More on disgust
More on that Jonathan Haidt interview. Tamler Sommers asked him:
Let’s take a more concrete question. Gay marriage. You brought this up in your talk at Dartmouth…You say that conservatives in America employ all four of the modules, whereas liberals only employ two. You said that liberals have an impoverished moral worldview, and that conservatives somehow have a richer moral life…You said that we as liberals have pared down our moral foundations to two modules, fairness and do-no-harm—whereas perfectly intelligent conservatives have all four modules…So if you take gay marriage…and you have people who have the intuition that gay marriage is really wrong, it’s impure Because they have that purity module that liberals lack. Do you want to say that in that culture that gay marriage is really wrong?
Haidt gives a highly unsatisfactory answer.
[C]onservative morality looks not just at effects on individuals, but at the state of the social order. The fact that acts that violate certain parts of the Bible are tolerated is disturbing to conservatives even though they can’t point to any direct harm. So I do understand the source of their opposition to it.
That’s incoherent. The state of the social order is one thing and violation of certain parts of the Bible is another, so why does he understand the source of conservatives’ opposition? And why does he understand it and why does he make a virtue of understanding it (so that understanding seems to shade into sympathy) ‘even though they can’t point to any direct harm’? The inability to point to direct (or, I might add, real, or genuine, or concrete, or specifiable) harm is not some trivial side matter, it’s the whole problem. If you can’t point to any real harm in X, then why do you want to forbid X? If you can’t point to any real harm in X, then you have to come up with a really good alternative reason for forbidding X, or else reasonable people will think you’re just trying to enact your ingrained dislikes into law, and that you shouldn’t do that.
Yet Haidt seems to be putting in a good word for exactly that.
And this is a difficult case, where it can’t work out well for everyone. Somebody has to give. If we were in a Muslim country, or a Catholic country where much of social and moral life was regulated in accordance with the purity and hierarchy codes, then it would be very reasonable to ban gay marriage. But we are not in such a country. We are in a country where the consensus is that we grant rights to self-determination unless a limiting reason can be found.
But why does that mean ‘it can’t work out well for everyone’? Why does Haidt think not banning gay marriage constitutes ‘not working out well’ for the people who want to ban it? They have a bogus, meritless, unreasonable, intrusive, meddling desire; they don’t lose anything by not getting their desire, because they wouldn’t gain anything by getting their desire, because the marriage of Dan and Stan is nothing to do with them. It’s absolutely ridiculous to say that allowing Jen and Pen to marry amounts to things not working out well for a bunch of strangers who want to tell everyone how to live. You might as well say my reading a book that someone in Nebraska doesn’t like the sound of means things have not worked out well for that person in Nebraska. That person in Nebraska should think about other things.
If I have a mission in life, it is to convince people that everyone is morally motivated—everyone except for psychopaths. Everyone else is morally motivated…One of the most psychologically stupid things anyone ever said is that the 9/11 terrorists did this because they hate our freedom. That’s just idiotic. Nobody says: “They’re free over there. I hate that. I want to kill them.”
They do though. He’s just wrong about that, I’m afraid. I know what he means – I thought that was a stupid thing to say too, and I still do, because it’s simplistic and misleading; but as a matter of empirical fact it’s just not true that nobody says ‘They’re free over there. I hate that.’ Many people – men – do hate and do say they hate the way women are free over here. Women’s freedom is the first thing they do away with when they win the gun battles, and it is explicitly the freedom that they hate. There are people – men – to whom the freedom of women is absolute anathema. If Haidt doesn’t know that, he should find it out; it’s important.
BLVR: So what would the consequences be of everyone understanding that the other side is morally motivated? I guess we could just get down to the nuts and bolts of the issue at hand.
JH: We would become much more tolerant, and some compromise might be possible, for example, on gay marriage. Even though personally I would like to see it legalized everywhere, I think it would be a nice compromise if each state could decide whether to legalize it, and nobody was forced one way or the other by the Supreme Court.
That’s the same misunderstanding as the one about things not going well for everyone, but it’s worse. Allowing gay marriage is not forcing people who don’t like it – it’s not allowing them to force other people, which is a different thing. People who want to impose their ideas of purity and sanctity on everyone are trying to force; people who refuse to bow to their wishes are not. It’s strange and rather sinister that Haidt sees both sides as trying to force the other.
“You said that liberals have an impoverished moral worldview, and that conservatives somehow have a richer moral life…”
I look forward to the day rapists start to justify their behaviour as “enriching their sexual life”.
Well actually, I’d shudder at the thought but you see I have such an impoverished moral life.
One excuse the appeasers of those who oppose human rights often trot out to justify their own position when they’re just too afraid to admit that they downright bigots is that it’s not a good thing to be gay because, well, I have nothing against gays myself, you understand, but. . . And after the but usually comes the excuse that it’s very hard to be gay when society frowns on it, so it’s not good to be gay and, well, while I have nothing against gays myself, you understand, that’s why I wouldn’t want my kid to turn out gay. Blah sodding blah. Well I remember summing up this attitude while I was doodling back in the seventies and a an ambic tetrametric couplet emerged:
‘We don’t like green,’ and shot me dead.
Don’t know where the first bloody line went. Should read:
They tied me, died me green and said,
‘We don’t like green,’ and shot me dead.
In face ‘died’ should be ‘dyed’ and ‘ambic’ should be ‘iambic’. Do you ever wish you hadn’t got out of bed? I’ll go away now, I promise.
I don’t know, “died me green” is not without its appeal…
OB, Thanks for the reference. Jonathan Haidt seems like someone who desperately wants to emphathize with the people he disagrees with most. Disagreement makes him nervous. So he’s got to somehow find a reason to respect the honor/pollution approach to morality (for example) because he’s actually a liberal atheist himself (as he says in his book. Very nice to have such an instinct to empathize, but he should aim more of it to the victims of the honor/pollution approach… “untouchables,” victims of honor killings etc etc etc. I think the honor/pollution stuff is gradually on the way out because it tends to foster a not very satisfying way of life for lots of people. But not fast enough!
Jean, yes, he says he’s a liberal atheist in the interview too. I suppose I can see how he gets where he gets, but…I think it’s either one thought too many or one thought too few; or maybe some of both.
‘Untouchables’ is of course an excellent example of what’s wrong with the purity approach. Nobody like Rohinton Mistry for exploring what that’s like, is there!
He needs his very own copy of “A Fine Balance”. Arrggh. Then I’d like to hear what he has to say about “pollution” morality…I think morality might really not be the right word for it.
Andy A: “Do you ever wish you hadn’t got out of bed? I’ll go away now, I promise.”
Some call it the IWTGWOUASM : “I wish the ground would open up and swallow me.”
Don’t worry about it, I am glad you came gave me a happy gulp of fellow-feeling.
“If we were in [a]…Catholic country where much of social and moral life was regulated in accordance with the purity and hierarchy codes, then it would be very reasonable to ban gay marriage”.
I live in a country that is over 80% Catholic and I would not consider it under no circumstances, (let alone ones mentioned above) at all – reasonable to ban gay marriage.
Irish (some) people are standing firmly behind two very brave people.
who are challenging the government.
See: Same-sex couple’s lawsuit a test of tolerance in Ireland Tax case seeks marital recognition
The Irish government argues that it cannot accept the women’s argument partly because of Ireland’s conservative 1937 constitution, which commits the state “to guard with special care the institution of marriage, on which the family is founded, and to protect it against attack
Anne-Louise Gilligan, a Dublin college lecturer in philosophy, is Irish and a former Catholic nun. Katherine Zappone, a member of Ireland’s government-appointed Human Rights Commission, is an American from Seattle, Washington. They have been a couple since the mid- 1980s when both were pursuing doctoral degrees at Boston College in the United States. Since moving to Ireland two decades ago they have worked together on a string of research projects dealing with urban poverty and feminist rights.
How is the pairing of these two women, together for 20 years, in any way “attacking” the family?
I just cannot even comprehend this argument, which seems to be the dominant nonsense which hides the ickyness factor.
Brian,
If you can’t see how this relationship is an attack on marriage you must simply be a couple of modules short of a morality. I pity you, for you will never experience the profound moral satisfaction of the true conservative.
Because if two women can get married then that means a person can marry a car, or an iPhone, or a box of Godiva chocolates, or the Solomon Islands. And if a person can marry any of those things, then that means an iPhone can marry a double-tall decaf mocha or a razor scooter can marry a Brazilian tapir. And if all those things can marry each other then that means that everything can marry everything, and if everything can marry everything, then ‘the family’ ceases to mean anything, because it’s everything, so it just means everything, which isn’t what ‘the family’ used to mean.
See?
If the moralistic socialites, – Purity and Hierarchy were to get married in the Solomon Islands. They would certainly beget in no time – Impurity and Immorality.
How very unsocialable and uncatholic, I say!
Now, where is my latte and Butlers?
“Nora Owen, a former member of the Dail, Ireland’s parliament, said she and other supporters have urged activists to refrain from staging campy faux-wedding ceremonies.” That doesn’t help,” she said.”
I newly saw Nora Owen. She looked like a lonely lost cut of a figure -[granddaughter of Dev, the Long Fella] amidst all the decidedly recently incoming raucous euphoric, jubilant/revelling political TD members. It was excruciating to see her move away from them as she quietly wended her way up the steps of the Hotel opposite the Dail. I thought to myself, there is new history in the making and she is not part of it all.
She lost her election seat one, but last, time around. It was also a kick in the teeth to see the action of it – TV. Her disillusionment was there for all and sundry to eyewitness.
Irrespective of the times, it also utterly disenchants me to read the above that she stated to the Boston on line paper.Like the rest [most] of her yesteryear social/political contemporaries she was/is also so unreservedly out of touch with the prevailing modern world.
“Do not have your campy-faux wedding ceremonies” WE DO NOT LIKE THEM is so outmoded language to the modern Irish people.
Marie T. Maybe Ireland needs to move at its own speed on these isues,change is happening if recent years are anything to go by.I love the way you ridicule the anti,s position O.B.do you i.pod take this car ect,great stuff.
Sorry the last post was mine not Marie T. I must be senile!