[cuddlybacon]

Note: This is a rough mix of reading Jonathan Haidt's books and my own thoughts.

What America is seeing is basically the result of a culture that only uses one moral value. Jonathan Haidt believes there is a set of moral primitives that all our brains support[0]. All other moral values or rules can be explained in terms of these. He also says that the US (potentially excluding the south) is the most single moral on earth. Particularly the "Liberal Cities" and particularly Universities. That one moral is care vs harm.

Some people want to be particularly moral. In societies the various morals have balanced usage, people will pick different morals to exemplify. Since different morals can give contradicting judgements on the same issue, this results in the net effect of these people being fairly neutral.

In a society with just one moral, all these people end up pushing in the same direction. If society is moving in one direction, then these people need to keep advancing in order to remain particularly moral. Given some specifics of US history, we see this result in the social justice movement we've seen in the last 10 years.

> what explains the relative stability in post-Christian Europe?

Europe, with a few exceptions, hasn't gone as hard at being focused on just a single moral value. They are largely biased towards care vs harm, but still use the other moral values.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory

[jimkleiber]

> The theory proposes six foundations: Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, Sanctity/Degradation, and Liberty/Oppression;

I'm curious to learn more about how he concludes that most of the US has coalesced on care/harm, as intuitively I would assume at least fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, and liberty/oppression would also apply as I see them come up a lot in the discourse here in the US.

Could you share some other links about how he concludes that?

[monkeydreams]

I am in agreement with you that Care/Harm is probably not the moral axis most at play in the US.

Liberty/Oppression is the primary axis (see gun control debates, state rights, mask mandates, neo-liberalism, etc, etc) with Fairness/Cheating (billionaires paying more tax, public healthcare for all vs excessive hospital bills, etc, etc) corresponding as the secondary political axis. Nearly all arguments portrayed in media, government, etc, orbit along one or both of these dimensions.

[jimkleiber]

I guess I don't see a particular primary moral axis. I've run workshops on responding to emotional attacks and I would imagine all 5 they listed would apply to most Americans in different ways, so I'm curious why he woukd say there's one and why he said it was care/harm.

[monkeydreams]

A few days late in my reply but I found your response very interesting. I feel that I have fallen into the very glib reactionary narrative I was trying to avoid. Thanks.

[jimkleiber]

It's ok, I'd say it happens to most of us. I wrote an essay (or recorded a podcast episode, I can't remember) the other day that I titled "Blinded by the fight," as I've seen how easily I can lock into a perspective based on the emotions I'm feeling in the moment. Eg, feeling fear of being too public on the internet and getting cancelled/stalked/manipulated can make me blind to the fact that many people on the internet may help me and support me in ways that I would love.

So, maybe a long way to say I'm grateful for what you said and glad we interacted here. Thank you :-)