TED Talks often reaffirm my faith in the human race. Their tagline is, "Ideas Worth Spreading."
I could recount to you a list of my favorite ones I've heard so far, but instead, I encourage you to go there and pick out your favorites. They've got all kinds of topics. They're usually all forward-thinking, and about saving and progressing our world. They often challenge preconceptions you might have been fed by your media.
They're free to watch, and even if you embedded one, in, say, a blog post, I don't reckon they're going to be the kind of people who come after you and say, WHOA, there, Chachi, don't go spreading that talk about making the poachers park rangers and tour guides, that's EYE PEE!
What clinches it for me, though, is they seem real. They seem to validate the progressive worldview, they seem to be about solutions. They're not usually unadulterated bullshit.
Which is why I'm still trying to collect my thoughts about one in particular, that struck me very differently.
In March of 2008, Jonathan Haidt, a "social psychologist" at the University of Virginia, gave a TED Talk. You can find that under "The Moral Roots of Liberals and Conservatives".
If you view it, I'll warn you that it may offend you like it did me.
And I'll wait for everybody behind the puffy orange cloud.
So "The Moral Roots of Liberals and Conservatives" happened during the Bush administration, in March of 2008, and I have no way of knowing if it's been discredited since then.
It still exists on the TED Talks site, and liberal personalities I follow on Twitter still give it at least some credence TODAY, which is a little disconcerting to me.
Because I found several incongruities in Haidt's descriptions of liberals and conservatives right away. I'll go over the top two I have, here, and invite you please to share yours in the comments.
Firstly, Haidt employs a kind of mockery (the likes of which I've seen Elisabeth Hasselbeck do to Bill Maher) at the liberals.
This kind of yeah, I know you think we're inferior, please don't call us stupid concern-trolling that makes light of progressive thoughts like "Embrace Diversity" and elevates xenophobia, for example, to a moral zenith that deserves pull quotes, a basis in survival skills, and a kind of nobility that embodies itself in buzzwords like "team player", makes it clear to me that Jon is batting for the conservative side.
So even though he's a "social psychologist," he's not a disinterested third party. But he's definitely smarmy. And now I can't trust him or believe him.
Secondly, Haidt draws this 7-shaped diagram that you'll recognize in the film. And it's such crap.
In brief, Haidt identifies 5 ethos that comprise the moral mind, and measures libs and cons along each of them. The ensuing chart looks like a 7, with the left on the left and the right at the right edge of the 7.
This is meant to show us, as liberals, that we rate high in doing no harm and in being fair, but low in "in-tribe" thinking, "purity", and "order." But conservatives, bless their hearts, excel in ALL FIVE of these essential building blocks in the Moral Mind!
I submit, first, that there's probably a sixth moral building block somewhere that we, as liberals, excel in. Probably "saving." The ethos to preserve a resource, sustain it, and reuse it over time, such as in the environmental movement.
But if Haidt is to be believed at least about where WE fit on his 7, our moral opposition to conservative thought is also rooted in the fact that conservative morals are low on the ethos that we excel in. So if we include the sixth ethos, preservation, and then put the conservative endpoints for "no harm" and "justice" where they ought to be, Haidt's 7 should look more like an X.
Examine conservative beliefs, and tell me if you think I'm mistaken. I'll start.
Conservatives believe poor unemployed people should get a job, or go hungry. Conservatives believe pregnant women should carry to term, or go to jail, and some believe their doctors should be harmed.
Those are both +injustice, +harm, and -preservation. The low point of our X, on the right.
I haven't even gotten to the comments beneath Haidt's topic on his video page. And I won't, except to say that the mouth-breathers had all gathered there.
But according to Haidt, they're 2.5 times more moral than you and me.
I think we need, as a community of progressives, to not allow charlatans like Haidt to frame these discussions, much less take his junk science seriously.
And I know others in this movement who still fall victim to this type of bullshit. If you happen to find any, lift them up, and set them straight.
If we can get even one more prog to stop ceding the moral high ground to people who don't deserve it any more than we do, this diary would have served a better purpose than I set out to achieve by writing it.