(At least we think we are.)
I was skimming some articles on the website “Medium.com” and came across the following headline; “The Very Real Pain of Having Trump Supporters as Parents”
It caught my attention and was intrigued to read more. You see, I had a very public and personal experience when I ran for State Representative in Michigan in the summer of 2020. “A public experience?” you might be thinking. “Of course you had a public experience, you ran for a public office, duh.”
Yes, you are correct, but mine more so. You see I had daughters that tweeted some things that, (for whatever reason), the media picked up on and ran with. We made international news. Yes, that’s right, international news.
It was mind boggling to say the least. I mean, who cares about me and what my children have to say? Isn’t a child disagreeing with a parent a normal part of growing up? A better, more newsworthy headline would be, “Teenager agrees with parent!” Now, that would be news.
Seriously, I’m not that big of a deal and the position I was running for was not that important, especially on the international scene. So, why all the attention?
I wanted to dig and try to get to the root of what is going on. In my search, I came across this article by Allyson Darling on Medium, dated October 25, 2020. Her one concluding comment, I think is at the crux of the issue.
She states, “But the response is heartbreaking. I’m sure that I’m right, that my views result in overall less suffering for Americans, something I care deeply about. They are sure that they are right. The only common ground is the love we have for each other. And that is not a small thing.”
The three things I took away from her comment are:
1. She is sure that she is right.
2. Her views are more compassionate.
3. She cares more than her parents do.
It seems to me, that her first point is stating the obvious, as if it is a new revelation. “She is sure that she is right.” Of course she does. Every person thinks they are right and every teenager, or 20-something thinks they know more than their parents do. There is nothing new about that. The reality is, they can’t possibly know more than their parents do. It’s impossible.
When I did an interview with the New York Times, about my daughter’s Tweets, the 26-year old reporter asked me something similar when she asked, “Don’t you think you should listen to your daughter?” I asked her, “Would you listen to a 13-year old girl, half your age, tell you how to live?” Her response? “I’ve never thought of it that way before.”
Exactly.
In our polarized world of “us vs. them” no one listens anymore because we each think we are right and the other person is wrong. It is just the way things are.
The reality is that we are all compassionate people. Or at least we think we are.
I would have to say that this statement aptly defines a majority of Americans. I may be naïve, but I still believe, and think the evidence shows, that most Americans are caring and thoughtful people who genuinely care about the welfare of others. More so here, in the USA, than anywhere else in the world.
No other country gives more in terms of time or money than we do. I don’t question our generosity, our care or compassion for others. I would say that your typical Republican or Democrat, is the same, in that they both care about people. Yes, they really think they do.
The difference is one of perspective and values. In other words, it’s how each person views the world and what he holds as “greatest value.” This idea is aptly described by Dr. Jonathan Haidt in his Ted Talk, “5 Moral Foundations Theory and Politics.”
In our desire to explain why half of America voted for the other team, we think they must be blinded by religion or by simple stupidity. That is a convenient belief system. “If you don’t see things my way, you are either blind or stupid.” That way, I never have to be challenged or have an original thought from others ever again.
It’s like the blind men touching a different part of the elephant. Each man was right, and each was very wrong. I recently wrote about how your perspective defines your reality. If you are interested, you can check it out here.
So if you think that half of America votes Republican because they are blinded in this way, then my message to you is that you’re trapped in a moral Matrix, in a particular moral Matrix. And by “the Matrix,” I mean literally the Matrix, like the movie “The Matrix.”
I’m here today to encourage you to make a choice, to decide. You can either take the blue pill and stick to your comforting delusions, or you can take the red pill, learn some moral psychology and step outside the moral Matrix.
We need to step back and consider the “Big Five Personality Traits” of humans.
The theory identifies five factors:
· Openness to experience (inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious)
· Conscientiousness (efficient/organized vs. extravagant/careless)
· Extraversion (outgoing/energetic vs. solitary/reserved)
· Agreeableness (friendly/compassionate vs. challenging/callous)
· Neuroticism (sensitive/nervous vs. resilient/confident)
Let’s start at the beginning: What is morality, where does it come from? The worst idea in all of psychology is the idea that the mind is a blank slate at birth. Developmental psychology has shown that kids come into the world already knowing so much about the physical and social worlds and programmed to make it really easy for them to learn certain things and hard to learn others.
The best definition of innateness I’ve seen, which clarifies so many things for me, is from the brain scientist Gary Marcus. He says, “The initial organization of the brain DOES NOT depend that much on experience. Nature provides a first draft, which experience then revises. ‘Built-in’ doesn’t mean unmalleable; it means organized in advance of experience.”
OK, so what is on the first draft of our moral mind? Dr. Haidt found five best matches of morality, which he calls the five foundations.
1. The first one is harm/care.
2. The second foundation is fairness/reciprocity.
3. The third foundation is in-group/loyalty.
4. The fourth foundation is authority/respect.
5. The fifth foundation is purity/sanctity.
What he found was, harm, care and fairness issues are important across all people. They all highly endorse these sorts of statements all across the board, but, liberals “a little more” than conservatives. Not a lot more, “a little.”
But look at the other three.
For liberals, the scores are much lower for the last three foundations of morality; Loyalty, respect and purity. The liberals are basically saying, “Those are not moral foundations. In-group loyalty, authority, purity — these have nothing to do with morality. I reject it.”
But as people get more conservative, the values across the board rise. We could say liberals have a two-channel or two-foundation morality. Conservatives have more of a five-foundation, or five-channel morality. In other words, you could say that conservatives have a more balanced morality than liberals. Or in simple terms, liberals are more immoral than conservatives.
With more perspectives, or foundational moralities as Dr. Haidt calls them, conservatives have a more stable and complete picture of true morality. Think of a two legged stool vs. a five-legged stool. One is wobbly and unstable and the other is more secure and sound to sit on.
I see this attitude and belief in the Church all the time. There is a group of Christians who really only care about one thing, and that one thing is “love.” Everything is trumped by love; love, love, love and love. All you need is love. God is love. Ugh! Makes me sick.
The obvious problem with that misbelief is that it skews and warps the true picture and nature of God, and reality itself. It isn’t the way things are. There are more Godly attributes of equal, and in reality, higher value or importance than love. But, the intentional focus on love and the reduction in value of other traits, is similar to looking at a Picasso painting of a woman’s face with a huge nose, a tiny ear and lopsided eyes. It is not an accurate picture of the woman.
What, you may be asking, is “what’s more important than love?” Well, for starters I would say truth. How do you truthfully define love? How do you love if you don’t have truth? If you are living your life based on a lie, is it even possible to love?
My children, when they were young, used to love sitting in a dirty diaper. Yes, they loved it. It was soft and warm, of course they loved it. You did too as a child. But, just because they loved it, do I let them sit in it? No! Why not, they love it after all?
Because, to let them sit in a poopy diaper is not the loving thing to do. Wait a minute, isn’t that judgmental or intolerant? Yes, it is.
Judging or discernment is another value more important than love. You must decide, or discern or dare I say, “judge” what is right and wrong, good and bad, what will add value or harm to the object I love. In order to love, you have to have truth and discernment. How a person values something is what gives love its true value.
Don’t believe me? Here is an illustration. Try telling your sweetheart the next time you see her that you love her, just as much as other women. Have fun sleeping on the couch or your buddy’s house tonight!
Here’s another example, what if I see a drunk leave the bar, fumbling for his keys, as he stumbles to his car? He’s so drunk that he can’t even put the keys in the lock on the door. What is the loving thing to do? Let him drive home, risking his life and the lives of others? Or is the loving thing to do to tackle his ass and take his keys away?
See, the Christians that live in the love, love, love, world, are missing a huge part of the story.
In the same way, the left is missing a huge part of human experience by only focusing on the top two moral foundations. According to Dr. Haidt, we can debate over what is fair, but everybody agrees that harm and fairness matter. That is worth repeating. We can argue about what is fair, but we all agree that fairness matters.
The trouble the left has, is that the very things they don’t see as valuable, like loyalty, authority and purity, are the very moral arguments and values that are the basis for what is considered fair and compassionate.
You might say, OK, there are differences between liberals and conservatives, but what makes the three other foundations moral? Aren’t they the foundations of xenophobia, authoritarianism and puritanism?
What makes loyalty, authority and purity moral? Those are the things that give care, compassion and fairness the legs to stand on. You need all five “tools in the toolbox” to have a chance at addressing the problem.
It took all of our moral psychology to create cooperative groups. Yes, you need to be concerned about harm and fairness, but without loyalty, authority and purity, how does it get defined or enforced?
You also need a psychology of justice; a value system of right and wrong. Then we organize into groups of similar ideology. An ideology that tells people to suppress their carnality — to pursue higher, nobler ends.
All groups do this based on their value system. Where as conservatives might see sexual morality as important, liberals see them as prudes and missing out on fun. But, liberals have a food morality of not eating meat, and conservatives see that as just stupid and missing out on the good stuff.
This is the crux of the disagreement between liberals and conservatives: conservatives embrace all five of the moral foundations and liberals reject three of them. They say, “Let’s celebrate diversity, not common in-group membership,” and, “Let’s question authority,” and, “Keep your laws off my body.”
Well, if you take the greatest insights from ancient philosophies and religions and combine them with the latest research on moral psychology, I think you come to these conclusions: that our righteous minds were designed to unite us into teams, to divide us against other teams and then to blind us to the truth.
So what do we do? Should we just ignore the people that don’t agree with our values or should we just go charging in, and say, “You’re wrong, and I’m right!” and use all sorts of shame, guilt and obligation to force them into compliance?
No, we don’t do either one. Why? Because, as we’ve just seen, everyone (every group) thinks they are right and the other person (other group) is wrong.
A lot of the perceived problems we have to solve, are problems that require us to change other people. Good luck with that! I have a hard enough time changing myself let alone other people. I give myself no chance of changing another person. It just won’t happen. Unless they want to change, they won’t.
If you want to try and change other people, a better way to do it is to first understand who you are and who we are as human beings. Understand our moral psychology, understand that we all think we’re right — and then step out, even if it’s just for a moment; step out of the comfort zone of your own poopy diaper.
Step out of the moral Matrix you have created and chosen to live in, just try to see it as a struggle playing out, in which everybody thinks they’re right, and even if you disagree with them, everybody has some reasons for what they’re doing.
Step out. And if you do, that’s the essential move to cultivate moral humility, to get yourself out of this self-righteousness, which is the normal human condition. Think about the moral authority that comes from humility.
So I think the point is that we all are passionately engaged in the pursuit of changing the world for the better. We are passionately engaged in trying to make the world a better place. But, there also needs to be a passionate commitment to the truth, as well as humility that comes from listening to other people.
My conclusion is to have a humble and passionate commitment to the truth, then kindly and creatively, try to turn it into a better future for us all.
