Excellent points, and your exposition finally helped me understand
something. The American conservative view, it seems to me, puts a lot
more emphasis on the moral interpretation of behavior that does the
liberal: on principles in general. That’s why conservatives were so
outraged by bleeding hearts who extended understanding to transgressors
and tried to help them recover from whatever bad things had supposedly
happened to them. Conservatives believe that to forgive transgressions
simply sets a bad example for others; people ought to realize that
actions have consequences, and it is not in society’s interest to rescue
them from those consequences. The suffering people have brought on
themselves is outweighed by the good it does others to see that
suffering, because that example will prevent many more people from making
the same mistake. If people do not experience bad consequences (for
others or themselves) from doing things that are bad, then we must create
those bad consequences for them: they must be caught and punished. And
others must see that punishment, and witness the pain and humiliation;
otherwise the lesson will be lost.
This idea of using suffering to send messages extends even to the
innocent. It is wrong to end human life before birth, so a 13-year-old
girl and her partner who indulge in sexual pleasures, without considering
the risk of pregancy, or even with it, should be made to suffer the
consequences of bearing and raising an unwanted child, and also the child
must suffer, to punish the mother and father if they love it. See what
misery is caused by teen-age sex? Be warned, all you other 13-year-olds.
You have to learn to defer short-term pleasure to obtain a greater, later
good. Abortion simply encourages more teen-aged sex by removing the
consequences. A teen-age girl who defies morality by having sex
should get pregnant and give birth and suffer all that follows,
and for that reason contraceptives should not be freely available. If she
and her partner can have sex without all those bad consequences, how will
teenagers ever learn? Let the suffering ones be an example to all the
rest.
Economic theory, too, shows this conservative attitude. “Market
forces” should be allowed to work, which means that if a company
mismanages itself or fails to be competitive enough, it should simply be
allowed to fail and be replaced by a more effective company. It’s too bad
that the employees of the failed company lose their jobs, but if they’re
simply supported in comfort by welfare they will not try to find other
jobs or improve themselves by education or training. They must be allowed
to suffer also as an example to welfare queens and all those others who
would abuse the system if given the chance, and to show the managers of
the company what they have done by their mismanagement. If some people
competing for a commodity like food do not earn enough money to buy
enough food for their family, they should get a better job or work
harder, and if they don’t, they should be given only the barest minimum
of aid to help them survive in squalid circumstances. Letting them live
in what would, in a third-world country, be considered luxury, would
remove the incentive to find other employment at whatever wage the
employer decides to offer.
What we see here is a set of practical, business-like principles which
use a clear logic to organize rules and procedures that support and obey
the principles in a consistent, even-handed way: the rule of law under
suitable principles of morality and legality. To carry out these
principles one must be consistent, not change with every passing whim,
even if the immediate results may seem cruel (though there is a certain
grim pleasure to be obtained by seeing the evil suffer the consequences
of their behavior). One must tolerate present unpleasantness to achieve a
greater good in the future. Logically, it follows that we must discourage
any attempt to interfere with the natural consequences of behavior even
when we see a way to do it. Behavior, as one famous psychologist put it,
is controlled by perception of its consequences.
I think that this picture explains a great deal about conservatism. I’ve
heard all these principles explained by conservatives, as well as the way
they’re used to justify what seem like inequities or unnecessary
hardships created as a result of adhering to them. Within the scope of
the subjects discussed, it is a logical and self-consistent organization
of perception and control. To understand how people could support this
way of thinking and acting, we must understand how self-contained and
internally consistent it is, how inevitable its logic seems.
And we must see how clear the roles of the people in it are. Teenagers,
adults, leaders, followers, employees, workers, good people, bad people,
self-indulgent people, prudent people, irrational people, rational
people. Human beings and other organized entities appear in this system
of thought only as categories, not as unique individuals.
The principles in this system are absolute. The idea of “moral
relativism” is abhorrent; a principle that can be changed freely to
fit the circumstances is no principle at all, no morality at all. Morals
are given by God; all people of faith know right from wrong; indeed
“The traditional test of insanity in criminal cases is whether the
accused knew ‘the difference between right and wrong,’ following the
‘M’Naughten Rule’ from 19th Century England.”
[
](Insanity legal definition of insanity)There, I think, we have a clue as to what is going on here. In HPCT,
reference conditions are set by higher-order systems, or at the top
level, by reorganization or heredity. We can easily see that a reference
signal that specifies going shopping for groceries has to be turned on
and off by higher systems – otherwise we would never go shopping or
would be unable to stop going shopping and would never be able to do
anything else. A fixed reference level implies that there is no
higher-level control system. “Shopping relativism” implies that
the reference signal for going shopping is not a constant, is not set
once and for all, but is adjusted to fit in with higher-level
considerations.
Moral relativism implies that there is a higher system that adjusts the
reference signals at the principle level according to circumstances under
control, and of course perceived, by the higher level. In a family, for
example, we do not always tell the truth, even though in most
circumstances we like to maintain this moral reference-principle. We do
not tell a child showing us a crayon drawing “I don’t know what that
scribble is supposed to be – it’s just a mess.” So morals are,
under suitable circumstances, adustable. We are not always, rigidly,
honest. We do not always, rigidly, obey the ten commandments, like the
one that says thou shalt not kill, or covet.
People who think of morality or other principles as fixed and immutable,
or as given by God and therefore not to be changed, might not have
developed a system concept level at all. Or it’s possible that while they
do have a system concept level, they are unaware of it and so it
reorganizes only slowly if at all (under the MOL principle that
reorganization follows awareness). I say those things hesitantly not only
because of the obvious riskiness as an opinion to make public, but
because it seems unlikely to me that anyone utterly lacks that level or
is never aware from that position. But there is something different in
the conservative system concept in comparison with mine, and the liberal
concept in general, and I think we need to understand just what that
difference is.
It’s also possible that the system concept level is a relative latecomer
in the human organization. It may not be in very good shape yet; it may
still be engaged in resolving conflicts at the principle level, or even
within itself. Perhaps even conservatives are torn, sometimes, between
conflicting principles, those dictated by their understanding of the
marketplace, and those they devoutly accept while in church.
And it’s also possible that a conservative PCTer, looking at liberals
from the outside as I look at conservatives, might come to similar
conclusions about liberals. That, too, would be useful, because we’re all
trying to understand how the human system is organized, and we’re all,
perhaps, trying to take the first steps toward building Level
Twelve.
Best,
Bill P.
···
At 04:54 AM 1/31/2010 -0700, you wrote:
[Martin Lewitt 2009.01.31.0357
Mountain]
[Martin Taylor
2009.01.29.10.54]
[Martin Taylor] PS. Without much supporting evidence, I would like to
believe most of them (“the Republicans” and “the
Democrats”) have similar controlled perceptions along the lines of
wanting a prosperous country in which most people could become happy if
they worked at it appropriately.
ML: I don’t think it is
different views about how the environment works, but rather, even if it
is agreed what “works”, which way of working is moral or to be
preferred. Some forms of social organization may be preferred even
if they don’t work as well. Human nature appears very susceptible
to control by terror, and terror governments have worked well by several
measures, including low crime rates, personal security, equality of
wealth distribution and stability over long periods of time. Ethnic
hostilities were well controlled under Tito in Yugoslavia, Saddam in
Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan and British colonial rule in
India.