As you may recall, I’m a big proponent of dialogue, civil dialogue, between people who disagree. I recently complimented Steven Attewell of the Realignment Project blog as a progressive willing to engage without labeling or demonizing his opposition. My idea that our current politics amounts to nothing more than a clash of tightly held world views underlies much of my thinking and my advocacy of a more civil dialogue.
Today on the Bill Moyers program, Moyers and Company, we were introduced to a bright social psychology scholar named Jon Haidt, Ph.D. of UVA’s Department of Psychology. I am impressed and amazed that Moyers invited him. I am impressed and amazed that Moyers conducted the interview with a general air of civility and without obvious (other than his facial expressions) rancor.*
I’ve got to say that I await Haidt’s book, “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion,” with much anticipation. Anyone who espouses the twin ideas that human beings are are all hypocrites and that the human brain is first and foremost a rationalization generator, has my attention. Moyers almost swallowed his tongue when Haidt said that we should stop idealizing his holy ‘reason.’This interview with Moyers just whetted my appetite for more.
By the way, here’s a link to Haidt’s home page if you care to look into this guy and it appears to contain a link to the Moyers interview.
See Haidt’s homepage at: http://people.virginia.edu/~jdh6n/.
At the end of the interview Haidt expresses some pessimism with our ability to make political changes which would encourage a more civil dialogue. He points to the practical difficulty of changing systemic electoral mechanisms in a world where both parties have incentives for keeping them as is. Nevertheless he pronounces two prescriptions to improve our present political situation which we can individually adopt. First he recommends that we, as a matter of personal morality, refuse to demonize or to impugn the motivations of those who oppose us on policy grounds. Second he suggests that we develop a complete intolerance for political corruption, whether it be on our own side or on an opponent’s side. We need to abandon the idea that, “Sure he’s a scoundrel but he’s our scoundrel.” Who knows but this could even bring an end to the truthfulness of the common Washington quip, “If you want a friend, get a dog.” I couldn’t agree more strongly with Haidt’s proposals. If the book lives up to the promise of the interview, I hope that people across the spectrum of ideas and ideologies will really listen to him and internalize his ideas.
*There was one moment during which Moyers could not keep himself from demonizing Republicans. Haidt was using the recent conflict over raising the debt limit to characterize the difficulty the parties had in reaching a compromise over the debt ceiling. Haidt was explaining that there are certain things which have been “sacrilized” (made sacred) for each of the parties. In posing a question about this situation, Moyers described it in this manner: “So John Boehner and the Republicans find it immoral to compromise and President Obama finds it immoral not to compromise.” This was hardly Haidt’s point, but I think that it was a stark shaft of light illuminating the interior of the Moyers brain.
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