The Righteous Mind

 

I read quite a bit. Not as much as some yet more than others. This is primarily in the form of various online resources and books. One of the latter that left a significant impact on me is: “The Righteous Mind” by Jonathan Haidt. So much so that I have read it twice now in the past year with each reading highlighting different aspects.

The most obvious theme in the book is that we are born with a moral matrix with six identified primary foundation pairs: 1) Care/Harm, 2) Fairness/Cheating, 3) Loyalty/Betrayal, 4) Authority/Subversion, 5) Sanctity/Degradation, and 6) Liberty/Oppression. Each pair is associated with the presence or absence of a characteristic emotion. These are, in the same order as the foundations, compassion, anger, pride, respect, disgust and resentment. Through extensive polling by Haidt and associates they found a distinct relationship between the moral foundations a person relates to and their position on the political spectrum. Those on the left predominantly say that Care/Harm and Fairness/Cheating foundations are significantly more relevant to them than the other four foundations. On the other hand, those on the right have a balance of all six foundations. This implies that the more “right” you are the more balanced your moral matrix is.

At first blush this appears to be reasonable. Those more on the left do indeed exhibit compassion for people and are solidly against cheating. But unfortunately, reality gets in the way. Take for example what we have been exposed to for the last 4 years in the US. The Democrats supposedly are “left” and thus should exhibit primarily compassion and be anti-cheating. Yet while they say that their actions are the opposite. Haidt does summarise these moral foundations well though in that “morality binds and blinds”; people come together by shared morals but in doing so can blind themselves to those same morals.

Another dominate theme in his book is one that I believe has more support by reality. This is that we collectively are “90% chimp and 10% bee”. While we have an innate tendency towards independence (the chimp part) we willingly cooperate to make our collective lives better, a trait shared by few other creatures but is exemplified by the beehive where each works hard for the collective good. Personally, I must agree with that description. I for one value my independence but at the same time am willing to work with others for a cause that benefits all of us.

Along the way I have come to appreciate the benefits of Capitalism to society, and this fits well with the chimp/bee paradigm. On an individual basis we make deals with other people. When each side agrees that the deal is perceived to be beneficial/acceptable it is then consummated. To gain buyers the seller will invoke innovation to come up with a way to make the best product for the lowest price that appeals to the most buyers and will ensure a profit. And companies are the same except they are a hive of people working together but still with the same objective of producing something others will buy at a price that results in a profit. Capitalism has reduced the number of people who are truly in poverty to the lowest it has ever been in recorded history. Do not believe me? Look around at those who we call “poor”. Are they obviously suffering from malnutrition and barely alive? Do they have shelter from the elements? Do they have “luxuries” that not all that long ago would only be found with the “rich”, like automobiles, televisions, and cell phones?

Yet those who supposedly are compassionate and are against cheating try to pillory Capitalism and work hard to tear down companies. Companies made up of people like you and I who work together for the benefit of all within that company and its customer base, made up of other people like us. There is a reason why Capitalism is also referred to as “free enterprise”; buyers are free to accept what sellers are offering at the price being asked for or they take their business elsewhere. It is this pressure on the seller that has resulted in lower income people having the opportunity to live like kings of the past.

One reason this book caught my interest is that I have been searching for a plausible explanation as to why all of our dominate political parties have abandoned their original themes. Themes that I now understand played upon our innate morality. Each would focus on a combination of different moral foundations. But then the messages being delivered to us, the voting public, began to change and in ways that were no longer compatible with the original themes. Take for example “jobs”. A theme that plays on multiple moral foundations including care/harm, fairness/cheating, sanctity/degradation, and liberty/oppression. Yet now all of them parrot that they support jobs for us citizens while at the same time they find ways to kill current jobs as they attack the companies we work for willingly due to the “bee” part of our humanity. And then create barriers for the creation of new jobs.

I now understand that one of my key moral foundations is fairness/cheating which explains why I do not like hypocrites and hypocrisy. But now it is becoming clearer in that these people who say one thing and then do the opposite have become deluded such that they suffer from cognitive bias and projection. They are unable to see due to innate biases the flaws in their own reasoning. Then they project those flaws onto others as they are antithesis to their own innate moral matrix if they even have one.

Before I close, I would like to share with you two quotes. One is based on the concept that we are part bee and the other on the moral foundations of care/harm and fairness/cheating and should resonate with most reasonable people. Why I bring them forward is so that we can re-evaluate our individual moral matrices and use that to guide us in evaluating the political choices we have keeping in mind that the messages the main parties are delivering are becoming too often based on falsehoods.

“Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” ― John F. Kennedy

“I have a dream that my … children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.