Of Moral Universes

One of the few sites I follow carefully is Judith Gayles “political waves” (http://polwaves.planetwaves.net/ ) She spends a great deal of time searching blogs and national newspapers daily looking for profound and interesting political articles, which she either reprints or links to. These are serious thought pieces with careful substantive comment. I recommend her wholeheartedly and if you haven’t checked out her site, please do. I hope one day she sets up a donation site as she spends so much time hunting and gathering for us.

One of her recent editions included an article reporting on the research of Jonathan Haidt from the University of Virginia who maintains that liberals and conservatives “inhabit different moral universes.” In order to demonstrate this, he identifies what he calls “five foundational moral impulses” that are hardwired into who we are as a species. His five are listed below with his explanation. (This gets increasingly interesting, so hang in there).

Harm/Care: Not harming others and relieving suffering.

Fairness/Reciprocity: People have rights that need to be protected.

In-Group Loyalty: Patriotism and loyalty are vital.

Authority/Respect: Social order should be a primary goal

Purity/Sanctity: Chastity and respect for life, lust and greed are bad.

Liberals, he maintains, prioritize the first two; conservatives the last three.

Most of us are probably some combination and if you’re not sure where you stand, you can go to Haidt’s site www.yourmorals.org and take some tests. That’s what I did, and I found that—just as I have always maintained, I’m somewhere in the middle, favoring conservative positions sometimes and liberal at other times.

Sure, I believe very strongly about harm/care. I’ve been grateful for public education, public-supported healthcare in Britain and Canada, and the willingness of the US to take in an immigrant and give her a chance that was denied to her elsewhere. But I’m no-raise-the-ladder thinker (the British call the phenomenon “I’m all right in my corner, Jack”). I’m glad to extend the opportunities to others in the hopes they will pay back as I have tried to do. I’m always intrigued by people who tell me they are “self-made,” when they have accepted public education, FEMA, air-traffic control, dispute mediation, fire services, protection from cheats and swindlers, and so on, and fully expect the government to “do something” in the face of natural disasters, economic downturn, and national pandemics.

I hate injustice and have walked on picket lines to protest various issues. Yet I have a problem with all the claims of rights. I think it has turned the US into a nation of lawyers where nobody knows where we stand until some court or another has clarified what ought to be common sense. Anybody can claim their rights have been violated and the consequences can be ruinous.

In-group loyalty and patriotism I will support to the extent that the loyalty is deserved. I’m not going to blindly support or excuse a crook just because he or she happens to be on my Super-Bowl political team. Like Hilary Clinton I initially supported Barry Goldwater until Kent State happened. People just walking across campus were shot. That could have been me. I learned then that authority—all authority—needed to be questioned. My friend Peter loves to label me a screaming liberal because I don’t agree with his extremely conservative positions. He doesn’t want to see the nuances in where I stand because (I suspect) his positions are based on what he finds comfortable.

Authority/Respect is important to me. I pay my taxes, and unlike others, don’t feel it’s “my:” money once it leaves my hands. I like having fire service and police protection. In these hard times, I’ve particularly enjoyed my local library. I wish that there had been more respect for authority and balancing of competing “rights” when it came to regulating the financial markets in their mad scramble for unregulated profit. If there’s a law for the common good, I really don’t like breaking it deliberately.

Puriity/sancitity I am not so hot on because in my experience “respect for life” in social issues turns people self-righteous and judgmental (sometimes even hypocrital as it’s almost impossible to live perfectly). I do not want anyone interfering in my family’s end-of-life decisions, for example. I had to decide whether to approve heroic measures for my dying mother. I had to decide to administer morphine to my dying husband, knowing that it was depressing his respiratory system and hastening death. I needed no “guidance” from others to do what I believed to be right and had anyone said something to me—no matter how well-intentioned—I would have heaved them out on the sidewalk. Yet I also support groups that protect society’s suffering and seek to protect farm and family animals from abuse.

Personally, I would argue for some compassion instead of the quick rush to judgment, along with pragmatic experiment as to what works. God save me from the theoreticians. I’m very fond of a section from Milton’s Areopagitica, “I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race . . . “ Lets judge things by how they work before rushing to condemn because it suits our particular prejudices. I guess it’s all a matter of balance and self-awareness. That’s what Haidt says. America needs to balance the founding virtues. I would also argue for some good manners instead of all the shrill screeching about who’s right or wrong and which side we are on. We are all on the side of the United States.