People On Opposite Sides of the Political Spectrum Seem Crazy To Each Other
Because they don’t understand or accept the fundamental outlook of the other
In 2020, I published a story just ahead of the election about what I’d learned from cognitive scientist George Lakoff’s book called Moral Politics. It helped me to understand why some of the things that core conservatives do and believe look somewhere between cruel and insane to me, but make perfect sense to them. After having a conversation about this today with a friend, I decided it was time, on the eve of another election cycle, to talk about these ideas again. All quotes, unless otherwise noted, are from Lakoff’s book.
Although there are more than two schools of political thought in the United States and voters are not a monolith, it’s useful for this discussion to divide them into core liberal beliefs and core conservative ones. When we look at the social dynamics that make for “moral behavior” in each, we can quickly see that these are not just two different systems of values, but two entirely different ways of looking at the world.
Both liberal and conservative values and belief systems, what Lakoff refers to as moral systems, can best be understood as two different types of family structures; Strict Father Morality and Nurturant…
