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.
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