We may not always know it, but we think in metaphor. A large proportion of
our most commonplace thoughts make use of an extensive, but unconscious, system
of metaphorical concepts, that is, concepts from a typically concrete realm of
thought that are used to comprehend another, completely different domain. Such
concepts are often reflected in everyday language, but their most dramatic
effect comes in ordinary reasoning. Because so much of our social and political
reasoning makes use of this system of metaphorical concepts, any adequate
appreciation of even the most mundane social and political thought requires an
understanding of this system. But unless one knows that the system exists, one
may miss it altogether and be mystified by its effects.
For me, one of the most poignant effects of the ignorance of metaphorical
thought is the mystification of liberals concerning the recent electoral
successes of conservatives. Conservatives regularly chide liberals for not
understanding them, and they are right. Liberals don't understand how
anti-abortion "right-to-life" activists can favor the death penalty
and oppose reducing infant morality through prenatal care programs. They don't understand
why budget-cutting conservatives should spare no public expense to build prison
after prison to house even non-violent offenders, or why they are willing to
spend extra money to take children away from their mothers and put them in
orphanages --- in the name of family values. They don't understand why
conservatives attack violence in the media while promoting the right to own
machine guns. Liberals tend not to understand the logic of conservatism; they
don't understand what form of morality makes conservative positions moral or
what conservative family values have to do with the rest of conservative
politics. The reason at bottom is that liberals do not understand the form of
metaphorical thought that unifies and makes sense of the full range of conservative
values.
To understand what metaphor has to do with conservative politics, we must
begin with that part of our metaphor system that is used to conceptualize
morality -- a system of roughly two dozen metaphors. To illustrate how the
system works, let us begin with one of the most prominent metaphors in the
system -- the metaphor by which morality is conceptualized in terms of
accounting.
We all conceptualize well-being as wealth. We understand an increase in
well-being as a "gain" and a decrease of well-being as a
"loss" or a "cost." This is combined with a very general
metaphor for causal action in which causation is seen as giving an effect to an
affected party (as in "The noise gave me a headache"). When
two people interact causally with each other, they are commonly conceptualized
as engaging in a transaction, each transferring an effect to the other. An
effect that helps is conceptualized as a gain; one that harms, as a loss. Thus
moral action is conceptualized in terms of financial transaction.
Just as literal bookkeeping is vital to economic functioning, so moral
bookkeeping is vital to social functioning. And just as it is important that
the financial books be balanced, so it is important that the moral books be
balanced.
Of course, the "source domain" of the metaphor, the domain of
financial transaction, itself has a morality: It is
moral to pay your debts and immoral not to. When moral action is understood
metaphorically in terms of financial transaction, financial morality is carried
over to morality in general: There is a moral imperative not only to pay one's
financial debts, but also one's moral debts.
The general metaphor of Moral Accounting is realized in a small number of
basic moral schemes: Reciprocation, Retribution, Restitution, Revenge,
Altruism, etc. Each of these moral schemes is defined using the
metaphor of Moral Accounting, but the schemes differ as how they use this
metaphor, that is, they differ as to their inherent logics. Here are the basic
schemes.
If you do something good for me, then I
"owe" you something, I am "in your debt." If I do something
equally good for you, then I have "repaid "
you and we are even. The books are balanced. We know there is a metaphor at
work here partly because financial reasoning is used to think about morality,
and partly because financial words like "owe," "debt," and
"repay" are used to speak of morality.
Even in this simple case, there are two principles
of moral action.
Thus, when you did something good for me, you
engaged in the first form of moral action. When I did something equally good
for you, I engaged in both forms of moral action. I did something good
for you and I paid my debts. Here the two principles act in concert.
Moral transactions get complicated in the case of
negative action. The complications arise because moral accounting is governed
by a moral version of the arithmetic of keeping accounts, in which gaining a
credit is equivalent to losing a debit and gaining a debit is equivalent to
losing a credit.
Suppose I do something to harm you. Then, by
Well-Being is Wealth, I have given you something of negative value. You owe me
something of equal (negative) value. By moral arithmetic, giving something
negative is equivalent to taking something positive. By harming you, I have
taken something of value from you.
By harming you, I have placed you in a potential
moral dilemma with respect to the first and second principles of moral
accounting. Here are the horns of dilemma:
No matter what you do, you violate one of the two
principles. You have to make a choice. You have to give priority to one of the
principles. Such a choice gives two different versions of moral accounting: The
Morality of Absolute Goodness puts the first principle first. The Morality of
Retribution puts the second principle first. As might be expected, different
people and different subcultures have different solutions to this dilemma, some
preferring retribution, others preferring absolute goodness.
In debates over the death penalty, liberals rank
Absolute Goodness over Retribution, while conservatives tend to prefer
Retribution: a life for a life.
Suppose again that you do something to harm me,
which is metaphorically to give me something of negative value. Moral
arithmetic presents an alternative to retribution. By moral arithmetic, you
have taken something of positive value from me by harming me. If I take
something of equal positive value back from you, I have taken
"revenge." Revenge is the moral equivalent of retribution, another
way of balancing the moral books.
If I do something harmful to you, then I have given
something of negative value and, by moral arithmetic, taken something of
positive value. I then owe you something of equal positive value. I can
therefore make restitution -- make up for what I have done -- by paying you
back with something of equal positive value. Of course, in many cases, full
restitution is impossible, but partial restitution may be possible.
An interesting advantage of restitution is that it
does not place you in a moral dilemma with respect to the first and second
principles. You do not have to do any harm, nor is there any moral debt for you
to pay, since full restitution, where possible, cancels all debts.
If I do something good for you, then by moral
accounting I have given you something of positive value. You are then in my
debt. In altruism, I cancel the debt, since I don't want anything in return. I
nonetheless build up moral "credit."
If I harm you, I have (by Well-being is Wealth) given
you something of negative value, and (by Moral Arithmetic) taken something of
positive value. Therefore, I owe you something of positive value. Suppose you
then refuse both retribution and revenge. You either allow me to harm you
further or, perhaps, you even do something good for me. By moral accounting,
either harming you further or accepting something good from you would incur an
even further debt: by turning the other cheek, you make me even more morally
indebted to you. If you have a conscience, then you should feel even more guilty. Turning the other cheek involves the rejection
of retribution and revenge and the acceptance of basic goodness -- and when it
works, it works via the mechanism of moral accounting.
This example illustrates what a cognitive scientist means when he speaks of
"conceptual metaphor." It is an unconscious, automatic mechanism for
using inference patterns and language from a source domain (in this case, the
financial domain) to think and talk about another domain (in this case, the
moral domain). It also shows that a mode of metaphorical thought need not be
limited to a single culture. Cultures in many parts of the world conceptualize
morality in terms of accounting. Moreover, it shows that the same metaphor can
be used in different forms by conservatives and liberals. Conservatives tend to
prefer the metaphorical scheme of retribution to that of restitution.
Before we proceed with our discussion of metaphors for morality, we should
point out the obvious -- that morality is not all metaphorical and that nonmetaphorical aspects of morality are what the
metaphorical system is based on. Nonmetaphorical
morality is about the experience of well-being.
The most fundamental form of morality concerns promoting
the experiential well-being of others and the avoidance and prevention of
experiential harm to others. Here is part of what is meant by
"well-being": Other things being equal, you are better off if you are
healthy rather than sick, rich rather than poor, strong
rather than uncared for, happy rather than sad, disgusted or in pain, whole
rather than lacking, clean rather than filthy, beautiful
rather than ugly, if you are experiencing beauty rather than ugliness,
if you are functioning in the light rather than the dark, and if you
can stand upright so that you don't fall down. These are among our
basic experiential forms of well-being. Their opposites are forms of harm.
Immoral action is action that causes harm, that is, action that deprives
someone of one or more of these -- of health, wealth, happiness, strength,
freedom, safety, beauty, and so on.
These are, of course, norms and the qualification "other things being
equal" is necessary, since one can think of special cases where these may
not be true. A wealthy child may not get the necessary attention of its
parents, someone beautiful may be the target of envy, you need to be in the
dark in order to sleep, excessive freedom can sometimes be harmful, sadness and
pain may be necessary to appreciate happiness, and so on. But, on the whole,
these conditions on experiential well-being hold. And these conditions form the
grounding for our system of moral metaphors. For instance, Well-being is Wealth
(and hence Moral Accounting) is based on the knowledge that it is better to the
rich than to be poor. Similarly, since it better to be strong than to be weak,
we expect to see morality conceptualized as strength. And because it is better
to be healthy than sick, we expect to see morality conceptualized in terms of
health and attendant concepts like cleanliness and purity.
What we learn from this is that metaphorical morality is grounded in nonmetaphorical morality, that is, in forms of well-being,
and that the system of metaphors for morality as a whole is thus far from arbitrary.
Because the same forms of well-being are widespread around the world, we expect
the same metaphors for morality to show up in culture after culture -- and they
do. Where we find purification rituals, we find a manifestation of Morality as
Purity. Because of the widespread fear of the dark, we find a widespread
conception of evil as dark and good as light. Because it is better to walk
upright than to fall down, we find the widespread metaphor that Morality is
Uprightness. In short, because our notion of what constitutes well-being is
widely-shared, our pool of metaphors for morality is also widely shared.
Indeed, the commonality of shared metaphors for morality both within and across
societies raises a deep question: What are differences in moral systems and
what is the source of those differences?
Of the roughly two dozen conceptual metaphors for morality in our conceptual
systems, most are used by both conservatives and liberals alike. But
conservatives and liberals give different priorities to those metaphors, and
the same moral metaphors with differences in priority results in radically
different moral systems. The metaphor with the highest priority in the
conservative moral system is Moral Strength. This is a complex
metaphor with a number of parts, beginning with:
Examples include sentences like: He's an upstanding
citizen. He's on the up and up. That was a low thing to do.
He's underhanded. He's a snake in the grass. Doing evil is
therefore moving from a position of morality (uprightness) to a position of
immorality (being low). Hence,
The most famous example, of course, is the fall
from grace. A major part of the Moral Strength metaphor has to do with the
conception of immorality, or evil. Evil is reified as a force, either internal
or external, that can make you fall, that is, commit immoral acts.
Thus, to remain upright, one must be strong enough
to "stand up to evil." Hence, morality is conceptualized as strength,
as having the "moral fibre" or
"backbone" to resist evil.
But people are not simply born strong. Moral
strength must be built. Just as in building physical strength, where
self-discipline and self-denial ("no pain, no gain") are crucial, so
moral strength is also built through self-discipline and self-denial, in two
ways:
To summarize, the metaphor of Moral Strength is a set of
correspondences between the moral and physical domains:
One consequence of this metaphor is that punishment can be good for you,
since going through hardships builds moral strength. Hence, the homily
"Spare the rod and spoil the child." By the logic of this metaphor,
moral weakness is in itself a form of immorality. The reasoning goes like this:
A morally weak person is likely to fall, to give in to evil,
to perform immoral acts, and thus to become part of the forces of evil. Moral
weakness is thus nascent immorality -- immorality waiting to happen.
There are two forms of moral strength, depending on whether the evil to be
faced is external or internal. Courage is the strength to stand up to external
evils and to overcome fear and hardship.
Much of the metaphor of Moral Strength is concerned with internal
evils, cases where the issue of "self-control" arises. What has to be
strengthened is one's will. One must develop will power in order to exercise
control over the body, which seen as the seat of passion and desire. Desires --
typically for money, sex, food, comfort, glory, and things other people have --
are seen in this metaphor as "temptations," evils that threaten to
overcome one's self-control. Anger is seen as another internal evil to be
overcome, since it too is a threat to self-control. The opposite of
self-control is "self-indulgence" -- a concept that only makes sense
if one accepts the metaphor of moral strength. Self-indulgence is seen in this
metaphor as a vice, while frugality and self-denial are virtues. The seven
deadly sins is a catalogue of internal evils to be overcome: greed, lust,
gluttony, sloth, pride, envy, and anger. It is the metaphor of Moral Strength
that makes them "sins." The corresponding virtues are charity, sexual
restraint, temperance, industry, modesty, satisfaction with one's lot, and
calmness. It is the metaphor of Moral Strength that makes these
"virtues."
This metaphor has an important set of entailments:
Moral Strength thus has two very different aspects. First,
it is required if one is to stand up to some externally defined evil. Second,
it itself defines a form of evil, namely, the lack of self-discipline and the
refusal to engage in self-denial. That is, it defines forms of internal evil.
Those who give a very high priority to Moral Strength, of course, see it as
a form of idealism. The metaphor of Moral Strength sees the world in terms of a
war of good against the forces of evil, which must be fought ruthlessly.
Ruthless behavior in the name of the good fight is thus seen as justified.
Moreover, the metaphor entails that one cannot respect the views of one's
adversary: evil does not deserve respect; it deserves to be attacked!
The metaphor of Moral Strength imposes a strict us-them moral dichotomy. The
metaphor that morality is strength induces a view of evil as the force that
moral strength is needed to counter. Evil must be fought. You do not empathize
with evil, nor do you accord evil some truth of its own. You just fight it.
Moral strength, importantly, imposes a form of asceticism. To be morally
strong you must be self-disciplined and self-denying. Otherwise you are
self-indulgent, and such moral flabbiness ultimately helps the forces of evil.
In the conservative mind, the metaphor of moral strength has the highest
priority. Though it clusters with other metaphors that we consider shortly, it
is the one that matters most. It determines much of conservative thought and
language -- as well as social policy. It is behind the view that social
programs are immoral and promote evil because they are seen as working against
self-discipline and self-reliance. Given the priority of Moral Strength,
welfare and affirmative action are immoral because they work against
self-reliance. The priority of Moral Strength underlies conservative opposition
to providing condoms to high school students and clean needles to drug addicts
in the fight against teen pregnancy and AIDS. This are
seen as promoting the evil of self-indulgence; the morally strong should be
able to "Just say no." The morally weak are evil and deserve what
they get. Orphanages are seen as imposing discipline, which serves morality.
They may cost more than AFDC payments to mothers, but the issue for
conservatives is morality, not just money. Conservative opposition to student
aid also follows from this metaphor; morally strong students should be
self-reliant and pay for the full cost of their own education. Similarly, the
opposition to prenatal care programs to lower infant mortality stems from the
view that moral mothers should be able to provide their own prenatal care, and
if they can't they should abstain from sex and not have babies.
An important consequence of giving highest priority to the metaphor of Moral
Strength is that it rules out any explanations in terms of social forces or
social class. If it is always possible to muster the discipline to just say no
to drugs or sex and to support yourself in this land of opportunity, then
failure to do so is laziness and social class and social forces cannot explain
your poverty or your drug habit or your illegitimate children. And if you lack
such disciple, then by the metaphor of Moral Strength, you are immoral and
deserve any punishment you get.
The metaphor of Moral Strength does not occur in isolation. It defines a
cluster of other common metaphors for morality that are important in the
conservative world view. Here is a list of the others.
We can see these metaphors at work in the conservative worldview, in
conservative rhetoric, and especially in social policy. The "three strikes
and you're out law," which is popular with conservatives, is a reflection
of the metaphor of Moral Essence: Repeated criminal behavior reveals an essence
that is "rotten to the core." If you have an immoral essence, you
will keep performing immoral acts that can be predicted even before they are
performed. Locking you up for 25 years, or for life, may seem like punishment
for metaphorically predicted crimes, but if you believe in Moral Essence, then
is it simply protection for society.
The metaphors of Moral Boundaries, Moral Health, and Moral Wholeness can be
seen clearly in conservative views of pornography and sexually explicit art.
Pornography should be banned to stop the contagion of immoral behavior (Moral
Health). If pornography is allowed, then it marks out new paths of sexual
behavior as normal and the old, clear paths and boundaries that define right
and wrong become blurred (Moral Bounds). Sexually explicit art defies the
edifice of traditional sexual values, leading those values to
"crumble" or "erode" (Moral Wholeness). Indeed, deviant behavior
of any kind challenges all these metaphors for morality, as well as the
metaphor of Moral Authority, according to which deviance is disobedience.
From the perspective of these metaphors, multiculturalism is immoral, since
it permits alternative views of what counts as moral behavior. Multiculturalism
thus violates the binary good-evil distinction made by Moral Strength. It
violates the well-defined moral paths and boundaries of Moral Bounds. Its
multiple authorities violate any unitary Moral Authority. And the multiplicity
of standards violates Moral Wholeness.
This cluster of metaphors -- what I will call the "strength
complex" defines the highest priorities in conservative moral
values.
There is another metaphor that serves these priorities -- the metaphor of Moral
Self-Interest. It is based on a folk version of Adam Smith's
economics: if each person seeks to maximize his own wealth, then by an
invisible hand, the wealth of all will be maximized. Applying to this the
metaphor that Well-being is Wealth, we get: If each person tries to maximize
his own well-being (or self-interest), the well-being of all will be maximized.
This metaphor sees it as the highest morality when everyone pursues his own
self-interest unimpeded.
In conservative thought, self-reliance (a goal defined by Moral Strength) is
achieved through the disciplined and unimpeded pursuit of self-interest. In
metaphorical terms, the complex of strength metaphors defines the moral goal
and Moral Self-Interest defines the means for achieving that goal. In moderate
conservatism, the reverse is true. There maximizing self-interest is the goal
and conservative values (defined by the strength complex) is
the means. Thus, the difference between strict and moderate conservatism is a
matter of priorities. Strict conservatives are moralistic, giving highest
priority to the conservative moral metaphors and seeing the pursuit of
self-interest as the natural means for achieving conservative moral values.
Moderate conservatives are more pragmatic and less moralistic, seeing
conservative moral values as the natural means to achieve the pragmatic end of
maximizing self-interest.
Consider for a moment what a model citizen is from the point of view of this
moral system. It is someone who, through self-discipline and the pursuit of
self-interest, has become self-reliant. This means that rich people and
successful corporations are model citizens from a conservative perspective. To
encourage and reward such model citizens, conservatives support tax breaks for
them and oppose environmental and other regulations that get in their way.
After all, since large corporations are model citizens, we have nothing to fear
from them.
At this point, a natural question arises. What gives rise of the cluster of
conservative moral metaphors? Why should those metaphors fit together as they
do? The answer, interestingly enough, is the family. Conservatives share aN ideal model of what a family should be. I will refer to
as the Strict Father Model.
The
Strict Father Model. A
traditional nuclear family with the father having primary responsibility for
the well-being of the household. The mother has day-to-day
responsibility for the care of the house and details of raising the children.
But the father has primary responsibility for setting overall family policy,
and the mother's job is to be supportive of the father and to help carry out
the father's views on what should be done. Ideally, she respects his views and
supports them.
Life is seen as fundamentally difficult and the world as fundamentally
dangerous. Evil is conceptualized as a force in the world, and it is the
father's job to support his family and protect it from evils -- both external
and internal. External evils incLude enemies, hardships,
and temptations. Internal evils come in the form of uncontrolled desires and
are as threatening as external ones. The father embodies the values needed to
make one's way in the world and to support a family: he is morally strong,
self-disciplined, frugal, temperate, and restrained. He sets an example by
holding himself to high standards. He insists on his moral authority, commands
obedience, and when he doesn't get it, metes out retribution as fairly and
justly as he knows how. It is his job to protect and support his family, and he
believes that safety comes out of strength.
In addition to support and protection, the father's primary duty is tell his
children what is right and wrong, punish them when they do wrong, and to bring
them up to be self-disciplined and self-reliant. Through self-denial, the
children can build strength against internal evils. In this way, he teaches his
children to be self-disciplined, industrious, polite, trustworthy, and
respectful of authority.
The strict father provides nurturance and expresses his devotion to his
family by supporting and protecting them, but just as importantly by setting
and enforcing strict moral bounds and by inculcating self-discipline and
self-reliance through hard work and self-denial. This builds character. For the
strict father, strictness is a form of nurturance and love -- tough love.
The strict father is restrained in showing affection and emotion overtly,
and prefers the appearance of strength and calm. He gives to charity as an
expression of compassion for those less fortunate than he and as an expression
of gratitude for his own good fortune.
Once his children are grown -- once they have become self-disciplined and
self-reliant -- they are on their own and must succeed or fail by themselves;
he does not meddle in their lives, just as he doesn't want any external
authority meddling in his life.
This model of the family (often referred to as "paternalistic") is
what groups together the conservative metaphors for morality. Those
metaphorical priorities define a family-based morality, what I will call
"strict father morality." Though many features of this model are
widespread across cultures, the No-meddling Condition -- that grown children
are on their own and parents cannot meddle in their lives -- is a peculiarly
American feature, and it accounts for a peculiar feature of American
conservatism, namely, the antipathy toward government.
Conservatives speak of the government meddling in people's lives with the
resentment normally reserved for meddling parents. The very term
"meddling" is carried over metaphorically from family life to
government. Senator Robert Dole, addressing the Senate during the debate over
the Balanced Budget Amendment, described liberals as those who think "
Despite the fact that strict father models of the family occur throughout
the world, this aspect of the Strict Father model appears to be uniquely
American. For example, in strict-father families in
The centrality of the Strict Father model to conservative politics also
explains the attitudes of conservatives to feminism, abortion, homosexuality,
and gun control. In the Strict Father model of the family, the mother is
subordinated to running the day-to-day affairs of the home and raising the
children according to the father's direction. It is the father that bears the
major responsibility and makes the major decisions. The Strict Father model is
exactly the model that feminism is in the business of overthrowing. Hence, the appropriate antipathy of conservatives to feminism
(although there is the recent phenomenon of conservative feminists, namely,
women who function with the values of conservative men such as self-discipline,
self-reliance, the pursuit of self-interest, etc.). The conservative
opposition to homosexuality comes from the same source. Homosexuality in itself
is inherently opposed to the Strict Father model of the family.
The conservative position on abortion is a consequence of the view of women
that comes out of the strict family model. On the whole, there are two classes
of women who want abortions: unmarried teenagers, whose pregnancies have
resulted from lust and carelessness, and women who want to delay conception for
the sake of a career, but have accidentally conceived. From the point of view
of the strict father model, both classes of women violate the morality
characterized by the model. The first class consists of young women who are
immoral by virtue of having shown a lack of sexual self-control. The second
class consists of women who want to control their own destinies, and who are
therefore immoral for contesting the strict father model itself, since it is
that model that defines what morality is. For these reasons, those who abide by
Strict Father morality tend to oppose abortion.
It is important to understand that conservative opposition to abortion is
not just an overriding respect for all life. If it were, conservatives would
not favor the death penalty. Nor is it a matter of protecting the lives of
innocent children waiting to be born. If it were, conservatives would be working
to lower the infant mortality rate by supporting prenatal care programs. The
fact the conservatives oppose such programs means that they are not simply in
favor of the right-to-life for all the unborn. Instead, there is a deep and
abiding, but usually unacknowledged, reason why conservatives oppose abortion,
namely, that it is inconsistent with Strict Father morality.
The protection function of the strict father leads to conservative support
for a strong military and criminal justice system. It also leads to an
opposition to gun control. Since it is the job of the strict father to protect
his family from criminals, and since criminals have guns, he too must be able
to use guns if he is to do his job of protecting the family against evil people
who would harm them. Although the NRA talks lot about hunting, the conservative
talk shows all talk about protecting one's family as the main motivation for
opposing gun control.
What links Strict Father family-based morality to politics is a common
metaphor, shared by conservatives and liberals alike -- the Nation-as-Family
metaphor, in which the nation is seen as a family, the government as a parent
and the citizens as children. This metaphor turns family-based morality into
political morality, providing the link between conservative family values and
conservative political policies. The Strict Father model, which brings together
the conservative metaphors for morality, is what unites the various
conservative political positions into a coherent whole when it is imposed on
political life by the Nation-as-Family metaphor.
The Strict Father model of the family, the metaphors that are induced by it, and the Nation-as-Family metaphor jointly provide an
explanation for why conservatives have the collection of political positions
that they have. It explains why opposition to environmental protection goes
with support for military protection, why the right-to-life goes with the right
to own machine guns, why patriotism goes with hatred of government.
The requirement of such forms of explanation is not the norm in discussions
of politics. Political commentators are all too ready to accept random lists:
conservatives favor A, oppose B, favor C, and so on. But on occasion
explanation is attempted and all the other attempts I know of have failed. For
example, William Bennett defines conservatism thus:
Conservatism as I understand it . . . seeks to conserve the
best elements of the past. It understands the important role that traditions,
institutions, habits and authority have in our social life together, and
recognizes our national institutions as products of principles developed over
time by custom, the lessons of experience, and consensus . . . Conservatism,
too, is based on the belief that the social order rests upon a moral base...
This does not explain which elements of the past are judged
to be best (certainly not witch burning or child labor or slavery) or which
moral base the social order rests on. It also does not explain why traditional
institutions like public schools are not to be preserved. Nor does it explain
conservative views in cases where there is no consensus, such as abortion.
Other conservatives claim that conservatives just want less government at
the federal level. This does not explain cases where conservatives favor more
government. The obvious examples are increased military funding, the
three-strikes law which requires many more prisons and the costs of keeping
prisoners, the promotion of orphanages (which would be more expensive than the
welfare programs they would replace), and tort reform, which would take
enormous powers from the states and give them to the federal government. In
short, conservative theorists are not very good at explaining what unifies
conservative positions.
Conservatives sometimes claim that they are just following the Bible. But
the Bible requires interpretation, and there are plenty of liberal
interpretations (e.g., the National Council of Churches, Liberation
Theology). It is Strict Father morality that determines what counts as a
conservative interpretation of the Bible.
Liberals haven't done much better. The common liberal idea that
conservatives are just selfish or tools of the rich does not explain
conservative opposition to abortion, feminism, homosexuality, and gun control.
To sum up, the conservative world-view and the constellation of conservative
positions is best explained by the Strict Father model of the family, the moral
system it induces, and the common Nation-as-Family metaphor that imposes a
family-based morality on politics.
The conceptual mechanisms I have just described are largely unconscious,
like most of our conceptual systems. Yet conservatives have a far better
understanding of the basis of their politics than liberals do. Conservatives
understand that morality and the family are at the heart of their politics, as
they are at the heart of most politics. What is sad is that liberals have not
yet reached a similar level of political sophistication.
Liberal politics also centers on a family-based morality, but liberals are
much less aware than conservatives are of the unconscious mechanisms that
structures their politics. While conservatives understand that all of their
policies have a single unified origin, liberals understand their own political
conceptual universe so badly that they still think of it in terms of coalitions
of interest groups. Where conservatives have organized for an overall, unified
onslaught on liberal culture, liberals are fragmented into isolated interest
groups, based on superficial localized issues: labor, the rights of ethnic
groups, feminism, gay rights, environmentalism, abortion rights, homelessness,
health care, education, the arts, and so on. This failure to see a unified
picture of liberal politics has led to a divided consciousness and has allowed
conservatives to employ a divide-and-conquer strategy. None of this need be the
case, since there is a worldview that underlies liberal thought that is every
bit as unified as the conservative worldview.
The family-based morality that structures liberal thought is diametrically
opposed to Strict Father morality. It centers around
the Nurturant Parent model of the family.
The
Nurturant Parent Model.
The family is of either one or two parents. Two are generally preferable, but
not always possible.
The primal experience behind this model is one of being cared for and cared
about, having one's desires for loving interactions met, living as happily as
possible, and deriving meaning from one's community and from caring for and
about others.
People are realized in and through their "secure attachments":
through their positive relationships to others, through their contribution to
their community, and through the ways in which they develop their potential and
find joy in life. Work is a means toward these ends, and it is through work
that these forms of meaning are realized. All of this requires strength and
self-discipline, which are fostered by the constant support of, and attachment
to, those who love and care about you.
Protection is a form of caring, and protection from external dangers takes
up a significant part of the nurturant parent's
attention. The world is filled with evils that can harm a child, and it is the nurturant parent's duty to be ward
them off. Crime and drugs are, of course, significant, but so are less obvious
dangers: cigarettes, cars without seat belts, dangerous toys, inflammable
clothing, pollution, asbestos, lead paint, pesticides in food, diseases,
unscrupulous businessmen, and so on. Protection of innocent and helpless
children from such evils is a major part of a nurturant
parent's job.
Children are taught self-discipline in the service of nurturance: to take
care of themselves, to deal with existing hardships, to be responsible to
others, and to realize their potential. Children are also taught
self-nurturance: the intrinsic value of emotional connection with others, of
health, of education, of art, of communion with the natural world, and of being
able to take care of oneself. In addition to learning the discipline required
for responsibility and self-nurturance, it is important that children have a
childhood, that they learn to develop their imaginations, and that they just
plain have fun.
Through empathizing and interacting positively with their children, parents
develop close bonds with children and teach them empathy and responsibility
towards others and toward society. Nurturant parents
view the family as a community in which children have commitments and
responsibilities that grow out of empathy for others. The obedience of children
comes out of love and respect for parents, not out of fear of punishment. When
children do wrong, nurturant parents choose
restitution over retribution whenever possible as a form of justice.
Retribution is reserved for those who harm their children.
The pursuit of self-interest is shaped by these values: anything
inconsistent with these values is not in one's self-interest. Pursuing
self-interest, so understood, is a means for fulfilling the values of the
model.
This model of the family induces a very different set of moral priorities,
which can be characterized by another set of metaphors for morality. Here are
those metaphors:
·
Morality as Empathy: Empathy
itself is understood metaphorically as feeling what another person feels. We
can see this in the language of empathy: I know what it's like to be in
your shoes. I know how you feel. I feel for you. To conceptualize moral
action as empathic action is more than just abiding by the Golden Rule, to do
unto others as you would have them do unto you. The Golden Rule does not take
into account that others may have different values than you do. Taking morality
as empathy requires basing your actions on their values, not yours. This
requires a reformulation of the Golden Rule:
Do unto others as they would have you do unto them.
·
Morality as Nurturance:
Nurturance presupposes empathy. A child is helpless and to care for a
child, you have to care about that child, which requires seeing the
world through the child's eyes as much as possible. The metaphor of Morality as
Nurturance can be stated as follows:
This metaphor entails that moral action requires
empathy, involves sacrifices, and that helping people who need help is a moral
responsibility.
·
Moral Self-Nurturance: You
can't take care of others if you don't take care of yourself. Part of the
morality of nurturance is self-nurturance: maintaining your health, making a
living, and so on.
·
Morality as Social Nurturance:
There are two varieties of moral nurturance -- one about individuals and the
other about social relations. If community members are to empathize with one
another and help one another, then social ties must be maintained. The metaphor
can be stated as follows:
This entails that social ties must be constantly
attended to, that maintaining them requires sacrifices, and that one has a
moral responsibility to maintain them.
·
Morality as Happiness: This is
based on the assumption that unhappy people are less likely to be empathetic
and nurturant, since they will not want others to be
happier than they are. Therefore, to promote your own capacity for empathy and
nurturance, you should make yourself as happy as possible, provided you don't
hurt others in the process.
·
Morality as Fairness: Fairness
is understood metaphorically in terms of the distribution of material objects.
There are three basic liberal models of fair distribution:
1.
equal distribution;
2.
impartial rule-based distribution; and
3.
rights-based distribution.
Metaphorical fairness concerns actions conceived of as
objects given to individuals. One can act to the benefit of others equally,
impartially and by rule, or according to some notion of rights. According to
this metaphor, moral action is fair action in one of these ways.
·
Moral Growth: Given that
morality is conceptualized as uprightness, it is natural to conceptualize one's
degree of morality as physical height, to understand norms for the degree of
moral action as height norms, and to therefore see the possibility for
"moral growth" as akin to physical growth. Where moral growth differs
from physical growth is that moral growth is seen as being possible throughout
one's lifetime.
These are the metaphors for morality that best fit the Nurturant
Parent model of the family, and accordingly they are given highest priority in
liberal thought. The metaphor of Moral Self-Interest, here as
in conservative thought, is seen as operating to promote the values defined by
this group of metaphors. And as in the case of moderate conservatism, moderate
liberalism can be characterized by placing Moral Self-interest as the goal and
seeing these metaphors as providing the means by which to help people seek
their self-interest.
Applying the metaphor of the Nation as Family, with the government as
parent, we get the liberal political worldview:
·
Regulation: Just as a nurturant
parent must protect her or his children, a government must protect its citizens
-- not only from external threats, but also from pollution, disease, unsafe
products, workplace hazards, nuclear waste, and unscrupulous businesses.
·
Environmentalism: Communion with the environment
is part of nurturance, part of the realization of one's potential as a human
being. Empathy includes empathy with nature. Caring for children includes
caring for future generations. Protection includes protection from pollution.
All of these considerations support environmentalism.
·
Feminism and Gay Rights: Nurturant
parents want all their children to fulfill their potential, and so it is the
role of government to provide institutions to make that possible.
·
Abortion: Women seeking abortion are either
women who want to take control of their lives or teenage children needing help.
Considerations of nurturance for both require providing access to safe,
affordable abortions.
·
Multiculturalism: Nurturant
parents celebrate the differences among their children, and so governments
should celebrate the differences among its citizens.
·
Affirmative Action: Since women and minorities
are not treated fairly in society, it is up to the government to do what it can
to make sure that they have a fair chance at self-fulfillment.
·
Art and the Humanities: Knowledge, beauty, and
self-knowledge are part of human fulfillment, and so the government must see to
it that institutions promote such forms of human nurturance.
·
Taxation: Just as in a nurturant
family it is the duty of older and stronger children to help out those that are
younger and weaker, so in a nation it is the duty of citizens who are
better-off to contribute more than those who are worse-off.
Again, what we have here is explanation -- explanation of why liberal
policies fit together and make a coherent whole: what affirmative action has to
do with progressive taxation, what abortion has to do with affirmative action,
what environmentalism has to do with feminism. And again the explanation
centers on a model of the family, the moral system that goes with that model,
and the Nation-as-Family metaphor.
Unfortunately liberals are less insightful than conservatives at recognizing
that morality and the family lie at the center of
their political universe. The cost to liberals has been enormous. Where
conservatives have organized effectively in a unified way to promote all their
values, liberals misunderstood their politics as being about coalitions of
interest groups And so have remained divided and
unable to compete effectively with conservatives.
As discussed at the outset, this is a brief overview of a long study and, as
such, it has been drastically oversimplified. Some of those oversimplifications
are so important that they must be addressed, if only in a cursory way.
All of us -- liberals, conservatives, and others -- make use of all of the
metaphors for morality discussed here. The difference is in the priorities
assigned to them. Thus, conservatives also see morality as empathy and
nurturance, but they assign a lower priority to them than liberals do. The
result is that nurturance and empathy come to mean something different to
conservatives than to liberals. In conservatism, moral nurturance is
subservient to moral strength. Thus, moral nurturance for a conservative is the
nurturance to be morally strong. For conservatives, moral empathy is
subservient to moral strength, which posits a primary good-evil distinction.
That distinction forbids conservatives from empathizing with people they
consider evil, and so empathy becomes empathy with those who share your values.
Thus, where liberals have empathy even for criminals (and thus defend their
rights and are against the death penalty), conservatives are for the death
penalty and against decisions like Miranda, which seek to guarantee the rights
of criminals.
Correspondingly, liberals too have the metaphor of Moral Strength, but it is
in the service of empathy and nurturance. The point of moral strength for
liberals is to fight intolerance and inhumanity to others and to stand up for
social responsibility.
The resulting picture of the priorities of the Strict Father and Nurturant Parent moral systems is as follows:
Here one can clearly see the opposition in moral priorities.
Of course, not all liberals are the same, nor are all conservatives. This
model oversimplifies many divisions within the liberal and conservative ranks.
First, there are moderate versions of both, pragmatic views
in which Moral Self-Interest is put first:
Another source of variation on all these categories comes
within the Nurturance and Strength complexes, where different kinds of liberals
can assign different priority to the morality metaphors there. For example,
President Clinton, unlike most other liberals, assigns higher priority to the
nurturance of social ties than to moral nurturance itself. That is, he sees it
of the utmost importance to compromise for the sake of trying to bring people
together. This makes him seem like a waffler to
liberals for whom the nurturance of social ties has a lower priority. The point
is that these are rich systems, with lots of room for variations of all sorts.
In addition, there are lots of other factors that are not part of this analysis
that distinguish other political positions. This is, after all, not intended to
account for everything there is in politics.
It is important to understand that one can have different family-based
moralities in personal and political life. Thus, one can have Strict Father
morality at home and Nurturant Parent morality in
politics -- and the reverse. And finally, the Strict Father model does not rule
out strict mothers. Though, it is based on a masculine family model, women can
use that model. And though I have used the gender neutral term "nurturant parent," that model ultimately derives from
a woman's model of the family.
In short, the models are ideal and the general tendencies are simple, but in
practice there are extremely complex variations on these models.
It is one thing to analyze a moral system and another to criticize it.
Criticisms of moral systems are often suspect because
they come from within opposing moral systems. I would like to suggest that it
is possible in various ways to criticize a moral system on other grounds --
either on structural or empirical grounds. I believe that is is meaningful to speak of moral pathologies, and I will
briefly discuss three of them, namely:
1. Deviational
Pathology: Here a deviation from an ideal model turns out to harm people the
ideal model was supposed to help.
2. Foundational
Pathology: Here a moral system contradicts its own foundations.
3. Empirical
Pathology: Here the moral system simply makes an empirical error about the
helpful effects it is supposed to produce.
Let us begin with cases of deviational pathology. Since models of the family
are ideal ones, while real people are less than ideal, real family life may
very often fall short of what the ideal models would project. The same is true
of political ideals, which in practice often fall short of their aims.
Interestingly enough, valid critiques of both the Strict Father and Nurturant Parent family models are critiques not of the
ideal cases, but of cases that fall short of the ideal. For each such critique,
there is a parallel critique of the shortcomings of liberalism and
conservatism.
Parents can misuse the Nurturant Parent model in a
number of ways:
Interestingly, each of these corresponds to classical
critiques of liberalism by conservatives. In overprotection, the government
helps people without being sure they have the means to become self-reliant. In
self-sacrifice, the government spends too much, gets deep in debt, and cannot
help people very much any more. Hedonism is overspending for our own sake now
without thinking of the future.
Similarly, the Strict Father model can also be misused in various ways:
These correspond to common liberal critiques of
conservatism.
In short, both models can be misused. Many of the critiques of the models
are really critiques of the misuse of the models. Are such critiques fair? Yes
and no. No, because they not critiques of the ideal models in themselves. Yes,
because those ideal models have to be used by real people, who will fall short
in many cases in just the ways indicated.
The metaphors I have discussed so far in paper have been both conceptual in
nature and deep, in the sense that they are used largely without being noticed,
that they have enormous social consequences, and that they shape or very
understanding of our everyday world. It is important to contrast such deep
conceptual metaphors such as Morality is Strength and The Nation is a Family
with superficial metaphors, which are only of marginal interest but which often
lead analysts astray. Consider the following quote from the International
Herald Tribune,
Senator Phil Gramm told a college
commencement audience that the social safety net erected by government by the
New Deal and the Great Society had become a "hammock
" that is robbing the country of freedom and virtue.
The safety net metaphor for social programs and Phil Gramm's
hammock metaphor are examples of such superficial metaphors. The safety net
metaphor is used consciously and evokes a vivid image that organizes much
deeper metaphorical concepts. The image of the safety net has been a mainstay
of the rhetoric of liberal moral politics for many years. The safety net
metaphor presupposes as part of its background an image of the citizen on a
tightrope. The tightrope is straight and narrow -- a moral path. The citizen is
doing what he is supposed to be doing -- working with skill and dedication. But
one thing we all know about tightropes is that all but the most skilled are
bound to fall -- and if there is no safety net, they will be severely hurt when
they do. If walking the tightrope is working, falling off is losing your job.
The safety net is a means of support -- temporary support till you can pull
yourself up again and get back on the tightrope. The physical support of the
net is the financial support of social programs designed to help moral, dedicated,
hard-working citizens who might not survive without it.
This is not all conscious, but it is implicit and it is what gives the
safety net metaphor its moral force. People who need a safety net are moral
people of ordinary skills who walk the straight and narrow. To remove it is to
virtually guarantee harm to the normal moral citizen who would rather be
working than lying helplessly in a net.
The safety net metaphor may be superficial, but its power consists in
evoking a worldview beyond itself. It invokes a worldview about the typical
working citizen of ordinary or less than ordinary skills. He is moral, wants to
work, and needs and should have protection. To remove the safety net is
immoral. No ordinary tightrope walker should be required to work without a
safety net.
When Phil Gramm turns the safety net into a
hammock, he is doing more than just replacing one image with another that looks
similar. He is imposing another worldview. The man in the hammock is lazy; he
isn't interested in working. The hammock isn't necessary; it is a luxury. When
you replace the safety net with the hammock, you also replace the tightrope,
the desire to walk the tightrope, and the morality of following the straight
and narrow. You replace the energetic, athletic tightrope walker with the
paragon of laziness in the hammock. Changing metaphors means changing
prototypes. The typical person who relies on social programs is no longer
moral, skilled, and energetic. He is unskilled and lazy, and his laziness makes
him immoral. The moral implication is clear: the government shouldn't be
supplying the luxury of hammocks to lazy people. It just encourages them in
their laziness.
The safety net and hammock metaphors pack a complex worldview into a single
image. But they are nonetheless still superficial metaphors that rely on much
deeper and less obvious metaphors for their power. Those deeper metaphors are
the ones we have already explored: Moral Strength, Moral Bounds, Moral
Nurturance, Moral Empathy, The Nation-as-Family. It is
the deep metaphorical moral systems underlying liberal and conservative values
that the safety net and hammock metaphors are tapping into. It is that deeper
metaphorical system that must be understood.
George Lakoff is professor of
cognitive sciences at the
This essay was first published by the Graduate Faculty
of the