Part 7: Unlearning Religion

This is part 7 of my series ‘There and Back Again: An (A)Theist’s Tale’. This series tells you my story of losing my faith and the slow journey of finding it again but not quite in the same way as before.

Part 7 explores my reflection on the problems caused by thinking about religion as 'belief'. Through this, I came to realise that religion is not only a lot more unconscious than I previously appreciated, but also applies more than I realised to societies marked by irreligion. Discovering this helped me to realise that I wasn't losing my religion so much as finding another.

You can find the rest of this series under the 'There and Back Again: An (A)Theist's Tale' tab at the top of the screen.

Thank you again to Eleanor Vivian for her proofreading and critical feedback.

4,100 Words

Image by Ri_Ya on Pixabay.

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Following many years living as a devout and sincere Christian, in June 2017 I had an atheistic epiphany leading to a profound, anguished ‘loss of faith’. Yet, though I seriously contemplated atheism for several months, what I instead fell into was an intellectually agnostic but pragmatically Christian Deism. The transcendent Prime Mover I believed in still wore Christian garb, but ‘God’ had become a spiritual reality so deep It was largely meaningless. There was lots of thinking about God but only a very meagre desire to listen and abide with Him. My atheistic epiphany had left my God a husk of His former self. He may still have been present, but it was a hollow presence, lacking in life and animation. If Shakespeare is right that all the world’s a stage, then God had left it some while back. The play had gone on without Him.

Yet, although I didn’t have the words for it at the time, I sensed that there was something unseen going on in all this. Was I merely losing my religion? Or was I simultaneously finding another? Had God left the stage, or had He been pushed out?

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What is a religion? My instinctive response to this question for most of my life has been that it has something to do with belief. After all, religious questions always seem to begin with ‘do you believe in…?’ Much like I’ve already touched on, religious worldviews are framed in our language as belief-based, while non-religious worldviews are instead framed as fact- or scientific- based. The religious and non-religious alike (usually) accept the same facts, and so the main difference between them is the willingness of the religious to make an extra step to frame their life around an Entity that can only be believed and never proved (or disproved). The religious are willing to believe there is some sort of significant Ultimate Spiritual Reality that meaningfully exists and relates with the material world in the absence of hard and fast empirical proof of this Entity; the non-religious are not.

Since religiosity in the West must take this extra step of belief, it is the religious who must persuade the non-religious it is a step worth taking. It takes no great imagination on the part of a religious Westerner to understand where the non-religious are coming from. Even if they might think it an unattractive or meaningless way to live, they can usually see quite easily how the non-religious got there. When the tables are turned though, the non-religious either (if they have no religious background) find it difficult to understand how you come to make that extra step of belief – even when such a step seems attractive – or (if they have a religious background) they find religion a skin that is easily shed. The 2018 British Social Attitudes Survey found that non-religious affiliation in the UK grows primarily because of generational differences. While 94% of non-religious parents successfully transmit their irreligion to their children, Christian parents in the UK are only between 30-55% successful (depending on their denomination) in transmitting their Christianity to their children. This figure drops again in all cases by about half when only one of the parents is Christian.[1] Clearly, it is easier for the religious to stop believing and become non-religious in our society than it is for the non-religious to begin believing.

Do you believe in…?

So how has religion – or more specifically, Christianity[2] – lost so much ground in the West? How has it become so…unnecessary? The answer to this question I think lies in our very understanding of religion in the first place – that it is fundamentally about belief.

If all religious questions generally begin with ‘Do you believe in…?’ then the most common and perhaps most fundamental religious question in my Western English-speaking world is “Do you believe in God?” But this betrays several oddities:

1. Firstly, why do we assume that ‘God’ is the primary religious subject? Though this is the case with Judaism, Christianity and Islam, it is not the case in other religions like Hinduism, Buddhism or Taoism.

2. Secondly, people who don’t believe in God might still answer ‘yes’ to a question like ‘are you spiritual?’ Given that the religious and non-religious may agree they have a spiritual nature, the next oddity is how and when did spirituality become divorced from religion?

3. Thirdly, it is odd because there is an obvious sense in which the main religious activity is not belief but ‘doing’. A religious person prays, gives alms, attends synagogue, recites Scripture, fasts, offers sacrifices, speaks vows, feeds the hungry, and more besides. So why do our questions assume that religion is underlined more by belief than doing?

4. Finally, and most subtly, if you are anything like me, you’ve probably assumed the question is directed at a single individual. But why should it? After all, can’t the same question be directed as much at a group of people as at a single individual? Religion is mostly a communal activity and most of the religious acts I previously listed are performed in groups. Why does it not occur to us then that people might therefore believe in groups as much as they perform religious rituals in groups?

The reason for all the above to me is quite clear. All talk of ‘religion’ in the West is understood in light of Western Christian Protestantism. While we portray ‘religion’ as a universal, global category, we are in fact fitting the world into a thoroughly Western Christian Protestant approach to religious life.

Re-Learning Religion

We frequently do not appreciate how much our language affects our view of the world. This is plain to me on quite a personal level. I spent nearly all my childhood in China. Every day I was interacting with Chinese people and surrounded by Chinese culture. I enjoy Chinese history, Chinese food and Chinese music. And yet, if you meet me in person, you will not think me the slightest bit Chinese. The main reason for this is simple – I do not speak Mandarin fluently and have never been immersed in Mandarin-speaking culture. When I spoke to my Chinese friends, I almost always spoke to them in English. When I ate Chinese food, I usually called it by its English name. When I read about Chinese history, I read it in English. When I watched TV, I watched Hollywood and BBC productions. When I read books, I read the classics and the not-so-classics of Western literature. When I did watch Chinese TV, it was always with English subtitles. I understood and appreciated Chinese culture and attitudes, but only like a scholar understands and appreciates their subject – at a distance. My everyday life in China was always enmeshed in English-speaking, not Mandarin-speaking, culture. Therefore, my many unconscious ticks, thought processes, and ways of appreciating the world are thoroughly English-speaking and Western, not Chinese.

It was only after my atheist epiphany that I began to recognise and understand this. I returned to the UK for high school and university, and throughout this period I was puzzled by how I had slipped relatively easily back into British society despite a lifetime up to that point largely outside of it. Then when I travelled to the Middle East on a couple occasions in 2018, I realised again just how culturally British I was and how a lifetime living as a foreigner in China didn’t mean I could simply slip comfortably into living as a foreigner in the Middle East. It was at this time that I was put in touch with a close friend of my parents. He was a Westerner who lived in China, but unlike me, he spoke fluent Chinese and had married into a mainland Chinese family. He’s written a great deal about his reflections and observations on mainland Chinese culture[3] and reading these was a revelation to me. Although I had witnessed much of what he said before, it was the first-time that I’d heard it all articulated in English. In particular, his writing articulated what was always in some sense obvious to me but never put into words – that Chinese think about religion (and Christianity) very differently from Westerners.

When Western-influenced English-speakers talk of ‘religion’, they are not speaking about it neutrally. Why do we assume ‘God’ is the primary religious subject, divorce religion from spirituality, think religion is primarily about belief, and assume religion is an individual pursuit? Because the reference point for all talk of ‘religion’ in the English language is the religion with the largest following historically in the English-speaking world – Christian Protestantism. Protestantism is not just the only religion that makes all the assumptions I have outlined, it is also the only form of Christianity that makes all these same assumptions too.[4] Assuming that religion in its totality is about belief is to misunderstand (to varying degrees) pretty much every religious tradition outside of Christian Protestantism.

Now of course all religions have beliefs, but when we make religion about belief, we naturally then start associating religion with the mind – the part of ourselves that thinks. But while belief is natural to all people, the ability to coherently think about it and articulate it is not. This is because we so often fail to appreciate the extent to which we are ‘embodied minds’.[5] Our minds do not exist in a vacuum. They belong to a body and spend most of their time seeing, listening, touching, feeling, moving, breathing and speaking – not thinking. Our minds also belong to this body, in this specific place, within this certain culture, and at this unique point in history. Most of us probably have few conscious memories before the age of around 6, and yet our experiences in these years will greatly shape us for the rest of our lives. We are constantly being shaped by our environments and the culture our embodied minds find themselves in.

What this means is that we believe and act out our beliefs long before we become conscious of why or what we believe (if we ever do). Take this very blog series! Everything I’m writing is an exercise in understanding my experiences after they’ve already happened. Our mind is much like a historian: our conscious thoughts explain the past much more frequently than they shape the future. Our religion then already encompasses us before we have learned to speak about its beliefs. It is shaped by the culture, biology, history, family and experiences our ‘embodied minds’ are born into. I went to church, was baptised, sang hymns and prayed to God long before I knew much about the beliefs that went along with these activities. Being able to consciously articulate our beliefs is then very often secondary (or tertiary or quaternary) to the primary religious focus: relating to that which is holy, sacred and worthy of reverence.[6] And our relationship with the Holy began before we ever knew what to say about it.

Though it is no easy thing to define the ‘Holy’, I think I can locate it. At its simplest, the Holy seems to me to be where our metaphysics and our ethics meet, where what is most fundamental about reality meets with how we ought to live. The two are inseparable. What is most fundamental about the world must be defined by what has the greatest bearing on how we should live, and how we should live cannot be answered without knowing what is most fundamental. For instance, in Taoism, Tao is fundamental to the cosmos, and Taoist ethics are all about achieving harmony with Tao in daily life. However, remove the belief in Tao as fundamental, and certain of the ethics – like not intervening in life’s events even when you have the ability to make a difference – will no longer make sense (at least to Western readers). Meanwhile those ethics that continue to make sense will only do so because they work within whatever new sense of the fundamental you now possess. Though ethics often overlap across religious traditions, it is a mistake to think this makes all religions ultimately the same. Ethics depend on the Fundamental, and the Fundamental frequently differs.

A Religious, Not Irreligious, West

If religion goes much deeper that what we consciously believe, and if religion centres on how we relate to the Holy, then what does this mean for religion in the West? I have watched several debates between Christians and Atheists where at some point the Christian tries to get the Atheist to admit that atheism is a belief. The Atheist almost always vehemently denies this, quite rightly emphasising that all their atheism indicates is the absence of belief in a God. In one such mini debate between Ricky Gervais (atheist) and Stephen Colbert (Catholic Christian), Stephen tries to do this, and Ricky replies, “Atheism is only rejecting the claim that there is a God. Atheism isn’t a belief system…This is atheism in a nutshell. You say, ‘There’s a God.’ I say, ‘Can you prove that?’ You say, ‘No.’ I say, ‘I don’t believe you then.’”

And Ricky is absolutely right – technically speaking. To pit Christianity and Atheism against each other is to pit two different categories. Christianity is a religion that tells us both what the Holy is and how we can relate to the Holy. Atheism merely rules out any God or gods as being the Holy, and nothing more.

But there is a sense in which Stephen is also right. Later in the debate, Ricky says:

“If we take something like any fiction and any holy book…and destroyed it, in 1,000 years’ time that wouldn’t come back just as it was. Whereas if we took every science book and every fact and destroyed them all, in 1000 years they’d all be back, because all the same tests would yield the same result…I don’t need faith in science.”

Its beautifully put. But unfortunately, though science – and the naturalistic universe it perhaps suggests – might be the bedrock of Ricky’s atheism, it tells us nothing about what gives Ricky meaning. And it is clear that the ‘irreligious’ West attaches meaning to a great deal many things beyond science’s reach – racial equality; individual, bodily and sexual autonomy; human rights; the abolition of suffering; and the progress of humanity to name a few. And just like any ‘fiction or holy book’, if you were to wipe Western civilisation off the face of the Earth, in 1,000 years’ time there is little chance future humans would have these same values.

Atheism then might be value-neutral, but atheists in the West are not. In Becoming Atheist, an oral history of modern unbelief, author Callum Brown interviews eighty-five adult atheists across eighteen countries. Across all interviewees he uncovers a common ethical code. First is the Golden Rule to treat others as you would like to be treated yourself. Secondly, he finds a set of principles about the fundamental importance of human equality and bodily and sexual autonomy. He categorises these beliefs as ‘Humanism’ and though few of the interviewees initially described their ethical code that way, they happily embraced the term when offered it.

The point, as Brown observes, is that:

“Without exception…they were ‘humanists’ before they discovered the term. Humanism was neither a philosophy nor an ideology that they had learned or read about and then adopted. There was no act of conversion, no training or induction... A humanist condition precedes being a self-conscious humanist.”[7]

Prof Alec Ryrie, commenting on Brown’s eighty-five humanists, notes:

“Those of them who had grown up in religious settings had embraced this ethic before they’d broken with their religion. And when the breaking point did come it was often either because of a conflict between their religious and humanist ethics, or because their humanist ethics made their religion seem redundant. The implication is that, in the West since the mid-twentieth century, growing numbers of once-religious people have adopted an ethic which was independent of their religion, and which was in some tension with it: so they either drifted away from or consciously rejected their religion.”[8]

This cuts to the heart of the matter. If, as Christianity has declined in the West, Brown’s ‘humanism’ has been the broad uniting ethic and belief system that has taken its place, then it has done so without anyone ever choosing it. Embodied minds born in the West found a culture and an environment that meant they believed in this ethic long before they ever became conscious that they did. Beliefs that are common and never chosen easily disguise themselves as self-evident facts of life. Perhaps this is why Brown suggests further research may show that “reason alone may construct humanism” as if the creation of humanist values were like Ricky’s scientific experiment whose results could be repeated in a lab. Instead, as Prof. Alec Ryrie observes, “the fact that those ethical values appear intuitively obvious to Callum Brown, as indeed they do to me, is not an answer. It is in fact the problem.”[9]

So where does this humanist ethic come from? Well, God or gods may not be holy to most Westerners, but that doesn’t mean there is nothing Holy in an atheist culture. Though I need to give this further thought, if the Holy is located where metaphysics meets ethics, then my gut sense is that in the West it is Individuality which is Holy. In a world without God or gods; where nothing beyond the material interacts meaningfully with the world; where death is the end of being; and where our very lives are the result of miniscule, incredible chance; in such a world where there is no purpose beyond or outside ourselves, then what is most Fundamental is the purpose that we ourselves make. But how do we know what purpose to make?

This is where Individuality comes in. Individuality is Fundamental, the essence of who we are at our deepest level. And who we are determines what we want. So naturally our passions and desires flow from this source. To find our Individuality then, we must discover our passions and desires. But we can only discover these if we are at liberty to do so. Our passions and desires require a river to flow through, and this ‘river’ is carved out by our freely made choices. Only when we make free choices are we reliably acting from Individuality, this place of who we truly are. When we are not free to make our own choices, we become cut off from our true self. Our spiritual quest then is to keep our river flowing, to maintain our freedom of choice and prevent anything outside of ourselves restricting us. Like when you mix corn starch with water, our Individuality has its greatest substance when it is in motion through our free expression. When it becomes static and its river becomes dammed, our Individuality dribbles into nothingness. Only by unashamedly living out our passions and desires do we fulfil who we truly are.

Individuality’s spiritual drive was quite simply expressed in a fitness podcast I recently overheard my wife listening to. The podcast host was sharing about how a near-fatal car accident had led her to make fitness – and helping others become fit – the purpose of her life. Towards the end, she said:

Because I loved fitness so much and I was following my passion that passion ended up saving my life… You have to go out and live. It’s not about being afraid. You shouldn’t be afraid about getting into a car accident…You should be afraid about not following your passions and not finding out what your purpose is on this planet because there’s nothing to be gained by that…You’re going to end up being in the best possible position for your life if you chase what you’re passionate about and if you live your life to the fullest and you’re out there doing it, and you’re doing it the best that you can.”[10]

If you live in the West, I’m sure you will have heard someone say something similar before now. And when you look, the reverence of Individuality is all around us. In the past, the politics of Medieval Christendom affirmed God as the basis of all political authority through rituals like church coronation ceremonies. So today, political authority is also legitimised through rituals, though now it is done through regular elections which act as real but mostly symbolic expressions of Individuality.

In our economies, advertisements daily preach Individuality’s fulfilment through our consumerist choice. The marketplace always ensures we have a range of option on offer, and online shopping and door-to-door deliveries means our choices bear minimal sacrifice. Commercial services which do not come with ‘free trials’ or allow you to ‘cancel at any time’ require too much of us and do not last long.

In romantic culture, our movies and songs celebrate and mythologise the beginning ‘sparks’ where passionate fulfilment of desire reaches its peak. Meanwhile, marriage-rates continue to decline as people become wary of formally and ritually limiting their Individuality.

Demographically, the young and fertile increasingly put off or don’t want to have children for fear it will constrict their lives at their point of greatest freedom. Meanwhile, the elderly live in fear of becoming a ‘burden’ on the freedom of the young. Increasingly, their care shifts from the responsibility of family, whose sacrifice is considered a ‘burden’ as it comes from obligation, to the responsibility of paid workers, whose sacrifice is at least compensated by the earning of money which expands their consumerist choice.

We talk of ‘technological progress’, but progressing where? If anywhere, it seems mostly to be towards the fulfilment of ever more and newer desires and the removal of what restrictions and inconveniences remain for the Individual in daily life.

Finally, in the area of ethics, Individuality does not have to mean we become self-absorbed and selfish. It can (and has) become a powerful, altruistic moral force. Whether we fight for gay marriage, stand up against racial injustice, promote trans rights, lobby for pro-choice legislation, argue for drug legalisation, make the case for euthanasia, campaign to welcome refugees, proclaim open borders, or tear down barriers women face in the workplace, we are on a spiritual mission to expand everyone’s capacity to freely choose. Mission complete, we will have ‘liberated’ the Individuality of all those who remain oppressed by forces outside themselves. Salvation requires we must all be free to attain the Holy and realise our true selves.

There are many other observations that could be made about all this. The point for me that the West is not losing religion, it has found another. This religion has a metaphysics. It has an ethic. And as such, it has a sense of the Holy. Whether Individuality as I have put it best describes what is Holy in the West is by all means up for debate. What though is beyond doubt to me is that the Holy lives on in the secular, irreligious West. Western society might be divided between those who live as though there is a God and those who do not, but both God-fearers and Individuality-seekers are inspired by a sense of the Holy, a sense which consciously or not fills them with purpose.

Concluding Remarks

Using terms like ‘reverence’ and ‘holy’ to describe Western Humanism may perhaps seem unfair. After all, these are not necessarily words that a Humanist, with their often-anti-religious convictions, would like to associate with their worldview. But I hope that rather than pigeon-holing atheistic humanism into ‘religion’, I have instead helped us unlearn and so re-imagine religion in a way that Christians as well as Humanists in the West can sympathise and agree. And of course, the picture in the West is much more complicated than a world easily divided into God-fearers and Individuality-seekers.

Like all other Westerners, the Humanistic ethic and reverence for Individuality is embedded deep within me. Growing up, I was always a God-fearer and an Individuality-Seeker. Much like Prof. Ryrie describes, part of my loss of faith was the conflict between both these parts of my being. A sense that obedience and allegiance to God – of Whom I could no longer be certain – was keeping me from living my life to its truest and most fulfilling potential. Yet, I couldn’t escape the feeling that deciding to live my life to its fullest wasn’t quite natural. A childhood in China might not have made me Chinese, but it made me enough of a foreigner in my own culture to arouse my suspicions. The path I was being led down was not value-neutral, and if I was to keep walking towards Individuality, I wanted to do so with my eyes open.

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Notes & References

[1] Curtice, John et al., British Social Attitudes 36, The National Centre for Social Research, pg. 21-22 (Available at: https://www.bsa.natcen.ac.uk/media/39363/bsa_36.pdf)

[2] Non-Christian faiths in the UK do not see the same trends. 93% of those brought up as a Muslim still identify as a Muslim – only 1 percentage point less than the non-religious. Indeed, only 1 in 10 of those brought up in a non-Christian faith in the UK will no longer identify with that faith into adulthood. Given that Christianity is the only large indigenous faith and main historical religion, this suggests the trends affecting Christians may be primarily historic-cultural in nature as religions that have primarily come in due to immigration over the last 100 years aren’t affected in the same way.

[3] Boyd, Will, China Mirror: Seeing the Chinese as They See Themselves, © August 2019, William Joseph Boyd, II. (Available at: https://www.lulu.com/en/gb/shop/william-boyd/china-mirror/paperback/product-156g6e2v.html?page=1&pageSize=4)

[4] 1. All Abrahamic religions, Christianity included, base their religious thought around the subject of God; Buddhists, Hindus, and Taoists (and atheists) do not. 2. Christian Protestants traditionally place greater importance on adhering to established dogma or articles of faith than they do on religious experience and spirituality. Thus spirituality (or an experience of the divine), though a part of Protestant practice, is not necessary for salvation. 3. Christian Protestants also believe that salvation is primarily attained through faith, and in practice this is expressed through believing in the articles of Protestant faith in the absence of certain proof. What you do matters far less then than what you believe (differentiating it from other Christianities and most other religions). 4. Finally, Christian Protestants make the individual the primary subject of salvation. Salvation is not mediated through any communal body like the Church. Only an individual can determine their own salvation. On top of this, an individual can only be saved when they exercise their free choice to become saved. It is not enough to be born in the faith. Each Protestant must enter the ‘veil of ignorance’ and then choose to believe and be saved.

[5] Dik, Oleg, 2020, Church, Immigration and Pluralism, pg. 11, (unpublished manuscript)

[6] Britannica, ‘Religion’, Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/religion

[7] Brown, Callum, Becoming Atheist, as quoted in Prof Alec Ryrie’s lecture, ‘Jesus, Hitler and the Abolition of God’ a Lecture series by Gresham College. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBrrsqhAXQI&ab_channel=GreshamCollege

[8] Prof Alec Ryrie’s lecture, ‘Jesus, Hitler and the Abolition of God’ a Lecture series by Gresham College. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBrrsqhAXQI&ab_channel=GreshamCollege

[9] Brown, Callum, Becoming Atheist,

[10] Street Parking Podcast, ‘My Fitness Saved my Life | More Than Nothing’, 19-22min, Available at: https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/my-fitness-saved-my-life-more-than-nothing/id1464479946?i=1000527387403

Nationalism: A Tale of Two Myths

This is the third edition in my series, Polar Opposites, which is looking at contemporary political polarisation in the Western democratic world. As parts of the series are published, you can find them under the Polar Opposites? tab at the top of the screen.

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images on Pixabay

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I’ve always been proud to be British. Not that I ever consciously decided this. It’s just been that way as long as I can remember. Perhaps I was won over by the many pleasant summer treks through the British countryside as a child. Then again, there’s nothing quite like arriving in some isolated, windswept coastal town to then be welcomed by the homely smell of a Fish & Chip shop with a complementary chorus of raucous seagulls. Additionally, I can’t deny that as a child I enjoyed rubbing in the faces of my American friends that we had a Queen – with all her kindly, regal elegance – and they did not. What’s more, growing up in mainland China where healthcare was rarely cheap, I learned from a young age to be grateful for ‘our’ NHS,[1] undoubtedly the one thing that most British people can agree we should be proud of.[2] Finally, I’ve harboured a strong suspicion for much of my life that there isn’t a flag in the world quite as beautiful and inspiring as a Union Jack. Call me quaint or old-fashioned (and you’d probably be right!), but all these things and more have given me a distinct sense of gratitude, peace and gladness about being British.

Yet, such statements of national enthusiasm these days are often frowned upon, at least in certain circles. In fact, some of you reading this are probably already squirming! Previously, I introduced the political labels ‘Open’ and ‘Closed’ as most accurately describing our political divisions today in the West. And I think nationalistic sentiments cause perturbation in some (including myself sometimes!) precisely because such sentiments have 'Closed' associations, leading Open groups to do all the frowning. This association isn’t surprising. Indeed, in the very report where think tank, More in Common, puts forward these new political groupings, it explicitly describes the values of the Closed as ‘nationalistic’. After all, the Closed generally favour maintaining cultural boundaries and so seek to create spaces of belonging with people with a shared heritage (which implies a shared ethnicity, language and worldview). It doesn’t surprise me therefore that innumerable Brits of an Open political persuasion, keen to affirm a variety of people, ideas and cultures, seem to feel awkward if not mildly treasonous expressing any hint of national pride. That the NHS is the one British institution most British people can get behind[3] seems at least to me to be because it appeals equally to both Open and Closed groups because it symbolises so powerfully the two moral foundations they share: Care and Fairness.[4]

However, we are mistaken if we think nationalism only appeals to the Closed. It turns out that in some contexts nationalism appeals more to Open than to Closed groups. And its at least in part due to myths.

The philosopher, John Hick, gives a good definition of ‘myth’ as “a story…that is not literally true but that nevertheless expresses and tends to evoke an appropriate attitude towards the subject of the myth.”[5] The value of a myth then is that it is visualisable and appeals to a person’s imagination, making it much more effective than abstract statements at influencing a person’s ideas and beliefs.[6] For instance, British victories over both the Spanish Armada in 1588 and the German Luftwaffe in 1940 act as important myths for British identity. They both play into the British sense that we are the plucky underdogs able to defy the odds. Of course, rationally-speaking, even if Britain was actually the underdog in both battles, this has no bearing on whether Britain would be successful in any future underdog scenario. But myths don’t work that way. What matters is that winning against the odds and punching above our weight has become wrapped up in what it means to be ‘British’. Myths like this are perhaps why arguments that Britain couldn’t make it on its own without its European partners in a post-Brexit world seemed to add fuel to the fire of Brexiteers. If you associate ‘British-ness’ with optimistic feelings about any situation where Britain must defy expectations, someone telling you Brexit will make things harder will probably not have its intended affect. Myths then play a huge role in predisposing you towards certain subjects, ideas and groups as opposed to others.

Much like the Closed, the Open also have their myths rooted in history. And there is perhaps no historical myth more morally significant than that of WWII and the Nazis. For what clearer example is there of Evil? As Prof. Alec Ryrie observes, “the most potent moral figure in western culture is Adolf Hitler. It is as monstrous to praise him as it would once have been to disparage Jesus.”[7] The Mastermind behind the Jewish ‘Final Solution’ and Exterminator of countless other non-Aryans laid a moral line for the Open so clear in the sand that’s they feel its reverberation with a fiery passion to this day: Evil begins with the exclusion, delegitimization and persecution by a majority of any racial, ethnic or sexual minority. When Pat Buchanan gave his infamous 1992 ‘Culture Wars’ speech slamming such things as ‘radical feminism’ and ‘homosexual rights’, it wasn’t a coincidence that journalist, Molly Ivins, quipped “It probably sounded better in the original German.” [8] The subconscious power of this myth means any hint of Naziism, such as asserting the importance of ‘British’ values, immediately produces a strong moral reaction amongst the Open. Similarly, the Open find it hard to affirm anything virtuous which they think the Nazis would agree with. The traditional family, military heroism, patriotism, a strong leader, group conformity – all these things are tainted with moral suspicion.

Now, I think it is fair to point out that the Closed (in the UK at least) as much as the Open mythologise WWII and would share an abhorrence for Naziism. Yet, I do not think it is done in the same way. While WWII provides for the Closed another example of the ‘plucky’ Brit and defeating the Nazis provides a reason for pride in British identity, WWII for the Open instead provides a warning for what could happen if we let ideas of nationhood, racial pride and cultural superiority go to far. The Closed celebrate WWII for representing the best in British spirit and values; the Open turn WWII into a morality lesson and fear the Nazis return. Influenced as they are by this myth, the Open are nearly always emotionally predisposed to diversity, multi-national cooperation, and minorities – whatever the Nazis were against – in a way that the Closed are not. Take immigration. For the Open, immigration highlights our willingness to embrace a variety of people and cultures under a multi-cultural, very un-Nazi-like umbrella. Yet, for the Closed, immigration undermines the British values we fought Two World Wars to defend. It is this difference in mythical lenses which greatly influence perceptions of nationalism in both Open and Closed groups.

Let’s start with England. Nationalism in England is associated with Closed groups in large part because it is about asserting the majority ‘English’ identity over England as a whole. "Why else did we fight off the Catholic Spanish and the Nazi Germans if not to keep this island English?" As such, English nationalism tends to be anti-immigration and emphasise the threat of perceived cultural outsiders who basically always constitute a minority. For instance, fear of Islam is particularly prominent in this group. This is not only due to the perceived threat of Islamic extremism, but also because of the cultural threat seen to be posed by the little understood but greatly feared Sharia Law in areas with large Muslim populations.[9] Bradford, a city with a large Pakistani Muslim population, jokingly gets called ‘Bradistan’,[10] but behind the joke English nationalism feeds of the worry that if we don’t keep our guard, the rest of the country will become like this. Meanwhile, Euroscepticism is also common amongst English nationalists, not only because the EU enables large-scale immigration, but also because it gives control of England’s destiny to foreign, non-English forces in Brussels.

Nationalism in England thus doesn’t appeal particularly to Open groups, particularly the most Open Progressive Activists. While 64% of all English people feel pride in their national identity, only 21% of English Progressive Activists feel proud of being English. Similarly, on the question of ‘British’ identity, just 5% of Progressive Activists are ‘very proud’ to be British compared to 23% of all Britons. Meanwhile, a whopping 59% of Progressive Activists are actively ‘not proud’ of being British compared to an average of 23% of all Britons.[11] Although not as strongly as Progressive Activists, the other Open groups of Civic Pragmatists and Disengaged Battlers also fall below the national average on such as questions as how good do you feel when you see a Union Jack or how proud are you of your English or British identity?[12] It is clear then that nationalism doesn’t vibe well with Open groups in England.

Yet, in Scotland, nationalism has a much more ‘Open’ moral force. This is primarily because nationalism in Scotland isn’t about asserting a majority identity, but rather about freeing the Scottish minority from its larger and more powerful English neighbour. Replace England with 'Nazi Germany' and Scotland with 'oppressed minority', and you instantly see that old WWII myth playing out. That its larger English neighbour is also more conservative and Closed adds further fuel to the fire of Scottish Open nationalism. For instance, despite its (albeit relatively close) defeat in the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, Scottish nationalism seems to have experienced a resurgence since the 2016 EU referendum. The EU embodies Open values because it affirms unity in diversity, aids multi-national cooperation, and facilitates the easy movement of people. Tellingly then, not a single Scottish constituency voted in favour of Brexit (which was most popular amongst Closed groups), and yet (to phrase it poetically) because the Scottish nation is subject to the imperial, oppressive yoke of English rule, the Scottish people have against their will been forced to leave the EU they never voted to Leave.

Thus, when you look at Scotland, the picture changes enormously on questions of nationalism, particularly again amongst the most Open Progressive Activists. Rather than showing significantly lower levels of national pride like they do in England, Progressive Activists suddenly show above average pride in their national identity (81% vs. 79% of all Scots)! At the same time, pride in their British identity drops even lower from 24% amongst English Progressive Activists to just 12% amongst Scottish ones.[13] This isn’t isolated to just Scotland alone either. For exactly the same reasons, nationalism in Wales also resonates with the progressive values and psychology of Progressive Activists and other Open groups in a way it just doesn’t in England.[14] However, Scottish nationalism is much more potent than Welsh nationalism, primarily because Wales simply has fewer Open people than Scotland. 45% of Scots fall into the three most Open segments compared to 37% of English and 39% of Welsh. Moreover, 17% of Scots are Progressive Activists compared to just 13% of English and 14% of Welsh.[15] Ironically, this means that Scots support a referendum on Welsh independence more than the Welsh themselves (33% of Scots vs. 28% of Welsh)! [16] It is clear then that nationalism’s appeal to different groups greatly depends on the context, particularly whether it is seen as a majority-affirming or minority-empowering philosophy.

Moreover, the collapse of political support for the Labour Party in its traditional left-wing heartlands in England and Scotland provides a prefect case study for these two nationalisms. Although in both England and Scotland, the Labour Party is seen as ‘left-wing’, in England it is seen as Open, while in Scotland it is seen as Closed. This is because in England, Labour was against Brexit, is generally pro-immigration, champions perceived minority marginalised groups like refugees and LGBTQ+ individuals, and usually (though not always) defends Muslims groups against criticism often coming from English nationalists. In Scotland though, the Labour Party’s support of the Union has severely damaged its Open credentials amongst left-wing voters there. Even if it isn’t Closed itself in a number of its policies, its support for the Union maintains Scotland’s subservience and ‘oppression’ by England. While Labour’s support in England then comes primarily from the three most open groups, in Scotland these groups now support the left-wing but Open Scottish Nationalist Party for the most part.[17] This switch in support is partly why the 2015 UK election after the 2014 independence referendum saw the Labour Party in Scotland lose 40 of its 41 seats!

Meanwhile, in England, a number of traditionally left-wing voters in the Midlands and the North are Closed rather than Open. For instance, Loyal Nationals identify more than any other segment as being ‘working class’ (65%) and are also above average in believing the system is rigged to serve the rich an influential (76% agree vs. 67% UK average). Yet, they are the least likely to think that immigration has had a positive impact on the UK (19% vs 43% UK average), they overwhelmingly think that society cares more about immigrants’ rights than those of British citizens (79% vs. 43% UK average), and they are the most likely to think Islamic terrorism is a serious problem (95% vs. 83% UK average). It was this segment that came out strongest in support of Brexit (69% voted Leave), and it is apparent this segment is increasingly disillusioned with the Open Labour Party. Between the 2017 and 2019 UK elections, this left-wing sympathetic group’s vote for the Conservative Party went up from 46% to 56%. Considering just over 1 in 6 UK people belong to this group, this 10-percentage point increase represents a significant swing that does much to explain the collapse of Labour’s ‘Red Wall’ heartlands in England since the Brexit vote.[18]

It is clear then that the myths we hold – whether we realise we hold them or not – can radically alter our perception of political ideas, including nationalism. Nationalism might be a dirty word for many Open individuals in England, but in Scotland and Wales it is embraced with open arms. A slogan like ‘Stronger Together’ might bear one type of emotional pull when the issue is the EU, but quite another when the issue is the United Kingdom. Realising the nuances in our political myths helps us understand why a Progressive Activist or Closed Brexiteer might be a raging nationalist in one country but an ardent Unionist (European or British) in another. There are deeper forces at work in us than just abstract reasoning. So next time you think to describe the Closed as ‘nationalistic’, perhaps think twice before you do.

[1] For non-British readers, the 'NHS' stands for the UK's National Health Service. [2] Juan-Torres, M., Dixon, T., Kimaram, A., Britain’s Choice: Common Ground and Division in 2020s Britain, 2020, More in Common, pg. 19 [3] Britain’s Choice, pg. 19 [4] Open groups like Closed groups have a high regard for the moral foundations of Care and Fairness, but, unlike the Closed, they don’t hold the three other moral foundations of Purity, Loyalty and Authority nearly as highly. Other national symbols like the monarchy, countryside, cultural heritage and the armed forces do not necessarily vibe so well or so exclusively with Care and Fairness, making them less appealing to Open groups. [5] Hick, John, The Fifth Dimension, 1999, Oneworld Publications, London, pg. 235 [6] Ibid, pg. 236 [7] Ryrie, Alec, Lecture 6: Jesus, Hitler and the Abolition of God, ‘The Origins of Atheism, a Gresham College Lecture Series’, 2018. URL: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/jesus-hitler-abolition-of-god [8] https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/buchanan-culture-war-speech-speech-text/

[9]https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/17/third-of-britons-believe-islam-threatens-british-way-of-life-says-report [10] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Bradistan [11] Britain’s choice, pg. 158 [12] Britain’s choice, pg. 158-160 [13] Britain’s choice, pg. 158 [14] Britain’s Choice, pg. 159 [15] Britain’s Choice, pg. 279 [16] Britain’s Choice, pg. 148 [17] Britain’s Choice, pg. 279 [18] Britain’s Choice, pg. 55

Open & Closed: The Moral Divide in our Politics

This is the second edition in my series, Polar Opposites, which is looking at contemporary political polarisation in the Western democratic world. As parts of the series are published, you can find them under the Polar Opposites? tab at the top of the screen.

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How do you guess someone’s political opinions? You might’ve never considered this question, but you most certainly have an answer to it. After all, before you speak in a group about something as potentially controversial as politics, you probably want to know what people around you are thinking. No one wants to risk looking like (at best) a fool or (at worst) a social pariah. So you will quickly scan the room, guess as best you can what people are like, and then decide what you should (or should not) say. Moreover, research shows the more you think you're surrounded by people ‘like you’, the more freely you will feel able to speak.[1] But this invites the question – why do we assume someone is ‘like us’ in the first place?

I think it’s fair to say most of us at least unconsciously answer this by assuming political differences can be predicted quite easily. If you know someone’s party membership, gender, income, race, religion or location, surely you can pretty accurately guess their political opinions? Trump voters – oh they’re white, evangelical, male and probably blue-collar. Remain voters – aren’t they all privileged, educated, metropolitan elites? And so it goes on…

Yet, research by Think Tank, More In Common (MIC), shows that political differences might not be so easy to spot. Instead, MIC’s research demonstrates quite convincingly how political opinions stem from deeper ‘core beliefs’,[2] defined as “the system of beliefs, values and identities that reflect each individual’s experience and shape his or her interpretation of the world.”[3] What’s interesting is that by analysing patterns in these core beliefs,[4] MIC is able to divide a country into ‘segments’, and these segments prove to be far more predictive of political opinions than race, gender, class or any other factor. You can see the segments in the UK and USA below:

Image (Left) from pg. 7 of 'Britain's Choice' & Image (Right) is Figure 0.1 in 'Hidden Tribes'

For instance, one of the US segments MIC identifies are the Devoted Conservatives, and while 92% of self-professed ‘Strong Republicans’ in 2018 approved of President Trump, 98% of Devoted Conservatives approved of him.[5] Meanwhile, on the question of race in the USA, roughly 1 in 5 Progressive Activists and 1 in 8 Devoted Conservatives are ethnic minorities. Yet, when ethnic minorities are asked whether they agree that ‘the rights of black and brown people are more protected than the rights of white people in the USA’, virtually no ethnic minorities among Progressive Activists agree, while nearly two-thirds of ethnic minorities among Devoted Conservatives do![6] What this shows is that people’s core beliefs more than any other factor drive people’s politics.

This is vital for understanding polarisation because our polarised politics isn’t ultimately a class, racial, or gender war, but a clash of those with different moral and psychological outlooks on life. For instance, people’s negative or positive perception of immigration correlates strongly with their perceived sense of threat. In the UK, those who agree with the statement ‘the world is becoming a more dangerous place’ are more than twice as likely to have a negative attitude to immigration (33% vs. 15%). Meanwhile, those who think more optimistically about the world’s security are 21 percentage points higher in their approval of immigration (60% vs. 39%).[7] Similarly, in the USA, whether you think people are too sensitive about race or don’t take racism seriously enough strongly correlates with your views on personal agency. If you think individuals are themselves mostly responsible for their life outcomes, then you are over twice as likely (70% vs. 30%) to think that people are too sensitive about race. On the flip side, only 1 in 3 people who think people’s circumstances are largely determined by forces outside their control believe race is treated too sensitively.[8]

Now this isn’t to say that material characteristics like socio-economic background, ethnicity or education level don’t impact people’s core beliefs and psychology at all. For instance, Established Liberals and Progressive Activists in the UK have the most positive views on immigration and this can be tied to them having the lowest threat perception of any segments. Yet, their low sense of threat can’t be separated from the fact that people in these segments are also the most likely to come from the highest socioeconomic and educational backgrounds. Meanwhile, Loyal Nationals have the highest levels of perceived threat and so unsurprisingly they have the most negative attitudes towards immigration. Yet, again this can’t be entirely disconnected from the fact that Loyal Nationals are the most likely to come from the lowest socioeconomic backgrounds and live in more deprived areas.[9] Likewise, on issues of race, 99% of USA Progressive Activists agree that ‘many white people today don’t recognise the real advantages they have’. However, not only are American Progressive Activists the second-most likely to be white (after Devoted Conservatives), they are also the segment with the highest socioeconomic and educational status. So It is clear that white Progressive Activists are likelier to have more advantages than the wider population - both white and non-white.[10] This might be why when you take Progressive Activists out of the data, less than half of all other Americans agree with this statement.[11] On the flip side, though US ethnic minorities in different segments differ on whether they think their rights are more protected than those of white people, within each segment, including the most conservative, ethnic minority members think their rights are less protected than their white counterparts.[12]

So to be clear, this research is not saying that material factors have no effect on people’s political opinions. Your core beliefs and psychology will of course reflect your life circumstances to some extent. Nonetheless, life circumstances alone are insufficient to predict people’s politics because people who otherwise have the same material characteristics can still differ markedly in their core beliefs and thus their political opinions.

Given then that core beliefs ultimately drive our political opinions, where are the core belief fault-lines dividing our politics?

While Western democracies has traditionally seen their political fault-line lying between ‘Left’ and ‘Right’, looking at MIC’s research reveals these groupings don’t really nail down the divisions we currently see. For most of the 20th century, the meaning of ‘left-wing’ and ‘right-wing’ was largely connected to a person’s view on the role of government and markets.[13] This was reinforced by the Cold War, a titanic ideological battle between two economic archetypes: the Socialist East and Capitalist West. Yet, political debates today don’t seem to rage over the economy so much, and this might be why 70% of people in the UK no longer find ‘right-wing’ and ‘left-wing’ relevant as labels anymore.[14] So what is a better way to understand today’s political divisions?

The answer suggested by MIC is that our primary political fault-line today lies between the ‘Open’ and the ‘Closed’.[15] In all countries studied, MIC finds that “politics is increasingly dominated by issues of culture, identity and integration.”[16] While the ‘Open’ are receptive to cosmopolitan values, multi-culturalism and pluralistic identities, the ‘Closed’ are (you guessed it) closed to these things, preferring consolidated nationalist values. Yet, the next question must be – why the difference? Why are some people ‘Open’ and other people ‘Closed’? Though MIC doesn’t explicitly look into this, by collating other pieces of its research together I think I can give a promising answer.

Just as older left/right divisions were (and still are) fuelled by a moral conflict over the justice of economic systems, it seems clear that a moral conflict lies beneath this more recent polarisation. When you analyse moral foundations in both the US and UK,[17] two distinct sides start to emerge. While every single segment in both countries holds the foundations of ‘Care/Harm’ and ‘Fairness/Cheating’ relatively highly and equally, the two sides begin to differ significantly in response to the moral foundations of ‘Authority/Subversion’, ‘Purity/Disgust’ and ‘Loyalty/Betrayal’. While the Closed segments continue to hold these moral foundations about equally with Care/Harm and Fairness/Cheating, the Open segments see a noticeable drop in their importance.

Image (left) is Figure 3.1 in 'Britain's Choice' & Image (right) is Figure 4.11 in 'Hidden Tribes'

This I believe unlocks the key to the polarisation puzzle. It is clear most Open and Closed people in the UK and USA want their societies to protect the vulnerable (Care) and ensure equality and justice (Fairness). However, unlike the Closed, the Open simply do not consider submitting to tradition (Authority), abhorrence for things that evoke disgust (Purity) and standing with one’s family or nation (Loyalty) to be as morally sacred.

This I think creates two areas of friction along our political fault-line. The first layer of friction this causes is the disregard the Open have for parts of life that have significant moral value for the Closed. This can be seen on such topics as standing for the national anthem (which underlines loyalty and respect to the nation), respecting the police (which demonstrates obedience to authority), and submitting to religious morality (which may judge acts as ‘sinful’ even if they do not cause obvious harm). This disregard creates further friction because moral foundations do not exist within isolated bubbles. For instance, athletes in both the USA and UK have been causing controversy because they either kneel rather than stand during the national anthem (USA) or take a knee in support of Black Lives Matter ahead of football games (UK). If moral foundations of Loyalty and Authority do not rank as highly as those of Care and Fairness, then it makes moral sense to use the platform of high-profile sporting events and their nation-celebrating rituals to highlight national injustices. However, if you hold all these foundations equally in importance, then expressing Care and Fairness at the expense of national Loyalty and Authority might understandably spark moral discomfort. To put this example in the language of moral foundations, while Open segments often interpret the actions of those opposing ‘kneelers’ as due to the Closed’s lack of Care and Fairness, in reality it is the Open’s own lack of Authority and Loyalty that makes them unable to appreciate why kneeling during a nation-celebrating ritual should be a problem at all.

This interconnectedness of moral foundations (or lack thereof) leads to a second layer of friction regarding the appropriate direction and limits of Care and Fairness. As much as we might want to make the lives of everyone in the world better, we are constrained by limits of geography and resource. We must therefore prioritise who we will show our Care and Fairness towards. The Closed tend to direct their Care and Fairness towards those they share familial, cultural or national ties. Helping these people expresses their own Loyalty, while also being something that seems quite ‘natural’ (and so Pure). Their Care and Fairness then is characterised by boundaries. Within these boundaries there is a strong imperative to help, but this drops for those on the outside. Unsurprisingly then, foreign aid is often a sore point for the Closed. To paraphrase numerous homeless individuals I’ve spoken to, “why is our government giving money to foreigners when there are still British people like me who are suffering?”

Meanwhile, because the Open reserve their highest moral value for Care and Fairness alone, they see less reason why boundaries should constrain their help. The extent to which you qualify for Open people’s help is not determined by how connected you are to them, but rather how much harm they can prevent in helping you. For this reason, they frequently look beyond boundaries to find the most vulnerable and in need. If preventing the most harm means giving foreign aid to people on the other side of the world, then that’s what they should do. This laser-focus on the most in need often leads the Open to be seemingly very dismissive of those in their own immediate national and cultural vicinities whose suffering is nonetheless judged as less than those of worse-off groups. Unsurprisingly, Closed groups (who do generally come from lower socio-economic and more deprived backgrounds) often feel unfairly neglected and dismissed by Open segments.

Understanding this greatly clarifies our most recent polarising issues such as Brexit and Trump. For Closed segments, there is a moral imperative to respect and protect historical culture, maintain traditional understandings of identity, and for these reasons only integrate those into the body politic who agree to conform to the values already present. These imperatives reduce their insecurity, provide stability, and promote connection with those around them. For Open segments though, whenever any of these imperatives is believed to cause harm, such as refusing admittance to refugees from unfamiliar cultures or pressuring individuals to conform to gender norms that make them uncomfortable, they want to overturn these established cultural dynamics.

Yet, there is one final, important missing piece in our jigsaw puzzle. This is because the ‘Open’ are not themselves a fully unified group. In both the UK and USA, while Closed groups are largely similar in their moral foundations with only minor differences, Progressive Activists in both countries have even less regard for the foundations of Authority, Loyalty and Purity compared to other Open segments. This means that Progressive Activists tend to have stronger political views than their Open counterparts and is probably I think why “Progressive Activists are often further away from the average for the population than any other segment.”[1] This becomes significant because Progressive Activists are the most politically active groups on social media[2] and the most likely to live in ‘bubbles’ of like-minded people with shared political views.[3] They are also particularly prominent (though still minorities) in metropolitan cities and within the higher education sphere.[4] All this means that as a group they not only possess a particularly visible cultural platform, but they also have significant power to express it. So although political rants against a ‘metropolitan liberal elite’ are undoubtedly exaggerated, there is nonetheless some basis in the stereotype.

My guess is that most of what I have just outlined will not be revolutionary to you. I mean, gee, who’d have thought in the age of Trump and Brexit that immigration and cultural integration rather than economics would turn out to be a really polarising issue…Yet, I believe what I have outlined here is important for two reasons. Firstly, providing language that more accurately captures reality can only be a good thing. In the UK particularly, political discussion has increasingly tied itself in knots because we lack words outside of the left/right paradigm to explain political behaviour. How do you understand the politics of left-wing, ‘Red Wall’ Labour voters who take a ‘right-wing’ position on Brexit? Or how do you explain a right-wing, Conservative Party government enacting liberal and left-wing policies like legalising gay marriage? Recognising an Open/Closed dimension to contemporary politics that doesn’t necessarily map neatly onto Left/Right identities then can only be helpful.

Lastly, I think understanding the moral foundations lying beneath our political divisions helps us do political conflict better. It is hard to do conflict well when you don’t consider your political adversary a worthy opponent – worthy of respect, fair play, and graciousness. It is easy to dismiss people who are immoral, deplorable, idiotic, disgusting and generally ‘the bad guys’. But research like this suggests people to varying degrees always act from moral foundations – however misguided you might think these are. And if the anti-kneeler does not dismiss themselves as a ‘racist’ and the trans-rights activist doesn’t think they’re just a ‘snowflake’, then perhaps – if we actually want democratic debate – neither should you. Granted, not all opponents prove themselves to be worthy after initial interactions, but when they do, a better democracy becomes possible again.

References

[1] Hawkins, S., Yudkin, D., Juan-Torres, M., Dixon, T., Hidden Tribes: A Study of America's Polarized Landscape, 2018, More in Common, pg. 131 [2] The full list of ‘core beliefs’ analysed are group identity; moral foundations; perception of threat; parenting style & authoritarianism; and agency & personal responsibility. [3] Hidden Tribes, pg. 18 [4] You can take a shortened version of the British or American test yourself both to understand how respondents are categorised into their segments and also to see which segment you yourself fall into.

[5] Hidden Tribes, pg. 9 [6] Hidden Tribes, pg. 98 [7] Juan-Torres, M., Dixon, T., Kimaram, A., Britain’s Choice: Common Ground and Division in 2020s Britain, 2020, More in Common, pg. 80 [8] Hidden Tribes, pg. 93 [9] Britain’s Choice, pg. 78 [10] Hidden Tribes, pg. 141-43 [11] Hidden Tribes, pg. 8 (after having removed the actual numbers of Progressive Activists surveyed using the data available on pg. 145, and recalculating the overall percentage) [12] Hidden Tribes, pg. 98 [13] Hidden Tribes, pg. 19 [14] Britain’s Choice, pg. 138 [15] Hidden Tribes, pg. 19 [16] Hidden Tribes, pg. 19 [17] Only Executive Summaries of the German and French MIC studies are available in English meaning it is not possible for me to confirm whether a similar pattern is seen in these two other countries.

[18] Britain’s Choice, pg. 140 [19] Britain’s Choice, pg. 11; Hidden Tribes, pg. 114 [20] Britain’s Choice, pg. 140; Yudkin, D., Hawkins, S., Dixon, T., Perception Gap: How False Impressions are Pulling Americans Apart, 2019, More In Common, pg. 40 [21] Britain’s Choice, pg. 275-76 (Figure 1.1.2. Region, Geography & Figure 1.1.3 Educational attainment) Hidden Tribes, pg. 142 (Figure 1.1.2 Region, Geography; Figure 1.1.3 Educational Attainment)