David Brooks knows Morality

A David Brooks column in the New York Times, today, "The End of Philosophy," is spot on, in my estimation, in explaining morality.

Here, a central snip of some of the text:

Moral judgments are like [this: You just know.] They are rapid intuitive decisions and involve the emotion-processing parts of the brain.

... What shapes moral emotions in the first place? The answer has long been evolution, but in recent years there’s an increasing appreciation that evolution isn’t just about competition. It’s also about cooperation within groups. Like bees, humans have long lived or died based on their ability to divide labor, help each other and stand together in the face of common threats. Many of our moral emotions and intuitions reflect that history. We don’t just care about our individual rights, or even the rights of other individuals. We also care about loyalty, respect, traditions, religions. We are all the descendents of successful cooperators.

Hooray, David Brooks. And hooray Born to be Good, a book that Brooks does not cite, but which gets into precisely these issues. This blog has three posts about Dasher Kiltner's book: (1), (2) and (3).

Brooks does cite, and quote, Jonathan Haidt, a academician who, similar to Kiltner, also embraces "positive" evolution ideas. [My meat- and virtual-space friend Nagarjuna is a big fan of Haidt and is currently reading his book The Happiness Hypothosis.] Here is Brooks's citation of Haidt

:... reasoning comes later and is often guided by the emotions that preceded it. Or as Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia memorably wrote, “The emotions are, in fact, in charge of the temple of morality, and ... moral reasoning is really just a servant masquerading as a high priest.”

[Haidt's words above come from 2001, from a book or paper I cannot fully ID. The 2003 book Handbook of affective sciences uses a paper Haidt wrote where Haidt quotes himself, with the ellipsis that Brooks uses, citing Haidt 2001 & Wilson 1993. Hmmm.]

Brooks ends his column with these fine words:

The rise and now dominance of this emotional approach to morality is an epochal change. ... it should ... challenge the very scientists who study morality. They’re good at explaining how people make judgments about harm and fairness, but they still struggle to explain the feelings of awe, transcendence, patriotism, joy and self-sacrifice, which are not ancillary to most people’s moral experiences, but central. The evolutionary approach also leads many scientists to neglect the concept of individual responsibility and makes it hard for them to appreciate that most people struggle toward goodness, not as a means, but as an end in itself.

I love that last half sentence: "...most people struggle toward goodness, not as a means, but as an end in itself."

Compassion, in Born to Be Good, #2

This is from the book Born to Be Good, in the chapter titled "Touch":

On the stage in Vancouver before [our Buddhist-Science panel], His Holiness the Dalai Lama entered stage left and proceeded to greet the four panelists with his customary bow and clasped hands. The sighs, tears, appreciative head nods, goose bumps, and embraces of the 2,500 people in the audience produced a crackling ether that filled the art deco auditorium. I was the last panelist for HHDL to approach. From eighteen inches away I came into contact with HHDL. Partially stooped in a bow, he made eye contact with me and clasped my hands. His eyebrows were raised. His eyes gleamed. His modest smile was poised near a laugh. Emerging out of the bow and clasped hands, he embraced my shoulders and shook them slightly with warm hands.

As he turned to the audience, I had a Darwinian spiritual experience. Goose bumps spread across my back like wind on water, staring at the base of my spine and rolling up to my scalp. A flush of humility moved up my face from my cheeks to my forehead and dissipated near the crown of my head. Tears welled up, along with a smile. I recalled a saying of HHDL's:

At the most fundamental level our nature is compassionate, and that cooperation, not conflict, lies at the heart of the basic principles that govern our human existence.

For several weeks after I lived in a new realm. My suitcase was missing at the carousel following the plane flight home -- not a problem. I didn't need those clothes anyway. Squabbles between my two daughters about the ownership of a Polly Pocket or about whose back-bending walkover best matched the platonic ideal -- no bristling reaction on my part, just an inclination to step into the fray and to lay out a softer discourse and sense of common ground. The frustrated person behind me in the line in the bank, groaning in exasperation -- no reciprocal frustration, no self-righteous sense of how to comport oneself in more dignified fashion in public; instead, an appreciation of what deeper causes might have produced such apparent malaise. The poeple I saw, the undergrads in my classroom, parents at my daughters' school, preschool teachers walking little groups of three-year-olds in hand holding chains around the streets of Berkeley, those parallel parking their cars, recyclers picking up cans and bottles, the homeless shaking their heads and cursing the skies, people in business suits reading the morning paper waiting for a carpool ride, all seemed guided by remarkably good intentions.

Compassion, in Born to Be Good, #1

This from Dasher Keltner's new book Born to Be Good, in the chapter titled "Compassion":

When Richie Davidson scanned the brain of a Tibetan monk, he found it to be off the charts in term of its resting activation in the left frontal lobes. This region of the brain supports compassion-related action, feeling, and ideation. After years of devotion and discipline, his was a different brain, humming with compassion-related neural communication.

Okay, you're rightfully critiquing, whose resting brain state wouldn't shift to the left if you had the time and steadfastness to meditate for four to five hours a day upon lovingkindness, as Tibetan Buddhists do? Fair enough. When Richie and Jon Kabat-Zim and colleagues had software engineers train in the techniques of minfulness meditation -- an accepting awareness of the mind, lovingkindness toward others -- six weeks later these individuals showed increased activation in the left frontal lobes. They also showed enhanced immune function. They may not have been donning the saffron robes of the monk, but at least their minds were moving in that kind direction.

Recent scientific studies are identifying the kinds of environments that cultivate compassion. This moral emotion is cultivated in environments where parents are responsive, and play, and touch their children. So does an empathic style that prompts the child to reason about harm. So do chores, as well as the presence of grandparents. Making compassion a motif in dinnertime converstions and bedtime stories cultivates this all-important emotion. Even visually presented concepts like "hug" and "love" at speeds so fast participants couldn't report what they had seen increase compassion and generosity.

Compassion is that powerful an idea. It is a strong emotion, attuned to those in need. it is a progenitor of courageous acts. It is wired into our nervous systems and encoded in our genes. It is good for your children, your health, and, recent studies suggest, it is vital to your marriage. In the words of the Dalai Lama: "If you want to be happy, practice compassion; if you want others to be happy, pratice compassion."

Born to be Good

A new book that I haven't seen yet and my library doesn't have yet has gotten my attention due to two reviews I read.

The book, Born to be Kind, has Confusian, rather than Buddhist, roots, but I like the idea behind it: That the best way to describe human origins is not survival of the fittest, but survival of the kindest. [I can't say that "kindness" sounds more likely to be true, but I'm hopeful.]

The author, Dacher Keltner, is on tour, promoting his book now. Below, a YouTubed statement by the writer about why he wrote his book.



Here's the review in the Jan-Feb, 2009, issue of Psychology Today:

Through his studies on facial movements, tones of voice, goosebumps, dinosaurs, and beauty, Berkeley psychologyist Keltner has forged what he calls a "new science of positive emotion." His conclusion: Human beings have evolved a set of positive emotions -- gratitude, mirth, awe and compassion -- and it is these that enable us to lead meaningful lives. The key to happiness, he says, is to let these emotions arise in ourselves and to evoke them in others. Human beings are wired to be good -- so much so, Keltner says, that the best way to describve our origins is not "survival of the fittest" but "survival of the kindest."

The second review I read was in Library Journal. Couldn't find it at their website, but did find it at Barnes & Noble.

UPDATE 1/27/09: Bill Harryman has a post on "Born to Be Good" over at Integral Options Cafe. Word of this book is spreading, and its POV is causing discussion.

UPDATE 3/3/09: There is a GREAT comprehensive review of Keltner's book in Slate, reviewed by the great Howard Gardner: "How Good Are We, Really?" At its end, the review is not altogether an endorsement of Keltner's book, since Keltner doesn't prove what he sets out to. But the book does entrigue Gardner, and me, because of what it does and can say about goodness in human beings.

Update 3/21/09: I've added two quotes from Keltner's book, related to compassion: Compassion in Born to Be Good, #1; and Compassion in Born to Be Good, #2.