Entry
Why Liberalism? (Part One)
January 27th, 2009
About a year ago I "came out of the closet" and admitted I was a liberal on our website. I'm intentionally invoking the closet imagery here because there are many members of the larger LDS culture who feel like it's an open contradiction to be both a practicing, faithful Mormon and a Democrat. I personally don't feel that Mormonism and liberalism are as mutually exclusive as some of my fellow church members may believe. As such, I wanted to write a series of blog entries exploring how I've come to identify myself as leftist-leaning (and how I nevertheless consider myself a Mormon in good moral standing within the church). This blog entry is going to serve as the introduction to this series. In this entry, I'm going to problematize my self-proclaimed identity as a liberal. Am I really an all-out liberal in the way that I sometimes claim to be?
A while ago, Chris and I stumbled upon a really great TED talk given by Jonathan Haidt. For those of you who are unfamiliar with TED, their website states: "TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes)."
Anyhow, Jonathan Haidt is a psychologist who is interested in studying what guides our moral decisions. In his 18 minute TED talk, he decided to talk about the moral differences between liberals and conservatives. (Do be warned that he makes some allusions to profanity, although he does not really use profanity himself.)
If you have 18 minutes, I highly recommend watching it. But if you don't, then the basic gist of it is that there are five foundations of moral behavior that are found in every functioning society:
- Harm vs. Care - This is the idea that we should not do harm to others but rather nurture and care for the members of our society. We value bonding with other members of our community.
- Fairness and Reciprocity - Everyone should get their fair share in society and be treated equally.
- Ingroup Loyalty - We form cooperative social groups in order to achieve common goals, to separate ourselves from groups that don't share our values or identity. This involves a certain degree of conformity and sacrifice for the sake of the group.
- Authority and Respect - We should have respect and reverence for our leaders and for those who are in positions of authority over us. We should be obedient to them.
- Purity and Sanctity - We should control our bodies and what we do with them.
According to Haidt, liberals and conservatives have fundamental disagreements about these five moral foundations. Conservatives rate all five of these foundations as important while liberals reject the last three (let's celebrate diversity, question authority, and please keep your laws off of my body). Also, liberals tend to value the foundations of harm vs. care and fairness a little bit more highly than conservatives do.
During the lecture, Haidt gives a link to his website yourmorals.org where you can take a series of quizzes to determine where you fall on this moral spectrum. When I took his quiz, I found that I sided with the liberals on every issue except Purity and Sanctity. (Because I still think that it's important for one to control one's own body.) I think that's probably what makes me merely "leftist-leaning" rather than a pure liberal.
This was a bit of a revelation to me because I often think of myself as an all-out liberal. What is probably more likely is that since I exist in a culture where I am surrounded by many strong conservatives, my liberal inclinations may seem much more extreme than they really are. I think I may sometimes overstate my liberal-ness because I feel a deep need for moderation and centricity in my community. The needle seems to pull so far to the right, I feel that I must personally balance it out by standing up for liberal values. At the end of the day, I think I want to achieve balance above all things. I like an idea that I have heard credited to Buddhism: "If you pull the strings on the guitar too tight, they will break. If you make them too loose, they won't play. You've got to tune the guitar to where the music is."
But while I may possibly be centrist (and perhaps even "rightist") on social issues and on questions of personal morality, I find that I definitely empathize with liberals 9 times out of 10 on most political issues. In future entries in this series, I hope to elaborate on these issues and my personal stance on them a little bit more.
Comments
Ammon said on Jan 27th:
I just took the quiz and found that I am pretty high in the purity and loyalty, perhaps because of my military background. I wish that was one of the demographics he was studying.
Alyssa said on Jan 27th:
I think we Mormons all pretty much agree on the Purity stuff. :) That's interesting about the loyalty thing...
Liz said on Feb 1st:
I'm so glad you are writing about this and I am excited to hear what you have to say. I agonized about a blog post I made in support of Hillary Clinton during the primaries. I need to do another in support of Barak Obama. I think there may be more liberal mormons than we think. Its nice to hear from them from time to time. I'll be listening.
Add Comment