Moreover, the biologists are confirming genetics probably plays a bigger role than we would prefer to give credit to. Our habits always comes down to this nature/nurture debate, but nature seems to win out (mostly). Certainly you can think of your genetic proclivities more like a first draft of a book. Then we get to live out the re-writes. Some never get past the editor's desk.
So what's guiding our moral intuitions? According to Haidt, it seems our reputations matter: “People are trying harder to look right than to be right.” He goes on to surmise that “Our moral thinking is much more like a politician searching for votes than a scientist searching for truth.” Hmm, kinda cynical.
Yet, Haidt is a scientist searching for some truth, although like many of his peers I gather he has a materialist orientation. That's not to say he doesn't respect religion — but more for its functional usefulness.
“Sacredness binds people together, and then blinds them to the arbitrariness of the practice.” This bind/blind tension is a repeating theme in all his moral categories: care, fairness (equality or proportionality), loyalty, respect for authority, and sanctity.
Haidt gets into his conversion from a lefty to someone more tolerant of the right as he developed his moral matrix. The catalyst for his is when he realized while people of the left tend to prioritize care and fairness, the folks on the right tend to value all five categories. (The caveat here is fairness: where the left sides more with equality and the right with proportionality). As someone on the left may say: “Loyalty to a group shrinks the moral circle; it is the basis of racism and exclusion, they say. Authority is oppression. Sanctity is religious mumbo-jumbo whose only function is to suppress female sexuality and justify homophobia.” Haidt counters this conventional thinking with more nuanced consideration.
He goes on to say: “Those bonded groups may care less about outsiders than they did before their bonding—the nature of group selection is to suppress selfishness within groups to make them more effective at competing with other groups. But is that really such a bad thing overall, given how shallow our care for strangers is in the first place? Might the world be a better place if we could greatly increase the care people get within their existing groups and nations while slightly decreasing the care they get from strangers in other groups and nations?” It relates to something I once heard: he cared for humanity so much, he didn't have time for his own family.
Haidt is partial to the Durkheim notion that these moral systems “suppress or regulate self-interest and make cooperative societies possible.” That's all fine and dandy for our secular friends. But there is one exception he grapples with: sanctity. As I was reading this section, I could sense Haidt's struggle as he was trying the fit the pickle in the jar. We know the human endeavor towards depth and meaning can be quite superfluous when looking at it from a materialist lens. So why do it?
Haidt makes an ample attempt at showing why we lose ourselves in the transcendent is so we can form stronger in-group bonds. This hive switch gives us a trance-induced state of belonging to something larger than ourselves. It becomes a sort of “transubstantiation of pluribus into unum” where we can satisfy our hunger for deep meaning and deep connection. In coming together around the sacred, we are not alienated individuals without purpose. Our “happiness comes from between.”
Haidt gets into the collective rituals and practices we partake to affirm this posture. I recall reading about this in another book, where the authors talk about the whooshing up of group ecstasy as a relief for isolation in the modern age. It can happen at a religious gathering, a sporting event, and a rock concert. But not a fascist rally — those are merely spectacles than festivals.
And while these communities can be enmeshed in a set of moral norms that bind and protect the group, there is more to consider. Our horizontal relationships are also tied to our vertical relationship of something Higher. We can engage this relationship as an individual endeavor also (via prayer, contemplation, and meditation). To this, Haidt does not have much to say. Other than maybe for him, he would see this as the spark to create and/or maintain religious groups.
Haidt, rightfully, comes to warn about our increasing secular society: “Religions are moral exoskeletons.... We evolved to live, trade, and trust within shared moral matrices. When societies lose their grip on individuals, allowing all to do as they please, the result is often a decrease in happiness and an increase in suicide, as Durkheim showed more than a hundred years ago.”
Furthermore, the loss of religion allows for more secular values to undermine our sacred values. One such example is our emphasis around group diversity. While groups that cohere need trust as bonding capital, in societies there is also the need for bridging capital — which allows for trust between groups who have different values and identities. Oddly enough, diversity is seen to reduce both kinds of social capital. Haidt states, “Diversity seems to trigger not in-group/out-group division, but anomie or social isolation. In colloquial language, people living in ethnically diverse settings appear to “hunker down”—that is, to pull in like a turtle.” Par for the times when we also consider our political climate.
It seems there will always be competing moral sentiments that can't be perfectly harmonized, so it will always be more fruitful to understand our limits than to impose our ignorance. But look on the bright side: morally, we've got more than enough to work with in one eternity.