The Future of Virtue

                                              by Jonathan Haidt

 

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I believe that we have lost something important – a richly textured common ethos with widely shared virtues and values. People used to be concerned with their honor, their reputation, and the appearance of propriety. Children were frequently disciplined by adults other than their parents. It may sound old-fashioned and constraining to us now, but that’s the point. Some constraint is good for us; absolute freedom is not. Anomie is the condition of a society in which there are no clear rules, norms, or standards of value. One of the best predictors of the health of a neighborhood is the degree to which adults respond to the misdeeds of other people’s children. When community standards are enforced, there is constraint and cooperation. When everyone minds his own business and looks the other way, there is freedom and anomie.

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The death of character: We have been losing older ideas about virtue and character for a long time. In the past, we honored the virtues of “producers“ – hard work, self-restraint, sacrifice for the future, and sacrifice for the common good. But during the twentieth century, as people became wealthier and the producer society turned gradually into the mass consumption society, an alternative vision of the self arose – a vision centered on the idea of individual preferences and personal fulfillment. The intrinsically moral term “character“ fell out of favor and was replaced by the amoral term “personality.“

Secondly, inclusiveness is popular. Increasing diversity has logically led to an ever-shrinking set of moral ideas everyone can agree upon. We have paid a price for our inclusiveness, but we have bought ourselves a more humane society, with greater opportunity for racial minorities, women, gay people, the handicapped, and others – that is, for most people. And even if some people think the price was too steep, we can’t go back, either to a pre-consumer society or to ethnically homogenous enclaves. All we can do is search for ways that we might reduce our anomie without excluding large classes of people.

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For many, diversity has become an unquestioned good – like justice, freedom, and happiness, the more diversity, the better. However, given how easy it is to divide people into hostile groups based on trivial differences, does celebrating diversity also encourage division, and would celebrating commonality help people form cohesive groups and communities?

There are two main kinds of diversity – demographic and moral. Demographic diversity is race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, age, and handicapped status. In other words, demographic diversity is a call for justice, for the inclusion of previously excluded groups. (TFC supports this.) But moral diversity is a lack of consensus on moral norms and values. Morals are what is right and wrong in human behaviour. But who wants moral diversity? If you prefer diversity on an issue, the issue is not a moral issue for you; it is a matter of personal taste. So let’s go back… increasing diversity has logically led to an ever-shrinking set of moral ideas everyone can agree upon.

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Liberals are right to work for a society that is open to people of every demographic group, but conservatives might be right in believing that at the same time we should work much harder to create a common, shared identity.