Why Liberalism? How our Sense of Empathy and Fairness Determines our Political Orientation

WHY LIBERALISM?

How our Sense of Empathy and Fairness

Determines our Political Orientation

By Eric Balkan

WHY LIBERALISM?

How our Sense of Empathy and Fairness

Determines our Political Orientation

by Eric Balkan

Revision 2.3 5/27/11

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 by Eric Balkan. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Social Stability vs Fairness

Self-Interest vs Empathy

The Axes: EFG

Common Alternative Explanations

Individual Responsibility

Political Correctness

Something for Nothing

Respect for Authority

Faith-based Politics

Big Government vs Small Government

Sense of Duty

Individual Freedom

Why We Believe

Cultural Socialization via Neuro-Plasticity

Faith vs Reason

Ends and Means

Gender

Age

Mental Toughness

Dogma and Ideology

Theories in General

The Upshot

Epilogue

Addendum A: Reading List

Addendum B: Analyzing some Current Issues

Addendum C: Q&A

Addendum D: Mock Discussion

Introduction

Think your political opinions are the result of carefully reasoned thought? Think that everyone would agree with you if they just weren't so clueless? Think again! Big government vs small government, free market vs a regulated market, individual freedom vs group benefits, conservative vs liberal.... Political controversies sound like they're based on differences in philosophy or ideology or maybe just fact. But they're not. The differences are largely cultural. And, in particular, they’re based on how much a particular culture values empathy vs self-interest and fairness vs social stability.

This distinction between philosophy – commonly, how we choose to look at things -- and culture – the effect of all the varied influences on us during our lifetime -- is key. That’s because philosophy is amenable to rational discussion, but cultural differences are not. They're part of us -- and much harder to change.

I got interested in this topic after some 40+ years of arguing politics without actually convincing anyone of anything. It finally occurred to me that our opinions on various political topics were based on deep-down, core beliefs, and not on the specifics of any particular issue. I then went off to study whatever thinking and research I could find on what those beliefs might be, and where they might have came from.

I became drawn to the conclusion that we obtain our beliefs largely from what behavioral/social scientists call the socialization process, via what cognitive science researchers call neural plasticity – which is what inculcates cultural influences into our brains. Further, I’ve theorized, the differences in our political beliefs stem from differences in how our various cultures and subcultures treat the attributes of fairness, empathy, self-interest, and social stability.

I should warn here that, while this paper is inspired by current research, the interpretation of that research can vary. And this paper is my interpretation: a theory if you will.

One of the side-effects of my conclusion was the realization that we can never be unbiased. So, even though I’ve made some attempt at it, in the interests of full disclosure, I admit to being a liberal.

I wrote this paper both to better organize my own thinking on the subject by putting it into words, and to see what others thought of my theory. (My thanks to those (Howard and Freda) who have contributed feedback so far.) So, let’s get started.

Social Stability vs. Fairness

Theory 1:

Conservatives seek to maintain the current social order, even if it's unfair.

Liberals seek to make things fairer, even if it upsets the current social order.

Virtually no one takes one of these positions to an extreme. We tend to each fall somewhere along the scale between wanting total stability and wanting total fairness. Take this situation: the police have arrested two people, one of whom is positively a terrorist and the other one an ordinary, innocent person. And it's impossible to tell which the terrorist is -- we just know that one of them is. If we release them both, the terrorist will continue his activities. If we imprison them both, we will be imprisoning an innocent man. If you say release them both, which is what our legal system would do, then change the situation so that there's 3 people, two of whom are terrorists. Do you still release them all? How about 6 people, where 5 are terrorists? 20 people? 100 people?

Or the other way, if you said lock them both up: If there are 10 people, and 1 is guilty, do you still lock them all up? You can play with these numbers until you find some you're comfortable with. And your numbers will undoubtedly be different than someone else's numbers.

A momentary detour: I use the terms social stability and social order largely interchangeably throughout this paper. They’re not quite the same thing, but they’re parts of the same desire. And that is the desire, which we all have, to do things in the familiar way, in familiar settings. I suggest that this desire is simply greater in conservatives than in liberals.

And while we’re at it, what is fairness exactly? The absence of bias is often given as a definition, but I don’t think that goes far enough. For instance, if you were paid a salary not based on your work but on some random number chosen by a computer, that would not be biased, but it also wouldn’t be fair. So fairness implies also a non-arbitrary relationship between actions and consequences. Taking both criteria together, it comes down to: getting what an unbiased observer thinks you deserve.

Now back to validating the theory. Think about Guantanamo. Conservatives want to continue keeping the inmates locked up, because it's safer that way. Liberals are concerned that some of those inmates are innocent, and we'll never know who they are if we don't have trials.

The above examples involved safety issues, but the same thinking gets involved in a very many political, social, and economic issues. Think about the