This is my attempt to understand Conservatives. I myself am a progressive, though I don't know why. I'm also an INTP 'Rational' knowledge seeker.

My goal is to understand people who have a different worldview. Supposedly we all live in the same world, but different people have in their minds different models of the world and how the world works. We need these models in our minds so we can make decisions about what to do and how to interact with the world. But our models differ even though we all live in the same world. That's fascinating to me.

I used to think a person's worldview was just their opinion, but now I'm slowly realizing it's much more. A person's worldview is their belief of how the world works upon which they make all their decisions on what to do. A person's worldview is based on their entire life's experience; what they've seen, what they've been told, what they've read, everything.

I'm slowly beginning to realize even though we all supposedly live in the same world, we all create our own worldview, and it's quite possible for there to be many strikingly different worldviews which conflict with one another.

It's also psychologically traumatizing for a person to change their worldview. (If it wasn't people wouldn't have a solid worldview and they wouldn't be able to cope with the world, so I opine.) People can change their worldview; for example some Christians leave the faith and become non-Christians, but the change initially leaves them very unsettled. There is a period of adjustment they go through. Another example, I changed my worldview when I realized Santa Claus didn't exist. It was a big change to my worldview, and took some time to get used to (though not really traumatizing). Another example, I changed my worldview when I realized Jesus never existed. The whole story is a myth. I originally took the evemerist view that Jesus was a person whose story became embellished to the point he was made a deity. When I changed my worldview I was unsettled for about two months, even though I'm not a Christian.

So my goal now is to understand other people whose worldview is different from mine. Why is theirs different? Why do I have the worldview I have? Was I born with it? Did I learn it? At what age? Has it changed over the years? Where do other people get their worldview from? I have a "knowledge seeking" personality (INTP 'Rational') so I'm just compelled to ask these questions and seek out answers.

The quest to understand starts with the following two books:

Year: 1996 (2nd edition 2002). “Contemporary American Politics is about worldview. Conservatives simply see the world differently than do progressives, and both often have a difficult time understanding accurately what the other’s worldview is.” Lakoff explains that Conservatives and Progressives have two very different concepts of Morality. This is an excellent book for anyone wanting to understand the other side's point of view. See a lecture given by George Lakoff at http://www.uctv.tv/library-popup.asp?showID=11194
This book takes work to understand, so here is an outline of the main points in the book:

1. Cognitive science shows people understand abstract concepts in terms of metaphors which explain the abstract concept in terms of less abstract concepts.

2. God is an abstract concept. One metaphor we use to understand God is the family metaphor, where God is the parent and we are his children. "God the father...", "Our father which art in heaven...". Also God created us, as parents create their children.

3. Government is an abstract concept. One way we understand government is by using the family metaphor, with government as the parent and citizens the children. (We speak of nation's "founding fathers," who gave "birth" to our nation. When our nation was new it was in it's "infancy.")

4. Different concepts of what a family should be produce different concepts of what Religion should be and what Government should be.

5. How a parent should raise their children is an abstract concept which we understand by using metaphors to simpler concepts. Professor Lakoff identifies about two dozen of these metaphors we all use and understand.

6. Both Progressives and Conservatives use and understand the same metaphors when thinking about government or religion.

7. The difference between Progressives and Conservatives is how they prioritize these metaphors. When we order the metaphors in terms of priority we find that Progressives order the metaphors one way, and Conservatives order the metaphors in reverse order. The metaphors Progressives hold as most important are the ones Conservatives hold as least important, and vice versa.

8. One can not logically determine which metaphor is more important than another. People do not determine their moral priorities by logically analyzing the metaphors themselves.

9. Both progressive and conservative logic is sound. There are no fundamental flaws of reasoning to expose. Once you prioritize the metaphors, the rest follows.

10. However, you CAN observe the results of using the progressive philosophy vs. the conservative philosophy. In the last chapters of Lakoff's book he shows that:
    1. Research clearly indicates the progressive "Nurturant Parent" model is superior as a method of child rearing.
    2. The conservative "Strict Father" morality requires a view of human thought that is at odds with what we know about the way the mind works.
    3. The conservative "Strict Father" morality often finds morality in harm; progressive "Nurturant Parent" morality does not.

Two Concepts of Morality
In my recent studies I've discovered quite to my surprise that according to George Lakoff there are two completely different concepts of Morality. One is "Morality is Empathy;" we care about what hurts others. This is the progressive view. The other is "Morality is Obedience;" to a set of rules, such as a list of sins you're not supposed to do. This is the conservative view.

Now I've been struggling to understand this dichotomy. It occurs to me that maybe children need a list of rules because they're too young to understand Empathy, and as we grow into adults some of us understand "Morality is Empathy" and switch to that, while others for whatever reason cling to the set of rules and never grow up. (This guess will probably prove to be wrong.)


Conservatives and Progressives make different assumptions about the nature of children in particular and human beings in general.¹

Conservatives are SJ Guardians?
My first insight is there appears to be a connection between conservative thought as described by Lakoff and the SJ 'Guardian' personality type described by Keirsey. I do not believe all Guardians are conservative, but perhaps many conservatives are Guardians who don't understand there are other personality types. Conservatives classify all these other people as immoral. (SJ Guardians make up about 40% of the population.) However, there are SP Artisans who were/are Republican, supposedly conservative. Ronald Reagan was an SP Artisan. And Arnold Schwarzenegger is SP Artisan and Republican. There are also SJ Guardians who are progressive. President Jimmy Carter was an SJ Guardian Monitor (according to the book Presidential Temperament: The Unfolding of Character in the Forty Presidents of the United States by Ray Choiniere & David Keirsey), and he was a democrat, thus I assume progressive, though I was too young at the time to make the distinction.

So far no conservatives have identified with George Lakoff's description of a conservative. It makes me wonder if Lakoff didn't describe a conservative then what did he describe? He's certainly an intelligent person, a cognitive scientist and linguist, and he went to all this trouble because he realized he didn't understand what conservatives were saying, and as a linguist that was embarrassing to him.

One hypothesis I have is Lakoff is an NT Rational, because they are the kind of people who are fascinated by what they don't understand and will do research to learn (same with me). And, he read a lot of books written by SJ Guardians, because they are the kind of people who are likely to write books about how they think people ought to behave. He successfully extracted the SJ Guardian philosophy from these books, and not identifying with it since he's not an SJ Guardian, he decided that must be the philosophy of conservatives whom he also does not identify with (he's a progressive). I'm guessing Lakoff is not familiar with temperament theory and the four basic types, and thus did not recognize the SJ Guardian way of thinking when he encountered it.

The Guardian (SJ) Socializer Parent (from Keirsey, pg. 278)
Guardian parents are mainly concerned with socializing their children. They would teach them the customs and conventions of their society, and would pass on the attitudes of good citizenship, most of which can be neatly summarized in the twelve points of Boy and Girl Scout Law. Scouts are to be: trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, clean, brave, and reverent. Guardian parents want their children (whether they join Scouts or not) to do their best to do their duty, and thus to be increasingly helpful and productive at school, at church, at social functions, and certainly at gatherings of the extended family—to become fully a part of their communities. But Guardian parents also want their children to value their duty and to want to obey. Dutifulness and obedience for the wrong reasons are not acceptable. SJ parents are far more concerned with this project than they are with the concerns of other types, that is, with fostering their children's venturesomeness, their positive self-image, or their individuality. Indeed, the way they usually see it is that fully socialized children are in a much better position to become venturesome, to feel increasingly good about themselves, or to establish their independence than those who are not well socialized, a point made abundantly clear by Alfred Adler and his disciple Rudolph Dreikurs.
     Among the Guardians, Administrators (ESTJs & ISTJs) tend to be strict parents because their main concern is that their children do what is right and not do what is wrong. They regard it as their obligation to the family and the community to keep their children under their watchful eye lest they stray from the fold. Their children must behave in a seemly manner and must not do things that reflect badly on the family. These are the parents who believe that punishment is the best way to keep their kids in line, and they will at times resort to corporal punishment to get their point across—to spare the rod, they believe, is to spoil the child.

Authority (Keirsey pg. 98)
Guardians trust authority. They believe in a hierarchical structure of authority—rule from the top down. They believe there should be subordination and superordination, that the actions of members of communities, schools, churches, and corporations, but also of families, should be governed by those in the highest positions. SJs tend to take the word of authorities in matters of education and medicine—their unquestioned assumption is "the doctor knows best." Moreover, SJs have an abiding trust in the heads of church and state, and popes and pontiffs, presidents and prime ministers, and royalty of all types seem to capture their trust and their loyalty. And many SJs believe that an even higher authority keeps an eye on us.

     Guardians are preoccupied with Morality (Keirsey pg. 87). They are probably the ones who lament:

     "The country is in a state of moral decline and there is no respect for authority anymore!"

     "We need "Moral Mission Statements!"

     "Postmodern relativism has led us into a nightmare of uncertainty and moral chaos!"

Conservatives are obsessed with obedience to authority. This isn't correct, as there are INTP conservatives. I think I'm confusing different usages of the concept of authority. There's authority related to the natural order. Then there's authority related to one's competence in a given field of expertise.

INTP 'Rationals' like myself are not impressed with authority related to one's competence in a given field of expertise, because we posses the ability to examine any statement made to determine if it is rational and consistent. If the authority is wrong we'll spot the error. We refuse blind obedience to authority, because we possess the ability to see for ourselves. "Architects [INTPs] exhibit the greatest precision in thought and language of all the types. They tend to see distinctions and inconsistencies in thought and language instantaneously, and can detect contradictions in statements no matter when or where the statements were made. Only sentences that are coherent carry weight with them, and thus authority derived from office, credential, or celebrity does not impress them. Like the ENTPs, INTPs are devastating in debate or any form of adversarial discussion, their skill in differential analysis giving them an enormous advantage in discrediting their opponents' arguments and in structuring their own. They regard all discussions as a search for understanding, and believe their function is to eliminate inconsistencies, no matter who is guilty of them." (Keirsey, pg. 206) (INTPs are found in only 1% of the population.) "INTPs detect contradictions in statements no matter how distant in space or time the contradictory statements were produced. ... INTPs can concentrate better than any other type." (Keirsey, Bates pg. 186)

QUOTES

“There are many other examples of DNA-mediated delight in activities tending toward adaptive fitness -- including parental love for children, joy in exploration and discovery, courage, camaraderie, and altruism.”—Carl Sagan, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, pg. 224

“In a laboratory setting, macaques were fed if they were willing to pull a chain and electrically shock an unrelated macaque whose agony was in plain view through a one-way mirror. Otherwise, they starved. After learning the ropes, the monkeys frequently refused to pull the chain; in one experiment only 13% would do so -- 87% preferred to go hungry. One macaque went without food for nearly two weeks rather than hurt its fellow. Macaques who had themselves been shocked in previous experiments were even less willing to pull the chain. ... By conventional human standards, these macaques -- who have never gone to Sunday school, never heard of the Ten Commandments, never squirmed through a single junior high school civics lesson -- seem exemplary in their moral grounding and their courageous resistance to evil. Among the macaques, at least in this case, heroism is the norm. If the circumstances were reversed, and captive humans were offered the same deal by macaque scientists, would we do as well?”—Carl Sagan, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, pg. 117

“Characteristically, [John Stuart] Mill had hit on an important question: Are people inherently bad? Those who believe so have tended, like Samuel Smiles, to be morally conservative—to stress self-denial, abstinence, taming the beast within. Those who believe not have tended, like Mill, to be morally progressive, fairly relaxed about how people choose to behave. Evolutionary psychology, young though it is, has already shed much light on this debate. Its findings are at once comforting and unsettling.
     “Altruism, compassion, empathy, love, conscience, the sense of justice—all of these things, the things that hold society together, the things that allow our species to think so highly of itself, can now confidently be said to have a firm genetic basis. That's the good news. The bad news is that, although these things are in some ways blessings for humanity as a whole, they didn't evolve for the "good of the species" and aren't reliably employed to that end. Quite the contrary: it is now clear that ever how (and precisely why) the moral sentiments are used with brutal flexibility, switched on and off in keeping with self-interest; and how naturally oblivious we often are to this switching. In the new view, human beings are a species splendid in their array of moral equipment, tragic in their propensity to misuse it, and pathetic in their constitutional ignorance of the misuse.”—Robert Wright The Moral Animal: Why we are the way we are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology.

“Children of authoritarian parents tend to lack social competence with peers: They tend to withdraw, not to take social initiative, to lack spontaneity. Although they do not behave differently from children of other types of parents on contrived measures of resistance to temptation, on projective tests and parent reports they do show lesser evidence of "conscience" and are more likely to have external, rather than internal, moral orientation in discussing what is the "right" behavior in situations of moral conflict. In boys, there is evidence that motivation for intellectual performance is low. Several studies link authoritarian parenting with low self-esteem and external locus of control.
     “Whereas the parents of aggressive children tend to be authoritarian, children of authoritarian parents may or may not be aggressive, and so far the aspects of family interaction that are important in determining whether a child of authoritarian parenting will be subdued or "out of control" have not been satisfactorily identified.”—(B2, Maccoby and Martin, p. 44, as quoted by Lakoff, pg. 354)

“The authoritative-reciprocal pattern of parenting is associated with children's being independent, "agentic" in both the cognitive and social spheres, socially responsible, able to control aggression, self-confident, and high in self-esteem.”—(B2, Maccoby and Martin, p. 48, as quoted by Lakoff, pg. 356)

“Single moms are stupid. Not all are stupid. But plenty are. Too many of them are stupid, lazy and selfish.”—Phil Luciano, columnist for the Peoria journal Star (Illinois) (9/20/05)

"I kind of see things in black and white terms. I know there's gray up here (pointing to her brain), but right here (pointing to her heart) I really see things as a struggle between right and wrong."—Nancy Grace, anchor, CNN Headline News, Colbert Report 1/9/06.)

Morality Is Empathy. Moral Action Is Nurturance.

prize faith over facts, to rely on the word of authorities rather than their own judgment, and to disregard arguments that run counter to their beliefs. http://www.ebonmusings.org/atheism/thoughts.html

One's thoughts should be set free to explore wherever they please, to examine one's beliefs from every angle, and even to consider the possibility that they are not true — because if they are true, they will inevitably stand up to reality and so there is no harm in asking the question. On the other hand, if they are not true, we should want to know that so we can replace them with something better.

In Aristotle's Ethics, it's clear that the ease and pleasure with which good acts are done, the absence of moral effort, is for him the symptom of virtue. (Osborne, pg. 25)

During the civil rights movement (1960's), white southerners worldview was that blacks could not be educated beyond a 6th grade education. Blacks were simply intellectually inferior. And blacks were happy with their lot. It was only those northerners who wanted to mess things up by forcing school integration. Putting blacks in white schools would only drag down the quality of education. Northerners worldview was that skin color has nothing to do with intelligence, blacks could be just as smart as whites. The black community carefully chose nine of their brightest students to integrate with the white school. What do we do with two conflicting worldviews? Obviously the southern worldview was wrong, as we now have numerous black college graduates who are very bright. Conflict boils down to a clash between two conflicting worldviews.

Don't pray in my schools and I won't think in your church.

"common sense rules of parenting that worked well in this country for generations" --Arthur Sido (Amazon.com)

"I can't watch most modern day cartoons with my kids without being thoroughly disgusted with the values and content. These classic episodes portray good vs evil kind of values." -- M. Stephens (Amazon.com)

"Doesn't your child deserve the same instruction and discipline that laid the foundations for generations of parents and grand parents to achieve in the face of despair and uncertainty, and ultimately build the greatest country in the world, The United States of America? Let someone else's kid be a guinea pig for "modern enlightened parenting". Relearn what has been forgotten." -- M. Stephens (Amazon.com)

In a day of widespread drug use, immorality, sexually transmitted diseases, vandalism, and violence... (Amazon.com)

"Every child needs boundaries and limits and they even crave it.." -- True only of SJ Guardian children? (Amazon.com)

"This book shows the perfect way to raise a child contrary to progressive & foolish ideas a child's spirit won't be broken instead it will teach them discipline, respect for law, authority & others in case you disagree just watch the news & see how must of criminals are young, *wake up America*" (Amazon.com)

"I think the permissive attitudes are what is wrong in the world (particularly the U.S.) today." (Amazon.com)

Conservatives believe Progressives "want to give it away." (Whatever "it" is...)
Progressives see themselves as wanting to make it accessible to everyone, which is not exactly the same as "giving it away."
I see conservatives as the ones who want to keep the status quo. So when slavery was the status quo the conservatives supported slavery and wanted to keep it. No changes. Then conservatievs wanted to keep racism. Conservatives were against women's liberation. And now conservatives are against homosexuals. Conservatives don't want change. Progressives want change for the better. Progressives fought hard to end slavery, end racism, give women the right to vote, and are now fighting for gay rights. (It's not a choice. Homosexuals are born that way.)

Of course I'm sure Conservatives don't define themselves this way, and Conservatives don't see Progressives the way Progressives define themselves.

"we are far more dependent on other members of our species that any other ape or monkey. We are more like ants or termites who live as slaves to their societies. We define virtue almost exclusively as pro-social behavior and vice as anti-social behavior. One of the things that marks humanity out from other species and accounts for our ecological success, is our collection of hyper-social instincts." I might add that this is exactly what the economist Joseph Schumpeter had in mind when he referred to capitalism as a naturally occuring spontaneous ordering, a concept anathema to the collectivist, group oriented, anti-individualist souls on the political left. Hence, they call Ridley a Thatcherite while ignoring the evidence of this book which leads to an understanding of the correctness of Schumpeter's inescapable conclusion. Mutual cooperation and trust on an individual level lead to far greater surpluses for all than any concentration of power laid in the hands of government bureaucrats.

Matt Ridley is all grown up, and what interests him in this book is not so much the origin of virtue (although he does get heavily into that) but the restoration of the conservative agenda. Alas. He argues from biology (our nature) to what ought to be politically. This is doubly "alas" because Ridley preaches mightily against this very delusion, calling it a "reverse naturalistic fallacy" --Dennis Littrell (Amazon.com) on Ridley's "The Origins of Virtue"

The questions continue. I haven't figured it out yet...

Write To Me:

• What do you consider to be the defining characteristics of a Conservative?
• And what do you consider to be the defining characteristics of a Progressive?

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