In most of my recent blog posts, I have discussed to dichotomy that Judith Butler introduces in her book Frames of War. This dichotomy or concept is labeled as “us vs. them”, and sets out to try to simply explain the divide in empathy between American imperialistic culture and the “other”. This concept has really left me reflecting on society, propaganda, and the role of the government the past couple weeks. It’s difficult for me to understand that people can be so “anti” one type of person that they are able to see another human’s life as “ungrievable”. This left me with a hunger for understanding morals and human nature, which was partially satisfied when my friend introduced me to the book The Righteous Mind, by Jonathon Haidt. Jonathon Haidt is a psychologist who studied morals—the intuition around personal morals and the reasoning that follow the moral intuition. He did many studied around the globe examining the moral tendencies of different cultures trying to understand, “Why good people are divided by politics and religion”.
To get the reader to understand the mind and moral processing he uses a simple metaphor:
“The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider’s job is to serve the elephant. The rider is our conscious reasoning—the stream of words and images of which we are fully aware. The elephant is the other 99 percent of mental processes—the ones that occur outside of awareness but that actually govern most of our behavior.”
-Jonathon Haidt
This metaphor is proven to be true throughout the book as he shows study after study of his where intuition from the elephant come first, and the rider just acts as a Public Relations for the elephant, to justify to others and yourself why you feel the way you do. For example he asks many people from different demographics the same morally confusing questions that contain shocking situations. Haidt uses the data from the answers/ responses from his surveys to show the how strong our morals are, or in other words “our elephant”. Haidt discusses in great deal the differences in morals between individualistic and sociocentric cultures and even the differences in morality between classes in individualistic societies.
There is an abundance of new knowledge that comes from this book, but I will only discuss the extremely pertinent points. Haidt puts to rest a lot of the questions I had about the humanity of those who cannot empathize with others, as according to him, “Empathy is an antidote to righteousness, although it’s very difficult to empathize across a moral divide” (152). He observes that there are things such as “moral matrices” that bind cultures together, and though these matrices are beneficial to the communal well being of a society, they can blind us to understanding that there are other moral matrices out there as well. For example growing up in a Western individualistic society that is very focused on autonomy can cause us to “detect oppression and inequality even where the apparent victims see nothing wrong”. This explains a bit about America always trying to help those that are different from them when maybe they don’t really need any help.
Haidt’s expertly proven theories about morals and intuitions have opened my mind to the reasoning around disagreements, war, and individual/societal differences. Though Haidt adds to Judith Butler’s need for “shared vulnerability” and gives light the troublesome “us vs. them” dichotomy, it does not excuse the actions of those who do not strive to empathize with those of another moral code. After reading these works by two very intriguing scholars, I have begun to wonder what process we go through to develop our morals and how strong of an influence they have on the choices they make in our daily life.
Works Cited
Haidt, Jonathan. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. New York: Pantheon, 2012. Print.