Demystifying politics

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Almost no one understands this basic formula:

* Left = individualism
* Right = order

Individualism to a philosopher is an "ism," meaning that the root is prized above all else. An individualist wants what he wants and civilization, tradition, culture, nature, and evil reality be damned.

Conservatives recognize that order comes first because everyone benefits from civilization and humans do not long survive without it.

Jonathan Haidt identifies six moral categories that animate people. Liberals like the first three, based around individualism, but conservatives add another three which associate with fairness to social order and realism.

Once you understand this split, it becomes easy to grasp politics. Leftists argue for whatever advances individuality at the expense of civilization; conservatives argue for whatever makes an order that benefits all at the expense of reckless egotism, which seems to be the foundation of humanity.

One of his key insights is that we are much less rational than we think we are. We tend to make moral judgments intuitively and immediately. If asked, we can produce reasons for our judgments, and might even believe that's why we made our decisions — but, in reality, these are just rationalizations for our intuitive hunches.

Republicans and Democrats do have intuitions in common: the intuitions that fairness is a moral good, and that doing harm is a moral wrong. But, by asking thousands of people to take surveys and ponder moral dilemmas, Haidt — who identifies as a liberal — has found that conservatives live in a broader moral universe. To a much greater degree than liberals, they draw on moral intuitions about loyalty, tradition, authority, and sanctity. That difference explains why Republicans are more concerned than Democrats about patriotism and family values. And, in their moral breadth, Haidt has found, Republicans are more typical of people around the world; the more tightly focused morality of liberals is rarer.

"Human nature," Haidt writes, "is not just intrinsically moral, it's also intrinsically moralistic, critical, and judgmental." A more practical and realistic political culture, Haidt believes, would accept and accommodate our natural moral differences, rather than seeking to eradicate them. Ultimately, Haidt argues, those differences should be objects of appreciation and curiosity, not anger.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2012/03/11/why-republicans-and-democrats-will-never-agree/zlpFNNaWdjI6gS3GdDr71J/story.html (https://archive.ph/HE3MT)

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Alaisdair MacIntyre had his own definition of the word "emotivism", which gets, I think, to the nub of the problem. For MacIntryre, emotivism is an attitude whereby all moral judgements are expressions of feeling: what feels right is therefore right, for you. This relates to what Charles Taylor calls "expressive individualism" – the mindset that it is simply good, in and of itself, for an individual to express their innermost selves.

https://thecritic.co.uk/in-defence-of-the-stiff-upper-lip/