Those of you who follow me may know from my bio that I am
writing a book on how and why value systems change in societies. The book is called "The Genesis of
Values", and I would like to set out some of its ideas in my blog, to get
comments and reactions from readers.
I know that blog posts are usually very topical and meant to more or
less stand alone, but I thought that readers might enjoy a chance to do
something a bit different, which is grapple with some new theoretical ideas and
help an aspiring author write his book.
So this is the first in what I hope will become a series of posts that
lay out my theories on value systems, including political ones.
Posts on my book will have (GV) in the title, for Genesis of
Values, so readers will be able to identify them, and will be numbered in the
order they appear. I will try to
be diligent in responding quickly to comments, so that I can answer any reader
questions, and discuss any issues that readers wish to raise. I will also monitor the comments
sections on GV posts after they drop off the listings, and respond to those as
well, so that readers who wish to continue any discussions can do so. Thank you all in advance for being my
new editors!
Today I'd like to start by introducing a few basic
ideas. As a psychologist it's very
natural for me to look to childhood influences as causes of psychological
phenomena. As a psychologist it's
also very natural for me to think in terms of personality types that possess
certain clusters of features, including personal values.
Putting these two together, it would then be natural to
think that values would be systematically influenced by personality, and
personality systematically influenced by conditions during childhood, so the
value systems of individuals would be influenced by conditions during their
childhoods. Psychologists
routinely think in these terms concerning individuals, and I was very surprised
when I found that other social scientists generally do not think in such terms
concerning larger groups.
The moment I started looking for correlations between
changes in social and economic conditions and political changes a generation
later, I found that they were everywhere.
The most obvious example is my own generation, which is the boomer
generation born in the first two post-WWII decades. This generation probably experienced one of the greatest
improvements in conditions relative to its forebears that has ever been seen. My generation grew up during a time of
peace, prosperity, security, and optimism. The prior generation, on the other hand, grew up during a
terrible depression and a world war, a time of poverty, war, constant
insecurity and fear of what the future might bring.
The result of this, if childhood conditions influence personality
and therefore values, should be a marked shift in value systems between these
generations, and that is exactly what occurred. As soon as members of my generation reached adulthood they
began to challenge the norms that obtained in society, advocating for sexual
freedom, resistance to authority, non-violence, rights for oppressed groups,
and many other changes. Also, this
generational phenomenon was most definitely not confined to America, but occurred
in the other advanced democracies at the same time as well.
Of course this is not to say that everyone in the baby boom
generation possessed this new value system, just as everyone in the prior
generation did not possess the older one.
These phenomena are clearly statistical, which means that what changes
is the likelihood and frequency of a particular value system under certain
childhood conditions. The baby
boom generation had a distribution of value systems among its members that was
noticeably different from its predecessor.
What this historical pattern clearly suggests is that hard
times produce a more 'conservative' value system, while better times produce a
more 'liberal' value system. This
is a reasonable first approximation.
Certainly, if we take a global-historical perspective, looking at
societies around the world and throughout history, it is very obvious that
affluence and prosperity are very highly correlated with more progressive value
systems. Before the Industrial
Revolution most societies were hierarchical and authoritarian, organized around
structures such as monarchy, aristocracy, serfdom, slavery, and the like. Similarly, poorer societies around the
world today are much less likely to be democratic, and more likely to violently
oppress minorities, women, gays, and any other culturally disadvantaged group.
It is tempting to think of the pattern of history as being
'progressive', in the sense of things steadily getting better, or more
'progressive' over time, but this pattern also works in reverse. Nazi Germany is an excellent
example. In 1933, when Hitler came
to power to great popular acclaim, Germany went into a period of violence and
hatred unrivalled among industrialized nations, with a regime far worse than
similarly advanced countries. What
made Germany so different? Many
theories have been advanced, of course, but I would note that Germany had seen
extremely hard times for almost a generation. Since 1914, Germany had experienced the devastation of WWI,
followed by the hyperinflation of the 1920s brought on by war reparations, and
then the Great Depression. In
1933, a 'hardened generation' began to come to maturity, that had only known
very harsh times, pushing the polity toward violence and repression, and by
1939 this cohort that had only known hardship was large enough to push the
country into war. Of course other
factors were at work as well, but I believe that the 'hardened generation'
hypothesis at least partly accounts for Nazism and the Holocaust. (I will discuss this particular example
in much more detail in a later post.)
So, it definitely seems to be the case that there are some
kinds of correlations between circumstances during early life and the resulting
value systems of different age cohorts.
But how can these be investigated systematically? There is a big problem with just saying
'more liberal' or 'more conservative' as a way of describing value systems,
because these words cover very many types of issues and also mean very
different things in different times and places. When people say 'more liberal' for example, in the modern
American political context, they would generally mean a value system that is
more tolerant of sexual freedom, less tolerant of violence, less sympathetic to
authority and more sympathetic to those who are subject to authority, more
inclined to want government to help the poor, and so on. When people say 'more conservative' in
the same context, they would usually mean the opposite.
My approach has been to take a few of these major components
of different value systems and to track them both independently and as parts of
value systems. For instance, I
take attitudes toward pleasure, including sexual, as one major component. I take violence and authoritarianism
together as a second component. (I
originally tracked these separately because I felt that they were distinct from
each other, but I found that they are very tightly bound together, enough so to
consider them jointly).
I consider attitudes toward economic issues to be another
distinct component. How the
economic component fits in, however, will have to be deferred until later,
because attitudes on economic issues are so strongly affected by self-interest,
not just by personal feelings of rightness and wrongness. Economic issues are a hugely important
part of political value systems, but they are very complex to analyze and I'll
have to deal with them in a later post.
With that in mind, I'll provisionally define Liberal (with a
capital L) as meaning a value system that has relatively tolerant attitudes
toward pleasure while being relatively intolerant of violence and
authoritarianism. Conservative, in
this essay, means the opposite.
When I use these words, capitalized, that's all I mean by them at this
point. Thus Liberals would favor
gay rights and gun control, Conservatives the opposite. Liberals would be less likely to spank
and more likely to allow children to call them by their first names (less
authoritarian), Conservatives would be the reverse. Liberals would be more likely to be pro-peace, Conservatives
more likely to be pro-war. Many
other political issues could also be easily classified as Liberal or
Conservative by referring to the dimensions of attitudes toward pleasure and
toward violence/authoritarianism.
So Liberals and Conservatives are polar opposites on the
dimensions of pleasure/sex and violence/authoritarianism, with each being
relatively permissive on one dimension while being relatively restrictive on
the other. Are there other value
systems besides these? Of course
there are, because many people do not neatly fit the definitions of Liberal or
Conservative used here. More
importantly, if we again take a global-historical perspective, it can be seen
pretty quickly there are and have been societies that have value systems that
cannot be classified as Liberal or Conservative. What about these?
Using the analysis of different dimensions of value systems
shows that there is actually a third major value system of global and
historical significance, one that has never been precisely defined and
named. I call this value system
Preconservative. Preconservatives
are relatively permissive and tolerant toward both pleasure/sex and violence/authoritarianism. This is a value system that crops up in
many different places, including many undeveloped authoritarian societies,
including feudal aristocracies in earlier centuries. It also occurs among privileged elites in wealthy societies
today.
In my book I try to explain the idea of Preconservatism by
discussing a range of cultural practices from such societies, but in this post
I'd like to do something different that I hope readers won't find
frivolous. A really perfect
example of the Preconservative value system is actually the title character from
the movie Borat, by Sascha Baron Cohen.
In this movie, Cohen pretends to be Borat, a man from a very poor
village in Kazakhstan, who has come to America to meet people and interview
them. Borat introduces himself to
unsuspecting Americans and films his interactions with them, which are
hilarious.
The humor in the movie comes from Borat's behavior, which is
absolutely outrageous. He attends
a genteel Southern dinner party and blithely invites a prostitute, takes
drivers ed and starts drinking hard liquor behind the wheel, offering some to
the instructor, makes unbelievably sexist remarks to feminists, talks about the
importance of killing Uzbeks to liberals, and so on. Borat is an equal-opportunity offender, possessed of a value
system guaranteed to astonish and insult both liberals and conservatives
alike. (Of course, the biggest
insult was to poor, Preconservative Kazakhstan, which did not find the movie
funny at all.)
In structural terms, what makes the movie work is that a
Preconservative can offend Conservatives by his acceptance of sexuality and
Liberals by his acceptance of violence, because Preconservatives are fine with
both. What makes the movie even
funnier is that Cohen plays Borat as an earnest, sincere, guy who is completely
unaware of his offensiveness and just wants to be friends with Americans.
Before returning to Preconservatism, I have to make a
general point about value systems, which is that they have things that they
value, such as specific virtues.
The primary virtues valued by Liberals, I would argue, are things like
compassion, empathy, nurturance and other qualities related to loving and
caring for others. The primary
virtues valued by Conservatives, on the other hand, would be things like
self-discipline, self-denial, self-sacrifice, and other virtues related to control
of one's desires and impulses. (Of
course, both groups would also value each other's primary virtues as well, but
the emphasis and degree would differ.)
Preconservatism also has primary virtues, and these are in
the area of power, strength, and dominance for those in the elite, and
obedience and submission for those who are not. This is shown in Borat as well, when he enters a room and
goes into an elaborate kissing ritual with the men in the room, while
completely ignoring the women.
Here he is demonstrating deference to people of higher status and
disregard for those of lower status, which is also typical of Preconservatism
(remember that violence and authoritarianism go together).
Moving away from Borat, this Preconservative trinity of
pleasure, violence, and authoritarianism can be seen quite often. The Roman Empire was of course famous
for it, with its orgies, and its circuses in which people were torn to shreds. Aristocracies throughout history have
often been this way. Feudal lords
had sexual rights with their serfs, were the ones who were expected to do
battle in war, and of course had complete authority in their domains.
Preconservatism is ultimately a product of the psychology of
dominance and submission. The
psychology of dominance is that dominant individuals do as they please and
should be admired for their dominance and obeyed. The psychology of submission is that voluntary
submissiveness is honorable and should be rewarded. (By the way, the word 'islam' is Arabic for 'submission'.)
Preconservatism will be most prevalent under conditions of
scarcity and poverty, for reasons determined by evolutionary psychology, which
will be explained in a later post.
Its most fundamental characteristic, however, is its association with attitudes
of dominance and submission. It
exists, therefore, wherever people lead lives of dominance, which includes both
primitive societies and also includes the elites of modern-day societies. Many economic conservatives in America
today are Elite Preconservatives in my classification of value systems, because
they are tolerant of both sex/pleasure and violence/authoritarianism and
operate according to attitudes of dominance, with its resulting reduction of
empathy.
In the philosophy of science theories are classified in a
hierarchy according to whether they are descriptive, explanatory, or
predictive. My theory of value
systems is all three, but we are still in the descriptive part, because objects
of study need to be precisely described and classified before they can be
explained and then predicted.
Having described and classified value systems according to certain of
their components, the next step is to describe when and where they occur.
In Western societies the historical pattern has been to move
from a Preconservative stage, to a Conservative stage, and ultimately to a
Liberal stage (I call this the Western Trajectory). These transitions, however, are not automatic, but depend on
continued economic progress. It is
very important to note that this means quite different patterns of progress
regarding violence/authoritarianism versus pleasure/sex. Violence/authoritarianism goes
(roughly) from high to medium to low as societies move from Preconservative to
Conservative to Liberal, while restrictions on pleasure/sex go (again, roughly)
from medium to high to low.
Restrictions on pleasure/sex actually increase during the early stages
of social/economic progress.
The most obvious example of this pattern is Great
Britain. In its Preconservative
stage it was a monarchy, its transformation to Conservatism began with the
Protestant Reformation and culminated in the Victorian era, and it eventually
became a Liberal society during the 20th century. I'll save the
details for a later post.
Readers at tpmcafe are most interested in American politics,
and America has shown this historical pattern also, with some differences. Colonial America began, of course, as a
transplant society from Great Britain, and the northern and southern colonies
were quite different. The northern
colonies were quite clearly Conservative in their value system, in fact
extremely so, with the Puritans actually classified as Early Conservative in my
system. (Early Conservative
societies are impoverished, very repressive and, well, puritanical. Iran and the Taliban would also be in
this category.) The south,
however, was just as clearly Preconservative. It was hierarchical, authoritarian, and violent, but not
Puritanical. (In fact, a gracious,
genteel, aristocratic-type lifestyle was the ideal.) Slavery, of course, like serfdom, is a mark of
Preconservatism.
As America progressed economically, the north progressed
socially from Early Conservative to Late Conservative. Late Conservatives tend
to be political activists, as first demonstrated in Great Britain, where Late
Conservatives abolished the slave trade and worked to help the poor while at
the same time crusading against vice.
The Late Conservative period in the American north is what we now call
the Progressive Era. We tend to
think of this as an early form of present-day liberal values, but the
Progressives actually had more in common with present-day religious
Conservatives. They wanted to
abolish Preconservative injustices such as slavery, but also favored Prohibition
and strict laws against pornography, prostitution, and vice in general. As the north continued to make economic
progress during the 20th century, it eventually moved from Late
Conservative to Liberal in that century's latter decades.
The south has followed this classic trajectory also, but
with an enormous delay. It began
with a Preconservative system and regressed instead of making progress during
the 19th century because of the Civil War and Reconstruction. In fact, it didn't start to move out of
its Preconservative value system until after WWII. People of my generation and older remember the tremendous
resistance to equal civil rights for blacks, which is indication of thinking
conditioned by attitudes of dominance, the hallmark of Preconservatism. The south has progressed greatly since
then on those issues, and is now in a Late Conservative stage. (Societies can and often do skip an
Early Conservative stage if economic growth is very rapid, going directly from
Preconservative to Late Conservative.
This is happening throughout Asia.) The south now is religious, patriotic, fairly repressive
sexually, and very activist in its politics, just as the Progressives were a
century before. The difference is
that the southern Late Conservatives of today find themselves resisting social
change instead of initiating it, as the Progressives did, because they are at
the trailing edge rather than the leading edge of the changes.
The western regions of the country are more
complicated. Today's Republican
party really has three geographic regions in which it is still very
strong. They are the south, the
great plains states, and the Mormon belt.
The plains states have probably remained Conservative due to constant
out-migration of more Liberal members to urban areas, and now have small
populations. The Mormon region
shows the same pattern as the south, going from Preconservative to Late
Conservative. Mormonism began as
an authoritarian polygamous sect with a significant history of violence. Polygamy is, pure and simple, sexual
privilege for elite males, and is another clear marker of Preconservatism, like
slavery. Mormonism today,
however, is no longer polygamous, less violent and authoritarian, sexually
repressive, and politically activist.
Other areas of the west show that an activist Late
Conservative stage usually occurs just before the onset of Liberalism. California is a good example:
previously Republican, elected Ronald Reagan governor twice, now reliably
Democratic. Colorado and Nevada
are just now undergoing the same transition. Both used to be reliably Republican, and Colorado in
particular was known as a center for evangelical Christianity, now both are
trending Democratic.
Other areas demonstrate this also. Virginia was, like Colorado, known as a hotbed of religious
activism, and has recently trended Democratic also. North Carolina and Florida are showing similar trends. In my own New York metro region the
Long Island suburbs used to be very solidly Republican and now vote Democratic
and are clearly Liberal.
This pattern makes it possible to see the political trends
in America over the past fifty years and, more important, to make
predictions. America has mostly
moved in a Liberal direction over the past half century, with the exception of
the south and the Mormon belt, which have moved toward Conservatism, but from a
Preconservative base. The turn
toward political conservatism in the 1980s was a result of the south moving
firmly into Conservatism, combined with a reaction to the poor economy of the
1970s. Since there are very few
remaining areas in America that are Preconservative, the movement toward
Conservatism cannot continue, while the movement from Conservatism to Liberalism
will continue. This means that if
reasonably good economic conditions persist, then an American transition to
European-style Liberalism is inevitable.
This is not guaranteed, however, because we now face a
potential Depression. The Great
Depression of the 1930s caused a temporary reversal of the political
transformations that accompany economic progress, and this could happen
again. (Remember that the effects
of economic conditions on social values are time-lagged, because conditions
during childhood affect values during adulthood. The Great Depression caused America to adopt more liberal
economic policies while it was going on, but also resulted in social
Conservatism in subsequent decades.)
Of course, this prediction about American politics is not
yet based on an explanatory mechanism for these values system changes, but only
on the observation of patterns and the assumption that they will continue to
hold true. In subsequent posts I
will detail the underlying psychological processes that cause values to shift
as they do in response to changing conditions. I will also bring economic issues into the discussion. After that, I will show how this theory
also explains values shifts in non-Western societies (there are actually
several trajectories that societies can follow).
I hope all you readers find this interesting enough to read
and comment on. Any time it
becomes boring, please tell me. I
have been working on this, on and off, for many years, and recently I find
myself in an odd situation. For
the past few years I have been making predictions based on my theory and
watching them come true. This has
made me try to push myself to articulate my ideas, but I need some feedback
about how to do it. Thanks for
reading.
