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Monday, November 17. 2008

Why do they hate me? Is it my morals?

Why do Liberals hate Conservatives so much? A quote from Ace:

...researchers determined that "there are five psychological foundations of morality, which we label as harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity." Conservative morality is based on some combination of all five of these moral foundations. There may not be an exact 20% input from each one, but they are all present. Liberal morality is based on only the harm/care and fairness/reciprocity foundations.

"Conservatives have many moral concerns that liberals simply do not recognize as moral concerns... liberals often find it hard to understand why so many of their fellow citizens do not rally around the cause of social justice, and why many Western nations have elected conservative governments in recent years."

Read the whole thing, but the point is well-taken. Libs and Conservatives are coming from different places, with different basic assumptions. I don't think it explains the hatred, though.

Posted by Bird Dog in Politics, The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 15:32 | Comments (13) | Trackbacks (0)

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maybe hate is the wrong word --maybe its just resentment and frustration, impatience and anger. What you would feel if some phlegmatic lumpenprole was forever in your way, thwarting your great fandango over the surface of the lands and ocean seas.
#1 buddy larsen on 2008-11-17 17:04 (Reply)
Dang. I love that poety in motion, Buddy. It made me think of Wal-Mart. I just can't stand it when lumpenproles fill up the lines with two buggies and eight kids and some coupons. I get the heebie-jeebies but I don't feel any hate. I read the celebrity magazines on the side and catch up on their real life fandangos.

:} **

P.S. I am not criticizing Wal-Mart. They're making a killing. Good on them.
`
#1.1 Meta on 2008-11-17 17:15 (Reply)
walmart --next time, for fun, go over and start handling the guns--then suddenly look at the clerk and ask him if he has any anti-depressants handy.
#1.1.1 buddy larsen on 2008-11-17 20:10 (Reply)
Don't forget the facial twitch,and carrying on a conversation with a person next to you, when nobody is really there.
#1.1.1.1 jappy on 2008-11-17 21:05 (Reply)
They hate because they hate. If all the conservatives in the universe were snatched up in something called 'the rapture', the next day the haters would still be a bunch of unhappy haters.

Just like if you invented a car that ran on nothing but sunlight- they would still want to outlaw cars.

There is no answer to make these folks happy. They are broken humans. The little switch on their backs is set to "evil", permanently.
#2 Phil on 2008-11-17 17:54 (Reply)
I have written about Haidt's research as well, and the incredible contortions he goes through to avoid the obvious: One side understands the other quite well, but it is not reciprocated. In all such situations - dreaming/waking, insanity/sanity, uninformed/informed - we recognize that the group which understands both sides has something the other hasn't. As that is an unacceptable conclusion for a progressive to come to, Haidt has to squint really hard when he looks at his data.

I would further note that liberals actually do use all five categories of morality, but do not have the self-awareness to recognise that they stuff the latter three into the first two for reasons that are more emotive than intellectual. They are extremely ingroup, authority, and purity conscious (think academia, think environmentalism) but don't realize it.

Hmm, I like that. I think I'll have to revisit the topic again.
#3 Assistant Village Idiot (Link) on 2008-11-17 21:05 (Reply)
I like that, too, AVI. Good analysis. That lack of self-awareness is embarrassing for the party of progressive ideas and change.
`
#3.1 Meta on 2008-11-17 21:50 (Reply)
"They are extremely ingroup, authority, and purity conscious...."

Yep --and the array of internal contradictions (a big one just now, the UN one-world globalist must also be a union America-first isolationist) creates the need for leaders who, rather than exemplars of first principles, are instead 'fixers', who like Marlon Brando in "The Godfather" wield power via secret personal deals, made in a space beyond DC's marble proclamation of the Rule of Law.

It's "extremely ingroup, authority, and purity conscious" alright --AKA "tribal" --where the fixer-in-chief (and his assigns) is the real law.
#4 buddy larsen on 2008-11-17 21:48 (Reply)
As a sinner, I know full well that nobody is more pissed off than a sinner who is reproached by others' good behavior. My wife's sobriety and generally clean language is a subtle and damning indictment of my behavior up until the time I met her. I knew my old ways were wrong and her ways were right, and that I was deficient. This was irritating.

I'm still very much of a sinner of course; just I tend to stick to different ones these days that are probably less damaging to me. Oh yeah, that's the other thing. If you want to be conservative and interested in morality, you have to be humble enough to admit that everybody is flawed and therefore you yourself are flawed. It is hard to admit to having flaws if man is the measure of all things. The idea of humanism, the modern type, is that man is the final arbiter of right and wrong. This notion is at war with the idea of a timeless, permanent morality by which man is measured. Conservatives have to accept a bit of hypocrisy as the buy-in to this world view - there is an ideal that we stand for, but which we sometimes fall short of. Liberals, naturally, find hypocrisy to be the highest of high crimes, and feel they have taken a conservative down for hypocrisy when one is caught messing up. Conservatives, on the other hand, see the takedown as a crime & punishment issues, the wages of sin.

The outlook leads to some interesting differences in viewpoint. My liberal friends insist Sen. Vitter is discredited because he's a hypocrite. My conservative friends know he is discredited because he is a degenerate. Those are very different verdicts - ours is based on the sin (or actual crime in this case) and theirs is based on the notion that if you strive for moral soundness but fail then morality must be an invalid standard.
#5 Al Maviva on 2008-11-18 07:27 (Reply)
There's an excellent little book called Beyond Culture, by Edward T. Hall. He talks a lot about micro-cultures, which applies to the liberal/conservative question, and about culture being so deep within the subconscious it's hard to recognize in ourselves. When encountering a different culture, a person's subconscious often reacts with "this is WRONG."

That, IMHO, is where the hate comes from. I suspect the answer is in finding a way to circumvent the fear/anger response happening on both sides and talk about our common values. First, we have to figure out what those are.
#6 UnderTheRadar on 2008-11-18 08:27 (Reply)
one wonders why they can't be what they have been --say, in our nation's more-cohesive eras.
#6.1 buddy larsen on 2008-11-18 11:00 (Reply)
Thanks for the tip. The general topic is a favorite of mine.
#6.2 Assistant Village Idiot (Link) on 2008-11-18 22:14 (Reply)
An interesting variation of this topic comes the concept of self-directed and other-directed personalities.

Those some would call Progressives in America are the "other directed". They believe the tranquility and harmony of society are paramount. Any decision of consequence is best made by the group or state according to some principle of social justice.

The "self directed" obviously do not.

Those who are interested should read "The Lonely Crowd" by Reismann? written about 1950. Easily found on Google.

Clearly the separation is simplistic and neither camp is uniform.

A Conservative might choose to marry within his community rather than the women he really wants. And a Progressive would insist that no group has a say about who he marries.
#7 K on 2008-11-18 15:29 (Reply)

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