BackCreating ‘unum’ out of ‘pluribus’
If we are not open-minded enough to explore other viewpoints, accept our inherent cognitive limitations and be humble about them, we cannot claim to be liberals
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Why do many poor Indians support the government’s decision to demonetize currency notes despite their inconvenience and hardship?
Why is it wrong for the court to interfere with rituals and practices of religious groups such as the Sabarimala pilgrims?
Why is it likely that German chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to contest for a fourth term, after her liberal decision on refugees, could turn out to be a crowning failure on her illustrious career?
Why is “unity in diversity" not a slogan that has only one rote answer that diversity is to be celebrated, unquestioningly?
If you want answers to these questions and more, the best place to start would be Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics And Religion.
There are three parts to the book. The first part shows that reason is not the one that drives intuition but it is the other way around. Without the heart, the head drops dead. “Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason. Reason is not fit to rule; it was designed to seek justification, not truth. As an intuitionist, I would say that the worship of reason is itself an illustration of one of the most long-lived delusions in Western history: the rationalist delusion."
The belief in the infallibility and the primacy of reason—in the tradition of Socrates, Plato and Kant—leads to the primacy of the individual over groups. All humans are capable of reason and hence all are equal. Anything that harms the individual or is unfair to the individual is not acceptable; is immoral. There is no morality beyond harm or inequality. Social norms and groups do not matter.
The second part of the book prepares the ground for the third part that exposes the limitations and the societal consequences of the mindless application of the above “liberal" principles or concerns. There is more to fairness than equality. The theory of karma is about fairness as proportionality—rewards and consequences consistent with efforts and actions or the lack thereof. Emphasis on equality encourages free riders and severs the link between effort and reward. Sustained over time, it causes societies and economies to weaken and eventually collapse. Thus, what is happening in Indian school education systems across states has dangerous portents. The link between effort and reward must be restored.
Similarly, there is more to morality than merely not causing harm. With the demonetization move, clearly some people have been caused hardship or harmed. That has raised many a liberal’s hackle. But, even those who are affected are still supportive because they place the immorality of black money above the harm and hardship caused to them. Of course, there are thresholds and trade-offs beyond which the prioritization can shift. For now, it is possible to explain this dichotomy using Haidt’s framework.
Groups that are cohesive easily defeat those that are not and are fragmented. Group rituals that are dismissed as irrational and inefficient bind members of the group. Think of the Sabarimala pilgrimage. It demands a 45-day preparation from the devotees. It demands abstinence from meat, alcohol and other physical comforts. The more sacrifices that a group demands of its members, the longer the group lasts and better it coheres. That is why externally imposed interference in group norms and rituals are guaranteed to destroy group coherence and, eventually, the group.
Haidt channels Emile Durkheim to warn that “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... Societies that forgo the exoskeleton of religion should reflect carefully on what will happen to them over several generations. We don’t really know, because the first atheistic societies have only emerged in Europe in the last few decades."
Recognizing and respecting differences is, in general, the right thing to do. But it is a fine line. “The process of converting pluribus (diverse people) into unum (a nation) is a miracle that occurs in every successful nation on Earth. Nations decline or divide when they stop performing this miracle."
The question is whether Germany has abruptly halted that miracle with its policy on refugees. Haidt writes: “In a paper revealingly titled E Pluribus Unum, Putnam examined the level of social capital in hundreds of American communities and discovered that high levels of immigration and ethnic diversity seem to cause a reduction in social capital... 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." Vielen dank, Frau Merkel.
In short, if we reject morality other than harm and fairness other than equality, focus exclusively on what is different between ourselves than what binds us and repudiate groups and their rituals, we are undermining the processes that humans had successfully deployed to survive and perpetuate themselves over time. Thank you, Haidt.
If we are not open-minded enough to explore, examine alternative viewpoints, accept our inherent cognitive limitations and be humble about them, we cannot claim to be liberals. The book is recommended reading for all those who admit to their biases in understanding the world around them and are intellectually open enough to want to improve upon it.
V. Anantha Nageswaran is an independent financial markets consultant based in Singapore.
Comments are welcome at baretalk@livemint.com. Read Anantha’s previous Mint columns at www.livemint.com/baretalk
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