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“MORAL POLITICS” |
| In a wonderfully unexpected
twist, a book about politics is pointing me in the direction of the heart
of my faith, and, I believe, of our religion. The division between Liberals and Conservatives evidenced so strongly in our nation now, is, according to George Lakoff, “a division between two ways of understanding the world.” “Conservatives see the world differently than do liberals, and both often have a difficult time understanding accurately what the other’s worldview is.” But the political division...runs much deeper than that,” he says. “It is a moral division. It is about what you think makes a ‘good’ person and what is the ‘right’ thing to do.” Lakoff is a cognitive linguist. He studies how we conceptualize the world and our everyday lives and how we think and talk about them. He set out to answer a few questions: - Why do political views on very different issues seem to cluster together? - Why do views on abortion, capital punishment, welfare and taxes tend to be similar among conservatives, and views on abortion, capital punishment, welfare and taxes tend to be similar among liberals? - What are the different underlying understandings from which these two groups of views must originate? Ultimately, Lakoff boils the current political division down to two different views of the ideal family and ideal parenting. The conservative/liberal division is, he believes, a division between the ideal of strict authority- and the ideal of nurturance - “at all levels - from family and child raising, to morality to religion to politics.” Are strength and authority the best tools to help children learn to become good people? Or are nurturance and empathy the best tools to help children learn to become good people? The spark for this service began with my desire to genuinely understand a conservative perspective. Too many kind and caring people in my life are politically conservative for me to want to speak ill of them. I wanted to understand, in order to figure out how to converse, and, I must admit, how to convert them....I wanted to learn how make the best difference in the world - politically. The journey has led me to an understanding of my faith as rooted in a strong nurturant morality - rooted in empathy and nurturance as ideals - and has fired my passion and hope for both religion and politics. My hope is that today’s service sparks much ongoing discussion among us about morality, religion and politics. We can merely brush the surface in one service, but I am likely to raise the issue of morality at the slightest of pretexts this year, believing that an understanding of our strong, liberal, nurturant morality is key to understanding our faith, our religion and our congregation and vital to our making the greatest difference in this community and in our world. Morality is all about well-being, says George Lakoff. We, here, are very much about well-being. Though we have shied away from the topic and the word, our religion is all about morality. Our Good News is not that we have found THE one and only True Path, but that we believe we have a life-giving, nurturant approach to traveling. Politics are an expression of morality, says Lakoff. Politics and religion aren’t so far apart after all, and, like a bloom in the midst of wintertime, that gives me great hope. Years ago, George Lakoff asked his friend, Paul Baum, “if he could think of a single question, the answer to which would be the best indicator of liberal vs. conservative political attitudes. His response: ‘If your baby cries at night, do you pick him up?’” Lakoff’s attempt to understand that answer led to his book, Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think. He wrote the book, he says, to help liberals “comprehend the moral unity of their own politics and the role that the family plays in it.” “What I have found,” he writes, “is that conservatives have a deeper insight into their worldview than liberals have into theirs. Conservatives talk constantly about the centrality of morality and the family in their politics, while liberals did not talk about these things until conservatives started winning elections by doing so. My findings indicate that the family and morality are central to both world views. But where conservatives are relatively aware of how their politics relates to their views of family life and morality, liberals are less aware of the view of morality and the family that organizes their own political beliefs. This lack of conscious awareness of their own political worldview has been devastating to the liberal cause.” “Liberals need to understand,” he says, “that there is an overall, coherent liberal politics which is based on a coherent, well-grounded and powerful liberal morality.” It is that “powerful liberal morality” that I see at work everywhere in our UU heritage and anchoring the life of this congregation. Before I go any farther, let me say that while Lakoff describes the core models of liberal and conservative moralities here, he does indeed understand the complexities of REality - that while some people are virtually entirely conservative or entirely liberal, most of us operate from different perspectives in different parts of our lives - We may approach work conservatively and parenting liberally, for example...be a fiscal conservative but a religious liberal. He also speaks to the huge number of variations on all aspects of this. He does say, however that 40% of Americans are primarily conservative and that 40% of Americans are primarily liberal in their views....views rooted in morality. MORALITY AND METAPHOR Morality, George Lakoff says, is about well-being. Moral action is action that promotes well-being or avoids harm, and immoral action is action that causes harm or decreases well-being. The way we think about morality, he continues, is rooted in our actual experiences of well-being: our experiences of being healthy or strong, for example. We think about morality in terms of health and strength. We talk about morality in terms of health and strength: When someone is immoral, we say that they are “sick” or “weak.” When we use metaphors of our actual experiences of well-being to conceptualize and talk about morality, What happens, is that we bring other aspects of that metaphor to our thinking about morality. For example: Because we think of morality in terms of health - and therefor sickness - we bring our understandings about physical health and sickness to talk about morality. So here, in the midst of cold and flu season, when some is physically sick, we know that they may be contagious. They could infect others. Since we think of someone who is immoral as “sick,” we import the idea that that person’s immorality might be contagious, that they might infect other people with their morals. One bad apple.... Unconsciously, we bring a concept from our actual experience of well-being - health, in this case - to talk about morality in general. Wealth is another form of experiential well-being. All things being equal, wealth is good to have. Lakoff has pages of examples of how we use a financial metaphor in our speaking and thinking. For example: If you do something good for me, increase my well-being, something moral, I say, “Thanks! I owe you one.” If I kick you in the leg, take away from your well-being, something immoral, in anger you might say, “I’ll pay you back! With interest!” We import, with the metaphor of wealth, other concepts from the domain of financing - in this case, an idea that, in the end, the books should be balanced. If you do something good for me, there is a sense that I am indebted to you. If I reciprocate by doing something good for you, then I’ve done two moral things! Not only have I increased your well-being, but I’ve balanced the books.” If I kick you in the leg, then you have a dilemma. If you kick me back - retribution - then you’ve done one moral thing and one immoral thing. Causing me harm is immoral, but getting even, balancing the books is moral. If I kick you in the leg and you do nothing, then you’ve still done one moral thing and one immoral thing. By refusing to cause me harm, you’ve done something moral, but by letting me “get away with it” you’ve left the books unbalanced, which is immoral. In that dilemma situation, the question becomes, Which is more important - doing no harm, or balancing the books? Each is moral. Morality is about deciding what is most important, especially when the moral consequences are mixed. Let me offer a positive possibility for that sample scenario where I kicked you in the leg... I could try to make it up to you. I could try to balance the books myself...try for restitution. I could bring you a plate of cookies, and say, “I’m so sorry I kicked you,” in which case I’ve done two moral things: I’ve increased your well-being (by one plate of cookies) and I’ve balanced the books. You also will have done two moral things: refusing to harm me and, therefor allowing the books to be balanced anyway. It’s a win-win win-win situation Clearly restitution is better than retribution, ...unless you believe that balancing the books, is more important than doing no harm, in which case you would have kicked me back and not allowed the possibility of restitution. A difference in priorities is the difference between strict and nurturant moralities. STRICT & NURTURANT MORALITIES According to Lakoff, There are two prominent ways of conceiving of and pursuing well-being, two systems for choosing what is most important - each based in our real life experiences of family. At the center of one way of looking at the world is the ideal of the Strict Father model: It is the “traditional nuclear family, with the father having primary responsibility for supporting and protecting the family as well as the authority to set overall policy, to set strict rules for the behavior of children, and to enforce the rules.” “The mother has the day-to-day responsibility for the care of the house, raising the children, and upholding the father’s authority.” That authority must not be questioned. “Children must learn to respect and obey their parents; By [respecting and obeying,] they build character, that is, self-discipline and self-reliance” and build the skills they will need to survive in a difficult world. “Love and nurturance are, of course, a vital part of family life but can never outweigh parental authority, which is itself an expression of love and nurturance - tough love. Self-discipline, self-reliance, and respect for legitimate authority are the crucial things that children must learn.” Once children are mature, they are on their own and must depend on their acquired self-discipline to survive. Their self-reliance gives them authority over their own destinies, and parents are not to meddle in their lives.” Just like governments are not to meddle in their lives. But I’m jumping ahead... Another worldview is centered on a very different ideal of family life - the Nurturant Parent model: “Love, empathy, and nurturance are PRIMARY, and children become responsible, self-disciplined and self-reliant through being cared for, respected, and caring for others. ...The obedience of children comes out of their love and respect for their parents and their community, not out of the fear of punishment.” “Good communication is crucial. If their authority is to be legitimate, parents must explain why their decisions serve the cause of protection and nurturance. Questioning by children is seen as positive, since children need to learn why their parents do what they do and since children often have good ideas that should be taken seriously. Ultimately, of course, responsible parents have to make the decisions, and that must be clear.” “The principle goal of nurturance is for children to be fulfilled and happy in their lives,” and thus to become nurturant people themselves. “What children need to learn most is empathy for others, the capacity for nurturance, and the maintenance of social ties.” Strength, respect, self-discipline, and self-reliance come through being cared for, being respected, through developing “potential for achievement and enjoyment, and through exploring the range of ideas and options that the world offers.” “When children are respected, nurtured, and communicated with from birth, they gradually enter into a lifetime relationship of mutual respect, communication, and caring with their parents.” Both of these approaches are strong and cohesive. They both pursue well-being. They even use the same basic set of moral principles, but they prioritize them in reverse order, Lakoff says. In Strict morality , the highest priorities are “moral strength, ...respect for and obedience to authority, the setting and following of strict guidelines and behavioral norms, and so on.” Nurturance is on the list, but last. It is a means to a higher end. “The function of nurturance in this model is to promote strength and authority; Nurturance is a reward for obedience, and withholding it, a punishment for disobedience.” Nurturing - helping - someone, is never moral if it interferes with that person’s learning of self-discipline and responsibility - that would lead to dependence. They need tough love. In Nurturant morality, the highest priorities are: “moral nurturance, empathy for others and the helping of those who need help. To help others, one must nurture oneself and nurture social ties. And one must be happy and fulfilled in oneself, or one will have little empathy for others.” Strength is lower on the list. Great strength is needed to be nurturing, but strength is a means, not an end. Authority is last on the list. Authority is seen not as a form of nurturance, but as a result of ones ability to nurture. It is an earned trust, not the ability to set rules. In a strict morality, the strongest imperative is to protect the system itself, for the good, for the well-being of all. In a nurturant morality, the only thing that can outweigh nurturance in importance, is protection. If someone is attacking your child, empathy is not what is needed at that moment. These two moral systems are each pursuing good, each seeking to prepare children for the best life, and each seeking to create a world where people in its system, with its values, will thrive. The completely reversed lists of priorities however, means that the two moralities move in radically opposed directions. APPLICATION TO POLITICS What links these two different forms of family-based morality to politics, Lakoff says, is the unspoken metaphor of the nation as family, with the government as parent. “Thus, it is natural for liberals to see it as the function of the government,” like a strong nurturant parent, “to help people in need and hence to support social programs, while it is equally natural for conservatives to see the function of the government,” like a strict father, “as requiring citizens to be self-disciplined and self-reliant and, therefore, to help themselves,” Let’s take the problem of drugs: Here, where strength is a priority, the problem of drugs is likely to be seen as a lack of personal strength to say no. Therefore stronger authority, rules, and significant consequences are seen as the solution. Here, where nurturance is a priority, the problem of drugs is likely to be seen as due to a lack of-nurturance, happiness, and social connection. Therefore help and social change are what is needed. Or...taxes on the wealthy: Here, where success is seen as a reward for being self-disciplined, taxes on the wealthy are viewed as a punishment for being successful. Higher taxes for higher incomes take away the incentive to become self disciplined. But here, where empathy and helping are more important, those who have more, have a responsibility to help for those in need. The nation helped you, now it’s your turn to help others. Taxes are a duty, a responsibility. Trying to avoid them is shirking your obligation. Success is a resource to use for nurturing- Lakoff carefully profiles the two approaches to social programs, taxes, immigration, military spending, crime, gun control, abortion, and the environment... He explains why any ONE person who deviates from the proscribed path of strict morality is seen as such a threat to that entire moral system, and therefor must be stopped, while in nurturant morality, the encouragement to explore and follow new paths is vital, as long as it doesn’t interfere with anyone’s ability to be nurtured or nurturing. He explains why competition and reward & punishment are vital to strict morality and so problematic in nurturant morality. He gives a play by play analysis of the last presidential election, writes passionately of the power of the language of metaphor, and, in the end, offers a list of what liberals need to do. The conservatives already know, he says, have known for decades, and have acted with care and passion and success in pursuing conservative ends. Conservatives “have learned that politics is about family and morality, about myth and metaphor and emotional identification. They have...forged conceptual links in people’s minds between morality and public policy by carefully working out their values, comprehending their myths, and designing a language to fit those values and myths so that they can evoke them with powerful [repeated] slogans ...that reinforce those family - morality - policy links, until the connections have come to seem natural to many Americans.” They have successfully “framed” American values from within a conservative perspective. “I once thought of conservatives disparagingly,” he writes, “as mean or insensitive, or selfish or tools of the rich... I have come to realize that conservatives are ...ordinary people who see themselves as highly moral idealists defending what they deeply believe is right. I now understand why there are so many fervently committed conservatives.” He continues, “I also find Conservatism, now that I think I understand it better, more frightening than I did before.” There are good reasons to prefer liberalism, he believes, some of which we know from life experience, and some of which we know from research. And, he adds, “Now that I can see the unity and strength of liberal-nurturant morality, ...I feel more than ever that liberalism must be articulated fully, communicated clearly, and defended staunchly, not on an issue-by-issue basis, but as a whole, - as a deeply moral perspective...” RELIGION It’s not difficult to move from there to religion. As Unitarian Universalists, we are very rooted in a deeply moral liberal nurturant perspective with a hierarchy of values - a well-grounded and powerful morality. We are all about developing our capacities to become the most nurturant people we can be, about helping our children become the most nurturant people they can be. We are about creating a world that is as nurturant as possible and a world that responds positively to nurturance - a world that helps nurturant people to develop and thrive...the kind of world we want to live in and the kind of people we want to live with in the world. “We are a congregation creating a better world - BY nurturing the heart and expanding the mind.” Our Universalist forebears focused on the heart. Our Unitarian forebears focused on the mind. Both are important to us, but it is more than just either/or or both/and. Expanding our mind, is a means to the end of becoming more nurturant. Learning, taking in new information, exploring is vital to our own growth and development and happiness. Knowledge feeds us, increases our well-being and increases our ability to empathize with others. Knowledge helps us to become more nurturant. That’s why we seek to expand our minds! “We provide a safe, caring, community where all can freely explore diverse religious thought.” Again, safety, community and freedom are the means, not the ends. The safety to risk being open and connected to others, caring for others and being cared for, the freedom to explore and learn diverse ideas - all of these help us to become more fulfilled, more empathetic, more understanding, and, therefor, more nurturant persons in the world. That’s why we seek a safe, caring community, where our freedom is unimpeded ...as long as we are not hindering anyone’s ability to nurture or to be nurtured, including ourselves. “We work for justice and equality with the power of compassion and compassionate power.” FEELING compassion, Lakoff says, is empathy. ACTING compassionately is nurturance. Acting compassionately, nurturance, is the higher goal. Empathy helps us know what to do. If we really feel what another person feels, we’ll want that person to experience a sense of well-being, like we’d want to feel , and we’ll act to make that happen. At our best, we “do unto others... as they would have us do unto them,” unless doing so would contradict our entire system of morality. We do indeed have boundaries, but we venture as close to the edge of empathy as we dare, in order to be as nurturant as we can, in order to create the most nurturant world that we can. That’s why we work for justice and equality! This is why we can have UU Christians, UU Humanists, UU Pagans, UU Buddhists and UU Nothingists all in the same congregation. These are all branches growing from this more fundamental trunk, this way of looking at the world and at the nature of human beings, this way of determining what makes a good person and what is the right thing, the best thing to do. We approach Christianity and Humanism and Paganism and Buddhism..in fact, ANY path, from a set of values that places nurturance high on the list. This nurturant morality, coherent, well grounded, and powerful is, to me, the common denominator that binds us, the trunk that supports us. I see my role here with you, as one of learning to water these roots, with any and all of the strengths that I have. Although a strict moral approach does surface in me, particularly when I’m stressed or when dealing with our cats, this nurturant morality runs deep in my bones. It seems mighty simple to base a religion on, but maybe it is just mightily simple. When I try it on for size, it fits so well! I keep running around the life of this church, in my mind, and trying it on people and things, and each time, so far, it fits. It is of a strong and flexible cloth. I am excited about what this means. About how it unifies so many apparently unrelated aspects of our congregation - so many apparently unrelated aspects of myself, truth be told. I am seeing how the various aspects of my life, my work, my interests, my hopes, my politics are all wrapped together - of a piece - not separate ends that I have to choose between, but all elements that work in concert toward a higher end, toward the higher priorities on the list. Though simple, this is a big holy grail for me. Not that I have all the answers, but for a moment, I have a unified theory of everything, and my passion is fired. The world so needs this tree of ours. The world needs its shade, its shelter, its tinder, its sap, its fruit, needs the seeds of this tree - this entire tree - whatever branch you find yourself on today. What do you see from your branch? What fires your heart? Come, bring your passion, bring your ideas, bring your need to be nurtured, bring your ability to nurture... Bring your empathy, your caring, your self-discipline, your boundaries... Bring your happiness, your order, your discipline, your love of nature... Bring your authority, bring your strength... “Come, build a land where- we bind up the broken” and teach others to do the same, “where we bring the Good Tidings to all the afflicted and all those who mourn.” Come, build a land, - - anointed by Life, anointed by God, not in order to wield power, but to wield compassion powerfully. Come, let’s build the land that we seek, the land that the world cries out for. The baby is crying in the night. Let’s pick it up! Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think by George Lakoff University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0-226-46771-6 |