By Ruy Diaz
In the popular mind, purity belongs to conservatism. In the novels and films of the time, crusty conservative oppressors try to prevent people from having fun. This is especially true regarding sexual purity—the list of conservative movie villains who loathe sexuality would be longer than this post. The stereotype is firmly entrenched in our psyche.
There is some truth in the stereotype. Psychological studies show that conservatives are indeed more concerned with chastity, more concerned with cleanliness, and more prone to disgust. These are all related to the moral dimension ‘purity’. In a devious experiment, inducing feelings of disgust in people temporarily turned them more conservative. (That is, those induced to feel disgust gave more conservative answers in a quiz about political and social values.) But I maintain that purity is not merely conservative. Liberals use purity—purity-based moral reasoning to be precise—in a different way.
You Are What You Eat
Liberals anchor purity in the external world. They often express purity in the many dietary fads to which people on the left are more susceptible. The organic food movement illustrates this kind of thinking. Once food has been made impure by modern technology it is no longer fit for human consumption. Once genetic engineering has improved a crop, for example, this mythological purity is lost. Similarly, if even a speck of fertilizer or a hint of pesticide touches your food, its purity is lost.
When it comes to the organic food fad, you are what you eat, but what you are purchasing is purity.
Environmental Purity
Begin a conversation with an environmental activist, you soon get a dose of purity-based moral reasoning. It is not enough to solve environmental problems, they ought to be solved the right way, the moral way. So, giving African tribes ownership rights over elephant herds is not enough—hunting elephants is always wrong. Similarly, buying rain forest acreage and placing it under private trust is somehow wrong—market-based solutions to environmental problems do not satisfy them.
This kind of thinking expresses itself best on climate change policy. Geoengineering is the study of ways in which human action can reverse global climate change. One promising approach consists of capturing atmospheric carbon dioxide and bury it in abandoned mines. This approach would be the cheapest option to reverse global climate change by far. People would hardly need to stop consuming what products and services they prefer to consume now.
Environmentalists, almost to a man, woman, and non-binary being hate geoengineering. The approach is not morally clean. Geoengineering may solve global climate change, but it would still pollute our collective soul.
Pipelines
Still, nothing illustrates purity-based moral thinking than the left’s opposition to pipelines. Pipelines, by a large margin, are the safest way to transport oil and natural gas overland. Alternate transport methods—rail and truck—are vastly more dangerous and result in larger consumption of fossil fuels during the transportation process.
But none of this matters to activists. When they talk about their opposition to pipelines, the language of purity is paramount. Opponents of the Trans-Alaska pipeline could not stop talking about Caribou herds and the pristine Alaska wilderness. The anti-Dakota pipeline activists complained about the disturbance of sacred Indian burial grounds. In a stunning non-coincidence, nuns in Pennsylvania built an outdoor chapel to sanctify the ground, making the proposed path of a pipeline a sacrilege. None of this is coincidence. Activists oppose pipeline on sacred, not on practical grounds.
Purity-based thinking, in conclusion, is not really a conservative way of thinking. This is a moral universal, which nearly all of us use, for better and for worse. We are all moralistic beings, and purity is one of the ways we moralize.
