Biofoundationalism I: Moral Foundations Utility Theory & Hypermoralization

Cthulhu swims left, because he has nowhere else to go

One year ago to the month, I published the first essay of my Biofoundationalism series on Twitter. The series has since gotten traction (currently eleven essays), and I get messages on it often. I’ve discussed these concepts in recent podcasts, and it’s time for them to come to Substack. I’m not going to link to the original essays, because I don’t want you to read ahead. I will be rewriting each piece and adding more to them in the process.

This is a multi-part series of essays on why I believe the well-known political cycles of nations and their societal shifts occur. It incorporates two frameworks I’ve created: Biofoundationalism and Moral Foundations Utility Theory.

Biofoundationalism I: Moral Foundations Utility Theory & Hypermoralization

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ABSTRACT

Biofoundationalism:

There are moral genotypes and political phenotypes. Your moral foundations are rooted in your temperament, and your temperament is biologically derived. The biological informs the temperamental, the temperamental informs the moral, and the moral informs the political. Moral beliefs are not a choice, and political stances are not an informed decision.

Biological traits (differing brain structures) that shape temperaments are evenly distributed across human collectives (societies), but rarely evenly expressed. Whether a political phenotype can be fully expressed depends on the economic prosperity of a nation. The environment dictates the expression, as it does with many genotypes and how their phenotypes manifest; this is formally known as gene-environment interaction. Humans are not an exception to nature’s rules.

Moral Foundations Utility Theory:

Conservative moral foundations take hold when you’re in the desert, canteen half-empty, scanning the horizon for threats. Liberal moral foundations bloom when you’re in the garden of plenty, a place where you can focus more on poetry and take survival as a given. The spectrum between these two poles informs the same spectrum of a society’s political expression.

Societies begin at conservative moral foundations out of necessity, then drift inexorably to liberal ones as resources and luxuries accrue. This drift is rooted in utility, is healthy, and a sign of success.

Conservative moral foundations are inherently order-based, hierarchical, loyalty-minded, and focused on accruing resources. You abide by these because you have to.

Liberal moral foundations are inherently fairness-motivated, resource-distributing, and harm-avoiding. You abide by these because you get to.

You cannot redistribute resources if you don’t have any. You cannot concern yourself with protecting the weak when you’re fighting for survival.

A nation only oriented by rightwing/conservative/masculine moral foundations is either at war or poor; a nation only oriented by leftwing/liberal/feminine moral foundations is decadent and lavishly comfortable. There is no hedonism in poverty, and no discipline in decadence. The environment dictates the expression of a society’s moral emphasis.

This produces the well-known leftward shift in a nation’s values over time, because liberalism advances as prosperity does, because the utility of liberal moral foundations increases as economic success does. Prosperity feminizes, hardship masculinizes. Masculine because you have to, feminine because you get to. Hard times, strong men, good times, weak men…

Thus Cthulhu swims left… because he has nowhere else to go.

However, a constant leftward shift eventually degrades into widespread entropic behavior, erodes society’s behavioral immune system, and results in a forceful reset rightwards. Returning to an order-based morality, and correcting the entropy that liberal excess created.

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Moral Foundations: The Conservative & Liberal Dyad

There is objective truth in STEM, and competing moral foundations talking past each other for most else. These are the moral foundations and their conservative vs liberal emphasis, taken from Jon Haidt’s The Righteous Mind, a book I highly recommend.

All of these moral foundations are important; there is embedded evolutionary wisdom as to why human collectives advocate them and why they are evenly distributed. Ideally, a healthy society will have an equal expression of them; when certain ones are militantly emphasized over others, an unhealthy one takes shape.

When there is such a clear behavioral bifurcation and empirically even split amongst animals within a natural system, it is self-evidently a natural dyad. Masculine and feminine. Conservative and liberal. These are dyads. Friendly foes. Synergistically antagonistic. Adversarially complementary. Symbiotically combative. A salutary equilibrium is found when balance is.

That differing morality (genotypes) results in different political affiliations (phenotypes) is a Darwinian result of evolutionarily useful behaviors for a species evolved for group strategy and coordination. The conservative/liberal split in societies is not, at all, a product of people finding all the right books (the other side clearly have read all the wrong books) and coming to the correct, high-minded, duly educated opinions driven only by “the facts” (the other side of course clearly just needs some better facts).

If we can figure out your political beliefs with a brain scan and amygdala size, we are having a biological discussion, not a political one. This will be deconstructed in Biofoundationalism II.

Salutary.io

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Hypermoralization and Moral Foundations Utility Theory

When a society has toxic moral overemphasis, what I’m calling hypermoralization, it starts to hold one or two moral foundations above all else, and injects them into apolitical things. During hypermoralized periods, government institutions, corporations, and media have an obsession with one or two moral foundations and disregard the others.

Hypermoralization is a fever that inflames one moral foundation at the expense of the others: from an all-consuming pursuit of order to the monomaniacal quest for perfect equity. The environment dictates the expression.

• During liberal hypermoralization, everything is about equality and fairness. For example: Disney movies that force leftwing themes, corporate ads that obsessively promote diversity and inclusion. The legal system begins to take it easy on criminals, in the interest of “fairness”. An obnoxious, omnipresent moralizing message politicizes aspects of life that should be nonpartisan. This only exists within decadent environments. Feminine because you get to.

• During conservative hypermoralization, everything is about sanctity, loyalty, and order. You get intense nationalism and in-group focused, patriotic displays in domains that should be neutral. You get wartime-style propaganda and “I want YOU to enlist in the US army” energy permeating the nation’s ethos. Draconian law enforcement and excessive legal penalties for crimes are common. This exists within an environment experiencing some kind of financial hardship or violent conflict. Masculine because you have to.

This is toxic moral-foundations overemphasis: hypermoralization.

Moral beliefs have different utility in different environments, and the environment dictates their expression and ascendance. This is a framework I call Moral Foundations Utility Theory, and it will play a major role in helping understand Biofoundationalism.

Hypermoralization only occurs in economic or environmental extremes: hard times elicit conservative hypermoralization, and decadent times foster liberal hypermoralization. Extreme behaviors manifest in extreme economic climates. Luxury conditions beget luxury beliefs.

The spectrum of wealth between indigence and opulence guides the evenness of society’s moral emphasis. As with all things, balance is healthy. A dyad exists for a reason, and a persistent asymmetry and dislocation within it is insidious, and a sign of poor or declining health.

A hypermoralized setting marks the onset of a political atmosphere where you won’t convince anyone of anything if they don’t fundamentally value the same things as you. There are decreasing political solutions to hypermoralization; people grow more dogmatic and intransigent, becoming inflexible and absolute in their morality and its political application.

Hypermoralization means people don’t see political differences as competing values and beliefs with something to offer, but as a Manichean war of good vs evil.

Opposing political factions begin to essentially speak different languages. Two different moral codes talking past each other, both accusing the other of being heartless, polarized, imbecilic, etc..

Radicalness begets radicalness, when you view the world through only one moral lens, political communication breaks down. I can’t convince you of anything, you can’t convince me of anything.

Extremes sow the seeds of their own reversal.

This goes on until it can’t.

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