Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - The Morality of Mask Wearing?

Episode Date: May 27, 2021

Mask moralizing and scolding still happens on both sides of the aisle. But rather than taking sides, what if we saw masks as a window into how humans think about morality? What can the masks wars teach us about how different groups define "moral" and "immoral," and how might that be a gateway into a less judgmental perspective toward both sides? In this episode, we look at the "moral tastebuds" God's given every human to cultivate. We explore what it looks like, even during the mask battles, to trust God as the ultimate food critic, who can define what really tastes and good and evil. To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks (Facebook) and https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO and @TMBTpodcast. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. Also, if you want to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at TMBT Podcast. You can also check out our hashtag, hashtag, AskT, where you can ask us anything, and we'd love to connect with you. Hey, Keith, did you know that the Princess Bride predicted the future? I've never seen the Princess Bride. You haven't seen any movies. Just trust me. Is this like, was it Back to the Future? Predicted the Future too?

Yeah. Well, if I had the Back to the Future Almanac about future sports, except that it was about Bitcoin and Ethereum and all cryptocurrency, I'd be a very wealthy person. Are you invested in crypto? I'm not. I think it's all the gamification of finances. And I think there's some pretty nefarious things that happen on crypto. But let's not, that's not what we're talking about. I don't know. The Princess Bride. I've never seen it. Okay, so here's what's happening. There's the main character. Somebody got married. There's a bride. There's a bride. The main character's name is Wesley. He's wearing a mask. And he's like Zorro? He's kind of like Zoro. And he's trying to wrestle this giant named Fezik. And Fezik is going to ask him why he wears a mask. Just listen to him.

Why are you wearing a mask? Will you burn the acid or something like that? Oh, no. It's just that terribly comfortable. I think everyone will be wearing them in the future. Why are you wearing a mask? Were you burned by acid or something? Everybody will be wearing him.

Right. It was totally right. It's not the first time in history, by the way, that people or governments have distributed masks. Again, you don't watch TV, but I like The Crown. It's one of my favorite TV shows. And one of the episodes is about the London smog. In the 1950s, there was this smog that was making people sick. And there's a scene where Queen Elizabeth is going to the surgeons and asking, what can we do? Just listen to, and this is from the Crown. It's the smog. Masks are bloody useless They're just for show To make it look like the government's doing something Masks are bloody useless Just to make it look like the government's doing something Now Hang on a second

When was that recorded? When was that recorded? Like was that That's from the show That's right Was that show after This is after the fact Coronavirus

So they're No no this is before coronavirus This is in 2016 That this episode was recorded Oh really Yeah Now that makes it more interesting Everybody knew that I guess

It is. It reminds me I don't watch British shows because I didn't understand a word they said. Yeah, well, that makes sense. You don't watch any shows. It's been funny. We want to talk today about the morality of mask wearing. This is kind of a hot topic. And I actually don't think, unlike the usual, we're not trying to give a hot take on a hot topic.

We're just trying to analyze this a little bit from afar and say, why is there all this moral outrage on every side about masks? Everybody is talking about this right now, wherever I go, whoever I sit down with, what they want to talk about is why are people wearing mask when they don't need to? And these are the same kind of conversations we had a year ago at the beginning of the pandemic when people were talking about why people wouldn't wear masks. And it really is a moral issue for people. They see it as right and wrong. They don't have a you-do-you perspective. They have a everybody should do this perspective. Whatever theirs is, that's got to be normative for everybody. So it's really interesting.

We've gone back and forth on masks. Back on February 29th, 2020, the U.S. Surgeon General tweeted this out. He said, seriously, people, stop buying masks. They are, all caps, not effective in preventing general public from catching the coronavirus. But if health care providers can't get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk. So this is one of the first things that came out about masks early on. They won't do anything to help you, and please don't buy them because you're going to cause harm to our health care workers. There was a chief medical officer at local hospital here who said to all the staff.

Do I really respect and has been great on all this stuff? Well, I think. But he changed his mind, yeah. He did change his mind? Yeah, so early on he said, look, masks, they don't do anything. This guy's in infectious diseases. And he was saying to the staff and the university audience, so this isn't like a private conversation, lots of people told me this, that he said, look, we're not doing masks around here.

They're ineffective in stopping a virus like coronavirus. But then as the virus went on, I think we had to get to get to. people grace because you don't know what to do in the middle of a pandemic. But as the virus went on, they started seeing different results and saying actually masks do seem to have an impact. We're seeing countries that are masking, having lower rates of COVID. And so I think it was probably maybe May or June and became more prevalent for local municipalities or counties or states even to do masking mandates. And so he changed his mind. He changed his mind. Well, yeah, our point isn't to say that people can't change their mind. They should change your mind. Information, you change your mind. If you haven't

changed your mind, you're an idiot on things. So I love being proven wrong because that means I learned something. So I think that the point is that the evidence about mask and the public announcements about mask has been inconsistent up and down. Just to give other examples, you think about how early on it was you've got to have a mask on to protect yourself and then later on and it actually doesn't protect you at all. It only protects other people from you. There were things early on of what kind of masks work or don't work.

I remember I was wearing early on. I got a gator because I'm a very forgetful person. I knew I forget my mask. An alligator? Gators are the little neck things. A little neck things you can pull up over your face. Duck Dynasty. Duck Dynasty stuff, right? I had a Duck Dynasty one. No, I didn't. But I got it because I was like, I'm forgetful. And if it's around my neck, I'll never forget it. And I was walking down the hallway and someone very seriously looked at me and said, are you trying to get me sick? Really? Here at the office? Here at the office. Somebody said that to you? Someone said to me, and I go, I'd like to guess you that was. Let's play a game. I guess. You won't. You won't. You won't

guess it as much as you think you will you want it would surprise you over it wasn't dave it was not dave but so i was like what are you talking about i'm doing the thing i'm wearing my mask and he goes well those things actually diffuse particles so when you breathe through him it makes it worse now i had no idea it turns out he was right that's why people stopped wearing gators later on i see a lot of people wear him yeah well apparently they don't have my same moral superiority i wore my underwear over my paper. Just like a pair of boxers. It was an awkward day at the office.

I said, Keith, you got to go home. That doesn't count. Well, I mean, people were saying, like, if you wear a mask, that would cause you to touch your face more often, and so masks could actually be more dangerous than helpful. And then how thick does your mask have to be? How many masks do you have to wear? Oh, triple masks. We're kind of laughing at this in retrospect. But the reality was there were a lot of claims that were made over the last year in the name of the quote-unquote science. Oh, the science. How many baseless claims are made in any given year

on the basis of the science? We need music. Let me say. It's like a deity. It's like people think that the science is a book you open and it answers all of your questions. Have you not read the science? With great objectivity. I know you read your Bible today, but what about the science? And everybody claims the science is on their side. Both sides say it is. And it kind of depends on the issue. They don't work. The science says they do work. The science says they don't work. We should do a whole episode on the science. It would be really interesting to do the science episode. The science behind climate change. The science behind abortion. The science behind it all. And so as mask wearing has changed over the last year and what we think about it has changed over the last year, the CDC has given different recommendations regarding masks. Did you hear the new one, by the way?

They said that men can now wear jeans shorts without being mocked by teens. Justin Bieber took it seriously. He's wearing jean shorts everywhere. He actually had some cargo shorts on the other day. I thought that was interesting. I didn't know he was a Bebees fan. I'm kind of getting into it. I'm going to a Justin Bieber concert. You are? I am. Next year? You've already got plans for 2022? Well, if you want to go to a Bebe's concert, you got to buy your tickets early.

Is it coming here to our local municipality? I think in St. Louis. Who's going with you? Just a bunch of friends. A bunch of people in their 30s. who were too old to go to a Bieber concert. Guys? Guys and gals, husbands and wives. Wow.

It's not a weird polygamy thing. That's a different episode. So let's talk about our context, where we're at right now in Columbia. So about, was it, two weeks ago, our city and our county lifted their ordinances which mandated wearing masks.

And you know what that means? It means this. Freedom. Freedom forever. No, in all seriousness. And then I think two days later, the CDC comes out with their most recent recommendations, which is that if you are vaccinated, you no longer have to wear a mask. And I don't know if you saw the little asterisk at the end of that, but it was another song.

On your face. They changed skin to face, but wow. I love it. Just a little Natasha Beddingfield. Well, it's like we're living in between the Old and New Testament. I mean, you lived in between the Testaments and you're trying to figure out. Do we have to offer it sacrifices still? Is the temple a thing?

How do we follow Jesus in this new world that has just been launched by the death and resurrection of Jesus? And I feel like we're living in between the Testaments now where the COVID virus was doing a lot of damage and now less so. We had to wear masks now less so. We had to social distance, now less so. But in some places, you still have to do these things. And we're not quite sure how to act. I mean, whenever I go out to a restaurant or Christine and I do something in public, are we supposed to have a mask, not have a mask? You know what's worse is traveling. Because like in Columbia, I kind of know what the rules are, but Emily and I went to Austin last weekend. And when you go somewhere else, you don't know what the rules are in their place.

Like how are people asking? Are they wearing masks? Are they not wearing masks? And unfortunately, the first restaurant we went to, they weren't wearing masks. We're like, oh, okay, I guess this is kind of a maskless town. It just turns out it was that one restaurant. So I went to the next one. I don't have my mask on and I got these scowls.

I'm like, oh, gosh. Oh, everybody here is wearing. I'm like quickly pulling it out, putting it on my face. Like, I've got it on, I'm sorry, don't judge me. I'm a good person. I'll tell you about my mask. I'm trying to kill you? I got a scolding.

I'll tell you about that later. Ooh, from Emily? No, from a bookstore worker. But we'll get into that. Okay. Okay, but you're exactly right. There's this judgmentalism on both sides. I want to be really clear.

It's on both sides. I know people who are probably on the far right, who have been incredibly condescending and judgmental towards people who are still wearing masks. They're like, how dare you? How could you? You dummy, you idiot. And I know people on the left you say, look, not everybody's been vaccinated yet. And it's still not time. We need to do this slowly. How could

you be so selfish? You've been selfish the whole time because you refuse to wear a mask from the beginning. You selfish people. So both sides are being judgmental. Did you see that New York Times had a deal the other day where you could put in your address and see what the thousand voters around you were registered as? No. And what political party. Yeah. So Christine and I put in our address. And it was literally 50-50 of registered Republicans and registered Democrats around us, perfectly red and blue, evenly divided. That is interesting. And that doesn't really surprise me because of the place we live, but also because I have friends on both sides of that that you just described. I have a friend,

a good friend, who hasn't worn a mask probably five times. He almost moved out of, when I say almost, he moved to a different location that didn't require a mask so he wouldn't have to wear one. He would call ahead and only go into stores or restaurants that didn't require them to wear a mask. This is during the heat of the pandemic. And I have other friends who are still wearing masks today outside on the trail, triple masked. And so this is something that is kind of working its way out on both sides, the anti-maskers and the pro-maskers. And it's been that way from the beginning. It's been politicized and there have been moral arguments from the beginning. And that's what we want to explore today. We want to talk about how we come to our moral conclusions.

Why is it that both sides can feel as though they are the morally superior side and be in absolute disagreement about what's the right thing to do? I think you're exactly right. Both feel morally superior for the choices that they're making. So there's a great book by guy named Jonathan Haight or Hate. I'm not sure how to say it. Do you know? No, I just make up pronunciations in my head and just run. Let's go with Height because calling him hate seems wrong. Okay, Harry Potter. Let's just do it a little quick. Harry Potter, the girl. Hermione. Yeah, see, I called her Hermione. when I read the book and then my kid, her me.

God. They corrected me and I refuse. You will always be Hermione. So it is really hate, height. Whatever. Who cares? John Fitton height. He read a book called The Righteous Mind.

He's a social psychologist at NYU. He previously worked at Penn State, wasn't it? No. You see? Penn. Penn. Okay. Anyways, he was the author of The Righteous Mind.

There's not many books I read multiple times. I think I've read this book four or five times now. It's one of the best books I've ever read. Four or five times. Yeah, I love it. Wow. I could read this book every year. And he talks about how we all have moral taste buds.

We all have different flavors of morality that we like. And just like some people love avocado and other people don't or some people love the taste of cilantro and other people don't, the same thing is true of morals. Now, what's really interesting, we're going to talk about what our moral taste buds are in a second. But what's really interesting is that he makes the point in his book that the moral reasons that we give to justify what we think is right and wrong, those are the second step. The first step is intuition. So first of all, I just want to say one more thing about Jonathan. What do we decide? Hite. Okay. I just want to say one more thing. He's an atheist who is friendly to faith, meaning he respects the role of religion and faith. He's not the kind of person that mocks it.

But he clearly doesn't believe in God. He's a confident liberal who's very open to politically liberal, who is very open to conversation and dialogue with conservatives. And what drove him to learn about morality and to study morality was because he wanted to help liberals win more elections because he felt that they weren't appealing well enough to people's moral foundations. Yeah, and we'll get into that. Just one more thing is he wrote the book, The Coddling of the American Mind, which we've talked about. And he's also written another book that I really like called The Happiness Hypothesis. I haven't read it. Well, I remember I was one year, this is several years ago.

It was my number one book of the year that I posted. And Dave got mad at me. And another pastor got mad at me because I put an atheist book as my top book of the year. And I thought it was going to lead the church astray. But if you know me, that's just what you get. Anyway. So, yeah, Jonathan Haight. What did we decide?

Height. Jonathan Haight wants to help Democrats win more elections, and he's afraid that they are appealing to a narrow set of taste buds. They're not appealing to all the moral taste buds of Americans. So given us kindergarten food. when we could have a masterpiece theater. Well, yeah, or I think he says it this way. Imagine you go into a restaurant, and it is a sugar-only restaurant. They have every different variety of sugar and sweetener there.

Sure, that's good. I mean, you would like that, but you would want your restaurant to have more than just sweeteners. And I think what he's saying is that sometimes we appeal to two narrow set of taste buds, as if our political and moral arguments are only appealing to. to the sugar. To one foundation. To one foundation instead of the whole meal. So yeah, let's get into those. Before we do, I want to go back to something slightly more fundamental. If I were to ask you, whoever's listening to this, why do you believe that something is right or wrong? You would probably give me a lot of logic, a lot of reasons. Here's why I believe that wearing a mask is

right. And you can give me a set of reasons for why it's right. And height in his book, he shows pretty comprehensively that something happens before that. That the reality is that you have moral intuitions. You have internal moral intuitions. And then after the fact, you come up with your moral logic. You come up with the reasons to defend your intuition. So he gives the example of the rider and the elephant. He says, imagine a guy. He's riding an elephant. And the elephant is taking him wherever he thinks he wants to go. Now, let's say the rider wants the elephant to go right, but the elephant goes left. Can the writer stop the elephant? Well, no. There's nothing he can do. And so what's the writer do? Well, he starts pretending like he actually wanted to go left. That's

he says, that's how our minds work. We have internal intuitions. That's the elephant. That's what we're riding on top of. And our reason is just justifying. It's the writer on top. It's justifying whatever the elephant is doing. And that is really troubling to a lot of people because we think of ourselves as people who think through issues and come to decisions based on logic and reason and evidence. And it's just not true. COVID is actually a prime example of this. I like to call it COVID logic. There's a comedian I like named Trey Kennedy who points out how the writer, we might say, the logic is actually just following the elephant because it doesn't make any sense.

So let's listen. This is a long clip, but trust me, it is funny. We're going to listen in. Let's talk airplanes, right? Who's gotten bitten by the travel dog? Well, we all got bit by travel bat. So in the airport terminal, you're going to need to social distance. That's enforced, okay, until you actually get on the airplane and then you're breathing in recycled air with strangers.

rubbing their elbows. Because remember this, social distance with care unless you're in the air. That's right. That's allowed. Let's talk sports. What do we know about COVID? It's transferred to be a close contact, exchanging of fluids. So that's why we brought sports back almost immediately. Before schools or weddings or funerals or anything. Because it's awesome. You'll notice players are playing without masks, but once they're in silence, they have to wear masks. Yeah. COVID respects the game. That's right. It's not going to check in, folks. All right, remember, on the quarter field okay, after the game stay away. No handshakes, none of that. And it's a lot. And it's a lot. And it's And churches. Churches vary across the board. You never know. Some opened immediately. Some just open up. They're still wearing masks. They're baptizing people with masks on. Like they're getting waterboarded. Is that a pastor? Or someone from Boston, O'A. Perhaps most confusing about the rules, it's got a very state to state. So we're going to highlight some of the more important ones. So you just so you know. California, remember, always sunny and 75. Do not go outside. No beaches. No hikes, no patios. Really no going outside. Unless you're homeless. You're, yeah, kind of living life over there. Florida, always sunny in 75.

the strong survive. Oh, it is anarchy down there. It's crazy. What else? What else? Portland, I would just stay away. I'm not sure what's going on there. They have a few problems. Great coffee, though. And finally, folks, whether we like it or not, the mask has been kind of politicized. It's interesting, right? Republicans, they really want to not live in fear. So a lot of them might not mask up as much because they don't want to live in fear. So that's why they also carry a 9-millimeter on their prison. Now, Democrats, they're going to focus more up. They're really on social distance, unless there is a cochelicized protest happening down the street. We're all different.

It's fine. But Democrat or Republican state or what state we can all agree on one type of person we love. People who drive in a car with a mask on. Mask on while you drive, how are you still alive? That's going to be on the test. It's a lot clip, but it's pretty funny. So here's why I wanted to show it, because it perfectly illustrates the elephant and the rider. The writer is going to be on top, giving all the reasons for why we should be doing this masking thing or that masking thing.

but it's really all about intuition. The logic isn't present. Now, part of it's that you have to live life, and so rules have to change with life, so that's part of the lack of logic. But the point is that we should admit the fact at the very least. No matter who you are, me included, our perspective on COVID is probably illogical at times, that we probably don't follow it, that we're probably justifying things that, at least according to the science, don't really make much sense.

Well, when you say illogical, I think what you mean is inconsistent. Yes. Not so much that it contradicts one of the things. another, as much as we find justification to do what we want to do. And those who are more COVID-cautious found justification to protest, say, the Black Lives Matter. Those we were definitely needed mask all the time, social distance, but this took precedent over that. They didn't need a social distance. As if the virus was sensitive to racial injustice. Well, and again, you could hear, I think the logic that was often said was, well, look, my life is at risk all the time. If I'm black,

And so COVID can kind of take a pause on some of the social distancing rules because of the risk that my skin color gives me. And so I'm not trying to evaluate that. I'm just making the point that we come up with our moral reasons after the fact. Or on the flip side of that, during the vice presidential debate, Kamala Harris said that she wasn't planning on taking the vaccine because it was being pushed through too quickly. And I was not surprised to see a boatload of conservatives come out and mock her and say, this is ridiculous. How could you not take the vaccine? Now let's just fast forward a few months. Now that Biden's the one who's giving it the vaccine, who is it that's saying we won't take that vaccine? We can't trust it. You can't take my liberty. You can't tell me what to do.

Oh, but it's the people who criticize Kamala Harris. It's just irrational. It makes no sense. Your liberty is not being infringed. I'm sorry. But again, the rider is on the elephant. So let's talk about our moral taste buds. Our moral taste buds, they relate both to our intuition, what we internally feel to be right and wrong, but they also relate to how. we justify our morals. So according to height, there are six different moral foundations. And we're going to walk through those and maybe you can kind of quiz yourself your personal moral taste buds. Chances are you won't like all these flavors. They might not connect with you personally. But I think it's a really interesting experiment to say which ones make sense.

So what I want you to do. I want you to quiz yourself. Which are these flavors do you like? Which are these flavors do you connect with? Which ones would you say, gosh, I don't think in that way. I don't have that flavor in my moral taste buds. Okay. So we'll walk through them one by one. The first one is the care or harm principle. So according to the care harm principle, something is morally wrong if it harms someone else or if it doesn't care for someone else. And this is one that is very prominent among all people. Yeah, most people have this principle.

If you don't have this principle, you're probably a psychopath. Or a libertarian. Well, I guess that's true. That's actually one of heights points that libertarians lack this typically. So you're saying libertarians are a psychopath? Is that what you just said? I think I did just say that without meaning to say it. Because I think most people would say something is wrong if you're hurting someone else.

Even libertarians would. They just don't think the government should be involved in care harm or in caring. Sure. So some examples of the care harm principle. Again, I was just in Austin and there's a ban that's gone up to prevent people from setting up tents in public places because they are having a lot of homeless people who are. And if you drove past it, it's crazy. My family lives in Austin, and they're moving because those tents, those homeless communities are coming right up against them. And they're just kind of weirded out by it. Now, I've been there, so I don't know. And so it's been a really interesting thing because Austin's also a very liberal city. And so it's causing this debate over the care slash harm principle. Are you harming homeless people if you refuse to let them set up tents? Do we have a responsibility to care for homeless people, to allow them to set up their tents wherever they go? Or do we have responsibility to protect. like you might say, the house values of families who don't want to see their house values drop,

it wouldn't shock anyone to say that crime tends to be higher among the homeless community. And there's a good reason to say, I don't necessarily want a homeless community right next door. So these are some of the principles that people are arguing around. What's caring? What's harming? Bumper stickers sometimes show people's tribal identity, what they care about. And so imagine a car that has a animal rights bumper sticker on it, or back in the day, it would be saved Darfur. or an abortion, pro-life, pro-choice.

Well, I think what they're saying in some of those is what they care about. I care about from a liberal perspective, people going hungry, or people being under racial injustice of apartheid, or I care about animals and their rights and their pain and all that. And when you see those bumper stickers, you know that that's a liberal. But on the other side, the conservatives, they've got their own care harm things. Like you said, abortion or wounded warrior. wounded warrior. There's a sense in which I care about people too, but it's a different kind of person that I care about, which I think is kind of interesting. So the bumper stickers are a way of

signaling. I buy into the care harm principle. And here's how I think that looks. This is how I think we should actually care for others. Let's do the next moral taste bud. This is the fairness or cheating principle. So something is morally wrong if it breaks shared rules and laws. That's not fair. It's not fair for you to break the rules. It's also wrong if there's a rule that acts with disproportionate favor towards one group over another group. Now, like, think here about both liberal and conservatives have this fairness cheating one. So Occupy Wall Street, that was a movement built around. This isn't fair because the wealthier are exploiting those without money, without resources. It's not fair that the 1% should have such a tremendous amount of the world's total wealth. And then on the other side

was the Tea Party, and they cared about fairness too. But they said what's not fair is people shouldn't be getting bailed out for their bad decisions. That's not fair. The government money shouldn't be going to bail out corporations or individuals who made bad choices, think student debt or personal debt or corporate debt or risky home loans. That's not fair. So they're both appealing to fairness, but coming up with completely different conclusions. Yeah, another modern example is that Chicago's mayor recently announced that she would only do interviews with black Brown reporters. So she won't do interviews with white people. And again, this is really... Isn't she married to a white woman? I don't know. She is. So, her wife doesn't ask her any questions.

I'm sorry, I can't answer. True. I don't know. But it's elicited to this fairness cheating principle. People are saying, this isn't fair. And on the flip side, there's people saying, well, no, it is fair. Because for years, white people have had the best access to people in power. So it's only fair to give black and brown reporters a change. So again, both people are appealing to the fairness cheating foundation. Let's go on to our next moral taste bud. Loyalty and betrayal. So according to this principle, something is right if it stands with the group's interest. This is all about being loyal to your group. And so it's right to show special favor and care towards your in-group members and breaking with the group or showing impartiality to the group is immoral.

And this is where hate, hate, what do we decide, hate or height? Hite. Hyte. Hymion. Hermione. It's hard to get right. Anyway, anyway, anyway, this is where Haidt says that people on the left, like himself, have more problems, that people on the right have a higher degree of loyalty and betrayal. That's one of their taste buds that's more prominent. He says that people on the left like him think of themselves as globalists. We're all in this world together.

We care about everybody, every human being on the planet. We don't have a place for America first or nationalism. And people on the right do. And so when people on the right appeal to this taste bud that says, hey, we've got to take care of Americans before we take care of everybody else, that that strikes a chord in people, that resonates with people. And this explains why during the Cold War, one of the major critiques of the right against the left was you're all sympathizers with these communists. You have socialist tendencies. And you aren't taking care of our group, our way of doing things. Or even if you come to a more recent time period, you can think about. Islam and terrorism. You have people on the right saying, we should broker no deals with terrorists,

and that means we shouldn't broker deals with people who are in the community of Islam even, because that's not the right thing for our group, whereas people in the left are saying, well, no, hold on a second. They're people too, and we should not show any special partiality against them. Well, so one more interesting little story that Haid tells in the book is it's 9-11, and obviously we don't know the tragedy that happens there, and he is this leftist professor, feels this, what he says is a strange desire to identify with Team America because America is under attack. He wants to put a bumper sticker on, right? He wants to put a flag on his car and he's so freaked out. How do I do this? I can't do it. I remember he makes the interesting company. He says you can tell who the blue collar workers are at the university.

The janitors. It's a UBA. Yeah. You can tell who they were. If you saw a car with a flag, you knew it wasn't a professor. You knew it was one of the janitorial staff or someone else, secretarial staff. So what he does is he gets an American flag for his car, but he also gets a U-N flag. So he puts on both on his car. So it's his way to say, I'm part of Team America, but I love everybody in the world too. And he's laughing on himself when he tells the story. I love it. I appreciate it. And one of the things he notes, because they did studies in South America and in more

traditional cultures, this is a foundation which is a firm taste bud in collectivist society. If you were living in a more collectivist society, the idea that you would treat someone from a different tribe or a different party with the same impartiality that you treat people on your own tribe would be ridiculous. That's dangerous. Why would you do that? That would be immoral. That would be wrong. So let's go on to our next taste bud. This is the respect and subversion principle. Okay. So according to this tastebud, something is right if it respects, if it submits to legitimate tradition and authority. It's wrong if it subverts someone's authority or it disrespects or dishonor something that shouldn't be disrespected and honored.

Yeah, and this is another one that Haidt says that conservative-type people play to more. For example, think of the flag burning. That's really disrespecting the country, and that bothers me in a way that's going to change the way I vote, maybe. Or the Bible burning at some of the Antifa rallies. It's not showing respect. It's dishonoring symbols of tradition. What about Colin Kaepernick?

Nealing. And then the other professional in college. athletes kneeling. So people on the right were just so up in arms, they couldn't even hear why they were kneeling. They just knew that the flag and the country and the military was being disrespected, or at least that's what they heard. Now, the people who are doing the kneeling, the more articulate ones, were saying, no, we're doing this about racial justice and justice for people in economic, racial, whatever terms. And so that appeals to the person on the left who says, I care about people, I care about social justice. So you have a battle of taste buds going there.

I would guess, and we'll look at this later, I think it's interesting. I think that the left has actually expanded its taste buds. There is a call to respect certain values. For example, if someone on the left saw someone on the right burning a Black Lives Matter flag, that would cause a huge upward to them. Or when you walked around, again, I was in awesome. It's true here in Columbia, you can walk downtown and see signs of respect for the Black Lives Matter movement or flags for the LGBTQ movement. Well, what about the Dr. Jill Biden debate, whether she should be called doctor or not? Besides want to respect. Right. And the left was saying, no, we care about respect, and we want her to receive the respect that she is due for her degree. Whereas the right said, well, no, we usually only use doctor to refer to medical doctors. It's a way of saying, hey.

We should do an episode on that. We would get in so much trouble. We would. Well, again, it's just like math. It's so interesting because if you'll just step back and listen to both sides, you realize there's reasons for both. They're saying, look, you don't call someone an MD who's not an MD. But here's the thing that's really about showing.

The medical. Yeah, but what I think is really showing is what you said earlier, and that is that we lead with her intuition, with the elephant. And then we justify it. And then we justify. And so you can find both sides doing that where they flip-flop, like you gave the example of conservatives upset with Kamala Harris because she wouldn't accept the vaccine. Now they won't accept the vaccine.

Or the Dr. Jill Biden debate all of a sudden the people on the left care a lot about doctors getting their titles and credentials recognized when they didn't care about that before. So it's intuition, my tribe, and then I find reasons to justify it. So the next principle is the purity and degradation principle. So something is right if it's not gross. Oh, wow. Something is wrong if it's dirty, if it's disgusting. That might be a food that you're eating.

It might be an action that you're doing. And so we're going to get an example here in just a second. But in his book, he gives a number of examples of stories that they use to test people whether or not they use the purity, degradation, taste bud to justify their moral intuition. So the example he gives in the book, Brace yourself. Well, no, I'm going to let you do the real bad one. I'm going to do this one. This one's the good one? Okay.

Well, the other one's so weird. Okay. So he asks people, he says, there's a brother and a sister who agree consensually to have sex. And in this consensual agree. And she's on the pill. And he's going to use contraception. So there's no risk of having a. child here. So again, this is all theory.

So there's no way that they'll have a child. They agree that they'll only do this once and that they will tell no one. So there'll be no social societal repercussions. They're not married. There's nothing. They just want to try having sex one time. And they say they're like good things come from it. And it's hypothetical. Like they feel closer. They feel closer.

I can't believe we're doing this. I know. It's so gross. But see, exactly. It is so gross. Right. But why are you offended? Because it's consensual. No one's being heard. Exactly. So that's the question that you're trying to bring out. is that people from cultures like our own have a really hard time with the story because they can't explain why it's wrong because it's gross is not a moral taste bud that we have. Or at least one we're not

comfortable using. We're comfortable using the harm, but this isn't harming anyone. So now what can we say about it is wrong? I mean, this kind of goes with the polygamy debate and all that kind of stuff. Another example. I'm going to make you do this one. I think this is the worst one because it's actually real. Well, it is real. So in 2001, I'm going to get this guy's name wrong. He's German. I can't even pronounce Hermione or Hermani or hide or hate. I took German. Let me give a trial to this. Arvin. All right.

Arvin my this. That sounds good. Yeah, let's go with Arvin. Myvese. That guy puts in an ad on the web that says this, quote, looking for a well-built, 21 to 30-year-old to be slaughtered and consumed. This is real. And it goes on with this ad.

I won't read the whole thing. Yeah, it's real. And essentially what he tells people is that he wants. to kill and eat someone, and he's looking for a volunteer. He's not trying to murder someone in a kind of weird Jeffrey Dahmer sense. And so he gets hundreds of applicants. And I think most people think he's joking. But he finds one guy who's in his 40s who takes him up on it. And they make a video and they sign documents and all very clearly consensual. Yeah, that's the whole point. This guy wants to die. This guy wants his body to be consumed. Nobody's taking advantage of anyone. No one's using

They're going to do it. They're going to kill him in a humane way that he agrees with. Yeah, so he is killed in a humane, painless way. And then over the next 10 months, his body is eaten by the... Arvin 8.41 pounds of his victim. I mean, it's so awful. So Noah Height says in his book is, imagine this guy, you know about this story, and he's going to come live in your neighborhood. There's a lot of evidence that says he's not any more of harm to anyone than anyone else.

He doesn't take an advantage. He follows the rules, the fairness, cheating thing. I actually think killing someone is still against the law. But there's a lot of people who would say, no, euthanasia, if someone wants to be killed, there's nothing wrong with killing that person humanely. So what Heid's asking is, why, if you think this is wrong for this guy to have done, or both of them to have done, to move into your neighborhood. Then why?

And he says that that part of you that says it's wrong is this purity degradation taste bud that may or may not be very well developed in your own life. Maybe it's there and you just haven't recognized it. And he notes that people, again, from cultures like our own, really struggle to articulate why it's wrong. The elephant knows. This is wrong, but the rider doesn't have this taste bud of purity and degradation, that what's right is pure and what's degrading is wrong.

And by the way, we're going to come back and apply all these to masks. You're going to put all these to masks. We just wanted to get them all out. Plus, I mean, these are weird. interesting. Stories. Okay. The last foundation,

this one's unique to Jonathan Haidt. This isn't used across all social science, but he calls it the liberty oppression principle. And so this means that something is wrong if it coerces someone else, or if it oppresses someone else or limits someone's personal freedoms. And he says something is right if it maximizes personal autonomy. And this is what you're saying that a lot of libertarians latch on to. Left-right libertarians, this is a principle that most Americans agree with, that liberty

is right, that maximizing freedom is best and that taking away freedoms is wrong. Let me give you, listener, an example of a question that was asked on one of these tests that he did. I want you to try to answer, why is this wrong? I'm going to tell you a story. I want you to answer why it's wrong. And while I give you some time to think, I'll play a little song for you, okay? So here's the question he asks. He says, a man goes to the supermarket once a week and buys a chicken. But I can't even read this. But before cooking the chicken, he has sexual intercourse. with it. Then he cooks it and then he eats it. Is this wrong? All right, think on your own. Got a few more seconds until we get through the little round of it. I don't think I need to.

I think I'll never hear the song the same way. Dut, dot, dot, da. Romantic music. Never thought of that as romantic. Here's what's really, really interesting. In his studies, because they asked this question to people from many different cultures and backgrounds, he found that people from what he calls weird cultures, weird's an acronym for Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic, they struggled to answer this question. At the end, most of the respondents actually said there's nothing wrong with this. They were conflicted. They wanted.

They wanted. They wanted. But they can't figure out what's wrong because they have relied on what, fairness, cheating, harm care. And no one here is hurt. No one's cheated out of anything. They're for liberty and maximizing free. So how can you say what this guy does is wrong? And what's fascinating is that then he goes to non-weird culture, so non-Western, non-educated,

non-industrialized, non-rich, not democratic. And they have no difficulty answering why this is wrong. They're smart people. Well, that's exactly right. They say this is degrading. You are degrading yourself. You are degrading your community. You are degrading others by using your body and doing this kind of thing.

It's unnatural. It's not right. So this is the purity and the degradation taste by. But also the loyalty that this is not good for the community to have. a chicken sex guy around. I just curious. Because someone who does that kind of thing is degrading the community as well. So, I mean, these taste buds interlock and interface.

Okay. Let's move on. The point is this. When we start talking about whether something's right or wrong, we have an elephant and we have a writer. And both the elephant and the writer have these taste buds. That's how they're deciding what's right and what's wrong. And as it turns out, your political party says a lot about which taste buds you personally

probably connect with the most. So Hype makes a point that libertarian. they tend to focus on two things. Fairness and liberty. He moves it forward and he says liberals, they also have fairness and liberty, but they add into that care, the harm care principle. Conservatives have all three of those, but they add into that and their moral taste buds, respect and loyalty.

Now, none of them have the purity degradation foundation, but the point here is that depending on your party, you're going to have a different set of moral taste buds that you're going to use to justify the rightness or wrongness or something. And you might actually have a hard time understanding someone else if they have taste buds that you don't share. Well, this is where I get a little bit confused, so maybe you can enlighten me here, Patrick. I think what's being argued here is that we are born with these taste buds being more active or more developed, and then we find our party because of the taste buds we have, the moral taste buds we have. It's not saying that first you become a liberal or conservative

and then you develop these taste buds, or is it a both and, a play in between. I think, I think he makes a point in the book that it's a both-in, that if your taste buds align with one particular party or tribe, you are more likely to identify with that party and tribe personally. But he also makes a point that these things are cultural. Depending on the family and the environment you grow up in, you might develop a taste for some things that you wouldn't have developed in other places. So then another question I have is when I'm reading the book, and I've read it a couple times, not as much as you, it starts to feel like this is relative. Yeah, that's a great question. that somehow there's no objective truth, there's no right and wrong, it's just what your taste buds are,

and then we just fight it out to see who has the power to enforce their will on the other, which is the world we live in. So why isn't this moral relativism, or is it? Is that what height is suggesting? I don't think it's what he's suggesting. I think he's using these taste buds descriptively. He's simply trying to help people understand one another. And the best way to understand someone else is if you can understand their moral taste buds, the flavors that they connect with. And again, it's just descriptive because as we've already shown, two people can believe in the care harm principle and come to different conclusions. And so it's not moral relativism, it's just a way of describing how we think about morals. I'll say this. In the Bible, it's really interesting. All six of these taste buds can be clearly found in the Bible. But what the

Bible says is that God is kind of like the ultimate food critic. He's the one who can determine what really is caring and what really is harm, what really is pure and what really is degrading. He's the one who can ultimately, as a critic, decide what's right and what's wrong. These come in conflict with each other, even within God. I don't mean conflict like he's got to choose between right and wrong. I'm just saying that God shows mercy to people, which is the care, harm thing. But those who reject him and his will face the consequences. Which would be fairness and cheating.

He won't rescue them. So his sense of fairness and justice at some point trumps his sense. sense of care and harm. Is that right or no? I'm not even sure. I think it's right. What I'm trying to say is that there's a difference between prescriptive and descriptive. Prescriptive would be to say that something is right if it is caring, fair, go through all those things and say that's what makes something right. That's not what Jonathan Hyatt's trying to do. He's not trying to give us a prescription or an ethic for morality. He's trying to describe how people think about morals. And the point I'm trying to make is that the Bible has every flavor. Now, God is going to tell you, again, what is

truly caring, what is truly fair, what is truly fill in the blank. And those things might come in different priorities at different times. So what we're not offering here is moral relativism. We're not offering a system of ethics. We're trying to describe how people, everyday people, make ethical decisions, think about morals, and how their intuitions think about morals. So let's take this and apply it to our question about masks, where we started. And as of today, when we're recording this, The CDC guidelines, the best I can understand them, you'll correct if I have it wrong, are that people who are vaccinated, fully vaccinated, do not need to wear masks or social distance except in a few circumstances. I think they said large crowds, hospitals, maybe some schools.

They're encouraging people who are not vaccinated to continue to wear masks. And so what that's left us then is kind of living in between the Testaments like we talked about where everybody's trying to figure it out. And some restaurants are continuing to require mask to be worn. And as you're not sitting down. They're getting some pushback, quite honestly, I've heard. And others are saying, okay, you don't have to wear a mask now, and they're getting pushed back.

It seems whatever way you choose, there's going to be a significant number of people who think you've chosen wrongly. So what we're going to do is we're going to work through these moral foundations and see how each side is justifying their view. Right now, we're talking about in the present. In our current moment, should we or should we not wear masks, we have different sides saying different things. And we're going to look at how people are justifying it using these moral principles.

Let's start with the care harm principle. There was a really interesting article in the Atlantic by Dana Stevens. I'm so tempted to read this whole thing, but she's saying why she's going to continue wearing a mask. And I'll just read the first paragraph here. She says this, but excuse me if I, like many people I see around me, am not quite ready to expose my lower face. Early on in the pandemic, I'm sorry, I'm laughing because I'm thinking about that Babylon D article.

I was it. I was thinking about it, too. Oh, what was the headline? What I've got right here. Study finds anyone's still wearing a mask at this point is probably just super ugly. You and I should wear a mask. Yeah, I was just saying. I would be happy. That's why I grew a beer during the pandemic.

I realized it was better to keep things. I know. That's what I'm saying. It's just better off, not showing everything. Okay, let's keep going. She says early on the pandemic, I made a vow with my family that we would set a high standard for COVID-19 avoidance. Not only were we not getting the virus ourselves if we could help it, but we were also taking no chances of inadvertently spreading it to anyone else. Even if that did

make for a long and lonely year without indoor gatherings and travel to see family and friends, I didn't want to go to my grave thinking I was a link in some chain of human interaction leading to someone else's serious illness or death. I still don't. The vaccines are remarkably effective, but not 100%. Breakthrough infections among vaguely. vaccinated people have already occurred, witnessed the cluster of cases around the New York Yankees. And the science, there it is, and the science about whether and how the virus can be transmitted by the vaccinated and unvaccinated is not yet certain. Putting aside the hard science for a moment, wearing a mask in public spaces, especially indoors where transmission is more likely, serves a broader social purpose. It says to those around us that, whatever our vaccine status, we value community safety.

Wow. She just says it really bluntly, explicitly. I care about other people. And me wearing a mask shows how much I care about other people. And I'm willing to wear a mask, even though there is a 0.000 chance, one chance, that I'm going to hurt someone else. It's kind of the bumper sticker thing. This is the Care Harm Foundation. It's a way of communicating. She's wearing a bumper sticker on her face. Yeah, exactly. And, well, we might be laughing and joking about it. I think we can also appreciate that. that there's a good heart and a good motivation here that says, I want to care for other people, and I'm going to put that above my own personal liberty and freedoms. Now, I don't think you can live that way consistently. Well, no, I mean, when she writes the whole thing about being a link in a chain that leads to death, my first thought, just to be honest, is the flu. You want to know what kills more children than COVID?

The flu. The flu is one of the most deadly things of children. Have we worn masks to protect our children from the flu? Well, no. Have you potentially been a link if you've had a flu in a chain that led to a child's death? Yes, there's a chance of it. that you might be. So again, you can tear apart the logic. It's easy to slam dunk on it, but that's not the point. We're trying to understand. She's saying, look, I care about my community. I care about

others, and that's what's motivating me. When I read it, I thought, I'm not sure why once you're vaccinated your potential harm to anyone else. But I also read it and thought, why do I care if she wants to wear a mask? That's exactly right. You do you. It's totally fine with me. I don't care. Even if I don't agree with you, why is it such a big deal to me if you want to wear a mask? God bless you. And on the flip side, so people on the right need to see there is a good heart and a good reason not to wear a mask. The reality is everybody is in fact. And you can make a case that if you want to be perfectly safe, you need to keep wearing a mask. But the right is also appealing to the care harm foundation. You can think about parents right now who are concerned about what wearing masks at school are doing to their children's mental health. In fact, before COVID, we had the highest rates of anxiety, suicide, and depression in American history. Since COVID, they have all quadrupled.

So no one doubts that social distancing and even mask wearing because there's an effect that happens when you can't see people's face as far as socializing goes, especially socializing children, that's had an impact on mental health. And the studies have shown that the impact has been greatest on people under the age of 18. That's where we've seen the greatest harm. Let's listen to this video of a mom at a school board. This is just a few weeks ago. And this is what she said. And you'll notice she's appealing to the Care Harm Foundation. Every month I come here and I hear the same thing. Social, emotional health. If you truly mean that, you would end the mask requirement tonight. Tonight. This is not March 2020 anymore. We have three vaccines. Every adult in the state of Georgia that wants that vaccine is eligible to get it right now. And every one of us knows that young children are not affected by this virus. They're not. And that's a blessing. But as the adults, what have we done with that blessing? We've shoved it to the side and we've said, we don't care. You're still going to wear a mask on your face every day, five and six-year-olds. You still can't play together on the playground like normal children, seven and eight-year-olds. We don't care.

We're still going to force you to carry a burden that was never yours to carry shame on us. My six-year-old looks at me every month before I come here and she says, are you going to tell them tonight? Tell them I don't want to wear this anymore. And I say, baby, it's not time to fight that battle yet. I try to explain that there's so many things. But it's April 15th, 2021, and it's time. Take these masks off of my child.

Wow, powerful. Tax Day. That's what it's called the great tax day speech. They moved tax day, so it wasn't on tax day. But again, what is she appealing to? She's appealing to care and harm. She's saying, look, putting these masks on our children's face, it's harming them. They can't socialize the way that they should socialize.

They can't see faces. And any child development person, according to, to the science would say that that actually really matters seeing people's faces for social development. Yeah, so I think the takeaway just from the care harm principle is that both sides care about people. Absolutely. Neither side is hard-hearted or lacks concern for people.

Now, it plays out differently, and they're concerned about different people. And different things. And, of course, it's always more complicated than just one of these moral taste buds at a time. But both sides care. Don't accuse the other side of not caring. Yep, that's right. Let's move on to the fairness cheating principle. Remember, this has to do with everybody needs to follow the same rules. We should treat people the same way. And so again, this principle has been used a lot during the masking debate and is being used right now. The question has been,

are you going to follow the rules that the CDC has set? And of course, in the past, you had people on the right saying, no, I'm not going to follow those rules. You can't tell me what to do. But now all of a sudden it's flip-flopped and you have people on the right saying to people on the left, Why aren't you following the rules? Why are you still wearing a mask? The CDC says you don't have to do it. So you see the principle being applied, although misapplied, depending on the time. Well, and this is how you get into mask scolding that people look at you weird if they think you're violating the rules. So this whole pandemic, people have been exempt from wearing mask if they have a health issue. So at church, there are people with health issues and they ask, can I come? I can't wear a mask for these reasons that the CDC is okayed. But they don't have like a sign on them that says that. So they walk into church and people look at them, like, well, how are you above the rules? Or I'm sure they have that wherever, restaurants or their workplace, whatever. How are you above the rules?

Because we think that people who think they're above the rules are special place in hell for those people. And again, you can see both sides saying you need to follow the rules at different times or both sides subverting the rules at different times and being called out for it. Okay, let's move on to the next one. This is the loyalty and betrayal foundation. So this is the idea that you should show special loyalty to your group, partiality even towards your group, and that you shouldn't betray people who are inside of your group. You shouldn't betray their identity or your identity alongside them. This is a little bit of tribalism.

This is where I show what tribe I'm a part of by whether I do or don't wear a mouth. Yeah, so a great example of this was David Hogg. He was a student at Parkland when the shooting happened and has since become a very progressive activist. I thought this was a really honest tweet, but he said this, I feel the need to continue wearing my mask outside, even though I'm fully vaccinated, because the inconvenience of having to wear a mask is more than worth it to have people not think I'm a conservative. He doesn't want to betray his group. He's saying the mask is irrelevant as far as health or safety or anything like that. It's a bumper sticker on my face. Yeah, it's about loyalty. Or how about this? Here's a clip from Rachel Madd, who, again, I think is actually being really honest here on MSNBC. She's talking about how she's feeling after the CDC announced that vaccinated people no longer needed to wear masks in ordinary circumstances. So I have a lot of feelings about this announcement, if I can just speak in personal terms. When you said today in that briefing, we have all longed for this moment. Like my heart leapt into my throat.

It's true. And it is such great news after all this time. And at the same time, I am very nervous about what you said today. It is hard for me to imagine myself, you know, waltzing into the stuff. stop and shop tomorrow morning and not wearing a mask. I just feel like I'm not wired that way anymore, and it still feels, it still feels risky. It is an amazing thing. I mean, this new guidance and what to ask her, everybody had very personal feelings about it, and I realized I did too and all these questions. Part of it is that I feel like I'm going to have to rewire myself so that when I see somebody out in the world who's not wearing a mask, I don't instantly think you are a threat,

or you are selfish or you are a COVID denier and you definitely haven't been vaccinated. It's amazing how quickly we jump to conclusions about people. I see someone who wears a mask in a car or out on the trail and I jump to conclusions about them, just like she's jumping to conclusions about people who don't wear masks. Yeah, that they're betraying the common interest. But there's also, again, this sense of loyalty to her group of we wear masks. This is our identity. This is our sociopolitical identity.

And this is what we do. And now I'm going to have to rewire that if I see someone, they no longer have a face tag that tells me where they lie on the political spectrum. The next principle is respect and subversion. Now, remember, this has to do with the moral tastebook that says that we should respect authority, that we should respect legitimate tradition, and that we should subvert authority or tradition. So this comes down to whether we should obey the CDC because of what they said they have a respected position, the doctors, the epidemiologist, the president. do we need to follow them because they have authority in our world? Yes, so it's something you would hear, again, more commonly on the left, and I would personally tend to agree with this, is, well, these people are the experts.

These people have the degrees. They have the right information to give us the best that we know about epidemiology and how we should respond to this virus. And so you should respect their degrees. You should respect their intelligence, and you should follow their advice. I want to live in that world. I want to live in a world where people who know more about certain topics are listened to, and we follow them. We trust and respect their education.

But I don't live in that world. I live in the world where people have forfeited. I don't mean individuals, individuals, but also we as a group, as a nation, have forfeited the right to be trusted because of our expertise on a subject. Because people have intentionally misled. they have admitted that they exaggerated consequences for what they think are noble reasons, but it just undermines trust. And we've seen this happen. Seen it with masks.

Well, yeah, we've seen it happen in history for a long time. Ever since Watergate back in the early 70s, there's been a lack of trust in government, in the church, in education, and sports, whatever. We don't trust authority anymore. So our society was not ready to handle a pandemic where we could trust our leadership and all being together. Can you imagine if we had like a world war now? We couldn't fight a world war.

We don't trust the people in leadership, whether it's in our local area or nationally. Churches aren't exempt. Again, you see this, especially on the far right as they follow their grand high leader, ex-former President Donald Trump, and whatever he says is correct and we should respect it.

But part of why he's trusted, and I think this gets back to what you're saying, is precisely because he has resisted the elite, educated community. that people have lost social trust in. They no longer trust the elites and the educated to tell you the truth. In fact, there's an interesting article by Michael J. Sandel. He's a Harvard law professor. He wrote a great book called Justice that's worth reading. How many times have you read that Patrick? That one only once. Oh, wow.

Sorry, Mike. Must not be very good. But he makes the point, and I think he's right, that when you have communities full of people and their lifestyle, their way of living, their way of life has been derided by elites and by the educated and by the experts. They will lose trust in you. When you deride their traditional sources of authority, when you subvert those things, you lose trust. And that's what's happened in a lot of these communities.

People who live in these elite coastal cities are telling them, this is how you should live. And they say, you don't know a thing about how I should live, and you hate how I live. So I'm not going to listen to you. Okay, I buy that. It resonates with me. But what I find silly is that the former ex-president Donald Trump,

the leader, is a Manhattan guy, went to Wharton Business School, had a television show, evidently came from a wealthy family whose dad gave him a lot of money to start his business and has been successful in that business. And so now he's the guy that educated, the Manhattanite, the liberal, the media star. He's the guy that we're all going to identify with, to fight against the elite. He is the elite. Of course that's true. And of course it's ironic.

He's the one that's leading a populist movement? Well, yeah, again, of course it's true. Of course it's ironic. But, but, but, but, but, but, but he has made his career, his political career tearing down educated expert elites. That's what he's all been about. True. He's got his Queen's accent. He's crass. He's brash. He says whatever he wants to. And you hear people say, why do I like him? Because he says it like it is. You ever hear the radio clips of him calling into radio shows as Donnie from Queens? And they know now it was Trump. And you can hear him. And he's calling under an assumed name to just kind of rap. as the radio show hosts as years ago. Okay, keep going on. This is hilarious. But again, you can see how each side is appealing to their own authorities, we should respect my authority, and how they're both subverting the opposite.

Because you have the left saying, the federal government has botched the entire pandemic. You see both sides respecting and subverting authorities, which they do or don't trust. Okay, let's go on to the second to last principle, purity and degradation. So again, this goes back to the idea that we should do things which do not degrade us,

which aren't gross. So if you think in the Bible, you could think, for example, about the purity laws, the Levitical laws, you can't eat pork. You can't wear clothing that has mixed fibers. Leprosy. Leprosy, things you can touch. You can't sit on a seat after a woman menstruates and sits on the seat. There's all of these different things that have to do with purity and degradation. And what I find really interesting, I already mentioned it, is that purity and degradation, it connected to clothing. One way that we show are purity, so you can think about, I went to the

wailing wall in Israel, the western wall. And when you go there, you have to put on a yarmika. And so I put on a yamaka to show respect. But for them, the yamaka is a symbol of purity, a symbol of being under Yahweh's authority, of being under Yahweh's leadership. I have a symbol on my head that's showing that that's the case. And it's a piece of clothing which is showing our purity and that I'm not degraded. Maybe you should wear those all the time. Wear one all the time. Well, does it sound like a different piece of clothing to you?

The yarmica? Yeah. How about the maschika? I've been taking my mask and wears any yamaka. Well, so I kind of joked, and this probably wasn't an okay joke, but I'm going to say it anyways. After I got vaccinated, I started calling my mask, my courtesy mask. I knew I wasn't wearing it to keep other people actually healthy. I was wearing it as a courtesy. To follow the rules. I was wearing it to follow the rules. But as you read some of the people in the left talking about their experience taking the mask off or that they can't take it off. You start to realize this is a purity degradation thing. It feels as though I'm degrading myself, as though I'm degrading others, is that I'm doing something impure. If I don't wear my whole clothing. It's deeply ritualistic. It's deeply religious. I think about when I, again, one last Austin story, I was in a bookstore in Austin. And I'm really not exaggerating. I had my mask on. So first of all, before I walk into the store, I was scolded for going into the store.

By who? By a worker. Skolded for going in? It was basically like, I don't know why you would want to be here when you could order online, but please keep your visit brief and we're only allowing in a limited amount of people. It's just like I felt guilty. Like I was doing something in here. Is this a new business practice that's, I don't know. Taking the world by storm, discouraging and mocking people who come into your establishment. So I go in and again, I had the mask on. I was being courteous. I wasn't trying to do anything, but I had a problem. You had to go to the bathroom. No, I had a nose itch. Oh. So I reached into my mask and pulled it down from my nose and scratched my nose. Were they watching you, I guess. Were you on

camera? I didn't see anyone around me. I mean, I wasn't paying that close to attention. And the guards come running out. The minute I do it, a worker comes around the corner and loudly yells, sir, would you please put your mask over your nose? Oh, wow. I was like, yeah, I said, I'm sorry. This is four days ago. You're vaccinated. The CDC has lived there's rules. And I wasn't rude. I go, oh, I'm sorry. I didn't say. I'm trying to scratch my nose, but. But it's clear at this point that this is not about science. She was a priest. She was a priestess, a high priestess of COVID purity laws. She was guarding the temple or something. it's really what it felt. He felt like a Pharisee coming up to me and saying, you haven't washed your hands

before you ate? You're doing what on the Sabbath? I mean, this is stuff that Jesus had to deal with. And it's just fascinating. We made a comparison between the left and Pharisees a while back and really tick some people off. People didn't like that. I don't know why they didn't like it. No one wants to be a Pharisee. Well, people think of the Pharisees as the Conservatives. And there's elements. I mean, theological conservatives, biblical conservatives, legalistic. And they're not used to thinking of Pharisees and what similarities they have with people on the left. But you've been saying that they do have similarity. Yeah, I think you can see it on both sides. But I think it's like this. The Pharisees were a revolutionary movement. They wanted to see Rome removed from Israel. They wanted to

see the world turned upside down. The power structures overthrown. And they thought the way in which that was going to happen was through Israel following a very strict set of laws and regulations. And of course, when you look at the left today, there's very much still a revolutionary mindset. We need to turn the world upside down. And how do we do that? It's by obeying. these laws and principles. We need to execute a certain form of justice. You need to think in a certain pattern. You need to wear a certain kind of mask and clothing. And it all lines up very well with how the Pharisees thought about how the kingdom of God was going to come to Earth. And of course, that's the point. When you look at what's the revolutionary spirit, the idea is I want to bring

God's kingdom on earth as in heaven. I'm going to bring a utopia here on Earth. And I do think that's what people on the left want. How are they going to do it? Well, as it turns out, it's not just the things we said in the past of trying to bring about radical justice movements, it also includes, I think, this purity degradation foundation now where people are dressing in certain ways to show that they're part of the kingdom. So let's go to the last moral tastebud that Jonathan Haidt talks about, and it is the liberty and oppression taste bud. So this one says that we should maximize people's personal freedoms, and it's harmful to limit those freedoms. This was one that, well before today, the right has leaned heavily into the you can't tell me what to do.

Perhaps I think the funniest example of this was a right leaning activist named Brandon Straca. So in June of 2020, he gets onto an American Airlines flight where they were requiring every person to wear masks. He's videoing this, by the way. And I tried to find the clip. I cannot find the whole clip anywhere. He was trying to make a point. He was trying to do something. And this poor flight attendant is saying, well, it's our rules to keep people safe. you have to wear it or have to take you off. He's like, well, you can't tell me what to do. I can

write on this flight however I want to ride on this flight. I don't have to wear him out. And they're going back and forth. And finally, someone comes in and they remove them. And of course, he has this very self-righteous thing at the end about his freedoms and American Airlines taking away his freedom. Yeah, I think the guy looks like a wacky little clown. It's a private business. They can do whatever they want to do. Right. I mean, if you don't want to. What happened to the pro business right? You can tell me to do whatever you want to. But the point- So it just shows that both sides have. have theater going on. Both sides have high priests, like the woman in the bookstore who's scolding you for scratching your nose and this guy who is going around to make a point with his little phone camera going because he's going to get an argument with this attendant.

Yeah, and show her what's up? But again, what does he appeal to? He appeals to the Liberty Oppression Foundation. He says, you cannot limit my freedoms, my personal freedoms in this way. What I don't understand about that is the old argument used to be that I have the right to swing my fist until it comes to your nose. And so he seems to be saying, I get to swing my fist and go right through your nose or he's denying that COVID is anything like he's a COVID denier. Either way seems weird. This is one of my interesting takeaways and you might disagree with me on this. I actually think that's exactly right. I think that there are people on the far right who are slowly losing the care harm foundation. By the way, I'm not saying that they don't care about harming

others. That's not my point. What I am trying to say is that it's not a convincing argument to them. It's not convincing morally to say, well, this cares for others. That might harm others. This guy doesn't care. He does not care if him having a mask off could potentially get someone else that he does not care. Mike is he would say I care, but I care about my rights more than that in the moral hierarchy. Yeah, I wish I had the clip because the flight attendant appeals to the Care Harm Foundation and responses, well, we're trying to keep people safe and healthy, because that's why we're wearing masks, and he won't hear it. What matters is my liberty. And this is one of my concerns for people on the right, and I've talked to lots of friends in this group who seem to be, like you said, maybe they're putting it as a

low-level priority, but it's becoming less and less of the thing. Back in the George W. Bush Bush base, the compassionate conservative was someone who was elevating the Care Harm Foundation. Now, they had a way. They said, this is how we think we should care for people. But that seems to be disappearing slowly. Yeah, and that was part of what Jonathan Haidt went and talked, remember, to the Democratic Party in his state, I think it was a Virginia Democratic Party saying, look, guys, we've got to talk to a broader moral base that people appeal to. Republicans, conservatives, he said at the time have this broader base and the Democrats, liberal, progressives need to develop it. But I agree with Hugh that the conservative moral base is shrinking and it's becoming all about freedom.

And I would actually say that the liberal moral taste buds seem to be expanding. We're seeing this purity degradation thing when it comes to mask. We're seeing this new respect and subversion thing when it comes to symbols of LGBTQ and other rights. And so it's just a fascinating thing that's happening culturally right now. again, someone's going to hear us and think that we're trying to bash one side or the other. You were missing the point. This is a descriptive thing. We're just interested in how people come about decisions, how I come about decisions, and what I think is right and wrong, what any of us think are right and wrong. And this mask argument reveals something. That's what we're interested in is what does our willingness or unwillingness to wear a mask? What does it reveal? And if I can press it further, if you're a Christian, I would simply say this, you should seek, by the way, to develop all six of these taste to us. I actually think they all have a tremendous value in your life. They're rooted in the Bible, in God, in Jesus. Yeah, that's the other half is you need to let God be your food critic.

He needs to be the one who defines for you what is care, what is fairness, what is purity, what is liberty. He's the only one that can define it. The other half of that for me too, though, is judge not, lest he be judged. If you want to understand why someone's committed, it's probably not because they're a moral monster. I mean, I had someone say this to me in a conversation the other day, they're like, look, I think people on the other side are trying to destroy our country and destroy my life. I go, really? You think that? You think they actually want to see you destroyed?

Maybe some, but I don't think many. Well, we just go back to the care thing that we talked about in mask, and the woman who's saying, look, our kids are suffering because they're wearing mask emotional harm. And on the other side, I don't want to stop wearing my mask because I don't want to be a link in a chain that hurts someone. Both sides are caring. We're not saying they're equally right or you have to agree with one or the other. We're saying that you can respect where the other side is coming from. And if you want to be persuasive, you need to speak to their concerns.

You're not going to get anywhere. You're not going to bring anybody over to your side by yelling at them and saying they're trying to destroy the world. You don't care about people. So you're not wearing a mask. No, I do care about kids in school who have anxiety disorders and who have missed school. But the other say, well, you don't care about it. You're just doing it for theater.

Well, no, I do care. I don't want to do anything if I'm a liberal who wearing a mask that would hurt another person. It's just not that big a deal. I'm willing to wear a mask if it just can't. people safe. So just respect the other side, I think. I agree. Again, we've been discussing The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt, so you might want to give that book a read. And if you want to get God's taste buds, if you will, you want to know what his thoughts are about ethics. I think

a great place to start is to go and read Matthew 5 through 7, the sermon on the Mount where Jesus lays out in decently long form what it looks like to have these taste buds be well formed according to him. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with?

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