Moral Politics in the Context of History of Marriage
This was first posted on www.jregrassroots.org on July 10, 2004. I
will expand on this later, bringing even more biology into it. For
more info on the topic, visit www.rockridgeinstitute.com.
Book Review:
George Lakoff Moral Politics and
E.J.Graff What Is Marriage For?
Most biologists understand the value of integration and cross-species
comparison in explaining phenomena of life. In 1963., Dutch ethologist
and Nobel laureate Nicholas Tinbergen published one of the most
influential papers in the history of science entitled "On the Aims and
Methods of Ethology". In this paper, Niko Tinbergen posits that a full
explanation of a biological (biochemical, physiological or behavioral)
phenomenon must include four distinct modes of explanation: mechanism,
ontogeny, function and history. Mechanism is a description of the
phenomenon at all levels of organization, from molecules and cells
through tissues and organs to organ systems and whole organisms.
Ontogeny describes how the phenomenon develops through embryonic
development, growth, maturation and aging, including environmental
factors that may influence the process. Function explains how the
phenomenon serves the organism, i.e., makes it well adapted to its
environment. History explains how and why the trait in question
evolved from its ancestral forms.
When a biologist reads literature on other subjects, from philosophy
to political science, the almost automatic search for all four modes
of explanation does not disappear, and more often than not, one or
more of the modes is discovered to be completely missing from the
discussion. Thus, a biologist will search for multiple sources in hope
that each will cover one of the modes that can then be put together
into a complete explanation of the phenomenon.
George Lakoff's Moral Politics is, in this regard, better than most
social science writing, as it discusses two out of four modes:
mechanism and ontogeny. Using the tools of cognitive linguistics,
Lakoff attempts to explain the differences in mindset and wordlview
between conservatives and liberals. We tend to think about human
populations as distributed along a straight line from extreme liberal
on the left through moderate in the center to the extreme conservative
on the right end of the distribution. Some more sophisticated models
show a coordinate system with economic views represented on the x-axis
and social views on the y-axis. Of course, in such models, we expect a
bell-shaped distribution with majority of the population clumped
somewhere in the middle. How can we then, in the same breath, talk
about sharp polarization in the current political climate in the USA?
Lakoff elegantly solves this problem with a discontinuous system
consisting of two core models, one conservative and one liberal.
Variations of the cores are not distributed linearly, but are radial
deviations from either one or the other core models. Thus everyone is,
at one's core, either a conservative or a liberal and there is no such
thing as a moderate. Political independents are the most sophisticated
(and pragmatic) voters of all, as they are capable of cool-headedly
picking and chosing between conservatism in some areas of life and
liberalism in other areas and smoothly transtitioning from one to the
other as they please. No surprise they are "swing" voters, unaffected
by 60-second ads, and present completely alien and opaque minds to
most campaign managers.
The difference, according to Lakoff, between the conservative and
liberal mindset lies in their understanding of human nature and
behavior, which informs their childrearing philosophies, which provide
the foundation for a moral system, which in turn determines one's view
on every imaginable economic, social or political issue.
Unfortunately for conservatives, their understanding of human nature
and behavior has been thoroughly refuted by the past century of
cognitive psychology and neuroscience. Their notion that children are
born bad and only upbringing makes them good is wrong. Their notion
that discipline breeds self-discipline is erroneous. Their notion that
obedience in childhood leads to self-reliance in adulthood is wrong.
Their idea that people always act in their own interest, a folk
behaviorist notion of "stick and carrot" approach, is utterly wrong.
Actually, the opposite is right. Kids are born with potential for both
good and bad. Strict discipline leads to selfishness and aggression.
Obedience leads to reliance on external foci of authority. Finally,
people act according to what they think is right, which is often
against their interest, even when they are fully aware they are acting
against their own interest (e.g., when poor people vote Republican).
The conservative worldview, dubbed Strict Father by Lakoff, also
relies on existence of Moral Order. For instance, God has moral
authority over people, people over other animals and the rest of
nature, men over women, adults over children, straights over gays,
religious believers over non-believers, Whites over Blacks, and in the
USA, also Americans over foreigners. Some of these power relationships
are suppressed in public discourse due to forces of political
correctness, yet are simmering hidden within the minds of core
conservatives nonetheless - witness the rise and fall of Trent Lott.
On the other side is the liberal core model, called Nurturant Parent
model, that is based on the modern science-backed childrearing ideas,
those of Drs.Spock, T.Berry Brazelton and Penelope Leach. Its core
value is empathy. It is based on equality and respect, on
self-nurturance and mutual nurturance, on promotion of love and
happiness, and on importance of community for personal growth.
This is not the place to go into details - you have to read the book -
but Lakoff persuasively demonstrates how one's views of economy,
environment, healthcare, education, foreign policy, religion and
everything else logically follows from one's core ideological belief.
Unrestrained free market, expanding the military, police and the
prison system, mixing Church and State, invading foreign countries at
will and torturing its citizens, while at the same time suffocating
social programs and ruining the environment are direct logical
outgrowths of the Strict Father model of parenting. Conservative views
that social programs are enabling laziness, or that the environment is
a recource to be used by humans, are the only logical views a
conservative raised in the Strict Father model can possibly adopt. And
don't forget, beliefs received from one's parents early in life are
the most difficult to question and abandon - they are just too deeply
ingrained.
Since science refuted the basic tenets of the conservative worldview,
it is not surprising that conservatives have strong anti-scientific
and anti-intelectual sentiments. Those "liberal elites" are their
natural enemies because their research keeps demonstrating that the
core traditional model is a house of cards, an out-dated edifice
without foundation in reality.
Perhaps the key take-home message of the book is that the two
worldviews use language differently. The same word will have a very
different meaning to a conservative and to a liberal. The last chapter
describes how the use of language, through appeal to core moral
ideals, affected some very important political outcomes, e.g., Clinton
impeachment, Gore's loss to Bush, and the early days of the Bush
administration. Lakoff warns the liberals to take the cognitive
linguistic findings seriously if they want to win elections in the
future.
While conservatives spent billions of dollars over the past few
decades on think tanks to craft the neo-Orwellian language of
conservative rhetoric, easily transfomed into soundbites, campaign
slogans and TV ads, liberals feel it is dishonest to to do the similar
thing. They go with the truth and expect that truth will win by
itself. They do not understand the power of framing issues in one's
own language, and will never win over voters other than self-described
core liberals.
There is a huge number of people in America whose values are liberal
and progressive who, due to Republican misuse of language, learned to
believe that they are conservative and that the GOP serves their
interests. The Democratic party needs to demonstrate to those people
that their place is on the Left. It has to craft the language of
progressive ideology and learn to market it and sell it to the
electorate. It needs to tap into native ability of some of its
political stars - most notably Senator John Edwards, this year's best
bet to beat Bush in a landslide - to change the style and content of
the political discourse and retake the domain of morality and "family
values" that the conservatives have so blatantly taken for themselves.
The first step is to finance research in liberal think-tanks, such as
The Rockridge Institute led by Lakoff himself. While conservatives'
parroting of Frank Luntz's talking points is infuriatingly dishonest,
it is also very effective. The response of the liberals needs not be
to hire an equivalent of Luntz to write talking points, but to use the
knowledge and wisdom of people like Lakoff to counter conservative
dishonest language with a liberal honest language.
Much of the debate among liberals today centers about the choice
between campaigning to "fire up the base" versus "moving to the right
to appeal to Independents". The whole dichotomy is based on utter
misunderstanding of what is liberal base, and who the Independents
are. Adopting a language that appeals to people who are progressive
but think they are conservative does not constitute moving to the
Right, it is just a smart way of using language, perfectly exemplified
by the recent victory of Stephanie Herseth in heavily Republican South
Dakota. Or, as Arianna Huffington once said, you need to talk to the
good in the people, and they will respond. If liberal is naturally
"good", then appealing to the good in people will awaken the
progressive liberal (really American) values of equality and fairness
in many people who otherwise identify themselves as conservative. They
are the base of the Democratic party, temporarily kidnapped by the
Orwellian rhetoric of the GOP.
While "Moral Politics" is an excellent and potentially useful analysis
of the current state of mind in the USA, a biologist trained in
Tinbergian "four aims and methods" will feel unsatisfied with the
book. The function and the history are missing, and without them the
conclusions are suspect and the explanation incomplete. Where does one
go to fill in the gaps?
What Is Marriage For? by E.J.Graff may be the book filling the
"history" gap. Sure, it does not trace all of the history of all
aspects of ideology, yet the history of marriage is probably the most
important and revealing aspect of the story of evolution of the two
worldviews. Both books contain a chapter on current research on
childrearing with, not surprisingly, similar conclusions and even
citing some of the same studies. These "ontogeny" chapters are
probably the strongest tie between the Lakoff's "mechanism" book and
the Graff's "history" book.
What can an unsatisfied reader of Lakoff find in Graff's work? First,
the history of marriage, as viewed from a Lakoffian perspective,
reveals that the two main moral systems and attendant ideologies are
not restricted to the USA, nor to the present time. Second, it
provides the demonstration that, besides occasional swings back and
forth, the liberal model has been, for a few centuries now, slowly
replacing the conservative model around the World.
The history of marriage can be seen as a constant struggle between the
two ideologies, one bent on keeping the moral authority of the white
straight adult rich male, the other fighting for equality of all
people. Every change in the definition of marriage was a blow to the
conservative core model, and a victory for the liberal worldview.
Giving women right to own property, granting legal equality, allowing
contraception, or divorce, allowing inter-racial marriage and,
currently, allowing same-sex marriage, are some of the stages of
evolution of marriage, from a feudal economic arrangement designed for
the strengthenig of the clan, towards marriage as a love relationship
between two equal human beings.
At every stage, the conservatives scream with the same rhetoric,
mentioning God, Armageddon, imminent dissolution of society, emergence
of disease, and weakening of the human race as inevitable results of
the proposed changes in the definition of marriage. The last century's
definition of marrige is dubbed "traditional" or "biblical" and
changes are viewed as crimes against nature. Current model of
"traditional" marriage is only about 80 years old. The "biblical"
marriage is an easy sell only to those who do not know history: it
took 16 centuries for the Christian church to realize that the Rapture
is not going to happen tomorrow, thus celibacy may not be the best
idea, thus marriage needs to be included into the domain over which
the Church exerts its control. Until the 17th century, the Christian
church did not say a word about marriage.
Whatever the proposed change in marriage is at any time in history, it
is conflated by conservatives with sodomy, incest, polygamy,
pedophilia and, watch this, atheism! As Graff notices, by the time
they get to that kind of rhetoric, it's too late. The techonological
innovation, leading to novel economic relations, leads to changes in
social fabric. The courts are forced to deal with and to acknowledge
the social changes. Once the legal battles pave the way, legislators
are emboldened to formalize the new social order and write it into
law. This may take a couple of decades, but when that happens, and the
conservative pundits start screaming Hail and Brimstone, the process
is already gone too far. The religious institutions, being the most
conservative, take the most time to adapt to the inevitable changes in
social relations. This may take several decades for Protestant
denominations, a few centuries for Catholicism or Islam, or never for
Eastern Christian Orthodoxy or Jewish Orthodoxy. Still, with or
without the Church blessing, the society moves on, gradually
dismantling all the elements of Moral Order and replacing them with
equality for all: sexes first, races later, genders (and sexual
orientation) today.
Putting the two books together, one gets the big picture: Lakoff is
too nice to conservatives, implying at least some validity of their
belief system although it is based on empirical nonsense. Placing
Lakoffian analysis within Graffian historical context paints a much
bigger and starker picture. History of the past few centuries is a
history of a big shift in power structure. The domination of a few
white Christian straight rich males over everyone else has gradually
diminished over time. In America, a country founded on principles of
liberalism (just read the writings of the Founding Fathers, the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution) and adoption of free
market ideas, the power immediately spread over a much larger number
of white straight Christian men. The rich still held the political
power, but the vast new middle class was legally equal, had equal
opportunity for success, and many moved upwards, upsetting the
hierarchy. That is the essence of the American Dream, after all.
Over the next couple of centuries, the other groups, those identified
by Moral Order as subservient to white men, faught and won equality
under law: women first, followed by people of other nationalities and
faiths, followed by people of other skin colors. Current fight is over
the equality of gay, transgender and intersex people, a fight they are
winning if the conservatives' "Armageddon" rhetoric is any indication.
Speeding up the process by introducing a Constitutional Amendment is
the most counter-productive action the conservatives are staging right
now, and it may prove to be their doom in the November election.
The only minority group that can still be openly ridiculed without
political consequences are atheists. And there, a battle is brewing
under the surface, too. A number of non-believers' societies have
existed for a long time. But today, it is different. Encouraged by the
successes of the gay movement, as well as by the numbers from the
latest Census indicating that non-believers are as much as 30 million
strong and the fastest-growing religious category, the non-believers
are uniting under the banner of The Brights (a cute word designed to
do to atheism what the word "gay" did to homosexuality) with
explicitly political agenda to change the cultural and political
landscape in a way that will allow the non-believers to be elected for
political office. The Newdow case in the Supreme Court, concerning the
mention of God in the Pledge of Allegiance, is the first test of
strength of the new movement.
Thus, conservative movement is a creed of rich white Christian guys
who are still peeved that Medieval power-structure that had them on
top is no longer around. They long for the non-existent Golden Age in
the past, for the times of fairy tales in which all of them are
princes and all of them can get to sleep with Cinderella. They know
they are cornered and fatally wounded and are fighting ferociously for
their very existence. Through lies and Orwellian language, they have
duped millions to help them fight. They will do absolutely anything
and everything to retain power, as they demonstrated in Florida
recount in 2000. Their only hope for the future is election of George
W. Bush. If Bush gets elected, they will be in a position to finish
the job they started during his first term, that is, to dismantle
democracy and any means through which progressives and liberals can
challenge their absolute power, turning America into de facto
one-party state. Reforms of the judiciary system, starving the social
programs, rigging the voting machines, changing the rules how Congress
and Senate operate, waging endless wars and flaming fear through the
population - all those are components of the strategy for their
survival. If successful, their program will turn America into a
totalitarian society without any middle class whatsoever. Middle class
is a rare and recent phenomenon in history. A state that wants to
foster a free-market economy needs to first form and, through laws and
regulations, protect the existence of middle class. The conservatives
have a different economic model in mind, one comprised of a few rich
guys at the top and a quarter billion enslaved workers, too poor,
tired and scared to speak out, with no protection by the courts. This
is a system based on monopolies and, as Adam Smith stated a long time
ago, such a system does not help a state win in international
competition.
It is no coincidence that the GOP reacted in furious panic to the
announcement of Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee, North Carolina
Senator John Edwards. It is Edwards who, better than any other
prominent Democrat, understands what is going on, and knows how to
explain in linguistic frames exactly how the conservatives are
undermining the liberal American values and the free-market economic
system. When Edwards speaks, he reframes the discourse in a way that
Frank Luntz is unable to counter, and in a way that resonates with
American people. Even those who are utterly uninformed and
disinterested in politics "get it" with their guts and hearts when
Edwards exposes the devious conservative schemes to undermine the
bedrock of our democracy and what America is all about. John Kerry and
John Edwards are no 60's hippies and liberals. They are progressive,
they are patriotic, and they are fundamentally American. They are not
on radial deviation from the Lakoffian liberal core - they are in the
dead center of the core. They will win in November. Once they win,
this will be the demise of conservativism in America. The fissures in
the Republican party are starting to crack already, and they will
explode after the election. The GOP may never fully recover from this,
no matter how much it tries to reform itself, so it is understandable
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