The Righteous Mind (Why Good People are divided by Politics and Religion) by Jonathan Haidt was recommended to me by my nephew as a book that changed how he viewed the world. Well, it certainly informed and challenged my world view but I’m not sure it’s changed it radically.
This book, written in 2012, was concerned about the polarisation of political and religious views back then. Today, with the advent of Trump, Farage et alia, that rift is even more pronounced.
Riding the elephant
Haidt set off back in 1995 (p41) with a crusade to understand the evolution of moral psychology which until then had been focussed on the evolution of the individual. First of all, he tried to track morality and came up with the graphic metaphor of a reasoning “Rider” sat on an intuitive “Elephant”. The elephant reacts intuitively to events, and the rider has no choice but to follow. The rider may think that his reasoning is guiding the elephant but in fact his reasoning purely justifies the path the elephant has already taken. A lot of our reasoning is like a press secretary putting a positive spin on what the elephant has decided (p107).
“Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second” (p82).
Haidt’s “Elephant/Rider” metaphor aligns with Daniel Kahneman’s concept of two modes of thought, “System 1” (fast, instinctive and emotional) and “System 2” (slow, deliberate and logical), as described in his 2011 book, Thinking, Fast and Slow. Kahneman was known as the “grandfather of behavioural economics” and received a 2002 Nobel Prize for prospect theory, which he developed with Amos Tversky back in 1979.
Moral foundations
To try and understand why people react so differently, Haidt looked beyond his own “WEIRD” (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic) world (p112). His secondment to an Indian university opened his WEIRD eyes to the viability of a more structured (if male dominated) society.
He proposed five “moral foundations” of:
- care/harm,
- fairness/cheating,
- loyalty/betrayal,
- authority/subversion, and
- sanctity/degradation (pp178-9).
After noting that conservatives value freedom and progressives antiauthoritarianism, he added a sixth foundation:
- liberty/oppression (p215).
According to Haidt, whereas progressives concentrate on only three of these foundations (care, fairness, and liberty), conservatives value all six. This explains why right-wing politicians get through to more voters – by using all six foundations in their messaging.
The ape and the bee
Looking at human evolution, Haidt suggests that early humans did not progress by searching for the truth but rather by acting in a way that maximised their chances of survival. He expands this from individual evolution to group evolution; groups survived better if they behaved a certain way.
Haidt challenges the established thinking of Dawkins and his “selfish gene” and revives Darwin’s long-discounted idea that “our ability to work together… is so all-pervasive that we don’t even notice it” (pp229-230). He presents four “exhibits” to support this view which he admits is still not universally accepted.
Humans may be 90% ape, but we are also 10% bee, so we have a potential “hive mentality”, enabling groups to flourish. The “hive” takes the individual out of his rational self and creates a euphoric feeling. Examples in Western culture could be a rave, a sports team, a political party, a religion or even a country.
I myself can identify with this – my hive was 50,000 fans at Old Trafford cheering Manchester United. Although religion may have originated in superstition (why did the harvest fail?) it has been a powerful type of group in advancing human civilisation:
“Only groups which can elicit commitment and suppress free riding can grow” (p317).
Transformation through experience
Haidt highlights two transformative moments in his journey through the moral psychology maze. The first was his experience of a totally different culture in India. I had a similar experience working in Africa then the Far East. One must respect that other societies work on a different moral basis.
The second of Haidt’s revelatory moments was reading Jerry Muller’s Conservatism, which postulated that “what makes social and political arguments conservative as opposed to orthodox is that the critique of liberal or progressive arguments takes place on the enlightened grounds of the search for human happiness based on the use of reason”.
Haidt was “floored” by this (p337), but this sounds to me very much like the concept of “caring conservatives” in the UK epitomised by John Major.
Haidt recommends that when interacting with people of different views, we try to form some sort of a bond with them to establish some “commonality or… trust” and respect their morality (p371).
Throughout, Haidt backs up his theories with solid science and acknowledges where he may be wrong. He provides copious notes and detailed references.
Author’s note:
Yes, I accept that we humans have needed to form groups to prosper and that these groups favour different moral foundations, but how do we cope with groups who have been fed lies by unscrupulous leaders?
Sure, we can understand how people accept those reassuring but false promises, but what alternatives can we offer to address their very real concerns? We should be in no doubt that our own group may itself be labouring under false promises, even if not actual lies. So both sides should, as Haidt says, try to find some “commonality or trust”, but they should also challenge the disinformation.
As a progressive I would challenge the lies of Putin (The West is the aggressor, not Russia), Trump (Haitian immigrants eat your pets), Farage (Turkey is joining the EU), and Johnson (£350m for the NHS when we leave the EU). To be fair, conservatives and libertarians also claim that progressives lie, like recently the Democratic Illinois Governor, JB Pritzker (ICE raids elementary school).
Comments? We want to hear them. Please write to editor@westenglandbylines.co.uk
