62December-January 2014
ENVIRONMENT
Also in this section:
Bogs 64
Agricultural emissions and Simon
Coveney 68
Book review: ‘The Vagabond Spirit of
Poetry’ 70
Book review: ‘Stop Feeding Your
Cancer’ 72
Politics
politics
attitudes
beget
beget
at least the message
was different
December-January 2014 63
A
NY political movement that fails
to understand two basic psycho-
logical traits will, before long,
fizzle out. The first is Shifting Baseline
Syndrome. Coined by the biologist Daniel
Pauly, it originally described our rela-
tionship to ecosystems, but it’s just as
relevant to politics. We perceive the cir-
cumstances of our youth as normal and
unexceptional – however sparse or cruel
they may be. By this means, over the gen-
erations, we adjust to almost any degree
of deprivation or oppression, imagining
it to be natural and immutable.
The second is the Values Ratchet (also
known as policy feedback). If, for exam-
ple, your country has a public health
system which ensures that everyone who
needs treatment receives it without pay-
ment, it helps instil the belief that it is
normal to care for strangers, and abnor-
mal and wrong to neglect them. If you
live in a country where people are left to
die, this embeds the idea that you have
no responsibility towards the poor and
weak. The existence of these traits is
supported by a vast body of experimen-
tal and observational research, of which
Labour and the US Democrats appear
determined to know nothing.
We are not born with our core values:
they are strongly shaped by our social
environment. These values can be placed
on a spectrum between extrinsic and
intrinsic. People towards the intrinsic
end have high levels of self-acceptance,
strong bonds of intimacy and a power-
ful desire to help other people. People at
the other end are drawn to external sig-
nifiers, such as fame, financial success,
image and attractiveness. They seek
praise and rewards from others.
Research across countries sug-
gests that intrinsic values are strongly
associated with an understanding of
others, tolerance, appreciation, coop-
eration and empathy. Those with strong
extrinsic values tend to have lower empa-
thy, a stronger attraction towards power,
hierarchy and inequality, greater preju-
dice towards outsiders and less concern
for global justice and the natural world.
These clusters exist in opposition to each
other: as one set of values strengthens,
the other weakens.
People at the extrinsic end tend to
report higher levels of stress, anxiety,
anger, envy, dissatisfaction and depres-
sion than those at the intrinsic end of the
spectrum. Societies in which extrinsic
goals are widely adopted are more une-
qual and uncooperative than those with
deep intrinsic values. In one experiment,
people with strong extrinsic values who
were given a resource to share soon
exhausted it (unlike a group with strong
intrinsic values), as they all sought to
take more than their due.
As extrinsic values are strongly asso-
ciated with conservative politics, it’s in
the interests of conservative parties and
conservative media to cultivate these
values. There are three basic methods.
The first is to generate a sense of threat.
Experiments reported in the journal
Motivation and Emotion suggest that
when people feel threatened or insecure
they gravitate towards extrinsic goals.
Perceived dangers – such as the threat
of crime, terrorism, deficits, inflation or
immigration – trigger a short-term sur-
vival response, in which you protect your
own interests and forget other people’s.
The second method is the creation
of new frames, structures of thought
through which we perceive the world.
For example, if tax is repeatedly cast as a
burden, and less tax is described as relief,
people come to see taxation as a bad thing
that must be remedied. The third method
is to invoke the Values Ratchet: when you
change the way society works, our values
shift in response. Privatisation, marketi-
sation, austerity for the poor, inequality:
they all shift baselines, alter the social
cues we receive and generate insecurity
and a sense of threat.
Margaret Thatcher’s political genius
arose from her instinctive understand-
ing of these traits, long before they were
described by psychologists and cognitive
linguists: “Economics are the method;
the object is to change the heart and
soul”. But Labour and the Democrats no
longer have objects, only methods. Their
political philosophy is simply stated: if at
first you don’t succeed, flinch, flinch and
flinch again. They seem to believe that if
they simply fall into line with prevailing
values, people will vote for them by
default. But those values and baselines
keep shifting, and what seemed intolera-
ble before becomes unremarkable today.
Instead of challenging the new values,
these parties keep adjusting. This is why
they always look like their opponents,
with a five-year lag.
There is no better political passion
killer than Labour’s Zero-Based Review.
Its cover is Tory blue. So are the contents.
It promises to sustain the coalition’s pro-
gramme of cuts and even threatens to
apply them to the health service. But,
though it treats the deficit as a threat that
must be countered at any cost, it says not
a word about plugging the gap with inno-
vative measures such as a Robin Hood tax
on financial transactions, a land value
tax, a progressively-banded council tax
or a windfall tax on extreme wealth.
Nor does it mention tax avoidance and
evasion. The poor must bear the pain
through spending cuts, sustaining a cruel
and wildly unequal social settlement.
Chris Leslie, Labour’s Shadow Chief
Secretary to the Treasury, has prom-
ised, like George Osborne, that the cuts
would be sustained for “decades ahead”.
He has asserted that Labour’s purpose
in government would be to “finish that
task on which [the Chancellor] has
failed”: namely “to eradicate the defi-
cit”. The shadow business secretary,
Chuka Umunna, has sought to explain
why Labour had joined the political
arms race on immigration. In doing
so, he revealed that his party will be
“radical in reforming our economy” in
support of “a determinedly pro-busi-
ness agenda”. They appear to believe that
success depends on becoming indisting-
uishable from their opponents.
It’s not quite as mad as the old tactic
among some Marxist groups of promot-
ing inequality and injustice in the hope
that popular fury would lead to revolu-
tion, but it’s not far off. Quite aside from
the obvious flaw (what’s the sodding
point of voting for a party that offers no
substantial change in policy?), it evinces
a near-perfect psychological illiteracy.
When a party reinforces conservative
values and conservative ideas, when it
fails clearly to expound any countervail-
ing values, when it refuses to reverse the
direction of the Values Ratchet, what out-
come does it expect, other than a shift
towards conservatism? •
First published in the Guardian 11th June
2014 www.monbiot.com
Britain has been
made conservative by
conservative parties.
By George Monbiot
What’s the
sodding point
of voting for
a party that
offers no
substantial
change in
policy?
“

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