The Independent Whig
I believe that Jonathan Haidt’s body of work supports the argument that the best metaphor for describing liberalism and conservatism is that of Flatland and Spaceland, where liberals are two dimensional “square” Flatlanders and conservatives are three dimensional “sphere” Spacelanders. Here’s his summary of Flatland from page 182 of his book The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom
“One day, the square is visited by a sphere from a three-dimensional world called Spaceland. When a sphere visits Flatland, however, all that is visible to Flatlanders is the part of the sphere that lies in their plain-in other words, a circle. The square is astonished that the circle is able to grow or shrink at will (by rising or sinking into the plane of Flatland) and even to disappear and reappear in a different place (by leaving the plane, and then reentering it). The sphere tries to explain the concept of the third dimension to the two-dimensional square, but the square, though skilled at two-dimensional geometry, doesn’t get it. He cannot understand what it means to have thickness in addition to height and breadth, nor can he understand that the circle came from up above him, where “up” does not mean from the north. The sphere presents analogies and geometrical demonstrations of how to move from one dimension to two, and then from two to three, but the square stilI finds the idea of moving “up” out of the plane of Flatland ridiculous.”
Leave a Reply
I Support Viewpoint Diversity
A politically diverse group of social scientists, natural scientists, humanists, and other scholars who want to improve our academic disciplines and universities. We share a concern about a growing problem: the loss or lack of “viewpoint diversity.” When nearly everyone in a field shares the same political orientation, certain ideas become orthodoxy, dissent is discouraged, and errors can go unchallenged.
Venn Diagram of Liberal and Conservative Traits and Moral Foundations and
The Independent Whig 
Discussion
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
Pingback: Most Analyses Fail to Identify The Root Cause of Partisanship | The Independent Whig - June 13, 2017
Pingback: Moral Capital is a Moral Foundation | The Independent Whig - January 13, 2017
Pingback: The Political Divide is Between Linear and Complex thinking, not Left and Right | The Independent Whig - January 9, 2017
Pingback: Social Justice Warriors Physically Assault Trump Supporters. It Was Only a Matter of Time. Here’s Why. | The Independent Whig - June 3, 2016
Pingback: Scientific Regress | The Independent Whig - May 11, 2016
Pingback: A Grave Error of Intellect and Imagination | The Independent Whig - April 20, 2016
Pingback: Eight Challenges to Moral Foundations Theory | The Independent Whig - February 3, 2016
Pingback: A Response To “Why are there so few non-liberals in social psychology? A closer look” | The Independent Whig - November 11, 2015
Pingback: Liberal and Conservative are Different Cognitive Processes | The Independent Whig - September 5, 2015
Pingback: Yeah, about that (purple) cake | The Independent Whig - July 22, 2015
Pingback: This Explains – and Changes – Everything | The Independent Whig - March 9, 2015
Pingback: Jonathan Haidt’s Metaphors Sacrifice Completeness and Accuracy in Favor of Parsimony and Ideology, Part I: Yin/Yang | The Independent Whig - December 14, 2013