Helen Dale on ideology/personality fit

We want rules that benefit people like us

Helen Dale writes,

Feminism was led by (and greatly improved the life chances of) women like me. It was great for smart, disagreeable, career-focussed women who don’t like or want kids. And yes, just like getting banged up for a bit of weed while harming precisely no-one seriously annoys the kind of smart, self-controlled person who can formulate a (libertarian) policy response to the War on Drugs, so too with women who were uninterested in home and family (or who were same-sex attracted) and found that being circumscribed professionally and romantically really, really rankled.

I will get back to her take on feminism later. Her main point is that we find an ideology congenial when it benefits someone with our personality type. For example, she argues that small government appeals to people who are conscientious and disagreeable (I would note that this combination is not terribly common).

If you want an innovative employee who also reliably finishes what he or she starts, then you need to look for a much rarer combination of traits: not only conscientiousness but also disagreeableness. Disagreeable people who care about doing a job well will poke holes in your plan but then fix it up for you while making it better. This combination of traits then gives conscientious, agreeable people something to work with

She cites political scientist Joseph Heath on what he calls the “self-control aristocracy.” Heath once wrote,

every academic proponent of libertarianism – understood loosely, as any doctrine that assigns individual liberty priority over other political values – is a member of the self-control aristocracy. As a result, they are advancing a political ideal that benefits themselves to a much greater extent than it benefits other people. In most cases, however, they do so naively, because they do not recognize themselves as members of an elite, socially-dominant group, that stands to benefit disproportionately. They think of liberty as something that creates an equal benefit for all.

Dale links this to Rob Henderson’s concept of luxury beliefs. Someone with a lot of self-control has the luxury of being able to try recreational drugs without ruining his life. But that does not work out well for everyone. Let me hasten to add that paternalism on recreational drugs does not have to include locking people up for trying them. But some form of paternalism may be appropriate, given the distribution of personality traits in the population.

Dale writes,

Wokies, I’ve noticed, are often smart but organisationally hopeless: high intellect in combination with low conscientiousness. This is a recipe for mental illness and personality disorders (particularly the Cluster Bs, as Josh Slocum argues). High IQ people with mental health problems generally fail at life just us hard as dummies do, too, while being far more bitter and destructive about it. Do you blame them for adopting an ideology that says everyone has to accommodate them and their messes, rather than the other way around?

Note that this gets the causality between social justice activism and poor mental health the way I am inclined to see it: the poor mental health makes people attracted to social justice activism. If you can say, “No, the people who throw paint at art works in museums and who block roads to support Hamas are just fine. If you met them at a party you couldn’t tell that they were unhappy at all,” go ahead.

Dale writes,

There are many more smart, agreeable, conscientious people than there are smart, disagreeable, conscientious people. Historically, the academy attracted the latter… As it expanded in size and admitted more women, however, the academy needed to draw on a wider talent pool. This is all very well and good and noble but it means higher ed is now stuffed to the gunwales with conformist cowards

Indeed.

Dale’s advice:

If you finish up in politics and policy, try to govern for people unlike you (and without seeing them as opponents).

I worry that the median voter has the median personality. And the median personality is not highly conscientious and disagreeable. It is probably agreeable and moderately conscientious. And it is hard for me not to see them as opponents.

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People Unlike Me