching their aims as if they are members of the same moral species, or as if speaking of a species still makes sense; and insinuating that our donning their harness and wearing their yoke is somehow a categorical imperative or an objective good.
A temporary locus of appetition, in a chaotic and ultimately unintelligible reality, making noises about sacrificing in the name of brotherhood. It’s quite puzzling.
DNW, I would presume from the verbatim duplication by Indy Whig of the earlier Mark McG post that perhaps someone is fishing for URLs to spam.
Mr. Keegan,
I meant what I said.
DNW ‘s take on compromise is insightful.
I believe that “compromise” is a liberal sacred value; an inherent “good.”
It’s not.
DNW does a good job of delving into why.
My bad IW. I found it confusing that your comment was verbatim to one one nearby, except for one name. No offense intended.
Huh. I don’t know any liberals that speak particularly glowingly of compromise in its true meaning. When they use it, they usually seem to me ‘conservatives should compromise by agreeing we’re right.”
Among centrists and independents in the middle, it’s spoken of well, but it’s absolutely not sacralized. Compromise isn’t inherently good or bad. The goodness of badness of any compromise lies in whether the compromise achieves more things worthy of merit than obstinacy.
I find that among folks far from the center, compromise is demonized. The notion that such a thing as “principled compromise” could ever occur is anathema.
Chris Christie talks a bit about the nature of principled compromise in a few of his speeches, and I find his formulation pretty compelling.
To the Independent Whig,
I wish to make another overt acknowledgement here that no matter how long I have been elsewhere making the kind of observations I have made here recently, what I have been presenting here as inferences and implications has already been explicitly laid out by Haidt as the product of his research, some of which dated back I believe, to the 90’s.
Thus, what I posed as political dilemmas, Haidt thoroughly and demonstrably does recognize. But having a different take and using a different and scientific lens, sees as the natural outgrowth of evolutionary artifacts grinding in the same geopolitical space; and thus a question of (as I interpret him) pragmatics.
I also note that your page on the following topic dates back to February.
Thus, rereading the “When compassion leads to sacrilege” transcript you present, re-reminds me that Haidt is quite conversant with the philosophical literature as well.
Haidt quoted by Independent Whig
What continues to puzzle me a bit, is how easily his own explicitly values-neutral stance taken as a social scientist, one who is avowedly involved in a descriptive rather than normative enterprise, seems to default to a liberal values framework when he presents his obiter.
Are we to just shrug this off and to understand that he is merely expressing his own personal and pre-programmed preference?
This linguistic gear shifting is a bit difficult for me to figure out. I wonder why, when clearly he too would tend to bracket terms like “good” or “liberty” with either explicit or implied brackets as a matter of principle, he talks in other places as if he thinks that the terms good or liberty can be presented without them: as in what I take to be the suggestion, that “positive liberty” is an objective good. Or that it somehow should be granted as one by the rational among us – who presumably reason that it is, on, and from, the basis of their programmed impulse to “care” or to feel what the other is supposedly (Is such a necessarily subjective projection, even accurate or even real?) feeling.
I guess even social scientists are entitled to doff their gowns at some point, and talk naturally.
One thing Haidt should be give direct credit for however, is in making no cynical pretense that he is using terminology in one sense when he means it in another. And that reminder of the difference between Haidt and what I take to be the conscious, not inadvertent, rhetorical duplicity of so many other liberals, is my motivation for leaving this particular remark.
Modern liberals as a group – whether cynically misrepresenting their aims through equivocation as I have argued, or simply unconsciously adopting their own dialect as the more generous would say – must in any case have profoundly different experiences of the self and meaning: and hence a profoundly different psychological reward system as well.
So again … back to the narrow reciprocity and lack of equivalency problem. What one wants from the other, the other does not want from the one initiating the wanting.
Where can it all lead …
DNW
RE: “What continues to puzzle me a bit, is how easily his own explicitly values-neutral stance taken as a social scientist, one who is avowedly involved in a descriptive rather than normative enterprise, seems to default to a liberal values framework when he presents his obiter.”
I offer for consideration some “out there” speculation on my part which constitutes a possible explanation of Haidt’s “default to a liberal values framework.”
“Genes make brains” (page 278 of The Righteous Mind), and Haidt has a liberal brain.
I don’t to be pejorative in any way, any more than it is pejorative to say a redhead has red hair.
But the simple fact of the matter is that we all do not think alike.
Just as there are different body types (i.e., ectomorph, endomorph, mesomorph) and different hair colors I propose that there are different brain types with different cognitive styles, abilities, and even , dare I say it, capabilities.
What is unfortunate is that different brain types gravitate toward different vocations. There’s a self segregation going on. As long as I’m speculating I’ll speculate wildly and wonder aloud if some sort of evolutionary branching or splitting of humans into two distinct groups is going on. Will social scientists and anthropologists 1000 years hence look back at our time and say “There, that’s when it happened”?
At any rate, one thing that is clear to us today is that liberal brains gravitate toward academia and conservative brains gravitate toward being “out there on the front lines, getting tough stuff done” as Scott Wagner said in a comment over on the YourMorals.org blog.
Even though this self segregation seems to be a natural byproduct of our different brain types it does bring with it some unfortunate side effects. Dr. Haidt points out a number of them in his Post Partisan talk and in his When Compassion Leads to Sacrilege talk.
Another side effect is that it seems liberals and conservatives “are fated to talk past each other” as you said above to Brian Keegan.
To me, the study of conservative morality by academic social science is like a group of people with no interest in, or affinity for, sports were trying to understand the game of football by watching a lot of games and deducing the rules without ever ensuring that anyone who has actually played the game actively participates in the design of the studies or the analysis of the findings.
You are quite right that some of the things you “have been presenting here as inferences and implications has already been explicitly laid out by Haidt as the product of his research,” and Haidt is “quite conversant with the philosophical literature as well.” I also know that Haidt and his team go out of their way to invite thoughful critiques and opposing views.
But that just begs your question en more emphatically: Why then “default to a liberal values framework”?
I offer for consideration the following possible answer: It is due to the liberal cognitive style operating in the morally and cognitively pure environment of academia.
I mean, it’s one thing to solicit critiques and input from conservatives, which, to their credit, Haidt and his team seem to go out of their way to do, but just imagine the possible differences that might result if half the team were liberals and half were conservatives. Imagine the brainstorming sessions. Imagine how the studies might be designed differently. Imagine how the results might be analyzed differently.
Imagine the insights that are, even now, being missed.
For example, your insight about compromise, above. What seems almost self evident to you as the logical conclusion of the dominoes of thought Haidt sets up in The Righteous Mind and his other work seems to be simply not on the radar of the liberal cognitive style, or if it is, it tends to be dismissed or perhaps lost in the “linguistic gear shifting” you mention.
I’ve riffed on this topic in comments I’ve posted to a blog piece by Ravi Iyer called “How Coherence Defines Conservatism,” over on the YourMorals.org web site, here: http://www.yourmorals.org/blog/2012/09/how-coherence-defines-conservatism/
Nuance that you (and I) see as potentially profound seems to sometimes be dismissed by the relativism of the liberal cognitive style as distinctions without a difference. For example, Haidt wrote an entire book, The Righteous Mind, chock full of scientific evidence and analysis which argues that the three-foundation and six-foundation moralities and thought processes operate in entirely different cognitive universes like those of Flatland and Spaceland which Haidt describes in chapter 9 of his book “The Happiness Hypothesis” only to then “default to the liberal values framework” through his Yin/Yang metaphor and its implicit message that the two moralities exist in the same universe with little more difference between them than “glass is half full, half empty” world views, as if the two moralities were nothing more than the two ends of Dr. Doolittle’s pushmepullyou. This, I think, is an example of the puzzle you speak of.
Imagine how much better, deeper, fuller, the human understanding of humanity might be if the field of academic social science contained even a handful of conservatives. As it is, I think the consequences are even greater and deeper than Haidt presents them to be.
For example, Haidt was literally “floored” by Jerry Muller’s assertion that “What makes social and political arguments conservative as opposed to orthodox is that the conservative critique of liberal or progressive arguments takes place on the enlightened grounds of the search for human happiness based on the use of reason.” (page 289 of The Righteous Mind.)
Haidt explains his reaction to this assertion, saying:
(also from page 289 of The Righteous Mind).
Really.
The thought that conservatism is motivated by the desire to do good, or that it is reasoned, and enlightened, had never before crossed his mind?
What a stunning admission, and what a horrible indictment of the liberal cognitive style and morality.
Look. Don’t get me wrong. I like Haidt. I honestly believe that his work represents a quantum leap forward in our understanding of morality and the political divide. I admire his ability to adhere to the scientific method and follow the evidence wherever it may lead, even if it leads to ideas that are against his own personal sensibilities.
But, I mean, think about it. Take a step back and look dispassionately at what actually happened here, and ask yourself:
How is it even possible that a modern, supposedly enlightened, supremely educated, exceedingly intelligent, adult American can earn a PhD – in psychology, no less – and then rise in his field to become a professor at a prestigious university without it ever even occurring to him that conservatives might actually, you know, think? And have the best interests of their fellow man at heart?
Take a minute and let that question sink in.
Now, also consider that Haidt really is one of the most enlightened people on the planet when it comes to academic understanding of conservatives. He “gets it” better than practically anyone.
And now, also consider, that the liberal cognitive style heavily dominates the entire K-12 public education system in this country, and most social media (read, the news and entertainment industries), and ask this question:
What, really, is the root cause of the political divide?
It is fortunate that Haidt stumbled upon that particular insight, but what other such insights into human nature, evident in your comments above, might the field of academic social science be missing or dismissing?
Haidt dedicates a chapter in The Righteous Mind to “The Conservative Advantage.”
But something he misses, I think, is the conservative disadvantage, which is this: Explaining and defending a six-dimension (at least) understanding of a six-dimensional (at least) social world to people who perceive and think in only three dimensions.
It is a challenge of Sisyphean proportions, and Haidt has certainly helped to reduce the height of the mountain, but it is a challenge that nonetheless remains.
[note from Jon Haidt:] H. E. Baber retracts her initial comment, a portion of which is included in DNW’s post, below this. Upon reflection, Baber has asked me to replace her initial comment with the more considered response, below the line.
————————-
Why should we regard WEIRDness (the characteristic ethos of Western Educated Industrial Rich Democratic individuals) as an inability to taste the full range of moral flavors rather than the ability to make fine distinctions between authentic moral intuitions and other emotional responses?
There are at least two considerations in support of my interpretation:
(1) Both WEIRDs and non-WEIRDs feel gut-level discomfort or disgust at stories about e.g. the family that eats their dead dog, the woman who cleans her toilet with an American flag, etc. But WEIRDs recognize that even though they have the gut feeling, these actions aren’t morally wrong. Non-WEIRDs don’t make the distinction between actions that disgust or repel them and actions that are morally wrong. Moreover in their attempts to justify their belief that these actions are morally wrong they appeal to the very kinds of considerations WEIRDs consider morally relevant—contriving lame stories about the harm that could come to the family from eating dog, worries about clogging the toilet and so on.
What this suggests is that WEIRDs taste the very same flavors as non-WEIRD but are more discriminating, reflective and critical.
(2) Near the beginning of The Righteous Mind you cite some cross cultural studies and, if I remember correctly, note that elites the Global South have the same take as WEIRD Americans. Unless I’m missing something it looks like globally, in the aggregate, WEIRDs are more educated, more sophisticated and more knowledgeable than non-WEIRDs. That is, WEIRDs are on a range of uncontroversial scales superior to non-WEIRDS. So this is some evidence (though hardly compelling evidence) that where there’s disagreement, WEIRDs are more likely to be correct.
I’ve been puzzling for the last couple of days over why Professor Haidt allowed Professor Harriet Baber to paper over her first comments, when he might have simply instructed her to offer up any corrections or emendations she wished in a subsequent message.
That, it seems to me, would have been the proper thing to do.
But apparently Baber’s aim was not so much to correct any misimpressions, as it was to obscure the record of the moment.
Now, it’s true that the Professor Baber’s remarks, directed in part at non-elite Americans and their moral values, were so viciously vituperative and preposterously malign, that I thought that she was putting on an act; making outrageous assertions as a pantomime liberal academic in order to parody a certain kind of WEIRD conceit.
I even said as much.
It appears to turn out however, that the delivery of Ms Baber’s breathtaking malevolence was anything but facetious.
Yet, properly understood, this particular glimpse into the unguarded moral sensibilities of a self-proclaimed American liberal academic, had as much value, and has granted more insight, into the moral makeup and core values of some liberals than anything else Professor Haidt has provided us with.
It’s just a shame that almost as fast as the curtain was drawn back, it was hastily thrown forward again.
Ms Baber’s original remarks deserved all the circulation that could possibly have been obtained for them.
Harriet Baber [philosophy professor at the University of San Diego], on October 19, 2012 at 6:55 pm writes,
“Why should we regard the moral universe of the lower classes and primitive people as a consequence of their ability to taste more moral flavors than those we poor WEIRDs can distinguish? … lower class people try to give a rationale in terms of harm for their gut feelings that sex between siblings, cleaning toilets with flag rages, etc. is bad by contriving scenarios involving harm. These poor, dumb, ignoramuses … I’m a liberal, one of your WEIRDs, and an academic. But I have nothing but hatred and contempt for working class Americans and members of non-Western cultures. And, c’mon Haidt: don’t you think that if these people get some education and financial security, they’ll become as WEIRD is us? The 6-dimension moral structure you describe is a defect—the illusion of stupid, unreflected, uneducated people. Our aim should be to dismantle their detestable shit cultures …”
I thought at first, and first lookup – given one of your book titles – that you were serious.
Then, I saw what you wrote somewhere about P.Z. Myers, and figured that to some extent you were probably parodying his crackpot style of calling for storming the kingdom of heaven and terrifying the deluded believers .
I’ve got to keep up with the field a little better.
http://home.sandiego.edu/~baber/research/index.html
no coincidence that lines diverged in ~2000.
if academic researchers want to promote civility in politics, they should work on developing a technology to replace the butterfly ballot.
It appears that my first estimate of Ms Barber’s comments was correct, and that she was not, as I had subsequently calculated, being facetious.
As the “retraction” makes clear, what she wished to retract from view was the possibly impolitic vehemence and vitriol with which her opinions and aims were presented, rather than their sum and substance.
Not that this will prove much comfort to those contemptible working class ignoramuses with their shit culture and their lack of government stipends; but they will at least have no doubt as to the sensibilities and psychology of who and what it is that wishes to “dismantle” them.
Ageed.
Nicer tone.
Exact same message.
And she teaches our children.
It’s horrifying.
A quick Google search of the community service involvement of politicians produces two recurring themes: politicians offer scholarships for community service and politicians promote legislation for supporting community service. Although both are laudable, the involvement should not stop there. Politicians should complete at least two hours of community service every month as long as they are public servants.
To support this statement, one must take into account the current political climate. This country has extreme political polarization in Congress. One source of this superfluous friction in government is redistricting, which placed liberal districts close to conservative ones. This results in staunch adherence to party lines, much more than in the past. This polarization causes “week long fights over amendments intended to strengthen consumer protections,” that had been easily passed in the House according to Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times. These ‘for the greater good’ bills should not be this hard to pass. The best government is plastic and adjusts to the needs of a fluid society. Polarization is also caused by increased media connections, purports an article in USA Today by Todd Spangler. With constituents continually linked in to the actions of the politicians, Congress adheres to their public identity along their party lines to remain ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ in the next election.
This is ridiculous. The purpose of a government is to serve the people. As described by Jonathan Haidt, Congress changed its behaviors in the 1990’s to discourage friendships and social contracts between Democrats and Republicans, which weakened the bipartisan bond between its members. This decreased the ability of politicians to work together, and with the addition of technology and redistricting, all around nastiness has skyrocketed. The real problem here is the lack of common ground. Republicans and Democrats apparently see each other as mortal enemies who should be thwarted at all costs. Instead, the real aim is to work together to determine the best legislation for the collective that they serve. The solution to this lack of cohesion is community service.
One may pose as a rebuttal that legislators and other politicians are public servants, so why should they be mandated to work in the community in menial tasks? In response, it is not the tasks that they complete, but the connection with their constituents and each other that is the goal of this proposal. Working with the people of their communities and also with each other during these community service events can activate the ‘hive switch’. Jonathan Haidt describes the hive switch as “the ability…to transcend self-interest and lose ourselves…in something larger.” In effect, “The hive switch is an adaptation for making groups more cohesive and therefore more successful in competition with other groups.” Collective work that involves group cohesion and synchronized movement with the purpose of group betterment switches on this biological trigger for promoting group survival. Community service is the perfect venue for this psychological phenomenon because it can involve purposed synchronized movement and involves a group to identify with. If those in the hive group are politically heterogeneous, and if they contain other politicians from across party lines, then a bond across the aisle will be formed, and fighting tooth and nail in Congress will be less appealing. The hive switch is necessary now because of the current abandon of cohesion. If logic will not pull our politicians together, biology will.
Community service that would activate this hive switch includes working with Habitat for Humanity and other building projects that involve group lifting and movement. Synchronized movements in sports through exercise drills would also fit the bill, so coaching sports is also on the list. Working in food banks often requires chains of people moving boxes of food. This too would activate the hive switch. And what’s more is that when those politicians take seats in Congress to argue for better legislation, they will know what their community group needs. Common work between politicians and community leaders will lead to discussions of the needs of the citizens. A politician working at a free health clinic will see first-hand what the impact of a new health care bill will be, rather than only seeing the dollars attached to it.
In today’s political society, there is a barrier between our politicians and us, the citizens. Although politicians often visit factories, schools and clinics, working together regularly through community service would form powerful relationships that one time meetings would not. If common hands-on community interaction were a regular occurrence, politicians would know how to best help the citizens and to agree with each other. To top it off, the citizens would have a stronger loyalty and a real connection to their politicians come Election Day.
I’m assuming you know your suggestion is impractical, but there is an important idea here: how can we find and elect leaders who want to serve the public good and not feed their own narcissism? We can give preference to those who have a prior history of genuine public service, such as the activities you describe. It is worth contemplating: do we want leaders who have a strong hive switch? The hive switch is about helping your ingroup; and the US is too heterogenous in ethnicity and social class for us to have a leader who wants to serve her ingroup.
So is it problematic if the party that is supposed to value loyalty and respect for authority has almost none for the current government?
I consider myself a conservative who’s only recently started to come out of a month-long depression that started in early November (I’ve started to come across much of Mr. Haidt’s work online and found my optimism starting to return, so thanks for that), but if I really take the effort look at things objectively I’ll admit that on the surface there isn’t really all that much that I find too objectionable. If you agree that most past presidents have had a tendency to govern along extremely centrist lines in the end (as I do), then I don’t think you’d be able to find a whole lot in Obama to dissuade your opinion.
The real issue I’ve concluded is that he is indeed suffering from major image problems. Whenever he is presented by either party or even himself he continually comes across as almost a liberal caricature: he grew up during the sixties and seventies, spending time as basically a “pot-smoking hippy,” he went to college to learn about political science and started hanging out with “the liberal elite” and college activists before moving on to become a community organizer in downtrodden Chicago, his family became members of an “anti-American” church, he even opted to forgo being called “Barry” in favor of something more, well, ethnic-sounding (what’s wrong with Barry? My middle name is Barry).
The point is there is basically nothing about this president conservatives like myself feel they can really latch on to and make a personal connection with, or provide any guarantee that he understands what we think. Without any sense of basic trust, every minor concession he makes publicly about business or oil drilling continues to come across as begrudging at best or an outright lie at worst. While the sound bites that really stick out are when he says things like “I’ll be more flexible after the election” or, “we’ve still got a lot of work to do” (to the left of course).
So the problem with Republicans is that they just don’t like the man? Well, not quite. The problem I keep seeing when it comes to the continued polarization of this nation is the complete dissociation of cooperation and the common good. Obama has now won two elections (the second I’m still not sure how) on the mantra of “blame Republicans,” “deregulation,” and “policies that got us into this mess in the first place.” So how on earth does it benefit Republicans to help him succeed? Even if he is secretly giving the right “98% of what we want” all that a smooth economy is going to do in the public eye is affirm the more extreme views that have been ascribed to him. I keep seeing people arguing based on these shallow precedents such as the “Reagan boom” (without mentioning that he often raised taxes and spending) or the “Clinton surplus” (without mentioning that the GOP controlled congress at the time). The goal is no longer coming to a consensus on the best course of action for the country, it’s about racking up the most politics points.
I think what we’re seeing is that “the game” just isn’t working, there is no blasting each other on the campaign trail compromising behind the scenes in order to keep everything running smoothly. I’ve always seen myself as more of a traditional conservative with a lot of optimism and a belief that people are inherently good, yet what I learned after 2008 is that you can’t just support the status quo. You can’t just be a voice of “Hold on, no one saw this coming, we’re dealing with extremely complex systems here so let’s make sure we stay smart about this.” or every time something major like the housing crisis hits you’ll be vilified and stampeded by the hordes of people screaming “Change!” We can see the trend, if all we do is defend the middle while liberals continue to attack from the left then over time they will continue to sneak in new laws, regulations, and institutions that we won’t be willing to get rid of and cause a continual drift to the left. It has become apparent that if we standard conservatives really care then we don’t have any choice but to go full-blown reactionary and join the ranks of Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh, if for no other reason than to try and force gridlock.
I was extremely upset when Romney lost the election after I started to see it as a vote for revenge vs. a vote for love of country. I was hoping that he would be the kind of president who could take a critical look at fixing the economy rather than seeing it as an opportunity to shove through partisan agendas, and that those on the left would be able to look at his time as governor of a blue state and realize he knows that the world won’t explode if gay people get married.
But by now I’ve also realized that there were probably many more issues with Mitt that would have been deeply disconcerting to liberals, he continued to let himself be seen as a plutocrat, a tax-evader, a greedy executive out to ship jobs overseas, a religious nut, he didn’t even try to appeal to minorities.
I think I understand now how many liberals must have felt back when George W Bush was in the White House. Businessman, Evangelical, warmonger, heir, tax cuts for the rich. No doubt they were extremely eager to see him drop the “compassionate conservative” ruse and start destroying America.