Righteous Mind, The, Jonathan Haidt (Pantheon Books, 2012) (read fall 2012)
The subtitle may be misleading: “Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.” The book is indeed about the reason politics and religion divide people; the misleading part is the adjective “good.” This implies that human nature is basically good, but in the Introduction the author says the “take-home message of the book” is “the realization that we are all self-righteous hypocrites.” (p. xvi) One of his subheadings is, “We Lie, Cheat, and Justify So Well That We Honestly Believe We Are Honest.” (p. 82) Sounds like human nature is not so good after all, although by the end of the book he claims that we are only 90 percent selfish and that “we all have the capacity to transcend self-interest.” (p. 317)
Haidt says there are three major principles of moral psychology:
(1) Intuitions come first; strategic reasoning second;
(2) There’s more to morality than harm and fairness (he says there are also liberty, loyalty, authority, and sanctity); and
(3) Morality binds and blinds (we are 90% selfish hypocrites, but 10% cooperative and altruistic). (pp. xiv-xv).
In answering the question, “Where does morality come from,” the author says he learned from anthropologists about “how unusual Westerners are in thinking about people as discrete individuals.” (p. 14) Non-western societies place the needs of groups and institutions ahead of the needs of individuals; western societies, since the Enlightenment, do the opposite.
He says there is a basic distinction between morality and social conventions:
Even in the United States the social order is a moral order, but it’s an individualistic order built up around the protection of individuals and freedom. ... When you put individuals first, before society, then any rule or social practice that limits personal freedom can be questioned. It is doesn’t protect somebody from harm, then it can’t be morally justified. It’s just a social convention. (p. 17)
In chapter 1, Haidt rejects the “rationalist” answer to the question, “Where does morality come from?” Based on his own research, he concludes that morality is not “self-constructed by children on the basis of their experiences with harm” (like when one kid pushes another one off a swing). Instead it comes from “some combination of innateness and social learning.” (p. 26)
Chapter two deals with the conflict between reasoning and desire or emotions. He cites Plato as standing for the supremacy of reason; David Hume for the supremacy of the emotions; and Thomas Jefferson for sort of a compromise view that reason and emotions are independent rulers in human life. (He doesn’t mention the best Christian description of this conflict, the Apostle Paul, in Rom. 7:15-25, where he bemoans the inner conflict he has between the good he wants to do and the evil he finds himself doing.) Relying on Darwin, Haidt says the winner is Hume: the “passions” (or emotions) rule over reason; the heart controls the head. (pp. 27-34)
He describes a number of experiments he devised to test his theory that the heart almost always rules over the head, even when the head is unable to come up with a good rationale. For example, he and a colleague asked 30 university students, separately, if it was wrong for a brother and sister to have sex together, one time, taking all possible precautions so the sister would not get pregnant. Only 20 percent said it was OK. But when asked to explain why, very few could give even a coherent answer, yet they would not change their opinion. (pp. 38-40) Apparently none of the students just said it was wrong because the Bible or God said so. It seems to me this would be a rational answer and could be supported by the student explaining that he or she had tried to follow many other moral rules in the Bible and had generally found them to be wise and beneficial.
Chapter 3, entitled “Elephants Rule,” expounds on the first half of the “social intuitionist model” of moral psychology: “Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.” He has a great anecdote about how he discovered that he was a “chronic liar,” when his wife criticized him for leaving dirty dishes on the counter where she prepared the baby’s food. Before she got the words out of her mouth, he knew he disagreed with her (because intuitions come first) and the instant he knew the content of her criticism, his “inner lawyer” went to work and came up with an excuse (strategic reasoning second), which wasn’t even precisely true. But it had all been done in a flash. (pp. 52-54)
He describes more ingenious experiments that support the idea that intuitions come first, including the association of “good” and “bad” words (like “love” and “cancer;” whichever one is seen first will tend to influence our judgment about the second word; photos of people of different races (seeing a black face before answering a moral question tends to lead to a more severe or conservative answer, if the person is prejudiced); even seeing or smelling something negative (“fart spray”) influences opinions on totally different issues, and conversely sensing something clean or pure (“hand sanitizer dispenser”) will lead to harder views on moral, especially sexual, issues. (pp. 57-61) The point is that “[m]oral judgment is not a purely cerebral affair in which we weigh concerns about harm, rights, and justice. It’s a kind of rapid, automatic process more akin to the judgments animals make as they move through the world, feeling themselves drawn toward and away from various things.” (p. 61)
Comment about psychology experiments. I think some of these should be taken with a “grain of salt.” Scientists of all kinds want to conduct experiments that demonstrate the discovery of something new. Conducting experiments that disprove hypotheses does not make a good foundation for career-building journal articles and books. So there is a built-in motivation to come up with positive results, and this may be more likely in the “soft” sciences like psychology and sociology than in chemistry and physics. Thus, it would be a lot more believable to me if I knew that particular psychology experiments were replicated, with the same results, in different places and times by different scientists.
Another illustration: psychopaths have good reasoning ability, but are unable to show emotions that indicate that they care about other people, including family, friends, and animals. Haidt says psychopathy is “a genetically heritable condition” that creates brains that are unmoved by the needs, suffering, or dignity of others. He concludes that “the rider’s job is to serve the elephant, not to act as a moral compass.” (p. 63)
Conversely, babies as young as six and ten months old show the beginnings of moral development. Experiments have shown the babies can distinguish between good and bad actions, not only toward themselves but also toward others. Haidt concludes that “the elephant begins making something like moral judgments during infancy, long before language and reasoning arrive.” (p. 64)
In the rest of this chapter, Haidt modifies his rule that “elephants rule” to “elephants mostly rule.” He says contrary reasoning can affect our intuitive moral judgments, especially when it comes from friends or comes after time for reflection. (pp. 68-70)
Is it better to be virtuous, or to appear virtuous to others? Plato chose the former, but Professor Haidt says that’s not the way it really is. In our world, “[a]ppearance is usually far more important than reality.” (p. 75) Only when we know in advance that we will have to justify our conclusions before an impartial audience that cares about the truth do we really try to figure out the truth. Otherwise our thinking is “confirmatory thought” – one-sided thinking attempting to rationalize a particular point of view. (p. 76) Haidt says, “Our moral thinking is much more like a politician searching for votes than a scientist searching for truth.” (p. 76)
My question is whether this applies to a believer really trying to please God. If not, how does Haidt explain the many Christians, Jews, and other believers who down through the ages have made hugely unpopular decisions to the scorn of their neighbors and even family and friends? Of course, believers are human and (from a Christian standpoint) sinful, so some – perhaps most – ostensible attempts to please God are really to impress human onlookers.
Before finishing the first part of his book (“Intuitions Come First; Strategic Reasoning Second”), Haidt makes two more points that are very important to understanding how we reach conclusions on disputed issues: (1) When we (intuitively) want to believe something, we ask ourselves, “Can I believe it?” When we don’t want to believe something, we ask, “Must I believe it?” Even a scrap of evidence supporting what we want to believe is usually enough to confirm our opinion; whereas even overwhelming evidence in favor of what we don’t want to believe will probably not change our minds. (pp. 83-85) This is why, for example, it is so hard to get people to change their minds about global warming or gun control (to pick “liberal” issues) or personal responsibility for welfare recipients (a “conservative issue”).
The other point is that people generally do not choose or vote selfishly, to benefit themselves, so much as to benefit their group or their chosen cause. It’s like bumper stickers, which generally call attention to the team or political party or issue that the car owner supports. We want our team to win, even if we do not benefit personally. (pp. 85-88) This helps explain why poor people often vote against their economic interests, although I think there are also other motivators at work here. But his conclusion is important: Because we have a strong tendency to support our group, regardless of objective truth,
This is why it’s so important to have intellectual and ideological diversity within any group or institution whose goal is to find truth (such as an intelligence agency or a community of scientists) or to produce good public policy (such as a legislature or advisory board). (p. 90)
Haidt concludes the first part of his book by warning that the worship of reason is a delusion. “Reasoning matters, particularly because reasons do sometimes influence other people, but most of the action in moral psychology is in the intuitions.” (p. 92)
The next part of the book introduces the idea that what we think of as morality in the west is not the only kind of morality in the world. As a matter of fact, it is a distinctly minority position on morality, because it is based on a relatively small subset of people from cultures that are Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (i.e. WEIRD). Westerners are more independent and individualistic. The focus is on each individual person. Hence, morality largely consists of avoiding harm to individuals and promoting fairness among individuals. We have a morality of autonomy. (pp. 96-99)
However, the rest of the world believes our morality of autonomy is deficient. Haidt describes two other major systems of morality, which stress the ethics of community and divinity. The ethic of community is based on the idea that people are primarily members of larger entities, families, teams, companies, tribes, nations. This leads to moral concepts such as duty, hierarchy, respect, reputation, and patriotism, because these protect the social fabric on which everyone depends. The ethic of divinity holds that people “are not just animals with an extra serving of consciousness; they are children of God and should behave accordingly.” Even if it does no harm and violates nobody’s rights, some things are degrading and violate the “sacred order of the universe.” This leads to moral concepts such as sanctity and sin, purity and pollution, elevation and degradation. (pp. 99-100)
Haidt’s own ideas began to change when he spent three months in India on a Fulbright fellowship to study the ethic of divinity. He says he went as “a twenty-nine-year-old liberal atheist with very definite views about right and wrong.” (p. 101) The biggest impact on his views came not from his research but from just living in an entirely different social milieu, a “sex-segregated, hierarchically stratified, devoutly religious society.” (pp. 101-102) He described his change of attitude:
Rather than automatically rejecting the men as sexist oppressors and pitying the women, children, and servants as helpless victims, I began to see a moral world in which families, not individuals, are the basic unit of society, and the members of each extended family (including its servants) are intensely interdependent. In this world, equality and personal autonomy were not sacred values. Honoring elders, gods, and guests, protecting subordinates, and fulfilling one’s role-based duties were more important. (p. 102)
He could still see the dark side of the ethic of divinity, which he says is “sometimes incompatible with compassion, egalitarianism, and basic human rights.” (p. 106) But he says this ethic helps us understand “the spiritual emptiness of a consumer society in which everyone’s mission is to satisfy their personal desires.” (p. 106)
Haidt says that evangelical Christians in the West constitute one of many “moral matrices” that provide “a complete, unified, and emotionally compelling worldview, easily justified by observable evidence and nearly impregnable to attack by arguments from outsiders.” (p. 107) He realized that his own moral matrix of liberalism, which “seemed so obviously ethical,” led to the assumption that conservatives were acting out of self-interest or thinly-veiled racism. When he came back from his three months in India, he “was no longer on the defensive;” he could see that conservative arguments made sense even if there were contrary arguments. He said he had escaped from his prior partisan mind-set, and that it
felt good to be released from partisan anger. And once I was no longer angry, I was no longer committed to reaching the conclusion that righteous anger demands: we are right, they are wrong. I was able to explore new moral matrices, each one supported by its own intellectual traditions. It felt like a kind of awakening. (pp. 108-109)
Finally, he quoted from Richard Shweder, a psychological anthropologist, to the effect that we all, right from childhood, have the potential to become righteous about many different concerns. While we often become more and more aligned (in the West) with the morality of autonomy, we retain these other moral intuitions latent within ourselves, and they can be drawn upon to broaden our understanding. For example, we can “become so well educated in the ethic of autonomy that [we] can detect oppression and inequality even where the apparent victims see nothing wrong,” like criticizing the position of an elderly devoted servant within a household. Making him or her more autonomous, with more rights (like shorter working hours or more days off) may satisfy our sense of righteousness, but not necessarily his or hers. (pp. 109-111)
This may be an oversimplification, but Haidt compares moral judgments to taste, as in tasting food. Some like food hot and spicy, some unseasoned and bland. However, we don’t consciously choose our tastes; they seem to be built-in. Haidt is a strong believer in evolution, so he says just as our tasting faculty (and everything else) resulted from evolution, so did our moral faculties. He rejects any divine authority for morals, but of course if you understand evolution as the means by which God created everything, this is not necessarily a problem for Christians.
What is more problematic, to me, is the implication that there are no moral absolutes. Haidt is not a relativist, in the sense that one morality is as good an another. But he says that as a psychologist he (and others) have discovered a half-dozen prime candidates for being “the universal cognitive modules upon which cultures construct moral matrices.” (p. 124) These include care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, sanctity/degradation, and liberty/oppression. But these do not necessarily lead to the same kind of moral behavior. Take the issue of spanking in schools. Liberals invoke judgments of cruelty and oppression; conservatives counter with judgments about proper enforcement of rules and respect for authority. (pp. 124-125)
In Chapter 7 on The Moral Foundations of Politics, Haidt argues that both liberals and conservatives start with the same five “moral foundations” but, because of experience and perhaps other factors, they arrive at different conclusions. But where do the five “moral foundations” themselves come from? The author says they are innate or “built-in” (by evolution, of course) to human nature. However, innateness does not mean fixed and universal; it means we start out with a complex brain that is flexible and subject to change. He quotes this definition of innateness:
Nature provides a first draft, which experience then revises .... “Built-in” does not mean unmalleable; it means “organized in advance of experience.” (p. 131, emphasis in original)
For example, he sees bumper stickers as “tribal badges” that advertise the “teams” we support. A bumper sticker saying “Stop the Genocide” for SaveDarfur.org is expressing the care/harm foundation from a liberal standpoint, while a sticker for the “Wounded Warrior Project” or warning “Don’t Tread On Me” expresses that same foundation from a conservative position, although he notes a difference – caring for conservatives is not universalist; it is more local, and blended with loyalty. (p. 134)
Another example is the fairness/cheating foundation, which for liberals leads to concerns about equality and social justice and for conservatives leads to concerns about taxation as redistribution and welfare cheats. (pp. 134-138) Historically, Haidt says this comes from the experience of our evolutionary ancestors who learned that being nice to those who were nice to them paid off. “The original triggers of the Fairness modules are acts of cooperation or selfishness that people show toward us.” (p. 136) Cf. 1 Jn. 4:10 (“In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us ....”).
So my summary would be that all humans are born, for example, with an inclination towards fairness and against cheating, but our experiences in the world lead some to work this out as primarily being fair to our own group (on guard against others cheating us) while others universalize it to seek fairness for all. Stated that way, the liberal position seems more Christian.
The third moral foundation is loyalty/betrayal. For millions of years Haidt says our ancestors “faced the adaptive challenge of forming and maintaining coalitions that could fend off challenges and attacks from rival groups.” Thus we are naturally more friendly toward others who are loyal to our own group and more hostile toward those who are not loyal; i.e., traitors. In attempting to show how heinous betrayal is to religions, he quotes extensively from the Koran (which commands Muslims to kill apostates), says nothing about Jewish views (perhaps appropriate in view of the strong dissenting movements in Israel today), and the best he can do to present a Christian position is to quote Dante, a Christian poet but hardly a theologian. (pp. 140-141) He also points out that the loyalty/betrayal foundation is more natural to conservatives, who tend to see the universalist bent of liberals as threatening to our country.
According to Haidt’s analysis, the next moral foundation is authority/subversion, which has to do with the amount of respect shown to parents, teachers, and others in positions of authority. Haidt says when he began graduate school, he subscribed to the common liberal belief that hierarchy = power = exploitation = evil, but he discovered that he was wrong. While hierarchy can always be exploited to hurt those on the bottom, often it serves a good purpose, such as maintaining order and justice in a chaotic world. This gives everyone “a stake in supporting the existing order and in holding people accountable for fulfilling the obligations of their station.” (p. 144) He doesn’t say whether this can legitimately be applied to, say, marriage.
Finally the author comes to the sanctity/degradation foundation of morals. This stems from the emotion of disgust, which Haidt thinks evolved to help shield our ancestors from disease and infections. So lepers, dead bodies, and excrement are shunned, hidden, or rejected. The opposite pole of this moral foundation, sanctity, is one that many liberals shy away from, but Haidt thinks this is a mistake. He says that “one of the greatest unsolved mysteries is how people ever came together to form large cooperative societies,” and suggests that it is probably related to the “psychology of sacredness,” which “helps bind individuals into moral communities.” (p. 149). Politically, conservatives are much more likely to embrace this moral foundation; witness their commitment to “the sanctity of life” and “the sanctity of marriage.” The left, however, has its watered-down version of sanctity, as in some of the moral passions of the environmental movement or in New Age grocery stores, selling a variety of products that promise to cleanse you of “toxins.” (p. 152)
Chapter 8, entitled “The Conservative Advantage,” is so insightful! It reinforces my gut feeling that this book is going to change my life. Not that I agree with everything in it, especially the historical where-morality-came-from parts, but his analysis of liberal and conservative ideas about morality ring true to me. Plus, they are backed up by much, much research.
So, what does Chapter 8 say that is so significant? Basically, as I understand it, he says liberals (Democrats) base most of their morality on just two of the “moral matrices” that Haidt has identified, care and fairness, whereas conservatives (Republicans) draw upon all five of the matrices. This enables them to appeal to such concerns as loyalty, patriotism, and sanctity as well as care and fairness. (pp. 155-167)
As a result of feedback from his published analysis, Haidt and his colleagues (mostly liberal graduate students) added a sixth moral matrix or foundation, liberty/oppression. (He said this one is “provisional,” because they have not yet finished rigorously testing it.) Essentially, “conservative notions of fairness ... focused on proportionality, not equality. People should get that they deserve, based on what they have done.” (p. 169)
Obviously, the liberty/oppression foundation of morality operates in tension with the authority/subversion foundation. Authority can cross the line into self-aggrandizement and tyranny. (p. 173) The question is, when is that line crossed, so that rebellion is justified (e.g., as in the American Revolution)? For Christians the line is probably drawn in a much different place than for non-believers, at least on many issues.
The liberty/oppression moral foundation is used by both liberals and conservatives, but with a key distinction. Liberals are more universalistic and use it in the service of underdogs, victims, and powerless groups everywhere, whereas conservatives are more parochial and concerned about themselves and their groups; for example,
... don’t tread on me (with your liberal nanny state and its high taxes), don’t tread on my business (with your oppressive regulations), and don’t tread on my nation (with your United Nations and your sovereignty-reducing international treaties). (p. 175)
Thus liberals tend to link liberty/oppression with care/harm, which support ideals of social justice, emphasizing compassion for the poor and a struggle for political equality. Conservatives, on the other hand, tend to link liberty/oppression with the fairness/cheating foundation, which is about proportionality, making sure that people get what they deserve, and only what they deserve. (pp. 182-183) Furthermore, the remaining three moral foundations – loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation – are almost totally ignored by liberals but embraced by social conservatives. (pp. 183-184) Haidt’s summary of his revised list of six moral matrices or foundations:
Liberals have a three-foundation morality, whereas conservatives use all six. Liberal moral matrices rest on the Care/harm, Liberty/oppression, and Fairness/cheating foundations, although liberals are often willing to trade away fairness (as proportionality) when it conflicts with compassion or with their desire to fight oppression. Conservative morality rests on all six foundations, although conservatives are more willing than liberals to sacrifice Care and let some people get hurt in order to achieve their many other moral objectives. (p. 185)
This makes a lot of sense to me, and explains some beliefs of mine that seem to conflict with my otherwise liberal approach to non-theological issues. For example, liberals are generally in favor of free breakfasts in schools, even for those who don’t need them (so as not to stigmatize the poorer students), but I have always opposed that because it seems to me that it tends to weaken parental responsibility. Another example: liberals are generally opposed to requiring voter ID cards, but I am not so quick to dismiss conservative concerns about cheating, and think that if made freely available in a non-discriminatory way, voter ID cards are not objectionable.
It also explains what Haidt says is one of the “great puzzles” that has preoccupied Democrats in recent years: Why do rural and working-class Americans generally vote Republican when this seems so obviously to be against their self-interest? His answer is that they are in fact voting for their moral interests. They care for more than just harm and fairness (in the universal sense). They care about the other four moral foundations, particularly liberty (freedom from government domination) and fairness as proportionality (workers shouldn’t have to support “free-loaders”). (pp. 185-186)
The third part of the book, entitled “Morality Binds and Blinds,” begins with a historical analysis (I would say “conjecture”) of how evolution produced human “groupishness” – our almost unique ability (bees and ants have this ability too) to form cooperative groups, which, according to Haidt, explains the small amount of true altruism (as opposed to self-interest disguised as altruism) in human nature. The idea (which I have probably over-simplified) is that over vast spans of time the first humans learned that working together (e.g., one holding down a branch so the other can get fruit and then share it) can be a win-win situation. Humans then formed larger and larger groups, families, tribes, nations, so that we now have civilization. (pp. 189-199)
Without going into detail, Haidt’s explanation of how evolution ultimately produced morality, seems intrinsically unlikely to me. Why would those who cooperated better survive rather than those who were stronger and more aggressive, and were able to kill off the more cooperative humans? My perhaps simplistic theological answer to the question of why we are (in Haidt’s words) “90 percent chimp and 10 percent bee” (i.e., 90 percent selfish and 10 percent altruistic) is that humans were created in the image of God, who is perfect, but that humans were corrupted by evil so that without being “re-created” by God (through Christ) humans show only flashes of pure altruism, unadulterated by self-interest. Of course, any supernatural explanation is a non-starter to most scientists, probably including Dr. Haidt.
Whether the author’s view of how the evolution of humans (he says “humans may well be a special case,” p. 212) produced morality is true or not, his conclusions, based on research, are very helpful. What he calls the “hive switch (p. 223), the human ability, under some conditions, of transcending our natural self-interest to “lose ourselves” in something larger than ourselves (a team, nation, etc.), leads to generally making people less selfish and more loving. (p. 227) It is generally accompanied by a sense of awe or wonder, even ecstacy, as when alone in a wilderness or participating in a “rave” (all-night dance party).
A prime example of what the hive switch can produce is the modern corporation, a legal fiction that many people working together can be a “person” in the eyes of the law. Obviously, the more the employees and officers of a corporation desire to work together – to be part of the corporate team – the better the atmosphere at work and the better the results for the company. Thus corporate leadership that triggers the “hivish nature” of its employees “can activate pride, loyalty, and enthusiasm among its employees and then monitor them less closely.” (p. 237) He has some good suggestions of how to do this, not only for corporations, but also for teams, schools or other organizations. His ideas include emphasizing similarity, not diversity; exploiting synchrony (people moving together, as in singing or doing calisthenics), and creating healthy competition among teams, not individuals. (pp. 238-240)
Although I believe Haidt is fundamentally wrong in his view of religion, his research has changed his own beliefs in the right direction (in my opinion). He concludes his discussion of the “hive switch” by writing:
When I began writing The Happiness Hypothesis, I believed that happiness came from within, as Buddha and the Stoic philosophers said thousands of years ago. ... But by the time I finished writing, I had changed my mind: Happiness comes from between. It comes from getting the right relationships between yourself and others, yourself and your work, and yourself and something larger than yourself. (p. 244)
I doesn’t take too much twisting to fit this into a Christian paradigm. Evangelical Christians especially have emphasized the need for people to have a right relationship to God (“something larger than yourself”) and believe that when that relationship is correct, right relationships with others and with all aspects of human life (including work) will follow.
When Haidt turns to apply his findings to religion, he dismisses the anti-religious fervor of the “new atheists” (Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett), who focus on what they believe are irrational and harmful beliefs. (pp. 249-255) But then Haidt gives more approval to what they call the cultural evolution of religion, which produces some or mostly beneficial results in improving cooperation and morality among believers in religious communities. (pp. 255-258) These atheists still claim that religious beliefs are irrational, but “[s]acredness binds people together, and then blinds them to the arbitrariness of the practice.” (p. 257)
In a section entitled “Is God a force for good or evil?” Haidt, in my opinion, presents a confusing and ambivalent case for “God” (by which he means religion) being mostly a force for good. First he doubts that religious people are any more altruistic toward outsiders than the irreligious, stating that “when social psychologists brought people into the lab and gave them the chance to actually help strangers, religious believers rarely acted any better than did nonbelievers.” Two pages later he says religious people “spend more time than secular folk serving in neighborhood and civic associations of all kinds,” and he quotes two political scientists, Robert Putnam and David Campbell, who have studied how religious and nonreligious Americans differ as stating that “religiously observant Americans ... are more generous [than secular Americans] with their time and money, especially in helping the needy, and they are more active in community life.” (pp. 265, 267). The reason for the latter, qualified positive conclusion is not what religious people believe but the fact that they belong to a religious group. (p. 267)
I think there are two reasons why Professor Haidt seems confused about religion. First, of course, like many scientists he rejects, a priori, the possibility that there might actually be a supernatural Being worshiped as God; in his view, all religion is a product of evolution. Second, he doesn’t seem to recognize the possibility that one or more religions can be more true than others. For example, his theory is that even when a religion “preaches universal love and benevolence” (like Christianity?) religion and religious minds are basically parochial, focused on helping the in-group. He explains away that evidence to the contrary by Putnam and Campbell in the following almost laughable interpretation:
... religion in the United States nowadays generates such vast surpluses of social capital that much of it spills over and benefits outsiders. But there is no reason to think that religion in most times and places has provided so much benefit beyond its borders. (p. 268)
Perhaps if Profession Haidt knew the history of the vast majority of hospitals and institutions of higher learning throughout Africa and Asia, he might not so quickly conclude that they were brought about by “vast surpluses of social capital ... spill[ing] over and benefit[ing] outsiders.”
Finally, in this chapter Haidt gives what he calls a functionalist definition of morality, which is hard to summarize except to say that it is whatever works to suppress self-interest and induce cooperation for the common good. (p. 270) This is a descriptive, not a normative, definition – that is, it does not claim to be truly right. For public policies, Haidt says that Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism – which aims to produce the “greatest total good” – has “no compelling alternative.” (p. 272)
Chapter 12, “Can’t We All Disagree More Constructively,” is an amazing analysis of the current American antipathy between liberals and conservatives. (p. 274 et seq.)
First, he debunks the idea that people choose their ideologies to further their self-interest. Although that seems somewhat self-evident to me, he points out that while self-interest may once have been a good predictor of ideology, in modern times both the rich and the poor go both ways – rich industrialists mostly right, tech billionaires mostly left, and rural poor mostly right, urban poor mostly left. He says “self-interest does a remarkably poor job of predicting political attitudes.” (p. 277)
Then what does predict people’s ideologies? Mostly, but not entirely, genes. Haidt describe some studies of identical twins and fraternal twins. Whether raised in the same household or not (as through adoption), identical twins grow up to have remarkably similar outlooks on life, whereas fraternal twins, or unrelated children raised in the same household, are much more likely to have different ideologies. Furthermore, he says the influence of genes is much more pervasive than things like IQ, mental illness, and personality traits like shyness. It extends to such things as preferences in music, likelihood of getting a divorce, political attitudes, and so on. (p. 278)
However – and this is the big thing – Haidt says that although our genes give us innate traits, they are not absolutely fixed. His idea is that the genes guide the construction of the brain in the uterus, but that’s “only the first draft,” and this first draft gets revised by childhood experiences. So the child predisposed by his genes to be conservative may in fact end up voting for liberals because of his childhood influences, education, job, etc. That’s not as likely as a conservative outcome, but it is possible. We are pre-disposed, but not hard-wired, to become what we become.
Theological comment: This to me makes a lot of sense, and helps explain the doctrine of predestination. For his own purposes, God endows us at birth with various kinds of genes. In some people, these point toward faith, in others they point in the opposite direction. But these are not immutable. As a personal example, I believe I had more liberal-leaning genes at birth than my brothers, more of a tendency to try new things, to travel, to experiment. I could easily have rebelled against Christianity completely, but did not, although I still see the strong influence of my genes in the kind of leftish evangelical I have become. Naturally I think my views are correct, but if they are so influenced by my innate traits, why should not conservatives, who are also shaped by their innate traits, think they are correct? How to get past this hurdle? Well, we have a standard, and his name is Jesus. While our interpretation of his life and words is also influenced by our genes, they struggle within the parameters of commitment; i.e., we can interpret the Bible liberally, but the written Word is still a constraint on how far we can go without tossing it out altogether.
One more point about this chapter. Haidt talks about the high importance of our “life narratives,” the stories we construct (which may not be entirely factual) to make sense of our lives. Compare the “liberal progress narrative” with the conservative narrative on pp. 284-285. These narratives depend on the moral matrices Haidt has identified for liberals and conservatives, and he says that conservatives can more easily understand the liberal narrative than liberals can understand the conservative narrative. (Read carefully pp. 284-287)
Haidt says the two big turning points in his intellectual life were his discovery in India of “broader moralities” such as the ethics of community and divinity, and his study and deeper understanding of conservatism, which he distinguishes from orthodoxy (true conservatives see radical change as dangerous, and orthodoxies sometimes advocate radical change to conform society of an externally ordained moral order). (pp. 288-289) His study of conservatism led him to the idea of “moral capital,” which are “the resources that sustain a moral community;” more specifically, the sets of values, practices, institutions, etc., that enable the community to suppress or regulate selfishness and induce cooperation. (p. 292)
He says the “fundamental blind spot of the left” is that “[i]t tends to overreach, change too many things too quickly, and reduce the stock of moral capital inadvertently.” “Conversely, while conservatives do a better job of preserving moral capital, they often fail to notice certain classes of victims, fail to limit the predations of certain powerful interests, and fail to see the need to change or update institutions as times change.” (p. 294)
As illustrations, he gives two examples where he thinks liberals are justified and two where conservatives are justified. For liberals, (1) governments can and should restrain overly-powerful corporations, and (2) some problems really can be solved by governmental regulation (e.g., removal of lead from gasoline, which has saved countless lives). For conservatives, which he divides into libertarians (who love free markets but are not too much into helping victims) and social conservatives, (1) libertarians are right to believe that market forces really are miraculous, and should be applied in many areas (e.g., health care); and (2) social conservatives, who “have the broadest set of moral concerns,” really understand moral capital and the value of groups and institutions of like-minded individuals (like churches and marriage) and the danger of pushing for changes “that weaken groups, traditions, institutions, and moral capital” (e.g., welfare programs that reduce the value of marriage and increase out-of-wedlock births). (pp. 294-309)
Haidt’s practical advice: If you want to understand another group, follow the sacredness. Think about all six of the moral foundations, and try to figure out which one or two are most important in a particular controversy. If you really want to open your mind, open your heart first, with friendly interactions with members of the “other” group. (p. 312)
Haidt’s book ends with a handy four-page “Conclusion” that summarizes the entire book.
This is a great work of nonfiction. I learned so much from it. As a Christian, I do not agree with some of his basic premises; e.g., that everything evolved from nothing without God; that God is only a human-made myth; and so on. But Professor Haidt has some wonderful insights that mesh with Christianity. Many of his conclusions from his scientific study of humans are profound, and I believe are helpful for believers and unbelievers alike. This is one of the most helpful nonfiction books I have read.