Interesting quote. I'm a little troubled by "minor rules...are placed above principles..." as it smacks rather too much of one of those I-you-he irregular verbs: we don't have to worry about offending those people because their beliefs are trivial. Authoritarianism has its principles: they may be inegalitarian, divisive and thoroughly wrong-headed, but if we tell ourselves that authoritarians are only doing it because Mrs Jones next door does it, or for some similarly "minor" reason, we may comfort ourselves in our own "principled" superiority, but we will be missing a huge point.
I don't have the full background (the rest of the paper, or the other literature on authoritarianism that it alludes to), so I don't know whether the author has fallen into the trap you describe, or only seems to have done so because of the sound-bite lack-of-context/lack-of-depth aspect of an abstract.
To an idealist (and I was always confused when my mother called me that in a tone of voice that suggested it was a bad thing), "minor rules...are placed above principles..." sounds, at first blush, yes a little 'inferior' to my own worldview, but much more than that, it seems bizarre. But running across that sentence in the context of a paper referring to research into such personality types, I get the message that it's not an aberration, not just a person here and there confused about priorities, but a way of thinking that entire classes of people exhibit. And at that point I started thinking, despite the temptation supplied by the "minor rules" phrasing, that whether my priorities are inherently superior or not, I probably need to work on making sense of that mindset instead of sneering and dismissing it out of hand. Though we may have a disagreement down at the mostly-unspoken assumptions level, I do need to interact with such people, and understanding pieces like that can be useful. Too often, communication rinds to a halt because each side thinks certain fundamentals are obvious (or, worse yet, fails to notice their own assumptions, like a fish not noticing it's wet) so that each appears opaque to the other and each other's arguments don't seem to make sense.
So, reading that description, while it certainly did not convince me that (*cough*) "lawful neutral" makes as much moral sense as "neutral good" as a scheme for organizing one's life, actions, and perceptions, it did make me think that what I have considered So Very Obvious, perhaps I should consider how to defend instead of assuming that the superiority of idealism will be just as obvious to anyone else of reasonable intelligence who isn't a sociopath.
I still don't understand that value system yet. But at least I'm aware that it's out there, as a sociologically-significant "type", not just as a caricature or the occasional nutjob. So some of the beliefs and arguments of such people start, slowly, to make a little bit more sense to me as logical results of that foundation, even if the foundation itself seems bewilderingly dissonant to me still.
A later step, if I get that far, will be to learn how to use this understanding to argue with such people more effectively, or to (*ahem*) convert them to something closer to idealism.
The other thought I had when I read that passage for the second time (while I was deciding whether to quote it or not), was to wonder what language, and tone of voice, the same folks use to describe idealists. That would be telling, with regard to the question of whether this is an "I-you-he irregular verb" situation or not.
So I have no idea whether the author fell into that I-you-he way of thinking or not, but I did come away with a different message than "look at those poor confused authoritarians who think minor things are major" myself. After I thought about it anyhow. (The very first quick reading, did sound like validation of my superiority, I'll admit. But it was interesting enough to get me to slow down and back up.)
Please excuse me if this too-long response is incoherent; I haven't managed to fall asleep yet from last night, and some percentage of my neurons are being more random than usual, I expect.
It occurs to me that "minor rules" is ambiguous in an interesting way: "rules that are minor", vs. "rules about minors" (which plays well with the preceding statement). And while this would not be a "normal" interpretation, it's not inconceivable that this is psychological or sociological jargon.
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To an idealist (and I was always confused when my mother called me that in a tone of voice that suggested it was a bad thing), "minor rules...are placed above principles..." sounds, at first blush, yes a little 'inferior' to my own worldview, but much more than that, it seems bizarre. But running across that sentence in the context of a paper referring to research into such personality types, I get the message that it's not an aberration, not just a person here and there confused about priorities, but a way of thinking that entire classes of people exhibit. And at that point I started thinking, despite the temptation supplied by the "minor rules" phrasing, that whether my priorities are inherently superior or not, I probably need to work on making sense of that mindset instead of sneering and dismissing it out of hand. Though we may have a disagreement down at the mostly-unspoken assumptions level, I do need to interact with such people, and understanding pieces like that can be useful. Too often, communication rinds to a halt because each side thinks certain fundamentals are obvious (or, worse yet, fails to notice their own assumptions, like a fish not noticing it's wet) so that each appears opaque to the other and each other's arguments don't seem to make sense.
So, reading that description, while it certainly did not convince me that (*cough*) "lawful neutral" makes as much moral sense as "neutral good" as a scheme for organizing one's life, actions, and perceptions, it did make me think that what I have considered So Very Obvious, perhaps I should consider how to defend instead of assuming that the superiority of idealism will be just as obvious to anyone else of reasonable intelligence who isn't a sociopath.
I still don't understand that value system yet. But at least I'm aware that it's out there, as a sociologically-significant "type", not just as a caricature or the occasional nutjob. So some of the beliefs and arguments of such people start, slowly, to make a little bit more sense to me as logical results of that foundation, even if the foundation itself seems bewilderingly dissonant to me still.
A later step, if I get that far, will be to learn how to use this understanding to argue with such people more effectively, or to (*ahem*) convert them to something closer to idealism.
The other thought I had when I read that passage for the second time (while I was deciding whether to quote it or not), was to wonder what language, and tone of voice, the same folks use to describe idealists. That would be telling, with regard to the question of whether this is an "I-you-he irregular verb" situation or not.
So I have no idea whether the author fell into that I-you-he way of thinking or not, but I did come away with a different message than "look at those poor confused authoritarians who think minor things are major" myself. After I thought about it anyhow. (The very first quick reading, did sound like validation of my superiority, I'll admit. But it was interesting enough to get me to slow down and back up.)
Please excuse me if this too-long response is incoherent; I haven't managed to fall asleep yet from last night, and some percentage of my neurons are being more random than usual, I expect.
(no subject)