When to Kill the Philosopher
Socrates, Biofoundationalism, Brain Hemispheres, and Mythmaxxing
A fundamental tension between two forces marks every society. These two forces are often referred to by various names, including conservative and liberal, traditionalist and progressive, among others. One side wants to maintain the status quo and uphold traditional values, while the other seeks to make changes and improve the social structure. This fundamental opposition in every human society is not exclusively a left-right divide. This divide existed long before the left-right political spectrum existed. It is also not necessarily a matter of politics. Defenders of the status quo can exist in business, technology, agrarian conglomerates, hypersonic 4th-dimensional alien spaceships (probably), and subreddits.
Here are two facts about the two sides in this divide:
First, one of the sides justifies itself by faith, and the other justifies itself by reason.
Second, one of these two sides is not consistently correct. Sometimes, neither side is.
Socrates Had It Coming
The life and death of Socrates provide insight into this divide. Socrates was wise because he recognized the limitations of his knowledge. He gave himself a standard: if it cannot be demonstrated through reason, there is no way to tell if something is true. He traveled around, asking people questions to find out if anyone had any good reason to know anything. It turns out that nobody had a good reason to know anything they thought they knew.
The people of Athens got tired of this, so they killed him.
In his dialogue with Euthyphro, Socrates inquires about the nature of piety. Euthyphro’s father likely murdered a servant, and Euthyphro is on his way to testify against his father. Socrates immediately recognizes that Euthyphro is a pious man. Only a righteous man would put the interests of justice over familial interests.
Recognizing that Euthyphro is pious, Socrates desperately tries to get Euthyphro to explain his piety. He is practicing piety, so he must be able to give a conclusive description of the nature of piety. Euthyphro’s justifications end up relying on the gods. Socrates is dissatisfied. Neither can figure out if the gods love the good because it is good, or if the good is good because the gods love it. Euthyphro eventually becomes annoyed and confused and exits the conversation.
This is not a good thing, at least in the moment. Socrates ultimately confused a good and just man about the nature of goodness and justice. What if Euthyphro, in his confusion, decided not to testify against his father? In the long run, though, it is a good conversation because, presumably, such conversations bring us closer to the nature of goodness. Eventually.
Socrates continues to have these conversations, and the Athenians are becoming increasingly upset. They have a good society going, and this ugly old man keeps accosting people and confusing them. Upper-class young men of Athens think it is cool and probably edgy that Socrates is confusing the lawmakers, businesspeople, and soldiers of Athens about the reasons behind their actions. It is pretty edgy. He is undermining the social order.
Socrates is put on trial. At his trial, he testifies that some guy named Chaerophon asked the Oracle and Delphi who the wisest man ever was. The Oracle says that the gods say Socrates. Socrates testifies that this was the impetus for his inquisitive quest. He knows nothing, so how could he be the wisest? He had to test everyone to see if they knew anything, because then he would have found someone wiser. Socrates spoke to every supposedly wise person and discovered they were not wise; he made many enemies. He testifies that this endeavor served Oracle because he vindicated Oracle's statement by proving that nobody knew anything.
Socrates presents compelling arguments throughout his trial, defending himself against his accusers and speaking the plain, rational truth. And Socrates is right. He states that he will not abandon philosophy, even unto death. He likens himself to Achilles, defending his honor at all costs. His post is philosophy. If he abandons his post, the subsequent dishonor would be worse than death. The fear of death is only the pretense of wisdom. One cannot be certain what comes next or whether it will be worse or better than the present. To choose the assured evil of indignity and dishonor over the possible good of death would be foolish and unwise. He will not quit philosophy because he wants men to focus on the highest things and improve their souls.
Bringing someone to see the light of the good, true, and beautiful can be a slow and painful process. The cave allegory in the Republic teaches this lesson. There may be temporary negative externalities, such as Euthyphro forgetting to testify against his father as he ponders the nature of justice and piety. If everyone stops doing and thinks all the time, who will harvest the crops or defend the city? There is a lot to do and little time for thinking. Socrates is disrupting their productive activities by confusing them and forcing them to think, rather than fulfilling their other duties. But Socrates also makes people more virtuous. This seems like an impasse.
But it is not an impasse. The court makes the optimal decision. By killing Socrates, the court stops his disruption, but it does not stop philosophy. Socrates warns that, by killing him, they will make more people interested in his story, and more people will encourage virtue, wisdom, and thoughtful consideration. Yes! This is what Socrates wants, is it not? Socrates is a nuisance because he interferes with the city's day-to-day affairs. Remove the immediate nuisance, and philosophy continues. And it did. Plato wrote down the dialogues and started a school. Aristotle learned from Plato and also started a school. Philosophy continued.
Fence Builders and Fence Destroyers
The story of Socrates is an archetypal example of a fence destroyer. Socrates encouraged people to question the old gods and focus on good old capital-T Truth. That had beneficial effects, in that it gave rise to the Western philosophical tradition. It also had a detrimental impact, as it was socially disruptive. Does one of these outweigh the other? Your answer will tell you which side of the divide you stand on.
G.K. Chesterton argued that traditions exist for reasons we may not fully comprehend, and we must understand their purpose before attempting to dismantle them. We should not be hasty when tearing down what has been established. In Virgil’s Aeneid, a Trojan Priest named Laocoön warns against trusting the Greeks with anything. When the Greeks arrive with a notably large horse as a gift, the priest relies on his religious wisdom to advise against trusting their enemies. However, everyone else thinks it is not a big deal, and they let the horse gift in. The Trojans probably thought, Come on, it’s not a big deal. This is a nice gift! Do not let your silly religious inclinations get in the way. We know how the Trojan horse incident turned out for the Trojans.
Icarus has a similar experience. After his father Daedalus crafts him the wings for flying, he warns Icarus not to fly too high. Icarus, with the hubris typical among sons, treats his father’s warning as an arbitrary constraint placed on him and flies into the air anyway. As a consequence, the sun melts the wax in his wings, and he falls to his demise.
Examples like this abound throughout human history, from ancient times to the present day. In the Bible, King Saul decides to take the offering to God into his own hands, even though this task is reserved for the prophet Samuel. This is the beginning of the end for Saul’s kingship. The Garden of Eden is even more instructive. Adam and Eve assume, due to the serpent’s deception, that the warning about the fruit of the tree of knowledge is an arbitrary rule, and that God is just doing it to restrict them. Their violation of this rule results in their banishment from paradise.
Aesop’s fable of the boy who cried wolf is also similar. Why not cry wolf? It is just for fun! Who cares! And then when the wolf comes, nobody believes you. The fable of the grasshopper and the ant is also instructive. The grasshopper decides to enjoy the moment instead of preparing for the future, and is forced to beg for food from the ants once winter comes.
These are all examples of a fence being torn down by someone who did not bother to understand its purpose. Something may seem more profitable or worthwhile than following some rule in the short or long term. Pure rationality might tell you, “This rule is arbitrary, made by old white men in robes reading ancient books.” So you disregard the rule and do what you think is best. And then we have the legality of child genital mutilation as a significant electoral issue.
Fence - Myth - Darwinian Truth
Rules and fences take the form of traditions and myths. Traditions and myths exist to transmit complex behavioral patterns and useful information across generations in a low-friction way. They are cultural memory devices. It is hard to communicate a list of warnings, rules, and their rationales across generations. However, a well-told story can condense all that information and then convey it forward through time. Later generations subconsciously internalize the lessons of the myths, and they can also delve into the myths and unpack them to spell out the rules, recommendations, and rationales explicitly. Even a non-Christian can give a cursory account of the Garden of Eden. You will seldom find even the most devout Christian believer who can confidently explain the laws in Leviticus.
On one level, it does not matter if the myths are true or not. A mythic story can refer to a real event or person, but is still told in a way that conveys valuable information to future generations. Even if one denies the Garden of Eden account in Genesis, one can still recognize and understand the point being made above. Socrates may not have been an actual person, but rather a literary device developed by Plato to convey philosophy in an engaging and accessible way. In either case, the trial of Socrates provides a valid vignette for the introduction of this essay. The question is not whether a thing was said, but why what we know was said was said. Why do we still have Genesis, Plato’s Republic, and Aesop’s fables? Because they facilitate proper action.
Pure rationality, by definition, exists outside the domain of action. Thinking and acting are distinct yet related processes. Thinking serves a purpose: to bring an end to thinking because it's costly in terms of calories and to transmit the correct action into the world of active life. Tradition and myth enable an individual to skip all or part of the thinking phase before taking action.
, author at ‘The Dosage Makes It So’, describes the difference between Darwinian and Scientific truths. He proposes a steelman of astrology: perhaps astrology has correctly identified a pattern with misguided attribution. “Some heuristics can be accurate, for the wrong reasons.”According to Dmitry, a Darwinian truth might not be scientifically accurate, but acting as if it is true can be beneficial. For instance, a porcupine throwing its quills is a Darwinian truth. Even though they do not do this, acting like they do will keep one safe from their quills. Wrong in fact, but right in action.
Astrology may be similar: “Astrology claims to be able to predict behavioral traits using the month of your birth.” Dmitry investigates if there is any causal relationship between temperament and birth month, identifying gestational hormones as a likely candidate. “The hormones you’re exposed to in the womb materially shape you for the rest of your life. Even little things in utero can be formative.” He explains:
Seasonal and dietary changes can significantly impact our biochemistry. Environmental shifts facilitate disruptions in hormonal output in mom, and thus fetus development, cyclically. In a way that could produce temperament patterns in humans that roughly correlate with birth months.
Astrology, therefore, serves as a proxy for the way that seasons impact hormones in the mother, which in turn affects development in the womb, potentially influencing behavior later in life.
Astrology ascribes to the planets what the endocrine system and seasonality impose upon us. It correctly documents personality variance by birth month that is actually due to biochemical cycles in mom the nine months preceding your birth. Right observation, false attribution. (Emphasis added)
Make sure to check out Dmitry’s complete essay in the endnotes.1
Astrology functions as a proxy for something real: understanding the way that prenatal hormones in the mother impact development. It is not itself true, but it leads to accurate insights.
So, should one believe in astrology? Knowing that it functions as a proxy for something else that is far more verifiable makes it hard to “believe” in the sense that most astrology fans do. All that is left is a cynical form of belief. The information presented by astrology is simple enough to communicate without the new-age accouterments, so “buying in” is not exactly necessary.
So, why not cut down all myths in this way? Why not strip back the stories and get down to the base level, and follow the underlying truth?
Myths are like abstract programs. In computer science, all code is meant to be instructions for the computer’s processor. At the basic level, the CPU speaks in machine code, which can be written at a low level in Assembly language. Assembly is an extremely unintuitive programming language, requiring an intricate and intimate understanding of the way the code interacts with memory. This is how one prints “Hello, world!” in Assembly:
section .data
msg db 'Hello, world!',0
section .text
global _start
_start:
mov edx, 13 ; message length
mov ecx, msg ; message to write
mov ebx, 1 ; file descriptor 1 = stdout
mov eax, 4 ; syscall number for sys_write
int 0x80 ; interrupt to invoke syscall
mov eax, 1 ; syscall number for sys_exit
xor ebx, ebx ; exit code 0
int 0x80Few programs are written in Assembly. Instead, new languages have been created that express the same instructions in an abstract manner. The code is compiled into machine code, allowing the CPU to execute the instructions. Abstract programming languages are much easier to read and write. Here is how one prints “Hello, world!” with Python:
print("Hello, world!")The same instructions apply to the CPU in both cases. This is because Python is an abstract, or high-level, language, whereas Assembly is a low-level language that interacts closely with the CPU. Python is mythological in the same way that something like astrology is mythological: it communicates something comparatively complex in a relatively low-friction way. Python is the most popular programming language for beginning programmers. Assembly language is close to the last.
Asking if we should discard the myths and focus solely on the underlying truths is akin to asking if we should abandon abstract programming languages. The answer: not usually. Astrology can be done away with because its underlying truth is simple enough. If one were to create an abstraction of Python where each line ends in a semicolon, and then it just compiles down to Python, that would be safe to discard. The alternative communication medium provides little value. But in other cases, the alternative communication medium offers tremendous value. We should not discard Python, C, and all other languages in favor of programming only in Assembly.
There is a place for low-level languages, and there is a place for abstract languages. Low-level languages are precise but cumbersome for communication. Abstract languages are easy to write and share, but they sacrifice complete precision and accuracy. A list of the best practices for human existence (if one existed) would be very handy, but also very hard to share with others and hand down over generations. Myths, which abstract those best practices and Darwinian truths, are socially lubricated because the brain adopts a narrative understanding of reality, as opposed to a merely fact-based one.
This is why, in The Republic, Socrates and his interlocutors focus on the kind of stories that should be allowed in the best state.
Built Into the Brain
There are two ways to understand the world: through reason, or myth and tradition. These are distinct yet complementary approaches to grasping reality. Relying solely on reason may dismantle barriers without comprehending their purpose, while focusing exclusively on myth and tradition can limit one's capacity to advance when faced with challenges. Therefore, these two methods need to work in collaboration. Both ways of engaging with the world are indispensable, so harmonious that they are inherently integrated into the structure of the human brain.
According to British neuroscientist Iain McGilchrist, the left brain/right brain distinction is not merely a fad or a product of pop science. Instead, it is a crucial distinction that separates how human beings understand and interact with reality. In his 2008 book, The Master and His Emissary, McGilchrist draws on split-brain studies, psychiatric research, and history to illustrate the critical distinction between the brain's hemispheres.
The left hemisphere of the brain has a narrow focus and relies on explicit reasoning, abstraction, symbol manipulation, and control. In contrast, the right hemisphere possesses a broad awareness of the world, thinks holistically, and depends on embodied meaning, context, and lived experience. The left hemisphere is the reason-first part of the brain. In contrast, the right hemisphere acts as the compiler for the abstract programs embedded in myth and tradition, returning to the computer science analogy.
The right hemisphere perceives reality before the left hemisphere does. The left hemisphere represents it abstractly and narrowly, which simplifies it and allows it to be used in rational thought. McGilchrist argues that modern Western society has become increasingly left-brain dominant, favoring abstraction over lived experience and manipulation over understanding. He distinguishes between the two:
For the right hemisphere there is... always an appeal open to nature: it is open to whatever is new that comes from experience, from the world at large. The corollary of this impact of expectation on attention is that the left hemisphere delivers what we know, rather than what we actually experience. This can be seen in its drawing skills. It will even draw the bones it knows to be within the human figure (so-called ‘X-ray’ drawings), and has a poor grasp of relative scale, spatial relationships and depth. There is an inevitable relationship between certainty and ‘ re-cognition’, the return to something already familiar. Conscious knowledge, the knowledge that characterizes left-hemisphere understanding, depends on its object being fixed – otherwise it cannot be known.2
The right hemisphere perceives reality as it is, as a whole, and processes it quickly in the background. Understanding the world through the right hemisphere is challenging because conscious, rational, and verbal thinking occurs only in the left hemisphere, which breaks reality into manageable pieces that can be processed by conscious cognition. He states: "Turning to the neurological and neuropsychological literature again, we can see what happens when the contribution of the right hemisphere to the world is absent. The world loses reality. People who have lost significant right-hemisphere function experience a world from which meaning has been drained."3 The world cannot be understood without the fluid reasoning of the right hemisphere, which understands in a way necessarily beyond reason.
The right hemisphere also recognizes humanness. Deducing and articulating the essence of a human being in rational terms is a challenging task. Any standard or essential characterization can be scrutinized by rationality. This is why there has consistently been disagreement over who or what is or is not human, from slaves in the 1700s to unborn children today. This is because it is not the left hemisphere's role to comprehend what constitutes a human being. McGilchrist states:
The right temporal region appears to have areas not only specific for living things, but additionally for all that is specifically human. Such judgments of ‘humanness’ are separate from the right hemisphere's superior ability to recognize faces. The right hemisphere prioritizes whatever actually is, and what concerns us. It prefers existing things, real scenes and stimuli that can be made sense of in terms of the lived world, whatever it is that has meaning and value for us as human beings.4
The right hemisphere is the one that understands reality, yet it is limited in its ability to deduce proper action and direct it. It relies on the left hemisphere to do so, hence the name of the book. The right hemisphere is the master, and the left hemisphere is the emissary. The right hemisphere grasps the whole picture and provides "the basis for our engagement with the world,"5 but the left hemisphere, being the engine for conscious thought, does not understand that there is a full picture outside of its purview. Therefore, it assumes it should be the master. The left hemisphere seeks to tear down fences because it cannot grasp the whole picture. It cannot even "see" the whole body, having access only to the right side, while the right hemisphere has a complete view of the entire body. In split-brain studies, the right hemisphere controls the left hand, whereas the left hemisphere demands control of the right hand. The writings and drawings produced by the two hands in these studies enable researchers to gain insight into this.
McGilchrist further illustrates the importance of their complementary nature in discussing emotion:
The left hemisphere specialises in more superficial, social emotions, by contrast with the right hemisphere, which is more directly in touch with primary-process emotionality. Related to this, the left hemisphere may also be more involved in conscious representation of emotion: willed, or forced, emotional expressions, once again principally of the mouth area, are controlled by the left hemisphere. A study on conscious and unconscious processing of emotional facial expression has suggested that the left but not the right amygdala is associated with explicit representational content of the observed emotion, whereas the right amygdala is more closely involved with unconscious emotional processing.6
The left hemisphere manages emotions in the active world: how they will be expressed and responded to. The right hemisphere, on the other hand, processes emotions without conscious awareness. This is why human beings can recognize that they feel an emotion, but may not be able to identify it precisely or understand why they are feeling it. The consciously aware part of the brain does not access this information until the right brain has properly processed it.
The two hemispheres need each other, but there is an "asymmetry of power,"7 McGilchrist says. Because the left hemisphere cannot see the whole picture of reality that the right hemisphere sees, it assumes that its perception is the world, and the right hemisphere is getting in the way. He states: "The Master makes himself vulnerable to the emissary, and the emissary can choose to take advantage of the situation, to ignore the Master. It seems that its nature is such that it is prone to do so, and it may even, mistakenly, see the right hemisphere's world as undoing its work, challenging its ‘supremacy’."8
The left hemisphere is blind to its limitations. It is not cognizant of what it does not know. The right hemisphere experiences the whole life world and transmits to the left only what is essential, so that the left hemisphere can act on it. The right hemisphere, on the other hand, "has no designs on anything."9 Instead, it has total vigilance, "without preconceptions, without a predefined purpose."10 McGilchrist encapsulates the two fundamentally distinct modes of being experienced by the two hemispheres:
The world of the left hemisphere, dependent on denotative language and abstraction, yields clarity and power to manipulate things that are known, fixed, static, isolated, decontextualized, explicit, disembodied, general in nature, but ultimately lifeless. The right hemisphere, by contrast, yields a world of individual, changing, evolving, interconnected, implicit, incarnate, living beings within the context of the lived world, but in the nature of things never fully graspable, always imperfectly known – and to this world it exists in a relationship of care.11
Care connects the right hemisphere to the fluid nature of actual reality. McGilchrist invokes Heidegger, who described care as the fundamental structure of Dasein's (“being-there”, or the soul) being. Through care, humans are always already engaged with the world. We care about things, people, and projects. We exist primarily as beings already immersed in concern-filled activity, not as neutral, detached observers and thinkers. Through care, a human being connects to reality before thought. Traditions, myths, and stories communicate with and instruct the part of the mind that directly engages with care. They guide care in ways that the left hemisphere, or rational brain, cannot fully comprehend. Man's myths and traditions teach him how to care about the world. The brain demands this, and even in the modern age of rationalism, it persists. Observe the Reddit users who constantly explain current events through references to Star Wars and Marvel movies, perceiving everyday life through the lens of a sitcom. These are considered the primary myths of the modern age, yet their influence is often overlooked due to the contemporary dominance of the left hemisphere.
McGilchrist attributes numerous societal pathologies, including technocratic thinking, bureaucratization, and the rationalized erosion of tradition, to the dominance of the left hemisphere. He argues that art, religion, tradition, and communal life are constructs of the right hemisphere under siege. McGilchrist claims that this process began with... Socrates. After Socrates, the West has gradually shifted from a left-right balance to a left-brain hegemony, resulting in a relentless onslaught of fence destruction. The left hemisphere fails to recognize the purposes of the mythic structures surrounding it, instead using rationality to dismantle them. He argues:
Today all the available sources of intuitive life – cultural tradition, the natural world, the body, religion and art – have been so conceptualized, devitalized and ‘deconstructed’ (ironized) by the world of words, mechanistic systems and theories constituted by the left hemisphere that their power to help us see beyond the hermetic world that it has set up has been largely drained from them... Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger have noted a gradual encroachment over time of rationality on the natural territory of intuition or instinct.12
Myths, traditions, and stories are essential elements of the human experience. Criticizing them for lacking immediate or obvious benefits to rational thought can lead to unintended consequences. The human brain is not just a machine of rational conscious thought; it also encompasses an entire hemisphere dedicated to non-rational processing. While one hemisphere often views the other as an adversary, they are complementary and function together harmoniously. The apparent competition that conceals a necessary and complementary relationship is also reflected in human society.
Built Into Behavior
, the author of the essay on astrology and Darwinian truths, is also known for his series on Biofoundationalism. The series, which is still in progress, is well worth reading. Dmitry posits an interesting and challenging thesis about political divisions in human society: morality is a genetic phenomenon expressed phenotypically through politics. He argues that moral beliefs are not a choice, and political stances are not informed decisions.Political differences are evenly distributed across the population, but material circumstances largely determine the expression of these views. Dmitry argues that conservative moral foundations are more pronounced when resources are limited, whereas liberal moral foundations are more heavily expressed when resources are abundant.
Harsh circumstances tend to foster the expression of conservative values, whereas abundance tends to encourage the expression of liberal values. Dmitry states that “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.13
An ideal society would have an even split of these two political perspectives. Still, sometimes a society drifts into hypermoralization: periods where one political phenotype is expressed at the expense of the other. Dmitry states:
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.14
During periods of hypermoralization, the two sides do not just see competing values but a battle between good and evil. Communication becomes impossible, and one side gains the upper hand in the power struggle, creating conditions that demand the other side's compliance.
Dmitry, drawing on Haidt, explains that six primary moral foundations are prioritized and evaluated differently depending on political stance:
Care/Harm
Fairness/Cheating
Loyalty/Betrayal
Authority/Subversion
Sanctity/Degradation
Liberty/Oppression
People in a society often disagree on how to respond to certain situations because of their temperaments, which are shaped by their unique brain wiring. This does not mean that truth and morality are relative; rather, understanding their roots and why different people hold different perspectives on what is true is key. The foundations of moral belief and political expressions are biological. Dmitry states:
We can predict your political beliefs with 83% accuracy with only a brain scan. We don’t need to know anything else about you. Don’t need to know your opinions, favorite books, where you went to school, none of it. And this is without AI. This hard reality cannot be ignored.15
Dmitry cites extensive research throughout the series to back up the claim that moral and political beliefs stem from biological reality. This is an uncomfortable truth because modern society conditions individuals through media and the education system to believe that people are blank slates, entirely shaped by their environment.
The blank slate theory is a farce, propped up by the fear of what fundamental scientific discoveries might reveal. However, the applications of scientific truth do not determine its validity. There is little trouble in understanding why a great athlete may be able to pass some degree of prowess to their progeny. Still, the popular understanding suggests that genetic influence somehow stops at the neck.
Extensive evidence confirms that the basis for politics is in the structure of the brain: "Conservative brains are wired for threat detection, stability, and ingroup purity (disgust response in insula). Liberal brains are wired for flexibility, openness to new experiences, and social fairness (empathy/sympathy response in insula)."16
Research has found a strong correlation between brain structure and political beliefs; however, many argue that this is merely a coincidence and cannot prove a causal link. However, Dmitry notes that the chances of these two things correlating without a causal connection are less likely than the alternative: that nature somehow created a coincidence at a mass scale.
Nature doesn't do coincidences on a large scale. It makes sense that different moral foundations would naturally prioritize, as trying to focus on all six at once would be challenging and unnecessary. It is similar to how people specialize in various areas of concern, which is natural in a social context where groups collaborate and work together. This division of labor allows individuals to focus on what they care about most, rather than trying to be all things to all people.
Humans can shape their environments, but their environments also shape them in return. Humans do not have full agency over how they influence their surroundings. One may rearrange furniture in a house, but only within a limited set of configurations. To overcome these limitations, one must change the broader environment, the house itself. Dmitry states:
A sunflower grows in a warm climate, and in winter the same seed withers. Similarly, moral convictions and political norms develop in the soils that sustain them. Adopting conservatism in decadence is like trying to grow sunflowers in the winter; promoting liberalism in destitution is like trying to grow sunflowers without any seeds. . .The correct (and healthy) way to comprehend it is neither is inherently superior, rather one side is sometimes more useful than the other. What decides the usefulness? The environment.17
Dmitry says, "Masculine because you have to, feminine because you get to." Masculine instincts of order and justice are more useful in times of necessity, whereas feminine impulses for care and distribution are more useful in peacetimes and abundance.
Thus conservative moral foundations dominate in hardship, as this is when conservative morals have the most utility. In times of war, toil, or strife, you prioritize strength, loyalty, hierarchy, and purity. A nation’s morality masculinizes in these environments, as this is the only viable path to survive and pull yourself out of such situations.
Dmitry also emphasizes the critical role that narrative plays in understanding political phenomena. Given a set of basic facts, someone with conservative moral foundations will attach a particular narrative to them. In contrast, someone with liberal moral foundations will interpret it through a completely different narrative. The world must be understood through narrative: there is no way around it. Human beings are not bare data processing machines. We incorporate information relationally, in large part thanks to the tremendous subconscious power of the right hemisphere.
So, how do the hemispheres relate to biofoundationalism? How does biofoundationalism relate to the fence question?
It may be tempting to say that the right-wing is more right hemisphere-minded, and the left-wing is more left hemisphere-minded. Broadly, this is correct. The political right is often associated with tradition and the defense of old values, whereas the left frequently emphasizes progress and “technical” solutions to social problems. The universities, the modern bastions of leftism, will produce 300-page reports on how to solve crime by solving the underlying social stratification which leads underprivileged communities to develop systemic relationships of otherization and violence. In contrast, the right says that crime should be solved by placing people in jail. This, in a way, is the two hemispheres at work. And, just as the hemispheres work in tandem, the political left and right work in tandem with one another. In both cases, the balance is sometimes broken, and in both cases, the balance must be restored.
So, does this mean that Socrates was a leftist? In a way, yes, but be careful. Despite his ideal state in The Republic being so fascist it would make Mussolini blush, Socrates privileged reason alone over tradition and myth. This is the same rationalism that propelled the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the modern university-driven, expert-led technocratic leftism of today. The myths of the time, which were a critical part of connecting to reality, were undermined by Socrates’ questioning.
The left and right hemispheres do not map perfectly onto the political phenotypes that Dmitry describes. It is conceivable that, at times, conservative moral foundations may emphasize reason as a means to overcome myths and traditions that have developed from liberal moral foundations. The point is that political disagreements are not always a matter of right versus wrong. Still, it may also be expressions of social evolution that seek to find equilibrium, much like the structure of the brain.
Mythic Evolution
What does this mean? Which of the two sides of the divide is correct? Those who want to uphold the myths, stories, and traditions passed down from their ancestors? Or those who want to upend those entirely and replace them with science has spoken truth? There is no universally correct answer. This is not to endorse moral relativism or a postmodern post-truth understanding of reality. Examining society in those terms is narrow and overlooks the broader perspective. The larger picture includes the other half of your brain.
The larger picture also includes the process. Human history is an ongoing development, in which forces push and pull, striving for control and to put their preferences into action. One side will always stand by tradition, and the other side will always stand by bare reason. They must do so. If one side completely gave over to the worldview of the other, the consequences would be disastrous. The result would either be relentless progressive entropy or devotion to atavistic norms. These two sides must clash with one another to keep each other in check.
One way Austrian economics differs from mainstream economics is its emphasis on the process of economic decision-making. In mainstream economics, economists make and study models. Models are always only a snapshot in time. Sometimes, a demand curve might have shifted, or the indifference curve might be in a different position to indicate a change over time, but the models then only refer to two points in time. Austrian economics takes a phenomenological understanding of human activity as its starting point, recognizing that the economy exists only ever through time, and its processes must be understood in this way. There is a place for models, but they do not present the complete picture.
When considering faith versus reason, tradition versus progress, on a societal scale, we must recognize that it is a process. There is no one-size-fits-all model, but instead a continuous development and violent clashing of these two poles. Mythic stories and narratives of civilizations rise and fall. When one goes, another takes its place. This is an inevitable process. Mythological narratives cannot be escaped, even by the most pure rationalist atheists (they still have a right hemisphere).
Socrates sought to understand truth, but in doing so, he disrupted critical pillars of social order. Sometimes the philosopher must be killed to maintain the structures that make life possible in the world. Sometimes, the structures must change to accommodate new circumstances. But in the latter case, we must understand why the fence is there before taking it down, lest we get eaten by what it was holding back.
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Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009), page 240.
Ibid., page 277.
Ibid., page 92.
Ibid., page 106.
Ibid., page 100.
Ibid., page 315.
Ibid.
Ibid., page 253.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., page 356.
Ibid.
Ibid.
If it wasn’t for Substack, I would have NEVER agreed with a statement like: “Socrates had it coming.”
Excellent article, love seeing neuroscience brought in to this