Why Are Left-Wing Groups Such a Mess?

Building on ideas from the anthropologist Richard Shweder, Haidt and his colleagues synthesize anthropology, evolutionary theory, and psychology to propose six innate moral foundations: care/harm, fairness/cheating, liberty/oppression, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation.

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And the six moral foundations are central to how Haidt explains politics. The moral mind, to him, resembles an audio equalizer with a series of slider switches that represent different parts of the moral spectrum. All political movements base appeals on different settings of the foundations—and the culture wars arise from what they choose to emphasize. Liberals jack up care, followed by fairness and liberty. They rarely value loyalty and authority. Conservatives dial up all six.

For Occupy Wall Street, fairness seems to be the chief concern—as it appears to be for the Tea Party. Occupy's version opposes rich people taking money through cheating and exploitation. The Tea Party's restores karma by punishing laziness and cheating, Haidt has written, "and they see liberalism and liberal government as an assault on that project." But, as tonight's meeting shows, the right owns an advantage in creating effective groups: Far-left activists dial down "authority" to zero.

Marc Parry, "Jonathan Haidt Decodes the Tribal Psychology of Politics" (via)