In the comments, Jason Malloy points out that Jon Haidt recently added a battery of questions to test liberal puritanism. Here’s Haidt’s explanation:
At Yourmorals.org we have always found that scores on the
Purity/sanctity foundation are higher on the political right than on
the left. Conservatives, particularly religious conservatives, live in
a more sacralized world. Liberals, particularly secular
scientifically-minded liberals, live in a more materialist, un-magical
world.Yet there are enough hints of “liberal purity” scattered about that
we at Yourmorals are actively trying to measure it… It can be seen in the liberal tendency to moralize food and
eating, beyond its nutritive/material aspects. (See this fabulous essay
by Mary Eberstadt comparing the way the left moralizes food and the
right moralizes sex). It can be seen in the way the left treats
environmental issues and the natural world as something sacred, to be
cared for above and beyond its consequences for human – or even
animal–welfare.
The punchline is excellent: “Can anyone understand Avatar who lacks all intuitions of purity/sanctity?”
READER COMMENTS
Franklin Harris
Mar 13 2010 at 8:29pm
So, you’re saying it’s not “Avatar”; it’s me?
Marcus
Mar 13 2010 at 10:08pm
Avatar is the left’s version of ‘The Passion of the Christ’.
Contemplationist
Mar 13 2010 at 10:27pm
Except that the Na’vi win the conflict
david
Mar 14 2010 at 3:05am
A dissenting opinion at The New Republic:
Steve Roth
Mar 14 2010 at 1:25pm
Ask and ye shall receive.
My interlocutors will perhaps be surprised to know that I scored a 1.0 on Liberal Purity, compared to Libs’ 2.7 and Cons’ 2.1.
I’m disappointed that they’re testing “Authenticity” rather than “Honesty.”
“You should tell the truth” is a pretty solid universal, seems to me. Would like to see how it interacts, and who values it more.
zeljka buturovic
Mar 14 2010 at 1:45pm
it is not obvious to me that liberals’ worship of the environment is related to purity to a significant extent.
as i mentioned previously, i think liberals are less likely to admit they care about purity or authority. conservatives are more comfortable saying ‘it’s because the bible says so’ than are liberals saying ‘it’s because my liberal friends says so’ even if these play comparable causal roles in their beliefs.
haidt’s questions might get around this to the extent they don’t ask about causes (the second section). but to the same extent, the question of the causes of environmental beliefs remains unclear.
in my opinion, liberals and conservatives have different perceptions of ‘marginal humans’ such as fetuses and animals. for example, i found a correlation of around .4 between ideology and a belief that ‘humans are animals’.
Ak Mike
Mar 14 2010 at 2:41pm
zeljka – I admit I have not reviewed the Haidt materials; but it sure looks to me as though environmentalism has a strong purity component. The emphasis on wilderness, and particularly on “unspoiled wilderness” (for example, the no-new-roads policy in national forests at the end of the Clinton administration) seems almost like an analogue of virginity.
hacs
Mar 14 2010 at 6:49pm
‘The punchline is excellent: “Can anyone understand Avatar who lacks all intuitions of purity/sanctity?”‘
Of course.
The bad guys are quasi-Neanderthals (I will call them Reps). They have an old-fashioned business: the extraction of a mineral of high value (unobtanium, diamonds, oil, etc.) in a distant land (Pandora, Africa, Middle East, etc.) populated by anthropomorphic beings of great wisdom and no technology (the nature provides everything they need). The primitivism of Reps is visible: the gigantism of their work equipment, their shortsighted goals, their dependence on a private army, and their disdain by the recommendations and results of the group of scientists who they believe manipulate. The contempt for science is obvious in the scene where Dr. Grace is ridiculed when she tries to warn them about the existence of something of a much greater value (new “green” technologies) in the forest. In short, the Reps are weak, reactionary, ignorant and stupid, as they must be in that kind of movie. Obviously, the Na’vi beings are blue (perhaps, the antithesis of red beings) and Pandora has floating islands (perhaps, the antithesis of the real Universe).
Whatever…
B.B.
Mar 16 2010 at 11:54am
It is more than just food and sex.
Environmentalism is the Left’s religion.
The Salem-1692-style hysteria of global warming is an example of purity/sanctity: emitting GHG is for secular liberals what sodomy is from religious conservatives, an unnatural and vile act.
If the Left is worried about species extinction, why? Are the arguments strictly utilitarian (which puts species preservation on a cost-benefit basis), or do they reflect sanctity (beyond calculus)?
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