I find that wherever I look in the media at this time, there are so many people moaning and complaining about the state of the world. Yet, a large number resist doing anything to create change that would begin the transformation from an oligarchy to a world that works better for people overall – this is disempowering ‘Victim consciousness.’ I have covered the idea of neo-tribalism much earlier in this blog (e.g. Relocalization and Community; The Hierarchy 2 – Waiting for Superman, and; Reframing and Visualizing a New Society 1). I am asked by so many people for advice on what to do to transform this world, but that negates the power of their individuality! We are all creative people and when we consciously and intentionally work together it is inspiring what we can achieve. I may be able to point the way, but it is WE not me who will make it happen. That is what reconditioning ourselves is all about – acknowledging that we have been conditioned and that we can change it by simply choosing what we would like to see instead of just putting up with what is being foisted upon us by a controlling hierarchy who are very good at making us fearful in making those choices. They do this by creating distrust and separation, and fearful about not having enough (lack of abundance). This is what drives us to hoard and deny others.
For this post I would like to address issues of morality that drive our behaviors (Definition: A particular system of values and principles of conduct, especially one held by a specified person or society) and how that creates separation. Our morals create division (The extent to which individuals and society perceive an action as right or wrong) and much of what I discuss today comes from the work of morality Psychologist, Johnathan Haidt. In his book The Righteous Mind, Haidt covers why we seem to be polarized with what seem to be extreme positions on how we need to live. In reality this polarization is not real, but what is real are the choices we make based on our moral frameworks – which are related to our acquired worldviews from our social conditioning that I have outlined in other posts in this blog.
So, how do we get on with each other in more productive and creative ways without alienating each other. First recognize that evolutionarily we are conditioned to promote high levels of cooperation and altruism for the benefit of the ‘group’ yet marginalize ‘free-riders.’ We also evolved to share and divide labor and resources such that each member of the group did what they were best at that helped the group. As we socially evolved into ever larger hierarchical societies we specialized more and more and our shared norms became the moral matrices of today that defined ‘correct behavior.’ Since the social system started getting even larger the ‘human-hive-switch’ began polarization where the body’s production of oxytocin and mirror neurons created more bonding with people whose moral matrices were similar. Which led to support or rejection of Ideologies based on these moral frameworks (Ideology: A set of beliefs about the proper order of society and how it can be achieved). Now, Haidt emphasizes that there are six main morals that we use: About Care (sensitivity & seeing need in others), Fairness (cooperating without cheating or exploitation), Liberty (maintaining individuality – resentment of attempted domination), Authority (sensitivity to rank or status within a social hierarchy), Purity (adherence to social absolutes, e.g. not eating pork (Judaism), or not interacting with the wrong social class), and Sacredness (investing in symbolic objects for social coherence – e.g. money, or religious iconography). Key life experiences (i.e. conditioning) determine which of the six morals we hold that are most important and these are also linked to our conditioning of how threats and fear were introduced in to our conditioning. Curiously, our brains neurotransmitter functioning of glutamate and serotonin are linked to fear and the serotonin production is linked to openness to experience, which predisposes one to flight and flight or willingness to explore things new that is linked to we preferentially select. I will avoid getting more academically dense and keep it simple.
The two polarized ends of the social continuum (which in most cases is now the political continuum) put different morals as most important. Both ends recognize and can agree on all six morals, but one end puts more emphasis on Care, Fairness and Liberty (i.e. the most sacred value is care for victims of oppression to sustain a moral community), while the other places emphasis on Authority, Purity, and Sacredness (i.e. the most sacred value is to preserve the institutions and traditions that sustain the moral community). It’s not that each end of the continuum doesn’t value the others values, but the former sees caring for the oppressed by finding new ways to help the oppressed, while the latter sees the sanctity of institution as the way to slowly make change, if indeed any change is recognized as necessary if money is seen as the sole measure of success. While most people are more likely somewhere along the moral continuum, it seems today that the polarized ends of the continuum dominate our civic and political discourse. (Most people fall under what we normally refer to as the bell-curve – 68% of people fall within one standard deviation of the middle of the bell-curve and 95% within two Standard deviations). People are being sucked in to moral lifestyle enclaves that are polarized, narrow and specific to the extremes, negating their support for other moral frameworks. For instance, you may strongly support the individual freedom moral, but have a stronger lean to choose the authoritarian group support moral. The media make it an either-or choice instead of one where compromise is possible.
So, to end this post with some advice, if you find yourself becoming polarized because of the mass media driven propaganda to both ends of the continuum, look at the ‘others’ from a moral framework perspective. Very few people are amoral (like the Cabal), most just place emphasis on other morals than you might. Try and listen calmly (really listen and not hear what you think is being said) to others perspectives recognizing that this is the life narrative of the other you are hearing. Things are rarely Manichean (a belief in absolute dualism with everything having two sides that are opposed, e.g. good-bad, right-wrong, etc., with absolutist black and white interpretations. In my worldviews course I always told my students that I needed them to stop seeing everything as black and white and to start seeing the world through a set of different shades of Grey.
As Jonathan Haidt emphasizes; Our minds evolved for righteous ‘groupishness’ to find connectedness within our preferred moral frameworks based on personal life narratives. When we decide to talk openly to others with different moral framework narratives, we can establish commonality and begin to trust the others more. We start by expressing praise of what is shared and focus on what is of common interest, and NOT on what separates us. We all share Economic, Social, Cultural, and Moral capital and dependent on how much chaos versus perceived order we will accept (e.g. fear versus openness) will drive us to support policies that benefit the many or just the few – the whole or just ‘our in-group.’ It seems we are born righteous, but what constitutes right comes from our worldview, aka our conditioning. While we might think that logic and reason are primary, it is the mostly unconscious moral emotions that dominate our lives. Understand that and you can start to understand how to communicate for change that works. What the coronavirus has been good for is what has been termed ‘The Great Pause.’ For the first time in decades we have a chance to stop and reflect on what is needed and valuable in our lives from what is superfluous. When the current lockdown is over, I hope you notice how you will be bombarded with corporate and political messaging to ‘get back to normal with hyper-consumerism’ (bearing in mind how many people globally will suddenly find themselves on the outside of the consumer dream). What I hope you will do is stop and recognize that the lockdown helped you identify the important things in your life, which I hope will spur you to make decisions about connectedness and what you will do as we wait for next time.
Let us not despair but act. Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer but the [BETTER] answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past – let us accept our own responsibility for the future. John F. Kennedy.
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