“After two and a half millennia, it’s rare to come across a genuinely new idea on the nature of morality, but in this book Josh Greene advances not one but several… Moral Tribes is a landmark in our understanding of morality and the moral sense.” – Steven Pinker, prof. of psychology, Harvard University
“Brilliant and enlightening… This book should be widely read and discussed.” – Peter Singer, Prof of bioethics, Princeton University
“A masterpiece… a landmark work brimming with originality and insight that also happens to be wickedly fun to read.” – Daniel Gilbert, prof. of psychology, Harvard University
We live in an increasingly polarised world. Many on the left have moved to the Regressive end of the spectrum, and not a few on the right have moved to the Fanatic end of it. It is not uncommon to see people dig in their heels and refuse to heed the voice of reason or evaluate the evidence when it comes to matters of morality. Our political beliefs, our religious beliefs, and even our beliefs about the climate and the very nature of reality are informed by our moral views. So it’s no exaggeration to say that Joshua’ Greene’s latest book, Moral Tribes: Emotion Reason and the Gap between Us and Them is a hugely important book that could not have come at a more opportune time.
Using personal anecdotes, historical stories, delightful metaphors and insightful analogies, Joshua Greene provides a framework for thinking about the numerous moral issues we’re confronted with, and drives home his central thesis: that Utilitarianism has had a bad rep, and far from being outdated and outmoded, it is the best – and possibly, only – hope we have of developing a pan-cultural meta-morality.
Greene makes his case in a methodical and logical manner – reminiscent of Peter Singer’s extraordinary efforts to build a coherent sense of ethics in his 1979 seminal work, Practical Ethics. Like Singer, and after the fashion of Socrates, Greene invites the reader to accept a working definition of morality. He proposes Morality as a suite of psychological capacities designed by biological and cultural evolution to promote cooperation. He goes to explain that different groups have differing moral intuitions, and different unconscious biases and this is ultimately the source of much of our disagreements and conflicts on issues of morality.
To help us understand the nature of these conflicts better, Greene employs three metaphors: The first is the Tragedy of the Commons (which illustrates the nature of me vs us disagreements); the second is the Tragedy of the Commonsense Morality (which explains the nature of us vs them disagreements); and the third is the camera metaphor, which essentially posits that the human brain has two modes of reaching moral conclusions – an automatic mode (essentially, our gut reaction, or instinctive response to issues of morality) and a manual mode (guided by thought, reason, reflection, and evidence). The key to making an optimal use of our moral brain is to decide when to stop trusting our gut feelings and when to shift into manual mode.
The problem facing our species is that we’re no longer at the mercy of the elements and no longer live in fear of wild predators. Today, the greatest threat to humanity comes from human beings. We are our own most deadly enemy. Many, if not most, of our biggest problems are solvable – but human choice and human morality get in the way. In comparison to previous eras and previous epochs, our world today has made enormous progress in reducing conflict and hatred. And we’ve made remarkable progress in the Rights Revolution – rights for women, gays, children, animals, criminals and so on. However, there is still much room for improvement.
Greene makes the point that many evolutionary biologists, like Richard Dawkins, make: that we are a remarkably caring species (something we’ve inherited from our primate ancestors). However it’s important to note that we care more for our own relatives and our own tribes. That’s not to say we don’t care or can’t care for strangers. With the support of numerous studies and experiments, Greene shows the reader that most humans under ordinary circumstances are reluctant to harm strangers (so much so that even pretending to do so under laboratory conditions causes our veins to constrict). We are no doubt aggressive. But our aggression is nothing compared to what it could be. Greene’s book is essentially optimistic that given the right education, and given the right focus on empathy and compassion, our species can push itself into a magic corner of unprecedented cooperation and moral decency.
In addition to various strategies for examining moral reasoning, an elucidation of deep pragmatism, and numerous psychological insights into human behaviour, Greene also makes a very interesting point about the difference between the two big tribes in modern America: liberals and conservatives (or Democrats and Republicans). He elaborates on the ideas put forward by Jonathan Haidt in his book The Righteous Mind. Haidt identifies six moral foundations: care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, liberty/oppression, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation. Each foundation corresponds to a moral emotion. He compares these foundations to chemical taste receptors in the tongue. Liberals, it would seem, have an impoverished moral palate (as compared to conservatives). Liberals seem to care as much as conservatives about the first four moral foundations, but don’t have much sensitivity to the last two. Liberals seem to be less bothered by things like gay marriage, fornication, patriotism etc. This is because of the impact of Enlightenment values and Western moral philosophers like Bentham and Kant.
But does that make liberals morally deficient? Greene says an emphatic No. Rather, it makes their moral tastes more refined. But Greene also points out that if we want to have a deeper understanding of human behaviour and if we are a political candidate seeking broad voter appeal, then it is hugely advantageous to be aware of and cater to all the six moral foundations among the electorate.
In a cogent and disinterested discourse on the issue of abortion (as a sample case of a moral issue on which people have strong views) Greene makes the point that most people hold moral views on such issues without being aware of the reasons for their views. When probed, most people’s reasoning falls apart, and they fall back on the issue of “rights”. The right to “life” as opposed to the right to “choose.” But Greene makes the point that talk of rights is not an argument per se. One cannot base one’s reasons on rights. If we are to defend the rights of gays, women, et al. then we mustn’t do it with feeling. We must do it with thinking. He defends liberalism and deep pragmatism as the right way forward on this front.
The ancient Greeks had a maxim inscribed in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi: Gnothi Seauton which means, “Know thyself.” The Russian playwright, Anton Chekov, points out that to become better we have to know what we’re like. If we wish to live in a more compassionate and caring society; if we wish to see enlightened humans take considered and thoughtful moral decisions; and if we want society to be based on the right balance between reason and emotion, then we can’t sit around expecting it to happen on its own. We’ve got to make active efforts to educate and enlighten our children so that they grow up to be thoughtful, responsible, self-aware moral citizens. We’ve got to make a concerted effort to eschew tribalism and parochial thinking. How do we do that? Being informed and aware is the first step; and Joshua Greene’s book is an excellent place to start.
