“Religion is in the box where science used to be. Politics is on the shelf where you thought you left science the previous afternoon. Entertainment seems to have been knocked over and spilled on everything.” – Charles P. Pierce, Idiot America (2009). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Note 11-13-2023
This 2012 episode of Moyers & Company is a useful take on the political culture of our times. Narratives “about fairness, capitalism, American history.” Moral foundations. Karma. Nuance. Why we’re all really good lawyers. The role of myths and fables. Fairness versus compassion. What the proper role of government is and is not.
And a call for two shared norms: ending demonization and cleaning up corruption.
(from transcript)
BILL MOYERS: And yet you also acknowledge that demonizing the other can be rewarded politically.
JONATHAN HAIDT: That’s right. It can because that makes you stronger in the contest within the group. Within the nation your side can beat the other side if you demonize, but it makes the nation weaker.
JONATHAN HAIDT: Most of our politics is driven by the people at the extremes, the people who have these dispositions fairly strongly, get passionate, get engaged, give money, blog, argue. Those people rarely cross over. So, but most Americans are not that politically engaged, and they’re the ones that decide the elections.
So, since most people aren’t extreme either way in their basic disposition, they’re up for grabs. And, whichever party can connect with their moral values. And this is where I think again, the Democrats have not fully understood moral psychology. I listen to them in election after election, especially 2000, 2004, saying, ‘We’ve got this policy for you. We’re going to give you more support,’ as though politics is shopping.
As though, ‘Come, you know, buy from us. We’ve got a better deal for you.’ The Democrats, I find, have not been as good at understanding that politics is really religion. Politics is about sacredness. Politics is about offering a vision that will bind the nation together to pursue greatness. And Republicans since Ronald Reagan have been really good at that.
BILL MOYERS: At the same time, it can blind you. It can bind you–
JONATHAN HAIDT: Absolutely.
BILL MOYERS: -into a tribe, but it can blind the whole tribe.
JONATHAN HAIDT: Absolutely. That’s what we’re stuck with. That’s the nature of moral psychology. You got it.
…
BILL MOYERS: This one took me aback, because it flies right in the face of my predisposition. “Anyone who values truth should stop worshiping reason.”
JONATHAN HAIDT: The idea of sacredness, the idea of sacralizing something. What I see as an academic, and as a philosophy major as an undergrad, is there are a lot of people in the academic world that sac- they think, oh, you know, no sacred cows. We shouldn’t sacralize anything.
But they sacralize reason itself, as though reason is this noble attribute, reason is our highest nature. And if we could just reason, we will solve our problems. All right, that sounds good on paper. But given all the stuff I just told you about what psychologists have discovered about reason, reasoning is not good at finding the truth. Conscious verbal reasoning is really good at confirming.
• billmoyers.com > “Encore: How Do Conservatives and Liberals See the World?” (June 1, 2012) – Politics is really religion. Politics is about sacredness.
Our country is more politically polarized than ever. Is it possible to agree to disagree and still move on to solve our massive problems? Or are the blind leading the blind — over the cliff?
Bill and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt talk about the psychological underpinnings of our contentious culture, why we can’t trust our own opinions, and the demonizing of our adversaries.