How to Be a Christian Lawyer Amidst Western Imperialism

In class today, we discussed how Western consumerism and secular cultural has become somewhat of an imperial power on the global scale. We then analyzed the relationship Baylor sees between Christ and culture and its mission for its students. Since I see Baylor as having taken primarily a synthetic approach to the Christ-culture dynamic, this leaves me with the questions - How can I take my education and I apply it to my vocation, and what can I do today to make that start happening? As a conclusion to this semester and this blog, I'd like to use my knowledge of Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory to develop a way to exercise acceptance towards alternative secular viewpoints while still accepting my own as ethically right, and I'd like to use this approach in the present-day to achieve my ultimate goal of becoming a public interest attorney.

First, to analyze the Baylor's synthetic approach to Christ and culture, I'd like to touch on a point that was brought up in class today. Dr. Whitlark asked us students, "Is there a difference between accepting and respecting another person's viewpoint?" I agree that there is a difference, but I would like to communicate that I believe that there was a definitional miscommunication in class today between he definition of acceptance. In one sense, acceptance can mean exercising tolerance toward another person. This is practicing acceptance. The other definition of accepting is to physically accept something to be true. One can practice acceptance without necessarily accepting someone's belief. I believe that the students in class today meant the former definition.

I also agree with this former definition of being the correct way to live one's life and the correct way Christians can and should live their lives. Haidt's moral foundations support this view in that they are meant to show people with different moral matrices and ideological realities that every person has some similar common values, and though one doesn't have to agree with another person's value, the moral foundations assign definitions to these values to encourage a logical discourse between different worldviews. This discourse is not meant to make people accept other views but simply help them practice acceptance (synonymous with toleration) in understanding the reasoning behind ideas different from their own.

Further, the way I am exercising this acceptance right now is that I have been working through Student Senate with faculty of the religion department to incorporate teaching of world religions into all Baylor Christian Heritage courses. I have worked closely with Blake Burleson, and we hope to finish this project by sometime early next semester. In this way, I hope to incorporate more acceptance of other cultures to the Baylor student body.

In the future, I hope to exercise acceptance in other ways through my vocation as a public interest attorney. I cannot predict exactly what ways I hope to fulfill this goal, but I know that as things arise, I will remember Haidt's foundations and the synthetic approach of Christ to culture that I learned at Baylor, specifically in this course, so thank you.

Haidt, Abortion, and My Vocation

In class we've been reading a lot about the pro-choice and pro-life sides of the abortion debate. Studying Roe v. Wade and other Constitutional Law issues in my high school government class, issues like these undoubtedly inspired me to pursue law and have an interest in being a public interest lawyer.

But how can Haidt's moral foundations be applied to the abortion issue, and how can this application apply to my vocation today?

First, Haidt's moral foundations easily apply to different perspectives regarding this controversial issue.
Absolutist pro-life advocates rest their perspectives solely on the sanctity/degradation foundation, while staunch pro-choice advocates rest their points of view only on the fairness/equality foundation of liberty/equality moral foundation (the 6th moral foundation that Haidt develops further after publishing The Righteous Mind.) Reconciling these two views is a different task, but recognizing the individual merits of both arguments and moral foundations of those arguments is at least a generous starting point to cracking the code.
Hays's argument in his chapter on abortion, however, asserts that the "Christian" thing to do is recognize fairness/equality above sanctity/degradation when the issue extends beyond the community of the church. Having a high regard for the law and law that extends beyond a faith-based conception, I agree with Hays but think as a Christian, it's also necessary to recognize his view in governing one's individual life.

Putting this learning into my vocational calling, if I am to settle any public interest disputes or constitutional issues, I will place the fairness/equality foundation above Christian notions of sanctity/degradation, but I think a personal regard for the sanctity of life and recognition of the strong merits of the Christian pro-life argument is necessary to make judicious rulings on the issues.

The Moral Foundations, The Bible, & Consumerism

As a quick review of Haidt's Moral Foundations theory, we've got:

1. Care/harm

2. Fairness/cheating

3. Loyalty/betrayal

4. Authority/subversion

5. Sanctity/degradation

(and, not directly in this book, but after writing it, he later adds)

6. Liberty/oppression

So, according to Haidt, all of our human actions are based off of these evolutionary response mechanisms.

But are these all we have?

I feel that if someone were to live with these moral foundations completely in-check, they may still not be living a moral life. And why is this? It seems that even if you addressed all of these moral foundations, you still could be living without humility, a virtue that's completely unaccounted for in Haidt's version of virtue ethics. 

The Bible's proposition of the virtue of humility shows that morality rests in something greater than simply an individual set of ethics but also one that addresses and prioritizes others. 

Thus, through Haidt's moral foundations, I can't find a way to deem the excessively consumerist culture we live in today "wrong," in my own sense of morality, it still certainly feels uniquely wrong, and Biblical ethics provide a more thorough explanation for this.

As the Bible calls us to defer to a higher power (that of God,) Haidt's "authority/subversion" fails to take into account any omnipotent being(s) but instead refers to more Confucian-type of subversive relationships. Even though humility can be present in Haidt's authoritative relationships, the Bible provides a more rich definition of humility by assuming that all people should humble themselves before a divine creator.

The consumerist mindset we see in America today certainly does not embody this Biblical perspective on the value of humility, and it could therefore have unforeseen negative implications in our society. 

Celebrity Instagrams are an interesting case study on this phenomena:

http://instagram.com/kendalljenner

http://instagram.com/taylorswift

http://instagram.com/caradelevingne

Though not every image is bad per se, taking the media message presented here as an aggregate and watching how Instagram has evolved over the past three years of having it has been a unique testament to the power these celebrities have in spurring "Instagram trends" and leading virtually every girl my age to copy them in their blatant promotion of an overly consumerist ideal.

I am not sure how exactly to tie this into my vocation, but I do think it's something important to take into consideration when deciding between employment in a public or private sector of the legal field. Although I find some parts of private law alluring and see public law as much less glamorous (especially because I work for the DA's office and see how underfunded the whole project truly is,) I think that there is something to be said for the quality of your drive to work hard for the public good on a much smaller salary than you could be making if you chose to do something less rewarding.

Regardless, humility is a deeply undervalued virtue in our society today, and the Bible provides a better explanation than the Moral Foundations theory for the immoral consequences of heavy-handed consumerism.

How to Solve the Problem of Homosexuality Using The Bible & Moral Foundations Theory

As we are currently studying homosexuality in class, and this happens to be an issue I'm particularly passionate about, I'd like to apply Biblical ethics and the Moral Foundations Theory to the various political perspectives on this topic. 

First, to establish what the Bible says about homosexuality... Whether one agrees with a basic reading of the narrative that homosexuality holistically is wrong and homosexuals cannot be accepted into the church, or one takes Hays's stance that homosexual actions are immoral but homosexual orientation completely acceptable (provided only celibacy is practiced,) most all Christians would agree that the Bible discourages homosexual practices.

Viewing this perspective through the lens of MFT, one can see the moral foundations operating here -- specifically, the Sanctity/Degradation foundation communicated throughout the Bible, such as in Leviticus 18:22, explaining the impurity of gay sexual conduct. In fact, it seems that throughout the Bible, all claims against homosexual actions are made based off of the sanctity/degradation moral foundation, asserting that homosexual practices are an impure threat to God's original intention for human design. 

The PMBC account, however, appeals to the harm/care and justice/fairness moral foundations to justify monogamous, healthy homosexual relationships. This makes sense, as the PMBC often uses Jesus's teaching as the supreme scriptural ethical norm, and in his own teachings, Jesus intentionally placed the harm/care and justice/fairness foundations above the sanctity/degradation one (for example, He instructed his disciples not to wash their hands before eating to make the point that some sanctity/degradation purity laws of the Old Testament had become outdated or secondary in importance to His message.) 

The issue, then, that we touched on in class was the idea that the PMBC account does not deal enough with the sanctity/degradation moral foundational element of homosexuality addressed in the Old Testament of the Bible. I would argue, however, that it does through its sole promotion of healthy, exclusive, monogamous relationships for both sexes. 

In class, we were told that the PMBC counsel only sees the "corruption" in our society's perception of sexuality as the marginalization of homosexuals as second-class citizens of society. This account isn't accurate, though, since the PMBC only sees this as one element of society's corruption. Since PMBC only advocates healthy, exclusive, monogamous relationships period, it is implicit that the PMBC sees relationships that are not healthy, exclusive, or monogamous as equally corrupt and fallen as does Hays. The only difference between the two schools of thought is that the PMBC does not see healthy, exclusive, and monogamous homosexual relationships as corrupt, since it takes the stance that the creation narrative cannot be read as strictly specified to the relationship between a man and a woman. 

Although Hays argues that his interpretation, the traditionally held one, of the creation narrative exclusively depicts a relationship between a male and a female, I assert that his view hypocritically overemphasizes human sexuality, a concept that he claims to be against. The PMBC interpretation, however, places less emphasis on the sexual identities or actions of Adam and Eve and more emphasis on their spiritual and emotional personas, so it therefore represents a perspective more aligned with the Consummation mountain peak of the Biblical text that acknowledges humans by their metaphysical qualities as opposed to their earthly sexualities. 

Coming to this conclusion, I've ironically titled this post "How to Solve the Problem of Homosexuality Using The Bible & Moral Foundations Theory" because I feel that the true answer to the problem that is homosexuality is to realize that it isn't a problem, but any relationship, homosexual or heterosexual, that isn't healthy, exclusive, or monogamous should take the blame instead. 

Essentially, I think that looking at the Moral Foundations, PMBC was right to credit Jesus's ethical teachings above Biblically sanctity/degradation-appealing outcries against homosexuality, since often these outcries were targeted at homosexual actions that were not within the context of healthy, exclusive, or monogamous relationships.

To tie this into my vocation, I'd like to add that gay rights are extremely important to me. In middle school, I met my best friend in 7th grade reading class and bonded with him over our love for Ralph Lauren. I knew he was gay immediately, but he didn't come out to me until less than a month ago. I have always known and accepted that aspect of his being but never pressed the issue with him because I felt that there was so much more to him than simply his sexuality. That being said, the amount that I know he wrestled with his identity and the courage I know it took for him to accept it does not compare to the pain I feel for him that many people still will not accept his orientation as a natural, inborn, and perfectly healthy part of him, and it pains me to read Hays's account that all people born with such an orientation should remain celibate, since this option oppresses their personalities and potentials for the everyday human happinesses heterosexuals in Hays's world take for granted. If you told a Christian, heterosexual person living in Hays's world at birth that they could not find their soul mates, or they could never raise a family simply because you believed them to possess a sinful nature, I think that this person would 1.) feel deeply saddened and ashamed and 2.) head for the hills and leave the church behind them. I therefore see this (celibacy) as a joke of an alternative for homosexual people. Having followed gay rights court cases since middle school, I see that our society has shifted into a more progressive mindset regarding this issue because it has been brought into the public sphere, and more people are beginning to accept homosexuality as a genetic quality and not a learned, environmental retardation of "intended" sexuality. It is only by accepting healthy, consenting, mutually exclusive homosexual relationships in which homosexual actions may take place that we can truly accept a person's sexual orientation and respect his or her humanity. Anything less is a degradation.

If the synopsis wasn't enough for you...

http://moralmatricesandideologicalrealities.blogspot.com/p/supplemental-links.html

Final Synopsis Take-Aways from Haidt's "The Righteous Mind"

*Realize I may not be getting credit for this blog post but nonetheless find it important*

Haidt's final chapter, "Can't We All Disagree More Constructively?" presents a few final quips of wisdom and some intriguing visual diagrams of major ideological moral matrices.

The underlying "most sacred values" Haidt presents for the three major ideologies are particularly poignant:

1. The Liberal Moral Matrix values "care for victims of oppression" most.

2. The Libertarian Moral Matrix regards "individual liberty" the highest.

3. The Social Conservative Moral Matrix prizes preservation of "the institutions and traditions that sustain a moral community."

Underhandedly promoting Conservatism above the other two ideologies, Haidt still asserts that all three ideologies are meant to evolutionarily coexist. With this, he provides readers with the advice to have a "suspicion of moral monists" because "human societies are complex" and though this does not warrant ethical relativism, morality cannot be determined based solely off of one moral matrix. Referring back to the words of Rodney King in his introduction, Haidt concludes with his follow up of the question "Can we all get along?" with the response "We're all stuck here for a while, so let's try to work it out."


This conclusion offers a powerful close to his heavy and lengthy work, but in ending my synopsis, I'd like to refer back to one of Haidt's lines from "The Hive Switch:"

Asking, 'does happiness come from within or without?,' Haidt decides --
"Happiness comes from between. It comes from getting the right relationships between yourself and others, yourself and your work, and yourself and something larger than yourself… Once you understand our dual nature, including our groupish overlay, you can see why happiness comes from between…"

In the rest of my blog, I'd like to investigate this quote as a few others to develop my application of Haidt's theory to the happiness I hope to find in my vocation.

"Morality Binds and Blinds" -- Delving Into Haidt's Thesis

In his chapter "The Conservative Advantage," Haidt tries to convince readers through some compelling statistical evidence that political conservatives place greater emphasis on all of the moral foundations than do liberals, who focus only on the "care/harm" and "fairness/justice" foundations. Though his conclusion is compelling, however, I tend to disagree because his data does not seem to be based on a normative mean. Basically, it looks to me like he assumes correlation implies causation for his experiments, but the steps he has to take to get there seem too numerous and far-reaching for his conclusion to be sound. Or perhaps his work is just orienteered specifically to a liberal audience in defense of conservatism. Either way, for this reason, I have difficulty applying this part of the book to my vocation. The subsequent chapters of the book also posed this problem because I think that Haidt extrapolates on his numerical findings too much.

Moving forward, though, Haidt proceeds to discuss how evolutionary processes have given humans a tendency to act altruistically in groups. He then explains how "group-think" and groupish-ness promote close-minded self-righteousness not just on an individual level but also when people associate themselves with organizations, parties, or more historically -- tribally. To give humans a little more credit, though, Haidt develops something called a "hive-switch," a state that Haidt believes people go into about 10% of the time to transcend their selfish mental states and aid others for no personal benefit.

Applying these group notions to politics, Haidt elucidates how politically, each party is "partially right and partially wrong," but when logical agreement no longer seems attainable, we should cater to the emotion of the riders to find cooperation and understanding across party lines.

Applying these group notions to religion, Haidt rebukes his atheistic worldview to pronounce that the human "extraordinary ability to care about things beyond ourselves" and "circle around those things with other people" is "what religion is all about."

By illuminating the ability of morality to work in tandem with humanity's groupishness in "binding" and "blinding," Haidt develops the brunt of his thesis -- that psychologically, people should work to trigger the "hive switch" in others in order to bring about a greater sense of shared intentionality with fellow humans. This, he believes, will bring a more tolerant and truly righteous earth.

Continuing with the Righteous Mind -- Can Psychology Explain Religious Moral Belief?

In my reading of the first half of Haidt's “The Righteous Mind” thus far, I have examined the fundamental tenets of Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory. 

After establishing a dual processing model through the analogy of an elephant and a rider (the elephant serving as all intuitive processes and the rider acting as logical cognition,) Haidt draws his foundations theory off of the assumption that humans are motivated primarily by intuition and then justify their intuitive behaviors through rational thought. Applying this model to the confirmation bias present in modern-day partisanship, in his fourth chapter, Haidt argues "moral thinking is more like a politician searching for votes than a scientist searching for truth." 

Through a narrative of his eye-opening trip to India, Haidt, a self-proclaimed liberal, Atheist academic, explains how he came to realize the worth of alternative value systems not present in American liberalism today. An extension and revision of social anthropologist and psychologist Richard Shweder's three ethics of autonomy, community, and divinity, Haidt outlines his moral theory basing all human intuition on the following five foundations:

1. Care/harm

2. Fairness/cheating

3. Loyalty/betrayal

4. Authority/subversion

5. Sanctity/degradation

To provide evidence for his theory, Haidt describes numerous psychological studies where subjects are forced to deal with moral ambiguities. Some interesting take-aways (there are WAY too many to list,) are:

1. When no one is watching, everyone will cheat (but just a little bit.)

2. The only people who don't care what other people think are sociopaths. 

3. Everyone is just a little bit racist. Don't believe him? Take the implicit association test: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

4. The more education a person has, the more justifications they can find for their moral intuitions. The moral intuitions underlying the logical justifications of all individuals across different backgrounds, however, does not change. 

5. If a person answers moral questions near a garbage can or foul-smelling area, they will feel more disgust for ethically ambiguous situations.

6. If a person answers moral questions after putting on hand sanitizer, they will feel more respect for sanctity and purity for ambiguous situations and weigh their answers as such.

7. Both political ideologies think all five foundations are important, but American liberals prize the care/harm foundation and fairness/cheating foundations above the other three, while American conservatives value all five equally.

 On this last point, though I agree with this fact presented by Haidt, I think he extrapolates too much to reach an over-arching and therefore unsound moral conclusion. Since American conservatives value all five moral foundations, Haidt concludes that they are morally superior to liberals in terms of policy in covering a broader span of human ethics. I disagree, though, because Haidt doesn't establish a baseline for an ideal level of value of each of the foundations. His conclusion hence isn't very normative. Having an equal value of all five foundations doesn't imply superiority -- Haidt fails to investigate whether or not some moral foundations may be more crucial or fundamental than others. 

To apply this reading to Biblical Heritage class, I will now compare one aspect of Haidt's theory to a Biblical outlook. 

From a Christian perspective, Haidt’s deriving of the sanctity foundation solely from the disgust emotion triggered by “waste products and diseased people” and “taboo ideas,” presents a narrow-minded assessment of the human morality underlying genuine religious belief (146). As I referenced before, through his research trip to India that changed his previously secular, atheistic worldview, Haidt portrays how he awoke this latent moral foundation within himself, placing a greater value on traditional societal structures and the notion of purity. Through interviews with Hindu priests and a first-hand look at the impact of religion on Indian culture, Haidt explains how the ethic of divinity implies “an order to the universe,” and that all things “should be treated with the reverence or disgust that they deserve” (122). He then reduces the motive for all religious consecration to this proper treatment of objects and people with regard to their deserved reverence or disgust. Any religious believer, however, might tell you that there is a much more intuitive element to his or her innate divinity foundation. The inborn notion that the complexity, simplicity, or beauty in form of some entity can turn one’s thoughts to a divine creator, a term deemed  “sensus divinitatis” by John Calvin, represents an emotional moral intuition that Haidt’s theory fails to address. Throughout history, the tendency of different cultures to develop religious faiths may aid in “binding groups together,” but it does not completely explain the universal conception of these groups to bind themselves around metaphysical deities instead of simply sacrilegious objects. On both the group and the individual levels, therefore, Haidt’s theory provides no interactive explanation for “sensus divinitatis.” In approaching the sanctity/degradation foundation from a purely psychological perspective, Haidt succeeds in appreciating religious belief but fails to identify with it, explaining the external reasons that an individual might value the purity of life but neglecting to fully realize the internal virtue inculcated by this moral foundation; hence, Haidt misses a piece to the puzzle of human morality, or he at least misses the mark of identifying with Evangelicals. 

This critical reading of the "The Righteous Mind,' is important in synthesizing its key points with my vocational aspirations. Though I think conceptualizing human thought categorically through the moral foundations theory could prove incredibly beneficial in being an attorney, someone who is expected to determine the motivations of people in regard to legal issues, it is also important to recognize that Haidt's words are not an infallible holy grail.  

Psychology may explain the span of human intuitions, but can it explain the depth?  Is there more to human thought and ideological disagreement than explanatory power?     

These are questions I hope to investigate as my reading continues.

 

           

Moral Foundations - A Synopsis of the 1st Quarter of "The Righteous Mind"

In the introduction and first two chapters of his work "The Righteous Mind," moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt prefaces his conception of social empiricism with schools of thought that serve as past precedents for his landmark social theory, proceeding to explain the initial tenets upon which his theory rests – the illusions of absolutely objective reasoning and moral judgment.

Haidt begins quoting the cliché phrase coined by Rodney King “Can we all get along?” following it up by explicating his authorial intent to provide a framework to think about the divisiveness of politics and religion given the premise that “human nature is not just intrinsically moral” but “intrinsically moralistic, critical, and judgmental” (XIX). Describing human cognitive faculties as “primate minds with a hivish overlay,” Haidt elucidates his hope to provide tools to help his readers better understand themselves and their neighbors, in order to avoid the hypocrisy detailed in his reference of Matthew 7:3-5  (XXII, XXIII).

Opening Chapter 1 with a coming-of-age narrative of his venture into moral psychology, Haidt explores the field’s foundations. First, he defines a nativist approach to moral reasoning, the notion that ethics are innate entities bestowed to individuals by genetics or God. He moves onto an empirical approach, the view that humans learn all moral reasoning from authority figures and societal structures. Next, Haidt examines a rationalist approach, the prevailing popular social theory among modern psychologists of the past three decades. A rational model holds that “kids figure out morality for themselves” primarily through interactions with other children, and its precepts were established through Jean Piaget’s studies of ethical developmental stages in children (6). After delineating these three precedents, Haidt initiates his argument for a new moral psychology model, social empiricism.

Through a series of anthropological examples, Haidt proves that often human intuitions override logical reasoning, showing that our reasoning cannot be understood simply in terms of inherent and acquired learning but must also be comprehended through six natural moral foundations that meld somewhat by learned social conventions. Declaring the interdependent relationship between objective reasoning and moral judgment, Haidt establishes his resolve to prove that oftentimes our perception shapes our logic, and our logic justifies our natural emotional responses, not the other way around. In this way, he starts to justify his tongue-in-cheek title that our minds are naturally righteous in the sense that they have distinct ethical underpinnings but also in the sense that they are self-righteously predisposed to clinging to their beliefs as exclusively right and the opposing beliefs of others as objectively wrong.

This book, expectedly, is pretty heavy, and though I enjoy it, I think it’s important after reading its contents thus far to reflect not only by summarizing them but also by relating them to my own life, so as to understand Haidt’s scientific theory on a more personal basis. Though I plan to do this more extensively throughout my reading, I’d like to lay out my reasons for choosing this piece in the same way that Haidt introduces his conception of the social empiricist theory.

First, I have always thought of myself as a relatively open-minded individual but struggled to reconcile this disposition with concise personal ideologies. In other words, I feel that when I don’t “take a stand” on an issue because I can see both sides, perhaps I am seeing both sides all too well, because my motivated fellow Poli Sci major classmates perceive my views as wishy-washy or weak.

In many ways, Haidt’s model justifies my logical “wishy-washy” decisiveness because before reading this book, I had already distinguished essential moral foundations in my own life but recognized that other people have different motivating factors. Haidt’s theory has clearly expounded and interpreted these factors as moral foundations in a way that makes sense to me, but it hardly remedies the hypocrisy seen in exchanges between individuals who don’t appreciate the ethical foundations of others, a subset that I would classify as the hefty majority of people.

To this point, even though I don’t think Haidt’s theory offers the alchemical gold of remedying ideological disagreements, I do think that it will at least help me pursue the vocation I already wished to practice as an unbiased and judicial defender of legality and pursuant of objective justice in a very subjective world. Through the lens of social empiricism, I hope to learn to better logically deduce and negotiate between differing ideological realities in order to one day be a more effective attorney, and I can’t wait to read more to work towards this goal.