In-Group Loyalty

(NOTE: This is an attempt to re-create a post I deleted by mistake and is no doubt much inferior to the original).

I get to the subject of in-group loyalty last because of all the conservative values Haidt espouses, it is both the most appealing and the most dangerous.

The value of in-group loyalty

I believe this value has more resonance for liberals than perhaps Haidt recognizes.  After all, liberals are generally repulsed by the libertarian vision of society (or at least the Randian version of libertarianism) that equates liberty with atomization of the individual and dismisses the wish to belong to anything larger as tyrannical "collectivism."  Liberals, I think, share with conservatives a recognition that society becomes very cold when people exist only as atomized individuals, when their interactions are purely commercial, and when obligations are limited to refraining from crime and keeping one's contracts.  But what is the alternative.  Liberals don't have that much to offer beyond government programs to soften the harshness of libertarianism.  Conservatives, Haidt seems to suggest, offer something better -- in-group loyalty.

What in-group are we talking about?  Haidt emphasizes mostly the nation and advises against immigration, bilingualism, and multi-culturalism as undermining a sense of national identity.  But he also acknowledges that the United States is too large to have a very tight sort of unity.  Invariably, there will be smaller in-groups that command people's loyalty.  Families are the most obvious one.  Churches and local communities are others, as are social clubs and civic organizations.  Another that conservatives notably dislike are unions.  These in-groups that command people's loyalty are the glue that holds society together.  This excellent article in the National Journal describes the general breakdown that occurs when social bonds are loosened. 

Conservatives have a lot to teach us about maintaining those bonds.  The Journal article remarks, for instance, that a lot of appeal of megachurches is so much their theology (conservative and Evangelical), but their ability to provide a real community in which members take care of each other.  And what could be more conservative than a traditional small town, where interactions are more personal than in the outside world, where friends help friends and neighbors know their neighbors, where you can always drop over to your neighbor's house to borrow something or ask your neighbor to watch your house when you are away?  This may, by the way, be the answer to the charity paradox.  Haidt confirms that liberals score higher on compassion and empathy than conservatives.  But conservatives (as they like to point out) donate more to charity in terms of both time and money.  Could the difference be a stronger sense of in-group loyalty?  Having a strong, supportive in-group, after all, makes people more charitable (at least toward other members). 

Liberals recognize the need for tighter-knit in-groups and are working on building new ones.  For instance, I belong to several dance groups that have also organized to help out members who had a new baby, had recent surgery, or were severely ill.  Others I know are forming liberal churches that deliberately downplay doctrine in favor of mutual assistance and community building.  And some of my friends live in Santa Fe Commons, a "cohousing project" in which members cluster their houses around a common plaza, work on gardens together, watch each other's children, serve common meals twice a week, all have mandatory chores, and hold regular meetings.  The trouble with all these approaches is that they are new and unfamiliar, thus uncomfortable to a lot of people; they are often too expensive  for many people; and they are sufficiently "liberal' in focus to be off putting to people who don't share their political outlook.  But all means, let us develop new types of in-group loyalty, but let us work with old ones as well.

The limits of in-group loyalty

In-group loyalty is essential to addressing our social problems, but it is not sufficient to answer them on its own, especially in its conservative or libertarian iteration.  Haidt believes that conservatives and libertarians have been able to make an alliance despite libertarians' general indifference to loyalty, authority and the sacred largely because they share similar notions of justice.  In particular, they equate justice with karma, as meted out by the free market.  But both presumably would acknowledge that the free market's karmic mechanism is not perfect, that bad things do sometimes happen to good people.  Then what?  Both are dead set against a government funded safety net.  Conservatives say in-group loyalty -- rely on one's family, church and community rather than government programs.  Libertarians say follow the free market -- migrate from troubled to prosperous areas.  These approaches are not entirely contradictory.  It is possible to rely on one's in-group for individual misfortunes like illness or accidents and on market-dictated migration for larger disruptions like plant closings or economic downturns. 

But that highlights an awkward fact. Except for its role as disburser of karma, the free market is not very conservative.  It has no regard for tradition, or for in-group loyalty, or for non-economic authority, or for the sacred.  When asked what is weakening our social bond, conservatives usually say big government, and its social programs that undermine more traditional forms of social support.  But that is to reverse causality.  The free market, by demanding mobility and constant change, is weakening our social bond.  Government social programs are merely an attempt to step in where more traditional forms of support are insufficient.

Tight-knit in-groups are limited in their ability to solve our problems because many such problems are simply too large for such groups to handle.  Turning inward tends to mean turning one's back on the outside world, but the outside world does not go away.  If one plant closing can destroy a whole community, then it can destroy that community's tight-knit structure and support mechanisms.  The megachurches the Journal article praises tend to be "non-denominational," not in the sense of lacking standards of orthodoxy, but in the sense of not being part of a larger denomination.  A Lutheran or Methodist leaving the community can find a Lutheran or Methodist church anywhere.  A megachurch member will have to start all over again.  Many problems, from market forces to natural disasters can overwhelm any one community's resources, both social and financial. 

Furthermore, in-group loyalty is not just limited.  It has a very dark side.  I will get to that in my next post.