Posted on 02/12/2018 9:13:00 AM PST by NewJerseyJoe
When Cathy Newman’s absurdly hilarious interview with Jordan Peterson exploded across the internet, it wasn’t just because it was so funny. To a lot of conservatives, myself included, it sounded way too familiar. What we’ve known for a long time, Cathy Newman made blindingly obvious: Liberals really don’t listen. Maybe liberals can’t listen.
I’m seeing again it in a book I’m reading on the history of America’s culture wars. Conservatives’ opposition to new views on morality in the 1910s and 20s was “driven by fear,” the author says. Never mind that when the Pope Pius XI weighed in on the question, his answer was balanced, focused both on the real good that comes for all from true morality, and what dangers may follow upon straying from it. No, it was all “driven by fear.”
Liberals don’t see both sides. In fact, it’s almost as if they can’t. Or maybe we should drop “almost” from that sentence. For there’s some fascinating — and disturbing — research that says conservatives have the ability to understand liberals, but liberals literally can’t understand conservatives.
It has a lot to do with seeing moral issues from multiple points of view. The Pope could do it; can liberals?
I’m sure they think they can. Suppose you went out and struck up a conversation with a liberal friend of yours, or a teacher or a co-worker. Suppose you asked them, “Who’s better at seeing moral issues from more than one point of view: liberals or conservatives?” What would you bet they’d claim they could do it better? I’d put a lot of money down on that one.
Five Moral Foundations
But then along comes New York University psychologist Jonathan Haidt. He and his research team set out on a global project seeking to understand human morality. They found that wherever you go, you’ll find five basic “moral foundations:” Caring, Fairness, Loyalty, Authority/Respect, and Purity. He explains all this brilliantly in a TED talk, if you can overlook some lingering bias. (In his book The Righteous Mind he includes a sixth, Liberty.)
But there’s more. Haidt found a glaring difference between people on the left and people on the right. Conservatives, by and large, tend to live with all five of these moral dimensions in balance. Liberals don’t. They’re strong on Care and Fairness, but they’re weak on Loyalty, Authority and Purity.
And that’s a problem. Jonathan Haidt, who viewed himself as a liberal before doing this study, extended his research to look at what societies need in order to maintain stability and security. And he realized it isn’t just the left’s favorite pair. It takes all five moral categories. He paid attention: he’s a moderate now.
The Really Interesting Difference Between Liberals and Conservatives
But hang on — we’re just now getting to the interesting part. Haidt asked liberals and conservatives to put themselves in one another’s shoes; to imagine how the other side would answer a list of ethical questions. Conservatives could do it. Liberals couldn’t. People on the right had the ability to understand people on the left; even to empathize with them to a degree. People on the left couldn’t do the same in return.
The reason, Haidt says, is because liberals’ moral scope is unbalanced. They’re so focused on Care and Fairness, they can’t imagine anyone thinking other values being important. Therefore, he says in this excerpt from his book The Righteous Mind, “If you don’t see that Reagan is pursuing positive values of Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity, you almost have to conclude that Republicans see no positive value in Care and Fairness.”
And if we don’t value Care and Fairness — liberals’ most important values, by far — then we must be Really Awful People.
Misunderstanding Conservatism
Think I’m overstating it? Go back to the link and re-read the rest of the excerpt. Read the New York theater critic who wrote, “Republicans don’t believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. … I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm).”
It isn’t just that liberals don’t want to understand us. Many of them simply can’t. Not without considerable effort and coaching, at any rate; but which of them puts in that effort? Why would anyone want to empathize with Really Awful People? “Many readers,” writes Haidt, “ stayed locked inside their Care-based moral matrices and refused to believe that conservatism was an alternative moral vision.” He continues, “One reader … thought it was ‘sad’ that Republican narcissism would prevent them from understanding my perspective on their ‘illness.’”
We could go on all day explaining our positive reasons for the positions we take; all they’ll hear is us playing cover-up games. We must be driven by fear. Or power, or hate. Anything but decency. “What you’re really saying is…”
They can’t even imagine anything better of us. Why? According to Haidt, they don’t have a place in their minds to process Loyalty, Authority or Purity. For a large proportion of the liberal world, those values don’t even belong in the “ethics” category — even though human societies can’t survive without them.
So What Do We Do?
Need I say it? There’s no magic formula to fix this. It’s going to take time, and patience, and even love on our part, along with constant clear explanation of who we are and what we believe. It’s going to take real relationships, in other words.
Even that, though, may be difficult, since both conservatives and liberals have gotten ourselves fenced off in different towns and cities, or different parts of town, and certainly on different parts of the internet. It’s going to take real relational outreach on our part, in other words.
And even then nothing is guaranteed. Considering how many people ignored Jesus right up until the end of His life — and how eager some of them were to end His life — we need to be realistic with our expectations.
Yet some responded to Him then, and some will respond still today. I’m not giving up. And in the meantime, I for one find this insight from Haidt to be very interesting — and helpful.
...and certainly on different parts of the internet.
Helpful article. But it’s easier to summarize than that. Liberals are emotionally immature. Stuck in a 9-13 year old view of the world around them,but less charming than your average middle schooler.
They would need to stop talking first.
The ears and the mouth can’t be used at the same time.
I would argue that more often than not, the underlying motivation for Liberals is primarily self serving, rather than any type of altruism.
Example: charity is great and should be encouraged ( to the point of being compulsory), as long as someone else is paying for it.
Taking your point a bit further.
Reading a typical DU Thread you see the OP’s opinion, then followed by a string of other DU’ers slavishly agreeing with and reinforcing it without dissent.
On FR, no matter the original OP’s viewpoint there is a certain segment who agree completely, but there is also discussion and in many cases disagreement of parts or even all of the OP.
Leftists/Marxists are ideologues. They are brainwashed so there is NO understanding of anything outside of their paradigm/worldview.
The ex-KBG, Yuri Bezmenov in youtube videos in the early 80s explained how brainwashing literally fixes the brain—wires it so that only emotions control the person. Reason is completely ejected and so when exposed to truth and facts, cognitive dissonance will result every time. Their emotions will block all reason. (which is the design of brainwashing).
Our schools are brainwashing into irrationality (emotions) today. The emotions are artificial (engineered) and unnatural always. All Classical Christian curricula was banned long ago—which gives the mind/child the ability, the tools, to “think for themselves”. Now, skools just condition children so they associate emotions with concepts, like babies (evil/destroy environment/worthless/killable), white men “evil”, oppressors, sodomy “love”, etc.
So negative emotions will always surface when looking at white males and it will be almost impossible to eject. The submerged negative emotions (always irrational) planted in young children are almost impossible to eject. Children will have a warped sense of Reality and can never be objective.
Schools put in the total conditioning system in USA by 1970. Earlier in Europe/Germany. It is the only thing they have had in China since Mao. (One Way to “think” only which is never “thinking”). With Common Core we have completed the ambitions of the evil communist John Dewey to totally destroy free will in children and deform (evolve) them into happy slaves of the State (useful idiots).
Marxism is total removal from Truth (God), Reason and Natural Law (common sense/logic).
Yes. You still need to color within the lines on FR, but at least they are not so ridiculously narrow.
Swamps are full of alligator all mouth and no ears.
Being generous with their vote is a core aspect of progressivism at the present time.
In the past I’ve pointed out how badly our modern society has missed one critical aspect of A Christmas Carol.
Scrooge, you see, has mainly the annyance with those who seek to gain from him voluntary donations to their charities, yet he obviously accepts the validity of them as organizations ... that the care for humanity is one given to organizations (and this not to individuals). He is simply one who has learned all too well the lessons of his culture.
What Scrooge has to learn is that humanity is his business, not that he should pawn it off on different sorts of organizations than had been known.
Remember the common assertion on the left, down through the years, that charity is inadequate?
Well, consider that if what you take away from A Christmas Carol is not so much that you should personally be about caring for your fellow man but that a different sort of charity is what is needed, one with much deeper pockets because of the power to tax, and which can be ministered professionally rather than by well intentioned amateurs.
This last is the lesson that progressives have learned.
Charity is inadequate not because it actually is inadequate (19th century urban England isn’t necessarily the best reference point) but because it doesn’t have the assured access to the taxes. People’s participation being voluntary is what makes it inadequate.
Scrooge, as reformed, doubtlessly helps a number of people but the limitations for funding institutional charity are no more addressed than if he’d never been reformed at all. Scrooge is a blip, a hiccup, and the men of good intention are still frustrated to raise money elsewhere it can be implied.
Ah, but let do-gooding TAKE from the public purse, make supporting it mandatory so that everyone proverbially (as least) gives at the workplace, and it is “adequate” because no one can refuse anymore.
Adequacy, and inadequacy, are then about funding and removing the voluntary aspect of it and not the results. They are a mirror image of Scrooge, assured about how much kinder their institutional systems are yet still sold out on the view that in the end humanity is someone else’s business and their part is just to vote for the right sort.
It is perhaps the oldest watershed in politics: the polity breaks down into people who only want to be left alone and people who don't want to let them alone. It is only the former who are capable of understanding the other; the latter already have their minds made up.
They are impossible to reason with. I don’t even bother.
As soon as I saw the words “personal blog” in your post, Humblegunner came to mind. I swear he has some sort of automated sniffer program that searches them out and auto responds.
Either that or no day job. :)
Taken to it's logical end, that's how fights (wars on a macro scale) begin.
Thus the description “Humblegunnered”. He’ll mow you down. LOL
“It’s going to take real relational outreach on our part, in other words.”
Notice the burden is always on us.
The burden is always on the adults to teach children.
for later
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