Evolution helps us explain why parties are so tribal and politics so divisive
Which of these two stories better matches your political view?
There used to be people who lived in unequal and tyrannical societies, where the rich got richer and the poor were exploited. Slavery, child labor, economic inequality, racism, gender discrimination and discrimination of all kinds and types were acceptable and widespread until the liberal tradition of fairness, justice, concern and equality resulted in the creation of a free and fair society. And now, the conservatives want to turn the wheel back in the name of greed and in the name of God.
There used to be people who lived in societies that consecrated values and tradition, where people took personal responsibility, worked hard, enjoyed the fruits of their labor and helped those in need through charity and benevolence. Marriage, family, faith, respect, loyalty, holiness and respect for the authorities and laws led to the creation of a free and fair society. But then the liberals came and destroyed everything in the name of "progress" and in the name of utopian social engineering.
We may quibble over the details, but political science studies show that most of the public is divided along the right-left spectrum, with these two stories serving as extreme markers. The story we tell about ourselves thus reflects the ancient story tradition of: "Once things were very bad, but now they are good thanks to our side." Or "things used to be really good, but now they're bad because of the other side." We are so consistent in our beliefs that if a person agrees with the first story, I can assume that they read the New York Times, listen to left-wing radio programs, watch CNN news, support women's right to abortion and oppose gun ownership, support the separation of religion from the state, support insurance Comprehensive health and votes in favor of redistribution of capital and taxation of the rich. And if he identifies with the second story, I'm guessing he reads the Wall Street Journal, listens to right-wing radio shows, watches FOX news, opposes abortion and gun control, believes America is a Christian nation that should not prevent religious expression in the public sphere, opposes health insurance Comprehensive and points against the redistribution of capital and the taxation of the rich... [and we are sure that the Hebrew reader will be able to find the Israeli equivalents - the editors].
Why are we so predictable and tribal in our political views? In his eye-opening book "The Righteous Mind: Why Politics and Religion Divide Good People"*, psychologist Jonathan Haidt from the University of Virginia claims that both left-wing liberals and right-wing conservatives believe that those who hold an opinion contrary to theirs are not simply wrong, those who are guilty of dishonesty are suspected of dishonesty. moral and even dangerous. "Our self-righteous minds have allowed humans to create groups, tribes and nations of individuals who cooperate with each other without blood ties," Haidt writes. "But at the same time, our righteous minds ensure that these collaborations will always carry the curse of moral struggle." He thus shows that morality binds us together in cohesive groups but blinds us from seeing the ideas and motives of the members of other groups.
Hundreds of thousands of years ago our species, humans, crossed an evolutionary Rubicon river and achieved collective moral consciousness. This was as a result of creating a state of "shared intentions", meaning "the ability to share mental representations of tasks that two or more [of our ancestors] were striving to achieve together. For example, when gathering food, one person pulled down a branch while his friend picked the fruits so that later they would eat them together." Chimpanzees don't tend to behave this way, Haidt writes. But "when the first humans began to share their intentions with each other, their ability to hunt, gather, raise children and raid their neighbors improved immeasurably, and at an exponential rate. Everyone in the team now had a mental representation of the task and knew that the members of the group shared that representation. Everyone also knew when one of the group members acted in a way that thwarted the success of the mission or kept the loot for himself, and reacted negatively to these violations of the representation." Examples of modern political violations include, for example, the accusations against Democratic Senator John Kerry that he is "volatile" who changes his views or the declaration of Republican candidate Mitt Romney that he is an "extreme conservative" in response to insinuations that his party loyalty is not strong enough.
Our dual moral nature led the Eidet to conclude that we need both liberals and conservatives competing with each other to reach a golden path that enables existence. And as the philosopher John Stuart Mill stated one hundred and fifty years ago: "Both a party of order and stability and a party of progress and reform are necessary foundations for a healthy state of political life."
About the author
Michael Shermer is the publisher of Skeptic magazine (www.skeptic.com his new book is The Believing Mind. Follow him on Twitter: @michaelshermer
Footnote
* The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Pantheon, 2012).
12 תגובות
Abram, it seems to me that you are quoting from an introduction to psychology. How important it is to keep such things that I threw away a long time ago, I have a bit of a problem with the link you made between Freud and Dan Gabrieli and his friends (prof?) But I understand that it has to do with personal experience.
There are humane rules given to human beings and they are the moral rules written in the 10 Commandments: Do not steal, do not murder, etc.
These are actually also included in the mitzvot of the Bnei Noah, which are Gentiles, and they also apply to them, beyond that, each person and his faith adds the caveats and rules of his religion
Therefore, religion is not a belief in something hidden as in something written and handed down in tradition, it is an opinion in any case.
Avi Cohen - I mentioned that there are religions like Scientology for whom tradition is not an issue.
Religion by and large is belief in something hidden that cannot be refuted - there are ideologies that have behavior that resembles religion but are not religion themselves. It is not you who defines others as it is they who define themselves in many cases.
Conflict is not good or bad - if you are on the side of the "good" you will want to defend or defeat the "bad"
Won't you go out and fight against slavery? Against genocide? There are things in our culture that are worth fighting for.
In other cultures it can be the opposite.
another one
Yes, the definitions here are ambiguous, I chose them because I had no better definitions. I understand when you say that secular people don't necessarily believe in freedom, but why don't religious people necessarily believe in tradition?
The fact that everyone defines for themselves what is good and bad does not contradict what I said, on the contrary, it only strengthens...
The point is that each side defines the other as the embodiment of evil.
I have seen debates/discussions here that define religion as the only reason for wars, and from there also debates about whether the Nazis can be associated with the definition of religious or not, but I doubt whether the communists can also be defined as religious..
Despite this they are responsible for many atrocities.
The point here is not what you believe or support, the point is that you associate yourself with a certain group, and define others as belonging to the other group. Once this is done, conflict seems only a matter of time.
It is probably an evolutionary mechanism that worked well when we fought with swords and bows, but in our time, with the development of weapons of mass destruction, it is very possible that the same mechanism will also bring us to an end.
Avi Cohen - Religious do not necessarily believe in tradition, secularists do not necessarily believe in freedom
See Scientologists (and all kinds of new "religions" like that) and communists of the collectivist type.
I emphasize this because such binary thinking is exactly what needs to be avoided here-
Second thing - good and evil are absolute personal definitions - that is, you and someone else can have opposite definitions of what is good and what is bad - in such a case conflict and even violent conflict is sometimes inevitable.
We need more articles like this here, because I can see the same "power struggle" right here on the site: secular vs. religious (I really don't want to turn this into a religious debate again, so if someone responds, respond to the matter, and not drift to the sides!). The religious believe in traditional values and holiness, and the secular in secularism and freedom.
This article is also important these days while there are riots in the Muslim world because of the portrayals of Muhammad in the media. If there were more studies like this and not just tongue-twisters, maybe we could solve the problems in a scientific/psychological way...
The problem here is that each of the sides is sure that he is right, and the other side is evil incarnate, and there is no way to convince him that there might be room for the other as well. And when this happens, then we are all taught that we need to destroy evil and fight it, and even if we didn't mean to, we started a new war.
I'm not sure if this is an original "Chinese" proverb but there is a saying: "If you fight the dragon, be careful not to become a dragon yourself..."
In Chinese philosophy it is called
yin \ yeng
Abram
It is true that denomination/origin has a certain correlation with political perception - but there are much more significant elements - such as economic status, place of residence, age, etc...
I can't agree if your division into fear and love- I don't think it goes here-
Calling the political left in the United States "liberals" is also an incorrect usage (which is very common in the United States, but that does not mean we should adopt it here.).
As I already wrote - most of the "values" of the two scholarships there developed for political and historical reasons and do not necessarily have a common "psychological" denominator.
By and large, I don't see too much "love" or "fear" in one party than the other
The 'reasons' for a person's liberal or conservative position can indeed be found in psychology, but (as already argued by Freud and his successors and proven by Dan Arieli and his friends, among others) not in its conscious part but (as usual) in the subconscious:
A good analogy can be made between two of the strong magnetic poles in our subconscious - fear/love and their expression in our personality and self-definition - and the degree of conservatism or liberality we express.
Fear is very important because it protects us from harm.
And love is just as important (in the abstract sense, not necessarily the romantic one) because without it, human relationships are not formed.
Therefore it can be said in general that a conservative person is a person characterized by a subconscious controlled by fear (of death) while a liberal is characterized by a subconscious controlled by love (of life).
This does not mean that the liberal is better than the conservative or vice versa; As the article rightly claims - both are necessary in order to achieve long-term prosperity in human society.
On these two forces/poles it is possible to put on another wig of our perception of the world - the perception of the self and 'my group' versus the 'other' and the other group:
A state of fear is expressed in the reduction of the concept of the self (I<my family<my community<my people) and love is its expansion (sometimes to the point of monism, mercifully).
In this context, the theory that holds that one of the reasons that the Jews (as well as the Italians and the Irish) integrated relatively well in the United States (at least compared to the Indians, Africans and Hispanics) is that they were 'less other' and more similar to the self (the white Protestant) of the founders of this nation - and therefore were included in the definition of the self their extended
In Europe, on the other hand, the Jews were almost as different as it is possible to be (along with the Gypsies perhaps) and therefore were clearly outside the self-definition of the peoples of Europe; As we have witnessed in our burnt flesh.
Therefore, it can be said in a very broad generalization that a conservative person is a person who is characterized by a subconscious controlled by fear and therefore has a tendency to narrow his ego group, while a liberal is characterized by a subconscious controlled by love and therefore has a tendency to expand his ego group.
(And I mention again that this is a psychological and not a value definition - any moral preference of one pole over the other is in the eye of the beholder).
One can easily see the correctness regarding the reality we know in the Jewish state (or the Jewish state as it is more accurate to call it today) and the comparison of the American immigrant society to the Israeli one seems to hold water: we also have a clear distinction between two main definitions of the I-group - the Jewish group Ashkenazi (includes the subgroups Europe, the Commonwealth of Nations and Anglo-Saxon countries) and the Sephardic group (North Africa, Asia and Arab countries).
It goes without saying that reality is immeasurably complex and in this corner of the Gaza Strip there also live Arabs (who are also divided at least into the group of Arab-Israelis and the group of Arab-Palestinians and let's not forget the Ethiopians who are still not entirely clear whether and how Israeli society accepts them) and therefore the commenter is very right in this regard 'Another' that mentions Despite all of the above, one must be very careful not to throw the micro behavior described at the psychological level into the macro level described in political terms.
Although it is true that humans have a tendency to fortify positions they believe in-
The apparent binary that exists in the United States is misleading-
The Republicans and Democrats - the "conservatives" and the "progressives" are more coalitions of different ideologies making an alliance between them than a party with a uniform platform like in Israel.
By and large, the main guideline is economic-governmental - everything else is a lot of historical circumstances.
There are many religious elements in the American left - and a large part of them really do not die for gay marriage - even the scandalous Westvero Baptist Church was associated with the Democrats (until they disowned them).
It is true that due to the structure of the media and political needs it is likely that those who hold "conservative" views will return a large percentage of them and not a mixture - but this is due to propaganda, the need for affiliation, and a political alliance.
Evolution has nothing to do with it. Rivalries and camps exist in many species.
happy New Year…