One of the better (fairer) explanations of conservatives that I've ever read from a liberal. Worth reading.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Karma
Arnold Kling sends us to a WSJ article by Jon Haidt (still my favorite psychologist) suggesting that The Tea Party can be explained by 1 word: Karma. Specifically, the tea party is the line that the government should get out of the business of violating Karma. Also in Haidt's article, he discusses the (quite variant) moral positions of Libertarians, Conservatives, and Liberals.
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So Haidt's theory is that Tea Partiers want the government to cushion their belief in karma from reality?
Why are all my regulars ornery? :-).
Alrenous, they want the government to stop helping to violate their belief in Karma...then they can go back to being upset that the universe doesn't support Karma either.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/10/psychology_and_politics
The fact that there's not much available to discuss about points of agreement tends to pervert the available sample of opinion. ("Great post!" "Yup." "I totally agree.")
Also I'm also moving, apparently that makes me even more abrasive than usual.
Ah, so they want the government to stop making the cognitive dissonance worse. The gov may be made to stop, whereas if the universe is doing it, it can't be made to stop, and also it may just be misunderstood - non-obvious karma.
And yes, this is what moving-Alrenous looks like when he's honestly trying to understand a position. Perhaps moving-Alrenous should stop posting comments until he's done moving, but he also seems to lack impulse control. (I honestly can't be arsed.)
It just makes me want to headdesk, though. If karma is a real law, then trying to subvert karma would just invoke bad karma without successfully shielding anyone...
I don't know where this fits on the progressive/conservative/libertarian grid, but doesn't karma share a lot conceptually with the aretavian obsession of feedback? Shouldn't we want to live in a world where good deeds are rewarded and bad deeds punished? Where success is pleasurable and failure frustrating or shameful?
Alrenous,
I wasn't actually complaining. I in my humor-impaired fashion tried to indicate the humor via a smiley. It's just that my smart commenters make me think.
You're about 3 levels deeper into the nature of Karma than is normally thought...I think Todd's line is good.
We WANT good effects to come from good action and bad effects to come from bad action, and if they don't some folks get real upset...and the TEA party are many of those folks.
Todd,
Should we want to? Idunno, but if we didn't then we'd have awful low justification for calling them good/bad.
It can get interesting when both interlocutors are humour-impaired.
Should be funny for bystanders, though.
Also I often answer jokes seriously even when I know they're jokes. I think it's funny.
Aretae, of course you're correct. My question came out sounding more tautological than I had intended. However, I think there may be a very real sense in which progressives may be willing to classify an action as bad, or at the very least unwise, and nontheless wish to use the state to minimize the negative consequences of such an action. And I guess this is where I get confused. I would prefer to live in a world in which one poor decision does not consign one to a life of misery; however, I also don't think the path to recovery should be entirely painless or that one should be able to walk it anonymously. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that accepting private charity carries with it a shameful sting that is absent in a government welfare check, and that that sting is ultimately quite useful in promoting a society of autonomous and compassionate people. One question I would like to have answered by someone on the left is, if it were possible to meet the physical needs of the poor solely through private charity in at least as efficient a manner as via government redistribution, which society would be preferable.
Todd's point is quite solid. One of the only reasonably effective ways of reducing moral hazard from charity is to make it cost you social status to seek it. The Mormons, for instance, are quite effective at this sort of thing within their own membership. They probably save the taxpayer more in social services & transfer payments than they 'cost' in terms of their tax exemptions. I wager my local church does the same as well, given that we tend to keep our marginal members from falling into deep pits into which Caesar and Aggripa seem to delight in throwing tax dollars.
That was really interesting. And it explains a lot about conservatives inability/unwillingness to see that a lot of suffering is not the result of the immorality or failings of the sufferer. Also creepily reminds me of a paper I just read by an IMF ED who wants the US and UK to team up with India in it's rise to power since we share the same "values," which in this case would perhaps mean believing that low castes suffer because of something they did.
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