Thursday, June 17, 2021

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt

 Commentary and thoughts

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion           by Jonathan Haidt

I have been trying to make sense of how anyone with any morals could support the former President after 1) the horrific response to COVID 19, followed by 2) the shredding of democratic values of faith in a free and fair election which didn’t even culminate after the insurrectionist attack on Congress on Jan 6, and 3) the non-stop self-serving lies, bullying, misogyny, racism and other personal character flaws this man has exhibited all his life.

I came across this title and went right after it. A shout out to our local Mooresville, NC library for having this book in old school paper, as well as audio or electronic versions. I went old school this time.

Haidt tackles this from a non-believer’s standpoint, and a generally leaning left standpoint, but acknowledges that from a moral development standpoint, he sees the attractiveness of a conservative approach (in the liberals vs conservatives framework).

In short, he has built out a Moral Foundations Theory to get at some shared underlying moral framework that can describe the facets of moral foundations across humans/societies in much the same way that Costa and McCrae developed a 5 factor model for personality at the individual person level, but this text also shares a lot of history and sociology to explain how he got there, versus an almost exclusively empirical factor modeling approach.

The model that Haidt and fellow researchers landed on had the following six dimensions:

1.      Care/harm

2.      Liberty/oppression

3.      Fairness/cheating

4.      Loyalty/betrayal

5.      Authority/subversion

6.      Sanctity/degradation

He argues that Democrats have a hard time resonating with the general public because liberals over-index on just a few of these dimensions at the expense of others, whereas Republicans tend to message to all 6 of these dimensions. Libertarians currently identify most with Republicans, but share some common interests with Democrats.

He describes the liberal moral matrix as heavily indexing on Care/harm, almost to the exclusion of all other dimensions, but also some weight to Liberty/oppression and Fairness/cheating. Highlights the most sacred value for liberals as care for victims of oppression. Minimal focus on the other 3 dimensions.

He acknowledges he identifies with liberals generally, and keys into 2 points that he feels liberals get right that he shares:

1.     1.  Governments can and should restrain corporate superorganisms.

2.      2.  Some problems really can be solved by regulation.

He describes the libertarian moral matrix having the most sacred value of individual liberty, as most heavily indexed on Liberty/oppression dimension (but more on the liberty side than the reducing oppression focus of liberals). To a lesser degree, libertarians also focused on fairness cheating, and weaker ties to the other 4 dimensions.

He identifies a counterpoint from the libertarian perspective against the 2 liberal points:

1.     1.  Markets are miraculous.

Just as there are some problems that government and regulation can address, there are others that markets seem to do a better job. He highlights healthcare in this space, which interestingly is also used by liberals as a rallying cry for oppression as those who can afford seem to get better care, and those who can’t afford have to choose whether to pursue health at the risk of financial ruin.

In turning to the social conservative moral matrix, he highlights their most sacred value as preserving the institutions and traditions that sustain a moral community. He describes the matrix as tapping into all 6 of the dimensions mentioned earlier.

In other words, the advantage conservatives have over liberals from these domains is that they tap into all 6 dimensions, whereas the liberals tap into only 3 of the dimensions.

His second counterpart to the liberal perspective comes from the conservative viewpoint versus the first counterpoint from the libertarian perspective.

2.     2.  You can’t help the bees by destroying the hive.

If we identify humans as bees- a metaphor Haidt uses to refer to humans “groupiness” or ties to social collaboration, movements like BLM, who have as part of their charter the invalidation of traditional family structures, are going to cause damage while they intend to increase care and reduce harm. In other words, there is a counterproductive element to liberal approaches which tear at the fabric of traditional institutions.

I really enjoyed the read. I still have not come to fully understand, however, how to make sense of the specter of the Trump Republican, who in my mind is not even a social conservative, as there seems to be a willingness to excuse any and all malfeasance by one specific individual. I don’t understand his many false fear-based messages, and am saddened as I see a willingness by some to excuse insurrection and embrace anti-democracy perspectives. They sow mistrust in public institutions. They excuse lying and bullying. The way the former President scrambled messages about the virus that has now killed 600k fellow Americans, dismissed the more clear-eyed science advisors and embraced sham science, the way he both excused and tried to blame China for the virus, leading to a poor embrace of preventive measures and now even to the anti-vax misinformation campaign which leaves a substantial portion of the U.S. population vulnerable to this virus. I just don’t get it. I’ll go through each of the dimensions:

1.      Care/harm- COVID….

2.      Liberty/oppression- believes that it is zero sum- if underprivileged people are lifted up, somehow others are harmed- takes the hive destruction theory above and exaggerates what most groups are trying to achieve- the boogey man on steroids-

3.      Fairness/cheating- uses the message that “the other” is cheating, despite the never ending misinformation about last year’s election, the 60+ court cases finding no fraud or cheating of any scale likely to impact his loss, statements of free and fair elections by his own CISA and DOJ leadership teams, etc. And of course, his past history in business…

4.      Loyalty/betrayal- wow- he’s managed to convince people to march behind flags with his image and name rather than the U.S. flag, and attack the capital. He’s managed to convince his followers to root for Russia over the U.S. if he’s not the leader of the U.S. Loyalty to person and party over country. Congratulations or something.

5.      Authority/subversion- I encourage all to take a look at the role of inspectors general, and then look at how the former President did all in his power to keep these watchdogs not just on a leash, but starved or even sent to the pound. Look at how he used acting cabinet members versus Congressionally approved staff so he could ignore the checks and balances that process involves. He got impeached for abuse of power when he tried to get Ukraine to announce investigations of a political rival, and then got impeached again when he set the conditions for the insurrection on Jan 6. He seemed to be hell-bent on destroying the institutions he was charged to lead and represent. Not a conservative value that I am aware of.

6.      Sanctity/degradation. His Lafayette Square stroll through protestors to hold a Bible he’s completely unfamiliar with in front of a church he’s never actually visited is the perfect symbol. His multiple wives that he discards as he goes to the next one, before closing out the previous relationship, and payoffs to porn stars and porn models suggest some room for improvement and a curious ideal for evangelicals. For him, the only thing holy is his brand/name. His affiliations with child predators like Epstein and Maxwell (“I wish her well”), his responses to questions about morality and his “favorite scripture,” all show someone who’s either abandoned any sense of the sacred or never got there in the first place.

With a publication date of 2012, this text precedes the 4 year Trump presidency, so I don’t know how Haidt would break Trump and his followers down within his framework, but you just got my analysis!

Friday, June 04, 2021

Early morning walks and law enforcement interactions

Needed to write this back when it happened- Nov 16, 2020.

Things seem to always be busy between family, church, work and military. And with COVID, I suspended my trips to my current fitness center of choice, Planet Fitness- can't beat $10/month, but even that stops when COVID rages.
So I started doing early morning walks around the neighborhood before the work from home day started. Sometimes I would ramp it up and add in a ruck sack with a bit of weight in it, the actual amount depending on my ambition and the feel in my shredded knees and arthritic ankles, back aches, etc.

So this early Monday morning, as I walked along with my ruck, headphones in, listening to one audiobook or another, I was coming out of one of the sub-neighborhoods and I see 2 SUVs coming down the road. I move to the side to avoid getting run over, and as one passes, I notice it is local PD. And the other angles in front of me. I check behind me and the other has angled behind me.

OK, I'm the person of interest here in the dark early morning hours. I remove my sweatshirt hood, pull my headphones and keep my hands out wide to keep folks happy.

One female officer and one male officer, I would guess she was in her 30s, him in his 20s, both white, him with a short military style haircut. They tell me they got a call from someone in the neighborhood about a prowler, asked for my name and address, which I provided. The young man then indicated it seemed obvious to him that I was out on a ruck walk. I think the fact that I had a military rucksack on my back and was wearing combat boots may have tipped him off. I also shared with him that I'd been doing these walks for months by this point, so that neighbor had missed out on my potential prowling many times prior to that.

I would have considered it all unremarkable, excepting that this past year has had much in the media about various less successful citizen-police engagements. I have rarely ever felt targeted, and even in this case, they quickly worked to put me at ease, as I did with them. Being an MP myself hasn't been a big factor, I don't identify as law enforcement, but I do know a large number in the Guard and Reserve who are also civilian police. We've had some good discussions over this past year.

Glad this engagement was one in which the peace was protected and preserved for all involved.