Are Religious Conservatives the Real Free-riders?

[robinturner]

Evolutionary psychologists are currently trying to find a theory that explains moral behaviour in evolutionary terms. This is hardly surprising, since evolutionary psychologists try to explain everything in evolutionary terms, but it is turning up some interesting ideas. I recently read Jonathan Haidt's article "Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion," which gives a good overview of evolutionary accounts of morality combined with the author's own theories about religion. One contradiction he grapples with is that we think of contractual societies (individualistic, pluralistic and tolerant) as promoting happiness, while at an individual level, "religious believers in the United States are happier, healthier, longer-lived, and more generous to charity and to each other than are secular people." Of course you can have religious beliefs in a contractual society, but the kind of society that religious conservatives would like to see is much closer to what Haidt calls a "beehive society" or what is elsewhere known as a collectivist culture. Such cultures value unity of belief and conformity to preset social roles over individual desires.

Most of the research on happiness shows that societies with an individualist rather than a collectivist culture are, on the whole, happier. Contrary to popular belief, people in Western Europe or North America are happier than people in economically comparable Far Eastern societies like Japan or South Korea - see Ahuvia's article "Individualism/Collectivism and Cultures of Happiness" (Journal of Happiness Studies, 3:4). On the other hand, if Haidt is correct, conservative individuals within liberal societies may be happier than average, despite the fact that if their values were accepted by the whole society, everyone would be less happy.

This leads me to another point that Haidt touches on, the free-rider problem. Some evolutionary psychologists posit morality (or "pro-social behaviour") as an adaptive mechanism which enables certain groups to enhance their survival potential. The problem with this is that some animals in the group will exploit this by reaping the benefits of pro-social behaviour without actually engaging in that behaviour themselves - free-riders, in other words. (Incidentally, the free-rider problem is one reason why Dawkins rejects the idea of group selection, but as Haidt argues, he does not have a very strong case, and it looks like Kropotkin got it more-or-less right over a hundred years ago.)

The popular view of free-riders is of dirty hippies, "welfare queens" and other scapegoats. But while religious conservatives look like good members of society - they work, give to charity and (reluctantly) pay taxes - it could be that they are the real free-riders. The particular beliefs they hold enable them to enjoy aspects of the good life Haidt mentions, such as health and happiness. But if their relentless attempts to remodel society were to succeed and everyone were to be a religious conservative, then the result might well be a net drop in happiness. Calvin's Geneva wasn't exactly a merry place.

Comments

[cassielsander.livejournal.com]

This may not be quite the same thing, but I am reminded of the comic book version of V For Vendetta, in which the Stephen Rea detective character, himself quite conservative in a communitarian, non-self-seeking sort of way, has a psychedelic episode in which he realizes how much he misses all the minorities and diversities that the triumph of his kind of thinking have destroyed. Those in charge of the destruction were of course much more corrupt than he, but his conservatism allowed his leaders to use him to destroy those he now realizes were an indispensable part of the nation he loved.

This in turn puts me in mind of a passage from Czeslaw Milosz's autobiography Native Realm, where one of his antisemetic older relatives complains that Poland is no longer worth living in: "Without the Jews, it's so BORING."

On a totally different note, I think the free rider analysis could work on leftists too (called liberals here in the U.S. but no where else in the world). I imagine most of those anti-G8 protesters would be less happy in a country where there views held total sway.

Of course, this "moderates try to keep everyone from doing what they want to do, for their own good" thinking, which might be similar to my favorite motto: "liberals are those who believe the means justify the ends", would make sense from someone whose young adulthood was lived in the 1990s U.S., where it seemed like a paralyzed government variously split between the parties produced more peace and prosperity than we'd had in a long time.

[shmivejournal.livejournal.com]

I believe "happiness" to be somewhat incidental to humanity. It's only there to get you to fulfill your survival and procreative goals without restriction.

Collectivist societies tend to put formal regulations on such things and so they are "less happy"

But, there is a difference between a survival trait and a happiness trait. Organized religion has numerous survival traits built right in. So go forth, and multiply.

[solri.livejournal.com]

You are of course right that happiness traits and survival traits are different, and occasionally contradictory (in the article I cite, Ahuvia speculates that collectivism arose because it had survival value for certain kinds of societies). And this is the problem with evolutionary psychology: it can sometimes explain how we come to regard some things as good, but can't tell us whether they actually are good. We can agree that in most cases survival is a good, but once survival of a group is more-or-less assured, other goods take priority, and there is no guarantee that these are such as would be achieved by following the kinds of behaviour that evolved to ensure group survival. Now I'm not claiming that happiness is the ultimate good (unless you adopt some eudaimonic view of happiness that makes it the ultimate good by definition) but it certainly is a good.

[solri.livejournal.com]

"liberals are those who believe the means justify the ends"

Love it!

[killingmoon.livejournal.com]

this is really interesting.
I'm wondering how "happiness" is being defined...
is it something that cuts across cultural boundaries with similar aspects,
or is it something that is defined differently in individualistic
vs. collective society?
For example, aspects of happiness in the U.S. may be defined
as wealth and success in career, but in a third-world country,
happiness might be defined as something much different.
I imagine health would be perceived an aspect of "the good life"
across the board, but in the many countries with poor health care,
this might be an unattainable ideal.
I really don't know how people in different countries
would classify happiness. Any ideas?
Or please point me in the direction of an article which talks about this...

[solri.livejournal.com]

You're right that happiness is a difficult concept to pin down. The research I refer to tends to use the term "subject well-being", which amounts more-or-less to how happy people think they are. Ed Diener, who pioneered SWB research has a good FAQ (http://www.psych.uiuc.edu/~ediener/faq.htm). There's some cross-cultural data on the World Database of Happiness (http://www1.eur.nl/fsw/happiness/).

[trochee.livejournal.com]

this reminds me of the anti-vaccination crowd in the US, which touts the healthiness of their babies (no deliberate exposure to nasty pathogens! yay!) but can only really get away without the vaccination because the babies they go to playgroup with are all doing their vaccinations (no neighbor babies with measles! yay!)

Seems like the same sort of free-ride.

[baal-kriah.livejournal.com]

Calvin's Geneva wasn't exactly a merry place.

Especially for early Unitarians. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servetus)

[solri.livejournal.com]

Ouch. Only the old-fashioned language is enough to distinguish this from something from the latest Osama bin Laden video:

Whoever shall maintain that wrong is done to heretics and blasphemers in punishing them makes himself an accomplice in their crime and guilty as they are. There is no question here of man's authority; it is God who speaks, and clear it is what law he will have kept in the church, even to the end of the world. Wherefore does he demand of us a so extreme severity, if not to show us that due honor is not paid him, so long as we set not his service above every human consideration, so that we spare not kin, nor blood of any, and forget all humanity when the matter is to combat for His glory

[baal-kriah.livejournal.com]

Quite so. Fanatics think alike no matter what their ostensible ideology. I shudder whenever I hear someone mistake "certainty, not faith, while in life, upon death" as a general prescription instead of a very specific promise about one issue (i.e., death). It's as if they've never seen this (http://books.google.com/books?id=ma7oPMB7TVAC&pg=PA112&lpg=PA112&dq=doubt+even+that+thou+doubtest&source=web&ots=zhzQZdelk_&sig=YtswVfbi6P9Uq94qnvDd-zka4h4).

You're right

[brendamobley.livejournal.com]

While I haven't worked out the sense in which these people are free riding, that is indeed what they are doing. Religious fanatics have a world view in which they are in the pure center and everyone else is pushed downward and away from hierarchial rank. They also feel entitled to the money, land and labor of others, a tendency only recently held in check by putting the idea into law that the members of all religions are equal. On a private level, it's always been the religous types who try to corner me into situations where they'll claim I owe them money. They have an incredible sense of entitlement, combined with a tendency to shame anyone who doesn't feed their narcissism. In addition, in America they can easily use their religiosity to gain prestige and position, while denying the same advantage to atheists and members of minority religions.

Re: You're right

[solri.livejournal.com]

No wonder they're happy, in that case ;-)