Unlocking the Liberal Mind - Part 5 - Entering The Liberal Matrix

It was good advice to a young person, "Always do what you are afraid to do." from Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay on Self-Reliance

I think Emerson might well have added, "And always think what you are afraid to think, and say what you are afraid to say."

Thinking what they are afraid to think is something that liberals desperately need to do. They huff and puff self-righteously about respecting "otherness" and celebrating diversity but in their hearts they are so awfully scared of being themselves and thinking their own thoughts.

At the beginning of the last section I talked about The Matrix and how what we're dealing with here is like a consensual hallucination. This hallucination is maintained by the shared assumptions and perceptions of the people in the matrix. For those in the liberal matrix these are liberal perceptions and assumptions.

Take this example:

 "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."  [The United States Declaration of Independence - 1776]

This is a perfect expression of liberal thought and the United States has been the clearest example of liberal principles in action. I thoroughly approve of this declaration but, note the word "self-evident". What does that mean? Surely it means that we take it to be obvious, incontrovertible, an unquestionable assumption? With a moral and political doctrine you have to begin somewhere and the concept of fundamental "God-given" rights is a fine place to start. However, the idea that these are self-evident can easily lead us to assume that they are universally obvious, which they are not. Nor are they universally held or even admired.

For example, the Muslim nations were not at all happy with the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights which was set out (along liberal principles) in 1948. In particular, the Muslims were unhappy about anything which contradicted Sharia, which was just about all of it. So, they made an alternative declaration, The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights, in which they make various noises about the superiority of Islam, thus undermining the whole point of universality.

Contrast these two excerpts, one from the Universal Declaration, the other from the Cairo Declaration:

"Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world..."

"Reaffirming the civilising and historical role of the Islamic Ummah which God made the best nation that has given mankind a universal and well-balanced civilisation in which harmony is established between this life and the hereafter and knowledge is combined with faith; and the role that this Ummah should play to guide a humanity confused by competing trends and ideologies and to provide solutions to the chronic problems of this materialistic civilisation..." (my italics)

You can see immediately the different worldviews at work here: the liberal worldview is very like the Declaration of Independence above with equality, inalienable rights, and freedom. The Islamic statement is immediately divisive, talking of the best nation, "should guide humanity confused by competing trends" (i.e. eradicate every idea that contradicts Islam). The Cairo Declaration proceeds in a similar vein all the way through and in Article 24 states:

"All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shari'a."

So after going round the houses it concludes by saying that Shariah is the ultimate arbiter and anything which contradicts it is not permitted. That's more or less what they said at the outset too.

When reading Mark Durie's book The Third Choice: Islam, Dhimmitude, and Freedom I was struck by how different the worldview of Islam is to that of Liberalism. I came to see how a very different worldview is constructed on a different set of foundations - in this case, the example and teaching of Muhammad. I came to see how a different moral matrix was formed in which things that I find abhorrent are treated as the expression of divine sanctities. The appalling judgements and punishments of Sharia may seem barbaric to us but to Muslims they are self-evidently true and just since they were made by Muhammad, the perfect example of conduct and the only source of truth.

Liberals find it extremely hard to face these differences because they are caught between their dominant Care foundation and their commitment to being non-Oppressive, and an awareness of facts that would make them feel much more hostile to Muslims if they were to allow them to enter their minds. Liberals protect themselves by projecting their own liberal assumptions onto alien people who hold very different views to their own.

I now want to look at how the liberal matrix came into being. I'm not claiming to be an expert on the history and development of liberalism (it's too vast a subject); what I will do is to give an overview of liberalism as I see it. I'm particularly interested in the psychological dimension of this development so that will be my focus. I will also be concentrating on the British experience as Britain was very influential throughout most of this period through the British Empire.

I'll be using the concepts outlined in the previous sections to help illuminate aspects of liberal thought. I will be making particular use of the concepts in Moral Foundations Theory, so to help make things a little less cumbersome let me make something clear: when I use the words Care, Harm, Fairness, Cheating, Loyalty, Betrayal, Authority, Subversion, Sanctity, Degradation with a capital letter I am referring to that moral foundation. It will save me from repeatedly writing Care/Harm Foundation etc.

The liberal worldview has not always existed. It is a relative newcomer to the world and, though highly successful for many societies, it has not become universal. How did it come into being?

Early Liberalism

There were various social currents which led to the break-up of medieval Christendom. The Renaissance brought a resurgence of classical civilisational cultural forms and the reassertion of classical philosophy and literature. It became possible to see medieval Christendom in some sort of historical context; a fact which made it less absolute. The Reformation brought Protestant subjectivisation to religion, by which I mean a person's relationship with God was ultimately their private affair and not something requiring an intermediary such as a priest. Conscience was the ultimate arbiter, the ultimate confessor. Freedom of conscience took root here and continued to proliferate in non-conformist religious movements. The development of democratic movements in the 17^th century, often inspired by non-conformist elements paved the way towards the recognition of individual rights and universal suffrage, both cornerstones of the liberal edifice. The scientific approach to knowledge in the 17^th century began to erode religious certainties and religious authority. This trend was reinforced by the growing freedom of conscience which laid the foundations for freedom of enquiry, both in science and other disciplines.

Where the medieval social order had been fixed, stratified according to a blend of religious and secular authorities, the early liberal era became much more fluid, particularly with the growing middle classes who took the opportunities provided by the loosening of social structures.

John Locke (1632-1704)

Liberalism was given a loose-knit theoretical foundation in the work of John Locke. His approach was pragmatic rather than dogmatic; he did not attempt to provide a coherent rational system but rather a new temper of thought which sought to reform society on the principles of personal liberty, the enjoyment of private property, freedom of conscience, rationality, a system of checks and balances in government to forestall the creation of tyrannies, and an empirical approach to knowledge which would seek progress through science, based on observation, and its application to human affairs. Its recipe for social change was not wholesale revolution but incremental changes that would be broadly agreed upon at each step. Its byword was tolerance and its most powerful weapon was freedom of speech, most famously expressed by Voltaire when he said, “I disapprove of what you say but will fight to the death to defend your right to say it.” In fact, Voltaire was responsible for taking Locke's ideas to France where he championed them.

In the first half of the 18th C. liberal society consolidated the gains of the Glorious Revolution and held back any resurgence of Catholicism in the form of the Jacobites (those still loyal to the catholic James II), culminating in the decisive defeat of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. Notable during this period was a group known as the Kit-Cat Club. This was a group of influential Whigs who were determined to see the fruits of the Glorious Revolution realised. The Hanoverian Protestant kings (George I, II, III, IV) were also key agents in seeing the Protestant hold on power maintained.

Liberals during this period were acutely aware of the perils of religious fanaticism and unreason, as played out during the previous century, and therefore strove to develop a social order based on rationality and tolerance, and that included tolerance of free speech. Today's progressive liberals might find this rather difficult to understand since it was a form of free speech in which differences of opinion could be hotly contested without the risk of being made into a moral pariah for expressing a viewpoint deemed off limits.

I recently bought James Burnham's book "Suicide of the West". This book, written in 1964, is a brilliant analysis of liberal ideology. I can do no better than base my exposition of the liberal matrix on his analysis.

Burnham had also arrived at the idea that liberalism constituted a sort of disorder, "the liberal syndrome" in his words. He saw this syndrome at work in relation to the threat from communism whereas I see it at work in relation to Islam. The parallels are spooky, to say the least.

Like myself, he saw various social and philosophical currents feeding into the development of liberal thought. He also saw liberalism as a rather nebulous, unsystematised philosophical tendency rather than a highly logical system. He identified 19 key liberal ideas which I shall work through in the same order as he does. As Burnham said, these ideas are often not precisely defined, they express tendencies or presumptions rather than laws or precise hypotheses. These core ideas illuminate a lot of liberal priorities and also why certain thoughts are now considered taboo in liberal circles. He also analysed the way liberal priorities have changed during the past 300 years, which is very important.

The liberal ideas:

Although we call these things ideas, they are not generally clearly defined or articulated. They are more akin to articles of faith. They have more emotional power than pure intellectual strength. James Burnham puts this point extremely well,

Modern liberalism, for most liberals, is not a consciously understood set of rational beliefs, but a bundle of unexamined prejudices and conjoined sentiments. The basic ideas and beliefs seem more satisfactory when they are not made fully explicit, when they merely lurk rather obscurely in the background, coloring the rhetoric and adding a certain emotive glow. "Democracy", "equality", "popular government", "free speech", "peace", "universal welfare", "progress", are symbols that warm the heart; but the mind has a hard time getting through the smoke that surrounds them. (Suicide of the West p.145)

For example, the great slogan of the French Republic "Equality, Liberty, Brotherhood" begs the question of how one actually reconciles equality with liberty since they pull in opposite directions.

#1. Human Nature is Infinitely Malleable
#2. We are Rational Beings

#3. Education is the Key to Progress

To be continued...

Unlocking the Liberal Mind - Part 4 - The Righteous Mind

Go to Part 3

In The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt takes us on a journey: an intellectual journey, a personal journey, an emotional journey. This section will aim to give you an overview.

In the film The Matrix people are held in a “consensual hallucination”. The hero of the film is given the option of taking a red pill which will release him from the hallucination and restore him to his own physical body (which is lying a vat of goo). Or he can take a blue pill and his consciousness will be restored to the matrix where he can continue in the rather pleasant hallucination in which nearly all human beings spend their conscious existence. He opts for the red pill and steps out of the hallucination. I'll return this theme again but for now...

Cross-cultural psychology

The work of Richard Shweder was one of the key milestones for Haidt in his journey. Shweder developed the concept of sociocentric and individualistic societies. All societies have to answer a small set of questions about social order, and one of the key questions is what will be the relationship between the individual and the group. Most societies have been sociocentric, the individual is subservient to the group. Western societies since the Enlightenment have championed the rights of the individual and societies have come to be seen as the protectors of individual rights.

This individualistic approach spread very rapidly through the 20^th century and defeated the sociocentric threats of both Nazism and Communism. The individualistic order is built up around the protection of individuals and their freedom.

For Haidt, Shweder’s work enabled him to see that there were competing moral matrices across the world and within each country. The work of Shweder was his red pill.

Shweder carried out hundreds of interviews with Americans and Indians (in the state of Orissa which is on the east coast of India) in which he presented them with short stories that involved a violation of a social rule in either the USA or Orissa. For example:

1. Actions that Indians and Americans agreed were wrong While walking, a man saw a dog sleeping on the road. He walked up to it and kicked it. A father said to his son, “If you do well on the exam, I will buy you a pen.” The son did well on the exam, but the father did not give him anything.

2. Actions that Americans said were wrong but Indians said were acceptable A young married woman went alone to see a movie without informing her husband. When she returned home her husband said, “If you do it again, I will beat you black and blue.” She did it again; he beat her black and blue. (Judge the husband) A man had a married son and a married daughter. After his death his son claimed most of the property. (Judge the son)

3. Actions that Indians said were wrong but Americans said were acceptable In a family, a twenty-five-year-old son addresses his father by his first name A woman cooked rice and wanted to eat with her husband and his elder brother. Then she ate with them. (Judge the woman) A widow in your community eats fish two or three times a week After defecation a woman did not change her clothes before cooking

In box 2. The actions that Americans said were wrong but Indians said were acceptable illustrate the different cultural perspectives on the position of women. For the Indians, inequality and authority enforced through physical punishment is right and proper.

In box 3 there are issues of respect for social position and the proper conduct of women that seem bizarre to Americans. As far as Americans are concerned a widow can eat what she darn well likes and it’s got nothing to do with anybody else (individualistic culture) but for the Indians there are certain social norms to follow even when it has no practical effect on anyone else.

Box 1 shows episodes of harm and unfairness which both Americans and Indians saw as wrong.

Haidt tells of his experience of living within a different cultural milieu in India (in the town of Bhubaneswar) and relates how it gave him first-hand experience of living within a different moral matrix. It reinforced his view that there is no universal moral backdrop upon which all people can agree. There are real and profound differences between cultures and there is no Archimedean point which allows anyone to say that their cultural norms are right and those of others are wrong. What typically happens is that we feel that our cultural norms are the right ones and we cannot understand how people could feel any different. But they do. Haidt describes a society in which women were, and expect to be, treated as inferiors; servants were not to be thanked for anything; women played their role, primarily in the kitchen, in the background and did not expect to be addressed as equals; to do so would make them distinctly uncomfortable. Haidt is not saying this is right or wrong (obviously, from a liberal egalitarian perspective, it’s wrong); it’s just the way that things are done in that part of India, amongst this stratum of society, and they see it as wrong to do otherwise.

Anthropologists developed the concept of cultural relativism in order to help them gain more accurate insights into alien cultures, as the research above demonstrates. This is a very sensible approach to take when studying alien cultures as it is impossible to understand a culture if you keep imposing your cultural preconceptions onto it or if you constantly judge it by the standards of your cultural norms. The doctrine of cultural relativism was expounded most forcefully by Melville Herskovits (1895-1963), who defined it as a perspective in which the values and institutions of any culture must be taken to be self-validating. (From The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought). This is obviously a useful and valid doctrine in the context of anthropology but where it has become extremely problematic is in the transfer to the political domain. Cultural relativism is widely practiced by multicultural democratic societies as a way of managing the multiplicity of cultures that now make up their populations. This results in a rather “hands off” approach to cultural differences. We are now seeing the beginnings of a severe clash between the individualistic cultures and the highly sociocentric culture of Islam.

So, in some moral matrices it’s not acceptable to treat women as equals while in others it’s not acceptable to not do so. Research indicates that we are born with certain predispositions towards moral feelings and attitudes which are non-culturally specific. These are universal but within particular cultures we learn what we should feel moral about. This is why there are different moral attitudes. But the underlying mechanisms are the same across cultures.

Dumbfounding studies

Through his research Haidt came to the conclusion that these underlying moral predispositions are the affective drivers of our moral reactions. The reasoning which we provide for ourselves and others is secondary. He undertook many studies in which subjects were presented with different moral situations; they were then asked whether they thought the behaviour described was acceptable or not and then asked to say why they thought that. Consider the following example:

Julie and Mark, who are sister and brother, are travelling together in France. They are both on summer vacation from college. One night they are staying alone in a cabin near the beach. They decide that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love. At the very least it would be a new experience for each of them. Julie is already taking birth control pills, but Mark uses a condom too, just to be safe. They both enjoy it, but they decide not to do it again. They keep that night as a special secret between them, which makes them feel even closer to each other. So what do you think about this? Was it wrong for them to have sex?  [The Righteous Mind p.38]

Only 20% of subjects said it was OK for Julie and Mark to have sex but where people said it was wrong they found it hard to deliver any reasoning that could stand up to scrutiny. These ‘dumfounding’ studies confirmed his prediction that people begin with a feeling that something is wrong and then try to present a rational case to support or justify that feeling. These feelings spring from the underlying moral predispositions.

Haidt uses the metaphor of the mind as 90% elephant and 10% rider. The elephant is all the automatic, emotional, features of the brain that have evolved over millions of years, are highly adapted and react much faster than you can think. This part of the brain is much larger than the conscious self which is represented by the rider. When the elephant leans one way or the other (like/dislike) in response to a situation, the rider follows and provides a respectable justification for the way the elephant is leaning. In response to the story of Julie and Mark for most people the elephant leans towards disapproval. As this happens, the conscious self, the rider, takes on the role of providing rational justifications for the elephant’s moral posture. This mechanism is summed up as “Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.”

The way the elephant feels about something or someone also affects how we see that thing or person. This is affective primacy. It is a very rapid semi-emotional assessment of like/dislike that the animal brain has evolved to carry out. Subsequent “reasoning” about the person or thing will be masked by the effects of affective priming.  This relates to the discussion of perception in Part 1.

WEIRD societies versus the rest

The point to take from this is that different moral perspectives operate in different cultures. We see the world from the point of view of our moral perspective which we have learned as members of our societies or subcultures. Others learn different moral perspectives as members of their societies or subcultures. The research in moral psychology shows that what is common to all of us are certain predispositions to learn moral responses. These predispositions are inherited from our evolutionary past. We learn what to be moral about. In Western Educated Industrialised Rich Democratic (WEIRD) societies, there are sets of responses to people who can be deemed inferior which are thought to be morally appropriate (e.g. forbearance, consideration, tolerance) and those thought to be morally inappropriate (e.g. condescension, ridicule, exploitation). The very idea of my describing people as “inferior” will raise the moral hackles of many. That’s why I used the term, because it illustrates the emotional reaction of the moral mind. In WEIRD societies we’re not even supposed to think of people as inferior, even though they might actually be inferior on almost every conceivable measure.

WEIRD societies are statistical outliers; they are unrepresentative of the world population as a whole today and they are unrepresentative of the societies of the past. Basing your views of the way people think and behave on the behaviour of people in WEIRD societies will most likely lead you to draw false conclusions. However, this is what most westerners do and what most western leaders do. It’s the result of what’s called the representativeness heuristic (remember those rules of thumb mentioned in Part 2?). The representative heuristic is a mental shortcut which infers that the people I’m most familiar with are representative of all people. In many respects this might be true but in terms of moral thinking and cultural norms, it is definitely false. Liberals were particularly guilty of this during the so-called “Arab Spring” in which they identified a tiny minority of young people as being representative of North African societies as a whole, in spite of the existence of plenty of evidence which indicated these youngsters were not representative. They could identify with these young people because they were more similar to themselves. As a result of the representative heuristic they took them to be representative of most North Africans. This has proven completely false. (But you can safely bet that liberals will still be clinging to this perception).

Moral Foundations Theory

Haidt compares our moral predispositions to taste receptors. They are there in all of us but they are tuned differently. It’s rather like the cuisines of different cultures; they all work with the same taste receptors but they develop different sets of flavours and different culinary themes. These ideas are based on extensive research and can be considered robust.

Many years of research across several continents has led Haidt and others in the field of cultural and moral psychology to the conclusion that there are 6 moral foundations. These are the in-built predispositions mentioned above which give rise to the sense that something is “just wrong” even if we can’t seem to explain exactly why. A recent example of a moral/political issue that has highlighted a difference in moral perspective is same-sex marriage. Broadly speaking, those on the right have been against it, whilst those on the liberal/left (anything goes as long as no-one gets hurt and equality must be applied in all matters) have been more comfortable with it. Those who’ve been opposed to it have “felt” it was wrong and have used arguments such as: “a marriage should be between a man and a woman with the ultimate purpose of raising a family”; “if they adopt children it may lead to problems at school”. Whatever the merits of these arguments, the real impetus for them comes from a pre-rational, emotional/intuitive level which just finds it at odds with their moral feelings (and there's nothing wrong with that).

The liberal counter-arguments have been dominated by notions like “equality”, human rights, and inclusiveness. The underlying moral feeling is concerned with not judging others, not “being oppressive” or authoritarian; there are no particular sanctities to get upset about. From this perspective, we have to keep stretching the boundaries of what’s acceptable so that marginal groups can be brought into the fold. All life’s contradictions will dissolve in the acid of equality. Any movement towards greater equality and inclusiveness is moral progress.

So what are the moral taste receptors that we are all born with? Research has so far identified six. They are stated in terms of opposing pairs and they are referred to as Moral Foundations:

Care/Harm

Fairness/Cheating

Liberty/Oppression

Loyalty/Betrayal

Authority/Subversion

Sanctity/Degradation

The Care/Harm foundation, as it suggests, is related to our sense that harming others, particularly the weak and vulnerable, is wrong. To care for the weak and vulnerable is virtuous and right. This would appear to have obvious links to the need for our ancestors (going right back to apes and primitive people) to care for the young. Primates, and particularly humans, have a relatively long period after birth in which they cannot fend for themselves. By contrast, a foal or calf will be on its feet shortly after birth and must be ready to move when the herd moves. Because we have relatively large heads, we have to be born before we have that sort of physical maturity and we therefore require a long period of being cared for. It is within this context that the moral foundation of Care/Harm arose.

The Fairness/Cheating foundation underlies our moral emotions relating to fairness and justice. Being in social groups confers many advantages upon group animals like ourselves such as the benefits of cooperation in which things can be achieved together which could not be done by individuals on their own. There is therefore a bargain to be struck in group effort such that participation in the risks or physical effort leads to a share of the prize. But what if people try to get a share of the prize without sharing the risk or the effort? This is the basis of the Fairness/Cheating foundation. We are highly tuned to the immorality of “free riders” and societies have ways of dealing with them. For liberals and especially the Left, the Fairness foundation motivates their concern with exploitation. [The moral emotions associated with cheating are anger and contempt. If individuals persistently cheat on the group, they must be punished to try to make them change their behaviour or they may be ostracised permanently.]

The Loyalty/Betrayal foundation is seen most obviously in those cultures where fidelity to the in-group is paramount. Islam demands the execution of apostates, for example. It may be expressed as loyalty to a sovereign, and this has certainly has been a key element of monarchical societies, even to the present day. But it is also seen in the loyalty expected of members of social and political movements. Those who change sides are the object of particular scorn. Whatever we may feel about the particulars of a person who betrays their group, we are all likely to feel some revulsion at the act of betrayal or disloyalty itself.

The Authority/Subversion foundation concerns the way we relate within hierarchies and is probably anchored in the value placed on social order. Those of our ancestors who were best able to navigate the social world of hierarchies would have had an advantage and would be best positioned to pass on their hierarchy navigating genes to the next generation. The Authority foundation relates to all those mental processes and outward behaviours that enable us to respond appropriately within authority structures. If, on the other hand, we reject hierarchical relationships we will tend more to the subversive end of this spectrum. Human cultures vary enormously in how far they demand respect for parents, teachers and other authority figures. Authority should not be confused with power, according to Haidt. Although, authority may ultimately be linked to the use of force for maintaining the social order, authority figures also have responsibilities for protecting the social order and of those within that order; there is a paternalistic element. For sure, there are often abuses of authority but authority in itself should not be seen negatively and in many cultures it is viewed very positively.

The Sanctity/Degradation foundation is based on what Haidt sees as a vertical dimension of purity versus impurity. Many cultures place certain objects or places on a totally different level to the ordinary worldly domain. Some temples have inner sanctums to which only those trained in the correct procedures of self-purification are allowed to enter. Many religions have washing rituals associated with prayer or meditation. Many afford a holiness to the spaces where rituals and prayers are carried out. These are not to be defiled by unseemly conduct or other forms of contamination from the outside. In the Grand Mosque in Mecca, it is forbidden for non-believers to enter as they are deemed to be unclean. If caught breaking this rule you face certain death. It is thought that the Sanctity/Degradation foundation is thought to be rooted in the disgust reflex which we acquired through our evolution as omnivores. Being omnivores opened up many opportunities for us to expand populations into unexplored territory but it also brought the risk of poisoning by eating contaminated or poisonous food. Our disgust reflex developed as a means of allowing us to maximise the advantages of being omnivores and minimise the disadvantages.

I’ve done my best to give a sufficient but not overly detailed account of Moral Foundations Theory but if you want to get a better understanding you can read this or get yourself a copy of The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt, a very worthwhile read.

Applying Moral Foundations to Political Psychology

The moral foundations start to become particularly fascinating when applied to the political spectrum. They also, I believe, offer us some powerful conceptual tools for examining the differences between liberals and non-liberals and for allowing us too see into the world of the liberal mind, which is what this is all about in the end!

First, lets have a look at some important research findings for the moral foundations along the political spectrum:

Along the bottom, the graph shows the self-reported political identity of the people who responded to the moral foundations questionnaire. These self-reported identities have been checked objectively and have been shown to be valid. The scale on the left shows how strongly respondents were rated on the different moral foundations as measured by their responses to moral questions. You can do these tests for yourself to see your own balance of moral foundations if you visit www.yourmorals.org

The graph shows a clear relationship between the different moral foundations and your position on the political spectrum. For liberals, Care and Fairness are the most important foundations. All the others are of much lower importance. For conservatives, Care and Fairness don’t have the overriding importance that they do for liberals and they also score more highly on the other foundations of Authority, Loyalty and Sanctity. In effect, liberals have a 2 foundation morality while conservatives have a more balanced 5 foundation morality. This research has been carried out many times in many different cultures and among many different populations and the results are consistent: liberal morality is dominated by concerns about Care and Fairness, whilst more conservative people have what we might describe as a full suite of moral foundations.

The way the moral foundations are tested is well illustrated by a series of questions asked about breeds of dogs preferred for pets.

Look at the following list:

• The breed is extremely gentle
• The breed is very independent-minded and relates to the owner as a friend and equal
• The breed is extremely loyal to its home and family and it doesn’t warm up quickly to strangers
• The breed is very obedient is quickly trained to take orders
• The breed is very clean and, like a cat, takes great care with its personal hygiene

Haidt et al. found that people preferred dogs that fit their moral matrices. Liberals went for dogs that are gentle and relate to them as equals (Care and Fairness). Conservatives look for dogs which are loyal and obedient (Loyalty and Authority). There was no partisan tilt on Sanctity; both sets preferred dogs that were clean. [The Righteous Mind pp. 161-162]

“But what about the sixth foundation?”, I hear you say. In response to an essay entitled, “What makes people vote Republican?” (Haidt is a liberal),  Haidt received a lot of feedback which led him and his colleagues to revise the Moral Foundations. It was clear from the reactions of conservatives in particular that the team had overlooked something. They had assumed that Fairness was essentially about Equality (which of course reflected their own liberal assumptions) but conservatives were saying something different and significant: Fairness is about proportionality. We should reap what we sow. If everyone gets essentially the same outcomes in life irrespective of how hard they work or what talents they have that is not just. This was a view of fairness that seemed to be characteristic of conservatives. (It’s easy to see how this conflicts with the line in the Communist Manifesto which says, “To each according to his need; from each according to his ability.” Liberals might like to believe that conservatives don’t care about fairness but in reality they have a different conception of it. For them, the liberal obsession with equality leads to unfairness by constantly taking from the successful to give to the unsuccessful; robbing the talented so that the less talented can prosper. Not only that but it is crippling the economic health of the country and undermining social order. 

The team also asked themselves whether the anger felt by liberals towards cheaters was the same as the anger they felt toward bullies and oppressors. They concluded it was not; rather, there was another moral foundation underlying these responses which they called Liberty/Oppression. They linked this to the mores of hunter-gatherer societies in which alpha males could become dominant and oppressive. With the development of weapons and language it became possible for a strong individual to be overpowered by a band of weaker rivals. Under these conditions early humans developed the abilities needed to unite in order to “shame, ostracise, or kill anyone whose behaviour threatened or simply annoyed the rest of the group.”

The Liberty foundation supports the activities of freedom fighters. The best expression of the awareness that is animated by the Liberty foundation is owed to Edmund Burke, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” It seems to me the liberals have now lost their interest in Liberty as in their view Liberty has been contaminated by a sense that it can be used to trample the rights of others (especially the weak). What liberals are now most concerned about is being Non-oppressive, hence their hypersensitivity to what may be oppressive to the weak and vulnerable. I shall therefore refer to Non-oppression as the liberal manifestation of the Liberty/Oppression foundation.

We see this particularly in the culture of Political Correctness. Those deemed to belong to vulnerable or powerless groups are to be afforded special consideration, even to the extent of deferring to their view of the world. They cannot be criticised or challenged about anything because that would be "oppressive". This attitude is extremely patronising.

The moral foundations team also recalibrated their measures of fairness to include more questions about proportionality. Previously they had been overwhelmingly focused on equality and human rights.

The liberal moral foundations form a triad. Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Liberty/Oppression.

In future I will refer to the liberal moral foundations as the liberal triad: Care, Fairness, Non-oppression. This triad leads liberals into all kinds of one-sidedness in their moral judgements. There is also a remarkable overlap between the liberal triad and the liberal template referred to in Part 3.

Moral Foundations in Islam

Different moral systems may define some of the key terms related to the moral foundations in radically different ways. We might think we're talking about the same things when we're only using the same words. For example, in Islam "peace" does not mean all people freely living their lives in harmony with all other people freely living their lives, it means all people living in total submission to the will of Allah. Allah's will is revealed in the Islamic scriptures and is codified in Islamic law, the Shariah.

Here's another example: "oppression" is defined by liberals as one group having dominance over another, with all the associated outcomes of inequality of wealth, status and opportunity. In the Islamic view, oppression is that which prevents Muslims fully living according to Allah's will, as set out in the Shariah. Shariah stipulates that absence of oppression for Muslims requires that unbelief (kufr) should be completely eradicated. This is one of the justifications for jihad, the violent subjugation or conversion of non-believers, for in order for such a state to exist all non-believers must be removed.

Not only does Islam define moral terms in radically different ways, it also is strongly weighted on the non-liberal moral foundations: Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, Sanctity/Degradation, whereas liberals have a moral triad based on the other moral foundations. Obedience to the dictates of Islam is strongly enforced and fatwas (religious rulings) are sought from religious authorities for all aspects of life. Loyalty to the group is strongly enforced, for example, apostasy is punishable by death (and recent rulings in the Muslim world (I'm writing in 2013) have reinforced this); Sanctities are also strongly enforced: we've seen the uproar over cartoons depicting Muhammad; uproar over Korans being mishandled; non-Muslims entering the holiest sites of Mecca can be executed as non-Muslims are seen as unclean.

It's interesting that the moral foundations underpinning Islam and progressive liberalism are both mutually exclusive and complementary. Could this help to explain the blind spot that liberals show towards Islam?

Whatever the truth about the origins of the moral foundations, they are evidence-based and powerful concepts for understanding our most deeply felt moral perspectives. In the next section I will begin looking at how we can apply the concepts elucidated in Parts 1 – 4 to unlock the liberal mind.

Unlocking the Liberal Mind - Part 3 - Groups, Differences, and Conflicts

Go to part 2

There has been a lot of research over the last eighty years or so into the nature of prejudice, group perceptions, and inter-group conflict. A lot of this has looked at the nature of racial conflict. Perhaps because the researchers were mainly white liberals a lot of the research has focused on white prejudice towards black people. This may even have given rise to an unexamined assumption both within the research and in the conclusions emerging from it that racial discrimination and prejudice are predominantly a white problem. The possibility that black people could feel prejudice and would act in discriminatory ways towards white people was not even considered. Marxist intellectuals are fond of claiming that science is “socially constructed” and perhaps they would be correct in this instance.

A lot of research on group behaviour sought to shed light on why conflict occurs between groups. Some of the main factors that appear to create or exacerbate conflict are:

• Racial differences

• Ideological differences

• Competition for (scarce) resources

• Wider social norms which condone hostility toward out-groups (certainly true of Islam)

• Conflict of interests


Whilst all these factors are important in the understanding of inter-group conflict and the attitudes associated with it, there may be something more fundamental at work.


Minimal Groups

Henri Tajfel (1971) undertook a series of studies into what are known as “minimal groups”. The proposition is that the mere perception of the existence of another group can itself produce in-group preference and out-group rejection/hostility, possibly the ultimate foundations of discrimination. He argued that before any discrimination can occur, people must be categorized as members of an in-group or an out-group. This makes categorization a necessary condition for discrimination but, more significantly, he found that the very act of categorization by itself produces conflict and discrimination, which makes it simultaneously a sufficient condition.

The discoveries of Tajfel’s research are remarkable; he found that when people are separated arbitrarily into groups, groups stripped of all distinguishing features, even when they know they have been allocated to their group at random, they still develop in-group preference and out-group rejection. Even when subjects were shown their allocation to their group on the basis of a coin toss, they still showed a strong in-group preference.

These findings have been replicated many times using a wide range of subjects from different age groups, different countries, and different cultures. The results are always the same: strong in-group preference and out-group rejection. I’ll be returning to this important research.

Islam will tend to foster inter-group conflict by marking its adherents so distinctly by their dress-codes. It is virtually impossible to see Muslims as anything other than a discrete group, as outsiders, and once you learn something about Islamic attitudes towards non-Muslims, the conflict is all the starker. The converse is also true: Muslims by being a very distinct in-group to themselves, will see non-Muslims as outsiders very strongly.

A lot of the effort directed at reducing prejudice has focused on dealing with the perceptions that people have of those belonging to different social groups, since this is perhaps the only factor that is amenable to education and re-training. A leading light in this area is Jane Elliot, who as an Iowan school teacher came to fame through her “Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes” experiment:

In 1968 she told her class of nine-year-olds that brown-eyed people are more intelligent and “better” people than those with blue eyes. Brown-eyed students, though in the minority, would be the ‘ruling class’ over the inferior blue-eyed children, and given extra privileges whilst the blue-eyed children were to be ‘kept in their place’ by such restrictions as being last in line, seated at the back of the class, and given less break time. They also had to wear special collars as a sign of their low status. The brown-eyed group adopted a superior attitude to the blue-eyed children becoming oppressive and mean and making derogatory statements about them.

Elliot’s experiment was clearly building on the strong tendency (that minimal groups research indicates that we have) to take a more negative attitude towards an out-group, but this time some of the more typical furnishings are added: different physical features; superiority; rules of behaviour based on group membership; power differences.

We abhor this behaviour and yet we all have a tendency towards it. Elliot has gone on to become a crusader for “diversity training” and a strong embodiment of “white guilt”. She is a fervent believer in the self-censoring watchfulness that we have come to define as political correctness. She believes that racism is in the eye of the beholder and therefore one need be ever-sensitive to the possibility of giving offence.

"Perception is everything," she says. "If someone perceives something as racist then I am responsible for not saying that thing." Racism-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder is possibly one of the most noxious and illiberal concepts currently adopted by diversity enthusiasts.

Whatever underlying concern for the underdog motivates this puritanical thought training, there is a very unpleasant sense that those deemed to be in the “wrong group” from Elliot’s perspective (e.g. Whites) will get very rough treatment. At her workshops, Elliot has demonstrated great verbal ferocity towards those in the “wrong” group, which would seem to bear this out.

There is a world of difference between feeling more affinity with one’s own racial/religious/cultural/generational group and believing that those of different groups are inherently inferior; should suffer systematic discrimination; and as the Koran puts it, “feel themselves subdued.”

People like Elliot give one a sense not of someone who has transcended racism but rather of someone who has inverted it.

Minimal groups research would seem to show that however enthusiastic you might be to escape the in-group/out-group trap, you are very unlikely to succeed. I also think that liberals are in an impossible dilemma when they try to apply this sort of framework to different cultures, and Islam in particular.

It is within the paradigm of diversity training and anti-racism that a lot of liberal thinking regarding Islam is cast. There is for example the view that perception is hugely important: regard people more positively, without prejudgement and as equals and relationships will improve and we can enjoy harmonious social relations with people who may have some differences but between whom there is equal respect.

Simple ethnocentrism is the attitude that one’s own culture is better than all others and that there is little of value on offer from cultures other than one’s own.

There has been a widespread dissemination of the idea that ethnocentrism is wrong. Again, within the paradigm of people like Elliot, ethnocentrism is our problem in the sense that we have to avoid seeing our culture as superior. We don’t have to concern ourselves with ethnocentrism being directed at us. Our concern should be limited to reducing our in-group preference. We can do this by seeing all cultures as equal and as having equal validity relative to the group members of each culture. To start talking about the virtues of our culture relative to another risks a slippage into the in-group/out-group trap and all the discrimination and associated horrors that come in its train.

Liberals like Elliot are certainly right to warn us about in-group preference and ideas of superiority. They are right to see the in-group/out-group dynamic as a potential source of error (really massive error in some cases). The Nazi treatment of the Jews is probably the most memorable case but there have been all-too-many others: the Armenian genocide carried out by the Turks (and which is still not acknowledged in Turkish society), the Rwandan genocide, the ongoing Sudanese genocide of Christians, Animists, and non-Arab Muslims, the list goes on.

Apartheid South Africa provided a long running case for liberals to focus their outrage against white oppression of blacks. It fits a pattern that liberals are very comfortable with: white, Western, in-group superiority against black, non-Western, out-group inferiority. This is what I call the Liberal Template. It’s a pattern that liberals can detect in many group situations which have certain variations but which are always seen to share some or all of these characteristics:

• White, western, wealthy versus dark, non-Western, poor

These "markers" are associated with other concepts: White, western, wealthy are seen to belong with oppressor, dominant, arrogant, racist, imperialist, colonialist, selfish, exploitative. Dark, non-Western, poor are seen to belong with oppressed, underdog, humble, innocent, downtrodden, generous, exploited.

Where the pattern does not fit too accurately, information can be filtered in or out so that it does fit. In fact, getting the Liberal Template to fit, to impose it as it were, can become the main focus. The liberal wants to see the world in terms of the liberal template because he knows his place within it and it is a virtuous one: he fights the oppressive qualities of his own in-group.

The classic case of the liberal template being misapplied is Israel. Israel is a small ethnically diverse, democratic country, which is tolerant towards minorities and progressive with respect to homosexuality, colour, class, gender, and different religions within its borders. It is located in the midst of hostile, reactionary neighbours and should be supported by liberals. It even gets accused of Apartheid, a prime liberal tactic to demonise an entire country. Why then is it the object of so much liberal vitriol? I would argue that it's due to the liberal template. Remember the difference between "seeing-that" and "reasoning-why"? Like the Muller-Lyer Illusion and the Old/Young woman image (see Parts 1 and 2), the liberal template imposes a pattern on the Israeli situation that overrules the use of evidence and reason. All the liberal sees with respect to Israel is Western/wealthy versus non-Western/poor. The former is the oppressor, the latter the oppressed. Contrary information is filtered out both by the imposition of the template and in order to maintain it. As a result, the liberal ends up in the absurd situation of supporting the very reactionary forces that he claims to be against at home.

The archetypal form of the liberal template is European colonialism and the Atlantic Slave Trade. This was the classic case of white people full of ethnocentric self-belief and arrogance using their (superior) technological know-how and organisation to conquer people in an (inferior) state of development. The self-serving justifications employed to define black people as inherently inferior, like animals, and not worthy to be treated any better, are key examples of the way belief and ideology are easily used in the service of in-group objectives.

All this is fine but there is an emotional force at work too which does not want anyone muddying the waters with evidence or argument that does not fit the template. Here’s where the selective nature of attention, perception, memory and all those other thought processes comes in – the cognitive mission – which are employed not to check whether the liberal template is in fact correct but to defend it. The liberal template is highly energised for self-protection not fact-checking.

However, I think their view of this is incomplete, dangerously incomplete.

I defined simple ethnocentrism above. There is another type of ethnocentrism that is more subtle. This type of ethnocentrism, let’s call it liberal ethnocentrism, is generally well-informed of the dangers of simple ethnocentrism but it falls into ethnocentrism all the same. Whilst not making negative judgements about other cultures and being always at the ready to value and accept people from different cultures, this type of ethnocentrism fails to acknowledge that the world views of these alien cultures could actually be built on completely different foundations to those of the liberal subject and may indeed share no common understandings or assumptions. This liberal ethnocentrism is so focused on eliminating simple ethnocentrism that it fails to see the profound simple ethnocentrism of the alien culture. Rather, the liberal assumes that the members of these cultures are just as ready as he is to reciprocate his respect for their culture. But when they aren’t, they can readily take advantage of his naivety. The liberal ethnocentrist naively believes that because he is accepting towards outsiders, they will treat him well too. It's like the innocent explorer accepting an invitation to dine with cannibals.

Liberals (back to the wider sense of the word I set out in my introduction) have become accustomed to the idea that whilst they have had the upper hand they have done many wrongs towards people in weaker positions. They (or rather their fellow in-group members) have been the ones doing the oppressing; they are the ones who need to correct their view of outsiders in order to be fairer towards them. This way of thinking has become deeply ingrained in our culture. It begins in the early years of child-rearing and education. There has been an army of teachers like Jane Elliott at work since the 1970s.

With all the focus on “the white problem” and the effort to reduce racism, out-group rejection, and ethnocentrism something of enormous importance has been missed: out-groups to us may feel in-group superiority for themselves. This is certainly true with respect to Islam and Muslims.

The liberal mind appears to be immoveably blind to the possibility that other cultures have their own ethnocentrisms (this is its own peculiar form of ethnocentrism). Islam just so happens to present us with one of the most blatant examples of this ethnocentrism:

Cultural superiority:

• Jahiliya is the doctrine that every culture preceding Islamisation is in a state of ignorance
• The Bible and Torah are viewed as merely corrupted versions of the Koran and are full of error. Their only merit is that they point toward the coming of Muhammad
• All forms of non-Muslim culture are inferior or evil: democracy, music, figurative art, free thought, drinking alcohol, mixing of the sexes etc.
• Muhammad is the final messenger of God and what he teaches supercedes all other beliefs

Legitimacy of Islamic domination:

• Warfare against non-Muslims is fully justified in order to bring (or force) the superior (and only true) way of life of Islam to them
• Muslims in mixed societies are to be seen as superior to non-Muslims and they are justified in exploiting, deceiving, and plotting to overcome the non-Muslims
• The dhimma pact underwrites the justified domination of Muslims viz a viz Jewish and Christian communities living under Muslim domination. The inferior status, absence of legal protection, and resumption of persecution following any (perceived) failure to uphold the dhimma pact are all justified because Muslims have both a right and a duty to dominate non-Muslims 

Imposition of Islamic law upon all people is a moral duty:

• Jihad is the sixth pillar of Islam. It is not simply defensive but a moral obligation upon all Muslims to replace all other cultures and religions with Islam
• Warfare against non-believers is to be understood as a gift to them as it brings them into contact with the only true religion of Islam

Internal controls: 

• To leave Islam is to challenge its truth and supremacy. This is an insult to Islam and anyone doing this is “no better” than a non-believer (kuffar) and hence deserves to be killed.
• To question Islam or Muhammad is to be guilty of doubting the truth of Islam. This is an insult to Islam and warrants a death sentence.

If this is not ethnocentrism in its most virulent form, what is?

I have a further question: how do you feel about a very ethnocentric culture displacing a less ethnocentric culture?

Go To Part 4

Unlocking the Liberal Mind - Part 2 - Patterns and Intentions

Go to: Part 1 - Perception

A few definitions:

Heuristics

When we have to carry out a task involving physical effort we will usually try to do it using the least energy. We take the path of least resistance – unless we have some other motive for doing more. The same is true of mental effort. Psychological studies show consistently that people adopt strategies to cut down the amount of mental effort required in all types of mental processing. This includes the effort needed to solve problems and the effort needed to assess social situations. We are cognitive misers – we avoid unnecessary expenditure wherever possible. We adopt various strategies to decrease effort and avoid information overload. If we had to assess all the possible options in every situation we would quickly become paralysed by too much information and too many choices.

For this reason we have strategies which cut down the range of possible choices quickly and enable us to make quick judgements. These strategies are known as heuristics: rules of thumb which allow  inferences to be made and conclusions reached rapidly. These heuristics, though essential, often lead to biases and omissions in our thinking. For example, people use stereotypes to evaluate individuals and groups. Stereotypes are over-generalisations made about a certain category of person. The Occupy Wall Street movement has a stereotype of the “1%” of America’s richest people which consists of white, male businessmen. This has some truth in it but not all of America’s richest 1% fit this description. Tiger Woods and Oprah Winfrey are among this group, as are many movie and pop stars. These latter don’t fit the stereotype so they are easily filtered out of OWS's minds. These short-cuts and biases easily become filters for the information we don’t like or which doesn't fit with intuitive patterns that we take for granted.

Cognition

Cognition is a term used by psychologists to describe areas of mental activity which involve some form of information processing. Things like perception, thinking, memory, attention are forms of cognition. Cognitive psychology has been heavily influenced by the model of the mind as an information processing system akin to a computer. These might best be seen as forms of lower cognition. Disciplined thinking involving language or other systems of symbols, such as mathematics, are higher forms of cognition. A cognitive ability such as perception just happens, whereas a higher form of cognition requires considerable conscious effort.

Intuitions

Intuitions are the domain of hunches, gut-feelings, and guestimates. They are not rationally considered but emanate from a semi-conscious, emotionally toned area of the mind. They are linked with the lower cognitive levels. They are also linked to feelings and the motivational drivers of the personality. You are experiencing intuition when you know something (perhaps the way home when you are lost or that an action is wrong)  but can’t explain why or how.

Looking into the Righteous Mind

Having looked in some detail at the psychology of perception in Part 1, I'm going to move on to one of the most crucial areas of psychology for helping us to understand why the Liberal Mind is so locked. I will be basing the first part of this on a section from Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind, and I will be largely paraphrasing what he has written.

In The Righteous Mind Jonathan Haidt shows a clear link between moral reasoning and emotional/intuitive responses to issues like incest, oppression and cruelty. What may well surprise you is that the emotional/intuitive response comes first and the moral reasoning second, not the other way round. A piece of work by Howard Margolis proved to be crucial in helping to understand why this relationship exists and why the emotional/intuitive response comes first.

Howard Margolis, a professor of public policy at the University of Chicago, was trying to understand why people's beliefs about political issues are often so poorly connected to objective facts and he turned to cognitive science to try and shed some light on the matter. He published his ideas in Patterns, Thinking, and Cognition. He took the view that the best model for the way we think about political issues was lower cognition: processes like perception. One of the most important features of perception is that it carries out rapid pattern matching. Margolis took as his starting point the effect of illusions like the Muller-Lyer illusion (see Part 1) and from this he concluded that there are two very different kinds of cognitive processes when we make judgements and solve problems: he called them "seeing-that" and "reasoning-why". The seeing-that type of cognition is the pattern matching that brains have been doing for millions of years. Simple animals can react to patterns of light and dark with particular behaviours. The way that we instantly recognize faces, letters of the alphabet, all derive from pattern matching. Pattern matching is instant, automatic, and seemingly effortless, although the brain devotes large resources to it. To see your own pattern matching processes at work have a look at the old/young woman image below:

The mind uses pattern matching to detect the young woman then the old woman and vice versa. Because the image is ambiguous in a balanced way, it is quite easy to see first one then the other. Note how your mind seizes on one pattern then the other.

Margolis came to the conclusion that people often use simple pattern matching to address more complex problems. This pattern matching uses the lower rather than the higher cognitive processing. It is intuitive rather than rational. He summed it up thus:

 “Given the judgements (themselves produced by the non-conscious cognitive machinery in the brain, sometimes correctly, sometimes not so), human beings produce rationales they believe account for their judgements. But the rationales (on this argument) are only ex post rationalizations.”

The non-conscious cognitive machinery responsible for the “seeing-that” is intuitive and affective, the rationale is the “reasoning-why” which attempts to give a rational justification for the position taken by the non-conscious mind. Margolis again, “reasoning-why is the process by which we describe how we think we reached a judgement, or how we think another person could reach that judgement.” Reasoning-why can only occur for creatures with language who have a need to explain themselves to other creatures. Reasoning-why is done specifically with a view to convincing others.

This pattern matching can also be seen in the way we make assumptions and logical fallacies. Take the example of post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this therefore on account of this). This error is based on the misapplication of the causality pattern. When one event follows another it sometimes means that the first event caused the second, but not always. It's an easy trap to fall into. The lower level cognitive pattern matching sees one event following another and jumps to the conclusion that the first caused the second. Take the example of Grandpa suffering from a fever, he takes a shot of fine whisky and low and behold he feels better the next day. Searching around for an explanation he seizes on the (notable) fact that he had the whisky the night before. "That whisky made me better", he says. This is a case of post hoc ergo propter hoc; he might have got better irrespective of whether he drank the whisky. Motivation can also play a part in the explanation we seize upon. Grandpa may well welcome the prospect that fine whisky can "cure" his fevers!

Jonathan Haidt uses the metaphor of a rider and an elephant to describe the relationship between the reasoning and verbal part of the self and the intuitive/motivational/emotional part of the self. They generally work together with the elephant being the powerhouse and fundamentally in charge while the rider can present things to others in the most acceptable way, thus looking after the elephant's reputation. This is a very powerful metaphor because it describes well the relative power and influence of the two aspects of the self and because, if you take note, you'll realise how your elephant leans one way or the other when confronted with information, other people, or situations. The elephant thus gives the lead and the rider searches for a way of explaining the response to the world outside. The elephant has all the advantages of the animal brain: supremely adapted from millions of years of evolution and very fast to respond (remember the affective flashes referred to in Part 1?). Do take time to reflect on this metaphor or, better still, get yourself a copy of The Righteous Mind.

It is very important to understand that our minds are primed to accept or reject pieces of information. This may not necessarily be our conscious intention, it just is the way we are and the reason we are like this is due to the elephant, that powerful set of responses that reaches back into the animal brain. Tom Gilovich has studied the psychology of strange beliefts and he has identified two basic responses to information. When we like a piece of information we quickly ask ourselves the question "Can I believe it?" because we are already willing to accept it but we need a small justification. We search for a reason to accept it and when we've found one, we can stop thinking (remember we are cognitive misers). But, when we don't like a piece of information, or our suspicions are aroused that it contradicts deeply held views in some way, we ask ourselves the question "Must I believe it?". We search for a reason to reject it and when we've found one, we can stop thinking. Psychologists have accumulated abundant evidence of "motivated reasoning"; it's just the way we are. As Jonathan Haidt puts it in The Happiness Hypothesis (see chapter 4 - The Faults of Others),

 "Over and over again, studies show that people set out on a cognitive mission to bring back reasons to support their preferred belief or action. And because we are usually successful in this mission, we end up with the illusion of objectivity. We really believe that our position is rationally and objectively justified." [my italics]

He quotes an anecdote from Benjamin Franklin which illustrates very well how the mind goes about its business. Franklin was a vegetarian out of principle but on a long sea voyage he found his mouth watering at the smell of grilled fish:

I balanc'd some time between principle and inclination, till I recollected that, when the fish were opened, I saw smaller fish taken out of their stomachs; then thought I, "if you eat one another, I don't see why we mayn't eat you." So I din'd upon cod very heartily, and continued to eat with other people, returning only now and then occasionally to a vegetable diet."




This episode shows Franklin searching for a justification for the action he wants to undertake. He sets out on a cognitive mission. The mission is given to him by his elephant, hungry and drawn by the smell of fish. We can all recognise this experience. It's something we all do in order to provide a rationale for something we want to do but which conflicts with another principle or interest.



The mind is a very integrated system which continuously adapts perceptions, thinking, and memories  to the demands of the moment. It is strongly coloured by intentionality, an inward pursposefulness which is not wholly, or even mainly, conscious. When we are attached to a viewpoint we are terrible at looking for information which contradicts it. We are very good at finding and accepting information that confirms it. Psychologists call this confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is universal and very strong - always bear this in mind when dealing with people holding different views to yourself. It's as if the mind has filters allowing some information to pass and keeping other information out. Once the mind goes into combat mode, your opponent's cognitive mission intensifies along with his search for information confirming his viewpoint and discounting yours. The filters lock down and only attend to your evidence and arguments with the purpose of shooting it down. The chances of changing any attitude or opinion are virtually zero in this state.

A few of us are sufficiently reflective and honest with ourselves to overcome this tendency on our own but most of us need the help of friends and people we respect to get us to look at things differently; to see a different pattern in the same image; to look at the same information from a different perspective.

The kinds of judgements that I want to address with respect to the Liberal Mind are essentially concerned with moral and political questions: is it wrong to prefer your own culture? When should you oppose oppression and when should you ignore it? Do some groups have a right to be protected from criticism? 

Questions such as these are intimately bound up with the subjects I’ve been discussing. I may not like the way some people behave; that’s largely an emotional (affective) response but in order to convince anyone else that they shouldn’t behave like that I’ve got to come up with some justification for my response and articulate it as a principle that all people should uphold. In other words, I’ve got to find reasons why people ought to share my (intuitive) judgement. I shall be arguing that the Liberal Mind is falling into the trap of applying simple pattern matching to issues that are far too complex for such an approach. In the next section I’ll be explaining what I think this pattern consists of and then how it is applied and how it constrains the Liberal Mind in disastrous ways.

Go to Part 3

Unlocking the Liberal Mind - Part 1 - Perception

Go to: Introduction

We all are engaged in a continuous process of evaluation of our social world, a world which includes both our political opponents, people from different cultural backgrounds to those closest to us in upbringing and outlook. To make evaluations of these people, their similarities to us, their beliefs, and their intentions we evaluate information that we get from outside in terms of criteria applied according to what is likely to be true for others. We might see Republicans as selfish and mean-spirited for example. This will make it more difficult to accept as a fact that Republicans give more to charity than Democrats (which is actually the case).

I want to begin an exploration of the factors which influence these processes by looking at some of the complexities of visual perception. Visual perception is the channel through which huge amounts of information regarding the social world enters our minds. The processes operating at this level are therefore important for understanding how accurate the information is and what factors are at work to make it less accurate.

Let’s start by looking at the constructed nature of visual perception of objects. Contrary to what common sense tells us about what we see, the world of objects is a mental construction from the information available to our visual cortex. I’m not suggesting that reality is completely made up. What psychological research tells us (from over 100 years of investigation) is that our brains build a representation of the physical world by using various cues. For example, take depth perception, our 3 dimensional image of the world around us; the information available to our brain is an inverted 2 dimensional image on each retina. Our brains use cues like superimposition (where an object near to us obscures an object further away) to infer that one object is closer than another. Take another cue: objects further away look smaller even though we know they don’t change size. This helps our brains to assess the relative distance of similar objects. Notice the word “infer”. Our brains do this automatically and generally arrive at the correct conclusions. There are instances where the depth cues can fool us, such as the Ames room.

In the Ames room one person looks huge while another person looks tiny. This is because the brain has been fooled into using depth cues to arrive at the wrong conclusion. Even though we know it is unlikely to be true the depth cues are too powerful and automatic to be overruled. The depth cues of linear perspective are so strong we can't prevent them from creating this illusion even though the relative sizes of the people in the room are completely improbable.

What is the brain doing?  The eminent British psychologist Richard Gregory suggests that the brain is engaged in a process of hypothesis testing, looking for the best fit for the available information and using the "rules of thumb" that our brains have developed over millions of years. This hypothesis testing activity can be seen when looking at the Necker Cube:

The brain looks at the cube one way and then finds another way which is equally plausible (the nearest face can be bottom left or top right). Our brain switches back and forth trying one “hypothesis” then the other. The key point to take from this is that the brain, even at this basic level of perceiving simple figures, is interpreting the available information. There is no fact in the naïve sense. The only "fact" in this instance is a set of black lines on a white background. Our brains build this into a cube.

Another example of our inability to overrule the interpretive nature of perception is the Muller-Lyer illusion.

In the Muller-Lyer illusion one of the horizontal lines looks longer than the other.  Measure the two lines and you’ll find that they’re exactly the same length. So now you know, consciously and rationally, that they’re the same length but they still look different. But, can you make them look the same length? This is a good example of a lower cognitive level (perception) being more powerful than a higher cognitive level (reasoning and knowledge).

There is another important facet of perception at this level and that is selection. The amount of available information is huge so the brain filters out what appears to be less relevant. The area around the focal point, for example a face we recognize in a crowd, is given more detail, while the faces around it are given much less. We can choose to attend to particular areas of the visual field but we can’t give the same amount of attention to all of them at once.

These processes start to get even more interesting when look at the issue of perceptual set. Perceptual set refers to a whole range of factors which lead to systematic filtering and biased interpretation of the visual information (though it can also apply to other senses like hearing). One important factor in perceptual set is expectation. We interpret what we see in terms of what we expect to see. A simple piece of research shows this in action. One group of people is shown a list of numbers and a second group is shown a list of letters. In each case the letters or numbers are shown briefly for a fraction of a second, one after the other. At the end of the sequence in each case an ambiguous figure which can be either 13 or the letter B is shown. You can test this yourself by scanning left to right, then top to bottom.

The group that has been shown the list of numbers identifies the middle figure as 13 whereas the group that has been shown the list of letters identifies it as B. In each case what has gone before has preset the likely interpretation of the figure. There are many other factors that have been experimentally demonstrated to show an effect similar to this: motivation, context, and mood, for example.

Affective priming is another important factor in perception. The founder of experimental psychology, Wilhelm Wundt, proposed the concept of "affective primacy". Affect refers to small flashes of positive or negative feeling that prepare us to approach or avoid something; it instantly primes us towards acceptance or rejection. Everything and everyone we encounter will trigger a small flash of affect. Try scanning through the headlines of a newspaper and take note of the flashes of emotion they set off. Wundt argued that affective reactions are so tightly integrated with perception that we find ourselves liking or disliking something the instant we notice it. (I'm basing a lot of this on Jonathan Haidt's book: The Righteous Mind where you can enjoy a much more thorough discussion of this topic.)

Research carried out by Robert Zajonc between the 1960s and 1980s showed that feeling of this kind occurs much faster than thinking and is much more powerful. Thinking is an evolutionarily newer ability which is rooted in language. Feeling carries far more motivational force and is much more closely integrated with behaviour.

Zajonc concluded that thinking could work independently of feeling in theory, but in practice affective reactions are so fast and compelling that they act to steer our thoughts and prime our perceptions.

Jonathan Haidt goes on to cite very interesting research which looks at alterations to peoples' reaction times when presented with faces from different racial groups. Depending on the nature of the task, a person's pre-judgements, which include affective flashes, can be shown to slow down or speed up response times. You can try this for yourself at ProjectImplicit.org

As Jonathan Haidt says, "The bottom line is that human minds, like animal minds, are constantly reacting intuitively to everything they perceive, and basing their responses on those reactions. Within the first second of seeing, hearing, or meeting another person, the elephant [Haidt's metaphor for the animal brain] has already begun to lean toward or away, and that lean influences what you think and do next. Intuitions come first." [my emphasis]

We can also add that the affective response will configure your perceptual systems to "see" in accordance with those affects. This feeling-toned thinking is part of the human condition. We are not computers. There is always an emotional and intuitive substrate to our thinking; it guides us, deceives us, compels us. We are held in the orbit of the lower self to a greater or lesser degree.

Just how compelling are these effects? There is a massive amount of research showing that we judge attractive people to be smarter and more virtuous (it's known as the halo effect), and we are more likely to give a pretty face the benefit of any doubt. Juries are more likely to acquit attractive defendants, and when beautiful people are convicted, judges give them lighter sentences, on average.

When these affective flashes contain feelings of approval or condemnation, we are experiencing moral emotions. These are particularly relevant for understanding both our own minds and the particular dynamics of the Liberal Mind.

I'll be returning to these findings and making use of them when I focus more directly on the Liberal Mind. Obviously, all that I have said so far can be applied to any of us but they can be used to help us understand the Liberal Mind too.

Go to: Part 2 - Patterns and Intentions

Unlocking the Liberal Mind – Introduction

I’ve undertaken a more long term project looking at some of the dynamics of the Liberal Mind. As I have a full-time job as well as other responsibilities I’m not in a position to write the whole thing at once. I therefore propose to publish a section at a time. This is the introduction where I will set out my aims, give an overview of the territory I’m venturing into, and counsel my readers to prepare for the long haul.

Over the last 10 years I have educated myself about the nature of Islam and have become distinctly alarmed both by its incursions into the West and the increasing evidence of radicalisation both at home and abroad. That in itself is bad enough but what has exasperated me almost as much is the continued blindness of so many people in the non-Muslim world. They continue to make assumptions about Islam that bear no relation to reality; they continue to defend a political position which takes absolutely no account of Islamic doctrines or of the many instances of behaviour inspired by those doctrines. This attitude which encompasses people on the political left, the political right, and the political centre is what I mean by the Liberal Mind. It’s liberalism in a broad sense: the habits of mind which originated with John Locke and the British empiricists, encompassing as they do both a theory of society and an approach to knowledge; habits of mind that were built upon by utilitarianism (seek the greatest happiness of the greatest number) and the progessive movements of the 19th century; Thomas Paine and the rights of man; the Founding Fathers of the American Constitution; culminating in such achievements as the abolition of slavery, the emancipation of women, the fairer treatment of minorities, all underpinned by a belief that societies could progress by better education for all, tolerance of diverse viewpoints, respect for empirical evidence rather than clerical or academic authority, and so on.

Liberalism in this sense constitutes what Thomas Kuhn called a paradigm. It’s an all-encompassing set of ideas as to what is possible, what is knowable, and the best means of achieving progress in human affairs; in short, it provides the context in which all things, including human life, are to be understood. This mode of thought and living has hitherto been adamantly opposed to all forms of tyranny, oppression, inequality, ecclesiastical dogma, and social forces that can be broadly described as reactionary (that is, wanting to turn back the tide of liberal progress). And yet, today these liberal forces are unable to bring themselves to oppose the most reactionary, tyrannical, oppressive, non-egalitarian, and clerically dogmatic force on earth today: Islam. Why is this? That is the question that I hope to shed light on.

I have drawn primarily on well-tested insights from psychology using such areas of research as: attitude formation and prejudice, cognitive processes such as memory and perception, moral psychology, cultural and evolutionary psychology, and studies of social influence. I use these to explore why and how the Liberal Mind has become “locked”; why it has become incapable of looking facts in the face and adjusting its attitude and behaviour to address a considerable threat to the very values it claims to espouse. Why is it that when you tell a liberal that you are concerned by the spread of Islam that they are more likely to see you as the problem rather than Islam? Why is it that a liberal will avoid finding out about Islam, except from sources approved by such bastions of liberal thinking as The Guardian?

Be prepared for a long haul. I have to lay down a lot of groundwork in psychology before I can apply the insights of psychology to the question at hand. In the next section I'll look at some aspects of the psychology of perception for this is important for our understanding of how we see the world - both in terms of our physical environment and the social environment. By the social environment I mean the whole global social world which is not your individual self.

Go to: Part 1 - Perception
 

So what's wrong with Olympic Ceremony message?

What is it that disturbs me about the Olympic ceremony? What is wrong with celebrating the Industrial Revolution and the NHS? I can add to that list but what bugs me most is that the multi-culti utopia that they tried to portray in the ceremony is composed of blind fools who refuse to look facts in the face: the facts of economic catastrophe hanging over them; the facts of excessive immigration undermining society; the facts of Islam with an agenda to subjugate and destroy all the "progress" that they are celebrating.

Why Muhammad Ali to open the games? Easy. He's the biggest loudmouth in the history of sport, he's black, he is or was a muslim and he's called Muhammad. He ticks a lot of boxes.