What can I say? My brain sometimes takes random odds and ends that I've read and puts them together in startling new ways. That's the case with this hybrid analysis of two works I've read recently: Greta Christina's AlterNet article Why Being Liberal Really Is Better Than Being Conservative, and LiveJournal blogger Issendai's post How To Keep Someone With You Forever. I've read the work that Greta Christina refers to - it's by a moral psychologist named Jonathan Haidt, and I used his work in my master's thesis.
Each of these articles has important things to say about various moral, social and psychological issues of our time. But today it occurred to me that Haidt's five dimensions of morality, which Christina breaks down tidily for us as "harm/care, fairness, authority, loyalty, and purity" also explain why and how the sick systems that Issendai describes come about in the first place. Come on with me over the jump for some starting thoughts on these topics.
First, let's talk about Haidt's findings, and get some definitions, so we all have a good idea of what we're talking about when we say, for example, "authority."
Harm/care is the value that concerns itself with, naturally enough, harm and care. Who is being affected? Is the effect negative? Who needs care or protection from that harm? Who needs to be compensated for having been harmed? Etc.
Fairness (and reciprocity) is the value that concerns itself with making sure the books balance. Did S get the same thing as J? Did P get fair punishment for what zie did to M? When A did me a favor, did I pay him back in kind?
Authority is the value that concerns itself with respect for those who have more power, more knowledge, or more clout than the rest of us. The leaders, the movers and shakers, the pastors, the CEOs - authority says that we should show them respect because they are the ones running the show.
Loyalty is the value that concerns itself with overlooking or excusing faults in people and institutions we feel we have a connection to. Socially, it's normally expected that family members will be loyal to one another, that employees will be loyal to their companies (sometimes enforced by non-disclosure agreements), and so forth.
Finally, purity is a value that concerns itself with moral adherence. This way of acting is pure, that way of acting is not. This way of believing is right, that way of believing is wrong. And so forth. Every group has its own definitions for what right and wrong and pure and impure are, but it's still somewhat generalizable in that everyone has something they find pure and beautiful, and everyone has something they find vile and disgusting.
Now, Haidt's findings fall out more or less like this: liberals tend to value minimizing harm and being fair as the most important things, while conservatives tend to value respect for authority, loyalty to authorities and others (such as work, family, friends, or partners), and purity (by which Haidt means "ritual purity" or "moral rightness").
You can see the value clash here. Authority implies hierarchy, which by definition implies an unfair system - some people are valued more and have more power than others. Loyalty can similarly imply that unfair system - it's not earned but expected based on your position within a society or social unit (such as the workplace, the family, etc.). And while purity may be a tough one to nail down, someone has to declare what's ritually pure and what isn't, which isn't exactly fair to those who get labeled as impure.
Similarly, authority has - by definition - the right to inflict harm on others in the name of maintaing its power, order and stability. Loyalty often demands behavior that is harmful to the self ("if you really loved me, you'd....") or to others. And once again, attempts to be "pure" in the ritual or moral sense can also cause a good deal of harm: think of how gays try to be straight by going through psychologically damaging "conversion therapy," for example; or how the Jews were declared ritually impure by nation after nation over the centuries and, in more than one case, became the target of pogroms.
So now that we have those ideas defined and the conflicts between them nailed down, here's Haidt's unsurprising finding: liberals tend to place much more emphasis on harm/care and fairness, and ignore the other three, while conservatives tend to emphasize all five of them more or less equally. This is why conservatives tend to see liberals as morally shallow, while liberals tend to see conservatives as unfair and harsh to those not of their in-groups.
So much for Haidt. Now let's move on to Christina's surprising finding, which is: liberal values are generalizable, where conservative values are not. On its face, it sounds strange, but once you look at the various values, you begin to see why this is true. Generalizable means "universally applicable" - that everyone will get the same thing, applied equally.
Well, how does one have authority if there's no hierarchy? How about loyalty - if everything's fair and equal, why would you need loyalty at all? Does purity really matter in a system based on minimizing harm, maximizing care, and ensuring fairness and reciprocity? No, it really doesn't. So these values are in basic conflict, and the conservative ones require a division of good and bad, of deserving from not-deserving, of in-group from out-group. The liberal values, on the other hand, are against all that. They try to universalize, to say "Each person deserves the same amount of fairness and the same amount of protection from harm and access to care as any other person, period."
So now we've got Haidt and Christina. Let's look at Issendai's work on the sick system, now, and then I'll put this all together for y'all.
Issendai lists several steps to creating a system where the people within it can't leave. Here are the four cardinal rules:
- Keep them busy all the time.
- Keep them tired.
- Keep them emotionally involved.
- Reward intermittently.
Then Issendai goes into how to accomplish these goals.
- Keep the crises rolling.
- Remind the people in the system that "things will be better when..." some impossible goal happens.
- Keep real rewards far in the distance.
- Establish one small semi-occasional success.
- Chop up their time.
- Enmesh your success with theirs.
- Keep everything on the edge.
If we look at these steps and these methods, do any of them look like they value minimizing harm, maximizing care, and having fairness or reciprocity? No, but I do see quite a bit of authority and loyalty in action there - especially loyalty. Keep 'em busy by reminding them that they owe you for the job or the love or whatever it is you're giving them. Keep them tired by running them into the ground and calling on their loyalty to you to keep them running once they're worn out. Keep them emotionally involved - do I really need to spell out that loyalty and emotional involvement are joined at the hip? How about those intermittent rewards? Well, if you're in a hierarchical system that involves authority, the system decides when you get the reward or if you get it at all - and how many of us have had a system where a jerk boss decides to give us a review that's just low enough to avoid getting that incremental $0.05/hour raise?
As for the methods, I see a lot of authority and loyalty going on there, too. If there's a crisis and you're loyal, you're honor-bound to help, right? And if things will be better later, you just have to hold on for right now - because you're loyal. The real rewards? Well, they'll come... eventually... right? once we get this crisis solved. Having those small, semi-occasional successes - well, in a corollary to the jerk boss keeping you from getting a raise, how many of you have had a boss give you a raise just so you won't quit? How about that enmeshment of your successes with theirs - can you separate out how many houses got started this month (because you worked twelve overtime hours every week) from the company's general success in building and selling them? Is your effort even recognized by the authorities of the company? No, because you're LOYAL, right?
Although not all these methods work on the basis of authority or loyalty, all four of the rules certainly do, and these set up the ways in which sick people create sick systems.
Anyway, I'm not done thinking about this, but it seems to me that those conservative values are the bedrock of most sick systems today.
Discuss.