{"id":21651,"date":"2024-05-11T17:37:29","date_gmt":"2024-05-12T00:37:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=21651"},"modified":"2026-07-05T15:01:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-05T22:01:10","slug":"a-table-of-moral-polarities-initial-take","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2024\/05\/11\/a-table-of-moral-polarities-initial-take\/","title":{"rendered":"A Table of Moral Polarities, Initial Take"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\"> td { padding-left: 0px; font-size:11px; } <\/style>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been making notes over the past month for a table of moral polarities, in order to align and summarize some of the concepts and the many news examples I&#8217;ve compiled lately. Recall how I&#8217;ve mentioned that certain attitudes, especially on the right, seem to go together. Obvious ones like religious fundamentalism and being anti-science and anti-gay, and others not so obvious. So let me set up a little table, a first draft, to start to compile some of these terms and attitudes.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/BerkeleyPier_800x600.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/BerkeleyPier_800x600.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><!--more-->I tried to see if WordPress can create a table somehow, and apparently it can, if you switch to &#8220;block editing&#8221;; but doing so seems to risk being stuck in some new editing mode I don&#8217;t want to keep. So instead I&#8217;m going to construct a very basic html table, in text mode of editing a post, and see how that works. &#8230;It seems to work fine, except that the result doesn&#8217;t show vertical borders between cells. Nor can I edit it in the way I can with a table in Word, using tab to move between cells and create new rows. Oh, well, let me try this for now. Further comments after the table.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m putting Right on the left because I always prefer chronological progressions, in tables, left to right.<\/p>\n<table>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"319\">Right<\/td>\n<td width=\"319\">Left<\/td>\n<td width=\"319\">Third<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"319\">Republican<\/td>\n<td width=\"319\">Democratic<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"319\">Red<\/td>\n<td width=\"319\">Blue<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"319\">Traditional<\/td>\n<td width=\"319\">Progressive<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"319\">Conservative<\/td>\n<td width=\"319\">Liberal<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"319\">Tribal<\/td>\n<td width=\"319\">Metropolitan\/Cosmopolitan<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"319\">Small town<\/td>\n<td width=\"319\">Big city<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"319\">Monocultural<\/td>\n<td width=\"319\">Multi-cultural<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"319\">Grand Narrative: The struggle to return to a golden past<\/td>\n<td width=\"319\">Grand Narrative: The struggle for equality and happiness [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2015\/12\/08\/more-notes-and-comments-about-haidts-the-righteous-mind\/\">Jonathan Haidt<\/a>]<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"319\">In-group prioritization (e.g. the Ten Commandments don\u2019t apply to out-groups)<\/td>\n<td width=\"319\">Out-group acceptance; expansion of the moral circle<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"319\">Restricted moral circle<\/td>\n<td width=\"319\">Expanded moral circle<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"319\">Restriction of options<\/td>\n<td width=\"319\">Expansion of options<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"319\">Ideology; assertions<\/td>\n<td width=\"319\">Conclusions from evidence; science<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"319\">Anti-education (or home education) to avoid conflicts with tribal mythology and values<\/td>\n<td width=\"319\">Education about the reality of the world (e.g. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2021\/11\/30\/l-a-universal-education\/\">here<\/a>)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"319\">Superstition, animism, seeing every disaster as a portent from God<\/td>\n<td width=\"319\">Acknowledgement of reality, awareness of coincidence, and the randomness of the universe<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"319\">Short-term thinking<\/td>\n<td width=\"319\">Long-term thinking<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"319\">Personal needs<\/td>\n<td width=\"319\">The greater good, in a global world<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"319\">Simplicity [Simplex]<\/td>\n<td width=\"319\">Complexity [Complex; Multiplex]<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"319\">Black and white thinking<\/td>\n<td width=\"319\">Understanding shades of gray, and even colors<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"319\">Zero-sum games, e.g. as when Trump thinks for him to win, everyone else must lose<\/td>\n<td width=\"319\">Non-zero-sum interactions that have driven human history and progress<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"319\">Conformist, to align with traditional values and the tribe; rejecting diversity<\/td>\n<td width=\"319\">Individualist, in the sense of allowing people to live as they like; encouraging diversity<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"319\">Rugged individualist<\/td>\n<td width=\"319\">Collectivist minded when necessary, to solve big problems the rugged individualists cannot<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"319\">Backwards<\/td>\n<td width=\"319\">Forwards<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"319\">Commonsense (tribal) morality<\/td>\n<td width=\"319\">Deep pragmatism (utilitarianism) [Joshua Greene]<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"319\">Obedience to rules to avoid punishment; conformity to group behavior<\/td>\n<td width=\"319\">social contracts; universal ethical principles [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2020\/06\/26\/notes-for-the-book-hierarchy-of-morality\/\">hierarchy of morality<\/a>]<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td width=\"319\">Prone to conspiracy theories; unaware of how complex the world is<\/td>\n<td width=\"319\">Acknowledgement of complexity, coincidence, and the implausibility of most conspiracy theories<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<p>A point that applies to this entire exercise is that things are not black and white; there are shades of gray, even color, in the way humans deal with reality (while conservatives tend toward black and white, which is so much simpler to deal with).<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sure I will keep revising this table, perhaps adding columns to acknowledge the extremes at both ends. (Fundamentalism on the right; extreme identity politics on the left.) And the next step is to add the various takes on morality and rationalism from Pinker, Kahneman, and Greene. It&#8217;s remarkably how well they align with the polarities already compiled. Not to mention propensity for conspiracy thinking.<\/p>\n<p>Actually, I&#8217;ll probably promote this post to a page. I&#8217;ve long that I&#8217;ve needed to summarize my conclusions about life, the universe, and everything (so to speak), that is, all the posts I&#8217;ve done here over the past decade, to leave some kind of legacy for those (everyone) who haven&#8217;t read my blog. And this post is a first step.<\/p>\n<p>\\\\<\/p>\n<p>3jun24: adding numerous other items&#8230;<br \/>\n12may24: added three rows, for Republican\/Democrat, moral circles, and black&amp;white thinking vs grays and colors.<br \/>\n14may24: added red\/blue, access to guns\/access to abortions<br \/>\n15may24: added the grand narratives<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been making notes over the past month for a table of moral polarities, in order to align and summarize some of the concepts and the many news examples I&#8217;ve compiled lately. Recall how I&#8217;ve mentioned that certain attitudes, especially &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2024\/05\/11\/a-table-of-moral-polarities-initial-take\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,86,60,41,7,2,15,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-history","category-meaning","category-morality","category-philosophy","category-science","category-science-fiction","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21651"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28174,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21651\/revisions\/28174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}