{"id":17301,"date":"2018-04-04T00:15:54","date_gmt":"2018-04-04T07:15:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=17301"},"modified":"2018-04-04T00:15:54","modified_gmt":"2018-04-04T07:15:54","slug":"egalitarians-unite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/egalitarians-unite\/","title":{"rendered":"Egalitarians Unite"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>First of all, I thought it was interesting and rather bold (and to many, offensive) that the UK version of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion<\/em> has a cover with a middle finger in place of the \u201ci\u201d in Mind of the title. I guess those Brits can handle more edgy things than us Americans :-). In fact, one reviewer stated that \u201cthis provocation is not out of place. Haidt\u2019s book is indeed audacious, it holds ideas that aim to challenge many readers, particularly liberals.\u201d[1]<\/a> Despite this, I decided to approach the book with an open mind and ended up focusing on the chapter called The Conservative Advantage, where the author dives into what he calls the Liberty\/Oppression Foundation. It is in this chapter where I found some interesting information on egalitarianism, which fits nicely with my research topic.<\/p>\n

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At the beginning of the book the author highlights Kohlberg\u2019s development of his moral dilemmas and states that the \u201cmost morally advanced kids (according to his scoring technique) were those who had frequent opportunities for role taking\u2014for putting themselves into another person\u2019s shoes and looking at a problem from that person\u2019s perspective. Egalitarian relationships invite role taking, but hierarchical relationships do not.\u201d[2]<\/a> It is interesting that the most morally advanced kids were the ones who could put themselves in another person\u2019s shoes. This is at the core of egalitarian relationships because it supports this idea of the golden rule as opposed to just selfishly ruling over someone without any awareness of how it feels to be in their shoes. Kohlberg also thought that authority figures could be obstacles to a child\u2019s moral development[3]<\/a>, and I would also add that this could affect their emotional and psychological development as well. People need to have the freedom to learn and grow without being blocked or told what to do or how to think all the time.<\/p>\n

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Haidt\u2019s discussion about the ethic of divinity was fascinating. He could see the value and beauty of its purity, but like the dark side of leadership, he could also see the dark side of the ethic of divinity. He says \u201conce you allow visceral feelings of disgust to guide your conception of what God wants, then minorities who trigger even a hint of disgust in the majority (such as homosexuals or obese people) can be ostracized and treated cruelly. The ethic of divinity is sometimes incompatible with compassion, egalitarianism, and basic human rights.\u201d[4]<\/a> I often see those focused on \u201cdivinity\u201d in an unhealthy manner, use it as an excuse not to treat others as equal or provide opportunities for egalitarian leadership. The most hurtful element I hear from those I interview is how people in the church, \u201cin the name of God\u201d, exclude, marginalize, and flat out reject women from the table of ministry leadership. I met a woman while studying for my MSW who was at a seminary studying for the ministry and ended up leaving the ministry and the Christian faith altogether because she kept hearing the message that God and the Bible did not support her leadership in the church. A very sad story I will never forget, and one that keeps me wondering how many other dynamic female leaders the church has lost for the same reasons.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>It was also interesting to me how the author came to add a sixth foundation to his five moral foundations. He states, \u201cI looked into what was known about the egalitarianism of hunter-gatherers, and found a strong argument for splitting apart these two kinds of fairness. The desire for equality seems to be more closely related to the psychology of liberty and oppression than to the psychology of reciprocity and exchange. After talking about these issues with my colleagues at YourMorals.org, and after we ran some new studies on various kinds of fairness and liberty, we added a provisional sixth foundation\u2014Liberty\/oppression.\u201d[5]<\/a> He talks about how the hunter-gatherers decided that cooperating and sharing food and resources was a better way to live. This caused me to think about how we have been bred to be hierarchical and wonder how we have come to value egalitarian beliefs at all. Then I read about Boehm\u2026\u201dIn his book Hierarchy in the Forest, Boehm concluded that human beings are innately hierarchical, but that at some point during the last million years our ancestors underwent a \u201cpolitical transition\u201d that allowed them to live as egalitarians by banding together to rein in, punish, or kill any would-be alpha males who tried to dominate the group.\u201d[6]<\/a> Yikes, I don\u2019t think all egalitarians want to kill alpha males, but I think many of us egalitarians would like to kill this idea of men dominating over women instead of supporting gender-balanced leadership.<\/p>\n

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Haidt goes on to confirm this idea that egalitarians who are fighting for equality are actually more passionate in their hatred for domination than they are for their love of equality. I have to agree that many people I have talked with who have felt oppressed and not treated as equals feel that if those trying to dominate them would adopt an egalitarian approach, the equality and reciprocity would follow. The author says this well\u2026\u201cWhen people trade favors, both parties end up equal, more or less, and so it is easy to think (as I had) that reciprocal altruism was the source of moral intuitions about equality. But egalitarianism seems to be rooted more in the hatred of domination than in the love of equality per se. The feeling of being dominated or oppressed by a bully is very different from the feeling of being cheated in an exchange of goods or favors.\u201d[7]<\/a> He later goes on to explain why he ended up adding the Liberty\/Oppression foundation to his list of moral foundations. \u201cWe added the Liberty\/oppression foundation, which makes people notice and resent any sign of attempted domination. It triggers an urge to band together to resist or overthrow bullies and tyrants. This foundation supports the egalitarianism and antiauthoritarianism of the left, as well as the don\u2019t-tread-on-me and give-me-liberty antigovernment anger of libertarians and some conservatives.\u201d[8]<\/a><\/p>\n

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<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>[1] Rebecca Litchfield, review of\u00a0The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion<\/em>, by Jonathan Haidt,\u00a0LSE Review of Books <\/em>(August 10, 2012) ,\u00a0\u00a0http:\/\/blogs.lse.ac.uk\/lsereviewofbooks\/2012\/08\/10\/book-review-the-righteous-mind-jonathan-haidt\/<\/a>\u00a0(accessed April 2, 2018).<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [2] Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion<\/em>, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Kindle Edition, p. 9-10.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [3] Ibid., 10.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [4] Ibid., 124.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [5] Ibid., 197.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [6] Ibid., 198.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [7] Ibid., 209.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [8] Ibid., 215.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First of all, I thought it was interesting and rather bold (and to many, offensive) that the UK version of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion has a cover with a middle finger in place of the \u201ci\u201d in Mind of the title. I guess those Brits can handle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2,1214],"class_list":["post-17301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp","tag-haidt","cohort-lgp8"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17301"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17304,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17301\/revisions\/17304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}