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What?!? I'm a LIBERAL?!?
OK. Deep breaths. Let's start at the beginning. I was reading dear ol' Reddit, and happened across this video post from TED:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html
Being a Sociology major (among other things) I found this pretty fascinating. It also has the ring of truth to it, which makes me like it even more.
Disclaimer: I know this two party view of the world is somewhat oversimplifying things, but I don't think it invalidates the ideas put forward.
BTW, as a general rule, you should never accept anything someone else tells you as the "truth" unless you have either 1) experienced it first hand, or 2) researched it and confirmed its veracity, or 3) minimally, it is consistent with what you already know to be true.
Anyway, about half way through, he gives a link to the website where you too can take the quiz he references in his talk. Well, this was too much to pass up for me, and here are the results:
Well I'll be damned. So, as you can see, the Blue bars are self identified "Liberals" and Red are self identified "Conservatives". My responses on each moral factor are in Green. So, on Harm/Fairness I'm MORE liberal than "Liberals" but less than "Liberals" on Loyalty/Authority/Purity. You'll have to watch the talk to understand why the first two run opposite scale to the latter three... he does a much better job explaining it than I ever could.
So, I guess you could say I might be sort of "Libertarian" but that still won't encompass my really strong views on Harm and Fairness. Now we're only talking about social values here (not small government, or the Constitution or anything like that) but damn! How did I not know this about myself?
I guess I'm in denial. Years of hearing my conservative teachers (yes, they do exist) and friends rail on "dirty liberals" has made me not want to be one (who wants to be someone that someone else views as "dirty"?). But now I actually understand why social conservatives think Liberals are SO "dirty". It's their high scores on the Purity factor of morality. They actually think Liberals are "immoral"!
Man, oh man. What an eye opener!
Oh, last but not least, if you want to take the quiz yourself, go here:
