The moral roots of Liberals and Conservatives

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For anyone who is struggling to "understand" those on the other side of the political spectrum, and who has an open mind, the following may be of interest:


Presented by Jonathan Haidt, it does seem to give a reasonable explanation as to the different "focus" of each side and may assist with understanding why the "other side" see things in a different way to that in which you do, as well as why the "means" used by each side towards the same "ends" can be so different.

Interesting topic.

Although, from my own experience of dealing with people with various political views.

Such people often fall short of the ideology that they project, with many of those who project political idealism
often using their chosen flavour of political ideology to convince the voting public to vote them in to a position that they can exploit for what power / capital (indirect/direct) it may offer.

Political idealism is like religious ideals among members of religion.
The rules of a religion and how the members of the religion keep the rules (or practice the rules) can be significantly different in reality.

I have actually read "The Righteous Mind" by Jonathan Haidt, and I find its approach to be extremely US-centric.

The current concepts (and the ones used by Haidt) of "Liberal" and "Conservative" in the US are both 20th century constructs - the former largely deriving from the 1930s and the latter from the 1960s.

Liberal vs. Conservative is not "the" political spectrum. It is "a" political spectrum.

A snapshot of the political categories in a single country with 4 percent of the world's population is not a sound basis for making general theories about the moral makeup of mankind.

EDIT: Haidt also bases much of his theory of morality on the concept of "group selection" in biology, which is generally considered irrelevant for the evolution of humans by most biologists.

Last edited by GGPViper on 16 Sep 2020, 11:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That is really interesting. One question I had is what does the issue of gun control has in common with global warming and what do either of the two have in common with abortion and what do any of those three have in common with race relations, etc.

I haven't watched this video but I really hope this video will answer this question.

If you watch the video, he includes a comparison across a range of countries\regions, not simply US based, where all return similar results...True it is about "a" political spectrum, but people around the world seem to focus on the same areas depending on where on that spectrum they sit, and this site is predominantly populated by those from the U.S.A., so it may help those here who seem to lack understanding of the motivation\drives of the "others", and so "demystify" them, leading to constructive rather than combative conversations.

I do think that the moral foundations thing offers a lot to conservatives who often seem unable to understand the more progressive point of view. That the progressives are likely to care even more about fairness and harm, but tend to have a very low feelings of importance for authority, ingroup and purity. This goes by a fundamental missunderstanding from the Right onto the Left, because the accuse the Left of caring too much about pointless purity of social justice, being too blinded by loyalty of their ingroup to their side of the Left, and trying to be authoritative in ways that make controlling governments. But you can see right there in the numbers that the Left actually cares less about those things than the Right.



This misunderstanding of the Left from the Right that the Left is much more likely to understand how an "authority" is not necessarily Right just because they found themselves in the place of an authority, they tend to need a better reason like actually being an expert. An "ingroup" is not inherently something to be blindly loyal about, it is a good thing to question if your immediate group is any more correct than another, which is why they are more likely to champion for those outside and protest from doing something like singing an anthem. And "purity" can be just a load of bull, screw traditional ideas of how someone has to dress as to not look slu*ty and love who you want, as long as no one else is hurt.

And of course the Left can have trouble understanding that to a conservative the type of loyalty to their ideas of the authority, purity and in general to their ingroups, can be just as important as whether someone is hurt. As the picture I linked above shows, those things can be even more important to them than whether something is fair, which boggles the mind of people on the Left. To the Leftists there is no way that sticking up for your home team, having a prim and proper image and displaying your loyalty to the glorious leader can be more important than whether something is fair, the idea can be a fundamental difference between what each side can consider moral, and I think is a good example of why each side would rather demonize rather than understand.

I for one really don't want to understand how the other side can blindly follow their authoritative leader who virtue signals purity of something like holding a bible up, while ignoring the inequality in the world.

And that sort of closed-minded opinion is what contributes to the problems...Let the "other side" understand "my side", but I don't want to make any effort to understand them.

If you don't want to make any effort to understand the "other side", you will be unable to put forward anything that will appeal to them, whereas an open-minded person would WANT to understand the other side in order to be able to come to an agreement where both sides are (relatively) happy. Similarly, why would anyone care about a group of bigots who expect others to do all the work (understand the bigots "side") when those bigots are too self absorbed to do anything in return (understand the other "side")?

Thank you for the insight into "woke" "thinking", by the way...It certainly helps explain the rush to "cancelling", or attacks on the "non woke" rather than seeking meaningful discussion with them.

I can't watch the video because speakers in my laptop are damaged - but wouldn't it be better to ask people of different political affiliations about moral roots of their views?

I don't know about Poland but -- at least in America -- they are not very self aware. Regardless of whether I talk to American liberals or American conservatives, neither of the two camps see the point of view of the other. If you ask American liberal, they would say "conservatives are ignorant and hateful" if you ask American conservative, they will say "liberals are immoral". So neither of the two sides really tries to understand the other side. They just discredit it. Thats why you need to go to neutral source.

But maybe in Poland its different. Americans as a whole (regardless of their political affiliation) are a lot more shallow than people in Eastern Europe. So maybe in Poland you *could* ask them and get an insightful answer.

The video does have closed captions available if you select them (CC at bottom right of video).

The talk is based around research he (and others) has done involving a large number of participants, and talking about the "common features" found across "Progressive","libertarian", and "conservative" people, along with the different emphasis each "group" puts on these factors and so how they influence the groups actions\decisions.

It is pretty easy to make this claim that you are open, but can you actually back that up rather than being unaware of your own prejudices? Let's be clear, most of the audience in that video were on the Left side, the minority were conservative, and this is representative of academia being mostly people from the Left. I honestly think extrapolation can be made that the Left is the side that is more aware and more logical and emotional on the parts that matter over things that can be more subjective.

Rather than putting judgement onto my self reflection, how about you offer some of your own, show that you are not closed-minded and that you can understand the other side. Because although I said that I don't want to understand the side that can focus on subjective virtues like purity, loyalty to an authority and one's ingroup, I like to understand that I actually understand it plenty. The world is much more simpler and more easier when you just tell yourself that everything is as it should with the group that you are in, to trust in big daddy authority leader and trust in purity ideals where you can blame a person who was sexually assault for asking for it for dressing a certain way. I do actually understand how appealing it is to just tell people that everything happening is fine, that there is no uncomfortable problems with whatever group I share with them, that we should believe that Scott Morrison has everyone's best intentions at heart, and if everyone just acted pure things would be better.

It would actually be incredibly easy to be a conservative, I would just have to trust how things have always been are how things should be, that I should just stop thinking that there are going to be some bad environmental changes from a fossil fuels based society, and shame people for acting abnormal, like not being straight and questioning whether something is harmful. To do all of that I would just have to turn off a good deal of my moral compass, to stop questioning whether people are being hurt by the status quo. I should put myself back into the closet and scapegoat porn as destroying healthy families.

Maybe it sounds like I am passing a judgement on conservatives, but people are not fully responsible for how their brains are wired, I am sure the conservative opinion of me is someone who stopped caring about morals of ideas of purity, like not caring at all about going to church. But I do think that the conservatives that think that way completely misunderstand my side because they think it is just one that stopped caring about traditional ideas of purity and want chaos by tearing down the patriarchy, or being some sort of traitor to your own people. Because it is the side of actually caring more about if someone is being hurt and a lack of fairness in the world, and to a conservative the idea of caring more about whether someone has a fair go and not being hurt over following simple ideas of "my group is best" and everything will be fine as long as traditional ideas of masculinity and femininity are followed, is alien to them.

If I had to still have a flaw from being part of the Left and having trouble connecting with the frame of mind of the Right, it would be from caring less about the ideas they have over tradition, like that queer people are scary, and that it should be important to loudly virtue signal national pride. Suppose that I should care more about wanting everything to act like it is normal during this pandemic, because the economic loss from lockdown is worth more than nanna kicking it after getting sick.

You could ask in America as well, but you'd get "orange man bad"\"communist"\"socialist"\"alt-right"\"white supremecist"\"racist" labels thrown at you for trying, depending on who you asked...Just look how conversations on this site with a large U.S.A. based membership devolve.

Let me see... our political scene is dominated by two center-right social-democrat parties driven by mutual hate.
Nope, Poland is not any better. This is exactly why I believe we need to talk about it.

Whilst I can see that with almost any other member, this could lead to an interesting discussion, you may remember that several times I have posted indicating that you should not expect a substantive (or any) reply to requests you address towards me (I've had enough of trying to address a point only to have the goal-posts moved), so sadly you'll have to survive without my insight here.

I will note that I will now consider further attempts to directly engage me in debate here (for example, requesting a responce from me\asking my opinion) as an attempt at harrasment, having pointed out on numerous occasions that I have no intention in engaging in further debate\discussion with yourself.

I think for balance, we should add "politically correct" and "SJW" or "woke" to the list. Otherwise yes.

But you yourself found it necessary to accuse me of being closed minded and not offering any attempt to understand the other side. I am merely engaging in the debate of this topic, but you have seen it as completely fine to make snipes at me while you put yourself on a high horse to say that I am not worth the time.

In previous discussions I have not moved the goal posts as part of some dishonest discussion technique, accusation that I have done so here is a dishonest moving of the goal posts of yourself. Actually engage in this topic you created instead of just posting a video with the claim that people are so lazy in not trying to understand the other side, and then deflect any discussion of playing a victim by saying that you are being harassed.

If you don't wish to interact with me, then start by not attacking or mischaracterizing me. That is super bad faith.