I’ve closely followed the writings of Jonathan Haidt. His conclusions are closely tied to scientific findings. He crosscuts the current American political divide. He is hopeful that we will find our way as a country.
In this recent article at The Atlantic, “Jonathan Haidt Is Trying to Heal America’s Divisions: The psychologist shares his thoughts on the pandemic, polarization, and politics,” Haidt explains what has gone wrong with many of those who consider themselves to be liberals and conservatives. What they have in common is authoritarianism populism:
Haidt laments the state of contemporary American politics, believing that on both the right and the left we’re seeing populism that responds to real problems but in illiberal ways. “On the right,” he said, “the populism there is really explicitly xenophobic and often explicitly racist … I think we see strands of populism on the right that are authoritarian, that I would say are incompatible with a tolerant, pluralistic, open democracy.”
Looking in the other direction, Haidt says, “we’ve messed up the word liberal and we’ve used it to just mean ‘left.’ I’ve always thought of myself as a liberal, in the John Stuart Mill sense. I believe in a society that is structured to give individuals the maximum freedom to construct lives that they want to live. We use a minimum of constraint, we value openness, creativity, individual rights. We try hard to maximize religious liberty, economic liberty, liberty of conscience, freedom of speech. That’s my ideal of a society, and that’s why I call myself a liberal.”
But on the left, Haidt said, “there’s been a movement that has made something else sacred, that has not focused on liberty, but that is focused instead on oppression and victimhood and victimization. And once you get into a framework of seeing your fellow citizens as good versus evil based on their group, it’s kind of a mirror image of the authoritarian populism on the right. Any movement that is assigning moral value to people just by looking at them is a movement I want no part of.”
Haidt went on: “I think this is a very important point for us to all keep in mind, that left and right in this country are not necessarily liberal and conservative anymore. On the left, it’s really clear that there are elements that many of us consider to be very illiberal; and on the right, it’s hard to see how Trump and many of his supporters are conservatives who have any link whatsoever to Edmund Burke. It’s very hard for me to see that. You know, I would love to live in a country with true liberals and true conservatives that engage with each other. That, I think, is a very productive disagreement. But it’s the illiberalism on each side that is making our politics so ugly, I believe.”
The key quote from the passage above: “Any movement that is assigning moral value to people just by looking at them is a movement I want no part of.” This is a modern version of MLK’s classic advice that is scorned by many modern day “liberals”: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. Why has this beautiful sentiment become so difficult today?
Haidt hopes we get back to a society where traditional liberals and conservatives collaborate. We need each other:
[T]he only known way to overcome confirmation bias is with other people. There’s been research trying to train people to question their assumptions. Nobody’s found a way. It’s very hard to train people to do that. The only way to do it is to have someone who doesn’t share your confirmation bias engage with you.
There is a lot of food for thought in this article. It has seemed to me that I will never win an argument that I start with a stranger. Logic and facts simply don’t work in the absence of a relationship. We need to show the other that we are willing to take down our own armor too, and then we both enter a place where we might both be changed by the conversation. Doing this causes the process to become one of learning rather than argument. This is a critically important lesson for those of us trying to make sense of the culture wars that undergird our political dysfunction. The lesson is that we need to lead with a relationship first:
I mentioned to Haidt that in my experience it makes a huge difference if you can establish a respectful and even warm relationship with people with whom you disagree, which allows both individuals to critique the other without feeling that either of you is under attack. When we feel we’re under attack, the armor goes up; the willingness to listen to the perspective of others goes down. If you don’t have a personal relationship with someone, I said, and you try to engage in rigorous debate, particularly in this hyper-polarized political moment, it’s often like shooting BBs against a brick wall. The arguments just bounce off.
Haidt agreed. “The relationship matters more than the message. That’s why a university, especially one that includes a diversity of viewpoints, can be so powerful—because you cultivate these relationships within a community that says our job is not to win, our job is to learn. That’s why the internet and especially Twitter are the worst places for this, because you don’t have relationships and people are trying to show how smart they are. They’re trying to show how devoted they are to their team. So the kind of political engagement, the kind of public square that we get from social media, is generally terrible. And again, that’s why I love universities so much and that’s what it was for me. The times I remember most are when my beliefs were shredded and I was shown new ways to think or given new ways to think.
“Does anyone really think we are going to win people over by insulting them and spouting hatred toward them?” he added. “Or are we going to win them over by listening, one on one, as individuals, human to human, American to American? . . . You can’t be hating and learning at the same time.”
Haidt has taken deep dives on many issues in his writings. This article also contains a succinct statement on what Haidt means when her refers to himself as an atheist:
I think of myself as an atheist, just meaning I don’t believe that there is a God, but it’s not a part of my identity that I think that,” Haidt said. “Here’s what I would say to go along with that: I’m an atheist who believes that religion is part of human nature, is generally a good part of human nature, and an essential part of who we are and how we became a civilized species.
This view dovetails well with my own “mild” version of atheism, which I’ve set forth in detail in a five-part article at this website: Mending Fences. We need to work with each other as human beings and war of any kind, including cultural war, is destructive of the fabric of society. As I point out in my articles, there are many things that I believe that I cannot prove. This has served me well in my conversations with believers, even though I do not believe in any sort of sentient deity.
Different outlooks on religion need not be a threat to anyone except those who are intent on stamping their own beliefs on everyone around them. In close, I’ll offer Exhibit A to my claim that believers and atheists can get along, just like traditional liberals and conservatives. It’s not often that you get to hear from an atheist as part of the sermon at a Christian church.
