More general: fairness and caring are pretty universal, but purity, loyalty and authority are not only culture-specific, also political tribe-specific, and there are huge mistake potentials here, what is authority for one is a proper expert for another, what is purity for one is understandable revulsion over an immoral act for the other, what one sees as disloyalty can be loyalty to a non-standard group and so on. In fact, my prior would be that loyaly, authority and purity will not predict major political tribes at all when the questions are truly properly set. The lack of them will predict a small number of really smart people. Then there is a larger bunch of people who imitate that small number, follow them as authority, loyal to their causes and feel revulsion when their ideas are dragged in the mud, but still use the non-authoritarian, non-loyalist, non-purist language of their leaders. (This tribe would be called “liberal” in the American terminology. In many Easter European cultures too, in Western Europe just called “normal”.) The vast majority of that tribe majority will have loyalist, authoritarian, and purist instincts, just not towards the common targets, and wrapped into a language that denies it. Loyalty to the group that identifies as disloyal individualists. Using Dawkins quotes as authoritarian discussion-stoppers, yet many of those quotes will contain funny, irreverent, anti-authoritarian bits. Conforming to non-conformism. Rebellion as a mass fashion item. These are not new ideas.
The fairness foundation isn’t universal. I know people who test low for it, but that may just be a testing artifact. “Whether or not some people were treated differently than others”—people are different, so of course there will be circumstances where it’s right to treat them differently. There are some cultures where it’s probably legitimately absent.
purity, loyalty and authority are not only culture-specific, also political tribe-specific, and there are huge mistake potentials here, what is authority for one is a proper expert for another, what is purity for one is understandable revulsion over an immoral act for the other, what one sees as disloyalty can be loyalty to a non-standard group and so on.
Note that you just made an argument for these being terrible bases for public and social policy in a diverse society.
Yes. And you can go two ways from there. Either you can try to eliminate them, but then you meet the issue that for most folks it is incredibly difficult to make a difference between policy and values as both are approached from an “I cheer for X” angle. If succesful, you end up with a society that does not have a culture. From this viewpoint I feel for the conservative case. It is very, very weird to try to build a society without culture, it is as if it was not meant for human brains. And it would be very good if people could see a clear difference between policy and culture but again it is very, very hard, it goes against many instincts.
I am basically a product of that. My parents were always the kinds of secular Euroliberals who don’t really believe in many values, and for this reason I alway found it hard to find goals in life: there was nothing they were passionate or judgemental about, so I find it to be passionate about anything. From this kind of upbringing it is just hard to think anything matters as everything was taught as a mere preference, hobby, interest...
The opposite solution is to try to break up into an archipelago, where sub-societies, sub-cultures are forming their own rules. This sounds a bit sci-fi but look at it this way. The Roman Empire was largely monolithical. The Dark Ages afterwards an archipelago. Charlemagne’s empire monolithical, then the German-Italian city-states and small kingdoms again an archipelago. It sounds a bit like it ebbs and flows.
Both the Roman and especially Charlemagne’s empires were archipelagos compared to today’s states. Both contained many sub-states that where mostly left to govern themselves as long as they acknowledged imperial authority and paid taxes.
More general: fairness and caring are pretty universal, but purity, loyalty and authority are not only culture-specific, also political tribe-specific, and there are huge mistake potentials here, what is authority for one is a proper expert for another, what is purity for one is understandable revulsion over an immoral act for the other, what one sees as disloyalty can be loyalty to a non-standard group and so on. In fact, my prior would be that loyaly, authority and purity will not predict major political tribes at all when the questions are truly properly set. The lack of them will predict a small number of really smart people. Then there is a larger bunch of people who imitate that small number, follow them as authority, loyal to their causes and feel revulsion when their ideas are dragged in the mud, but still use the non-authoritarian, non-loyalist, non-purist language of their leaders. (This tribe would be called “liberal” in the American terminology. In many Easter European cultures too, in Western Europe just called “normal”.) The vast majority of that tribe majority will have loyalist, authoritarian, and purist instincts, just not towards the common targets, and wrapped into a language that denies it. Loyalty to the group that identifies as disloyal individualists. Using Dawkins quotes as authoritarian discussion-stoppers, yet many of those quotes will contain funny, irreverent, anti-authoritarian bits. Conforming to non-conformism. Rebellion as a mass fashion item. These are not new ideas.
The fairness foundation isn’t universal. I know people who test low for it, but that may just be a testing artifact. “Whether or not some people were treated differently than others”—people are different, so of course there will be circumstances where it’s right to treat them differently. There are some cultures where it’s probably legitimately absent.
Also, I don’t think liberal language hides the purity intuition.
From my, admittedly limited, knowledge of non-Western cultures, I get the impression that the fairness norm is very much a Western Civilization thing.
My bad. I wanted to say universalist.
Note that you just made an argument for these being terrible bases for public and social policy in a diverse society.
Yes. And you can go two ways from there. Either you can try to eliminate them, but then you meet the issue that for most folks it is incredibly difficult to make a difference between policy and values as both are approached from an “I cheer for X” angle. If succesful, you end up with a society that does not have a culture. From this viewpoint I feel for the conservative case. It is very, very weird to try to build a society without culture, it is as if it was not meant for human brains. And it would be very good if people could see a clear difference between policy and culture but again it is very, very hard, it goes against many instincts.
I am basically a product of that. My parents were always the kinds of secular Euroliberals who don’t really believe in many values, and for this reason I alway found it hard to find goals in life: there was nothing they were passionate or judgemental about, so I find it to be passionate about anything. From this kind of upbringing it is just hard to think anything matters as everything was taught as a mere preference, hobby, interest...
The opposite solution is to try to break up into an archipelago, where sub-societies, sub-cultures are forming their own rules. This sounds a bit sci-fi but look at it this way. The Roman Empire was largely monolithical. The Dark Ages afterwards an archipelago. Charlemagne’s empire monolithical, then the German-Italian city-states and small kingdoms again an archipelago. It sounds a bit like it ebbs and flows.
Both the Roman and especially Charlemagne’s empires were archipelagos compared to today’s states. Both contained many sub-states that where mostly left to govern themselves as long as they acknowledged imperial authority and paid taxes.