Thread by @akshayalladi

General musings in this thread: Going back to a great book again- psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s book on Moral Foundations theory, since there is a lot of debate on moral universalism versus differences between societies. I was intrigued by the origin story of the theory….(1/n)

..he first saw it when he spent time as a researcher in Odisha! Until then he was a hardcore liberal, but when he spent time with people here and found them to be friendly, but also deeply moral he saw that it was a different moral “matrix” (2/n)

…And he even introduced this notion of different moral matrices by asking the overwhelmingly liberal audiences in his talks whether they are willing to take the “red pill” (he used this term!) and see past their own moral matrix (3/n)

This then finally gave rise to the moral foundations theory where the 3 key foundations of the “individualism” cluster are care, fairness, and liberty, whereas the 3 of the “binding” cluster are loyalty, authority and sanctity (4/n)

As an aside it is interesting that the values/ moral foundations that Haidt added to his own liberal values (of the individualism cluster) are called the “binding” cluster. Dharma comes from the root word “Dhr”- to hold or to bind together. Not a coincidence (5/n)

Anyway, his big finding was that liberals tended to emphasise only 3 moral “taste buds”- those of the individualising cluster. Conservatives or traditionalists had a balance of all 6- NOT just the last 3. (6/n)

A cultural universalist of any kind will likely emphasise the individualising cluster. The binding cluster will always be culturally specific - loyal to WHAT or WHOM?, respect for WHOSE authority? WHAT has sanctity? Answers will differ by society (7/n)

Hence culture isn’t just a superficial thing - of some differences in cuisine, clothing, arts and literature etc. There are cultural universals but also very specific moral differences. Nature may be sacred in one moral matrix but a mundane resource to exploit in another (8/n)

What we call “civilisation” is one memeplex - a set of norms, institutions, morals/ values, philosophy, apart from their manifestation in arts and aesthetics, and other cultural artefacts. (9/n)

There can be several stable memeplexes, similarly there can be different civilisations with differences on each of these aspects, but with internal coherence. Civilisations won’t necessarily converge. They have commonalities in values, but also differences. And that’s ok (10/10)