Towards enduring values
We must lead the shift from extrinsic to intrinsic values, and start
by not apologising for the policies that create a fairer and kinder
world, says the author.
George Monbiot
So here we are, forming an orderly queue at the slaughterhouse gate.
The punishment of the poor for the errors of the rich, the abandonment
of universalism, the dismantling of the shelter the state provides:
apart from a few small protests, none of this has yet brought us out
fighting.
The acceptance of policies that counteract our interests remains the
pervasive mystery of the 21st century. In the United States, blue-collar
workers angrily demand that they be left without health care, and insist
that millionaires should pay less tax. In the UK we appear ready to
abandon the social progress for which our ancestors risked their lives,
with barely a mutter of protest.
What has happened to us?
The answer, I think, is provided by probably the most interesting
report 1 read last year. Common Cause: The Case for Working with our
Cultural Values, written by Tom Crompton of the environment group WWF,
examines a series of fascinating recent advances in the field of
psychology, and offers a remedy to the blight that now afflicts every
good cause from welfare to climate change.
Progressives have been suckers for a myth of human cognition, which
Tom Crompton labels the Enlightenment Model. This holds that people make
rational decisions by assessing facts. All that has to be done to
persuade people is to lay out the data: they will then use it to decide
which options best support their interests and desires.
Psychological experiments
But a host of psychological experiments have shown that it simply
doesn’t work like this. Instead of performing a rational cost-benefit
analysis, we accept only that information which confirms our identity
and values, rejecting any of the information that conflicts with them.
In other words, we mould our thinking around our social identity,
protecting it from serious challenge, and so confronting people with
inconvenient facts is likely only to harden their resistance to change.
Our social identity is shaped by values that psychologists classify
as either extrinsic or intrinsic. Extrinsic values concern status and
self-advancement.
People with a strong set of extrinsic values fixate on how others see
them. They cherish financial success, image and fame. Intrinsic values
concern relationships with friends, family and community, and
self-acceptance.
Intrinsic values
Those who have a strong set of intrinsic values are not dependent on
praise or rewards from other people. They have beliefs that transcend
their self-interest.
Few people are all extrinsic or all intrinsic; our social identity is
more usually formed by a mixture of values. But what psychological tests
in nearly 70 countries do show is that values cluster together in
remarkably consistent patterns.
Those who strongly value financial success, for example, have less
empathy, stronger manipulative tendencies, a stronger attraction to
hierarchy and inequality, stronger prejudices towards strangers and less
concern about human rights and the environment.
Those who have a strong sense of self acceptance have more empathy
and a greater concern about human rights, social justice and the
environment. These values suppress each other: the stronger someone’s
extrinsic aspirations, the weaker his or her intrinsic goals.
Social environment
Of course we are not born with our values; they are shaped by our
social environment. By changing our perception of what is normal and
acceptable, politics alters our minds as much as our circumstances.
Free, universal health provision, for example, tends to reinforce
intrinsic values. Shutting the poor out of health care normalises
inequality, reinforcing extrinsic values.
The sharp shift to the right, which in the UK began with Margaret
Thatcher and persisted under Blair and Brown — all of whose governments
emphasised the virtues of competition, the market and financial success
— has changed our values. The British Social Attitudes survey, for
example, shows a sharp fall over this period in public support for
policies that redistribute wealth and opportunity. And this shift has
been reinforced by advertising and the media.
Power politics
The media’s fascination with power politics, its ‘Rich Lists’, its
catalogues of the 100 most powerful, influential, intelligent or
beautiful people, its obsessive promotion of celebrity, fashion, fast
cars, expensive holidays: all these inculcate extrinsic values. By
generating feelings of insecurity and inadequacy — which means reducing
self-acceptance — they also suppress intrinsic goals.
Advertisers, who employ large numbers of psychologists, are well
aware of this. Crompton quotes Guy Murphy, global planning director for
the marketing company JWT.
Marketers, Murphy says, “should see themselves as trying to
manipulate culture; being social engineers, not brand managers;
manipulating cultural forces, not brand impressions”. The more they
foster extrinsic values, the easier it is to sell their products.
Political map
Right-wing politicians have also, instinctively, understood the
importance of values in changing the political map. Thatcher famously
remarked that “economics are the method; the object is to change the
heart and soul”. Conservatives in the United States generally avoid
debating facts and figures. Instead they frame issues in ways that both
appeal to and reinforce extrinsic values.
Every year, through mechanisms that are rarely visible and seldom
discussed, the space in which progressive ideas can flourish shrinks a
little more.
Instead of confronting this shift in values, we have sought to adapt
to it. Once-progressive political parties have tried to appease altered
public attitudes. |