On Liberality

To the ancients, a “liberal” was educated, generous, tolerant, high- and open-minded, and above petty concerns. A distinctive feature of the modern world is that liberal “tolerance” has often become a norm for everyone, and entrenched formally in law and governance.  

The core idea, I think, is that certain forums, such as governments, are best set to be “demilitarized zones” with respect to certain contested considerations, such as religion. “We don’t fight over that here.” For example, in a state with “freedom of religion”, state decisions should not depend directly on religious considerations. Religious facts may influence state decisions, and state decisions may have consequences for religion, but if so those should result indirectly from other more direct considerations. Such rules are enforced by looking at explicit reasons given for decisions, and at patterns across decisions. 

Law has long had norms against basing decisions on judge personal connections, or on extraneous features of litigating parties. In the ancient world the politics of cities was usually that of competing coalitions of families. But the Catholic Church banned cousin marriage, suppressing the importance of families, and allowing non-family-based loyalties to flower in cities, firms, and other orgs. Such orgs often made norms against nepotism, i.e., against basing org decisions on family loyalties. 

After the very deadly Thirty Years War, many Europeans adopted “freedom of religion” norms against governments making decisions based on religious considerations. And “freedom of speech” norms against their favoring particular points of view. Over time more banned considerations were added, including firms, race, gender, and sexual orientation. And via “anti-discrimination”, such norms have been extended to landlords and businesses.

The problem is not just that issues regarding which liberal norms require tolerance are often in fact not directly relevant to their decisions. It is more that people tend to form social coalitions and then slant decisions to favor their coalitions. For example, small non-profits are often dominated by a coalition, each of whom makes all org decisions, including who to hire and what clients to serve, according to whomever has the most social pull with that coalition. Insiders are always favored against outsiders. 

To create orgs that make decisions on any basis other than favoring dominant coalition leaders, it can help to enforce norms about particular considerations that are not supposed to matter for particular decisions. So, for example, if you want firm hiring decisions not to be overwhelmed by family loyalties, you may need a norm against nepotism. If you want two subordinates to work hard to compete for a promotion, you may want to commit to choosing the best performing one, regardless of their political connections. And if you want to avoid governments being dominated by fights between families or religions, you may need a norm against their decisions favoring such things. 

Note that no people or orgs are liberal about everything. Instead, liberality norms are exceptions to the usual presumption that everything can in principle matter for anything. We don’t ban considerations that seem unlikely to be coordination points in coalition fights. And when opposing coalitions are lopsided enough, we often just let the bigger one crush the smaller one. 

Note also that realms of informal social pressure, such in mobs and “cancel” campaigns, are also often seen as forums where liberal norms apply. “Classical liberals” were not just wary of governments taking sides in commercial, family, or religious fights, they were also wary of using shaming and loyalty to press such fights. (Your mileage may vary with “libertarians.”) 

Over the last few centuries many, but far from all, social trends have been in the direction of increased liberality. For example, we now more accept government taking sides on types of business practices, if they don’t target particular firms. And we now favor democracy over other forms of governance, for most types of orgs. 

Critics of liberality have long noted that we have two very different reasons to not consider or favor X in forum Y:

1. to prevent fights over X from overwhelming Y, and

2. because X hardly matters to Y.

Critics have feared that norms banning X in prestigious forums Y, like law or government, will be taken as signs that the society doesn’t actually care much about X. For example, they have feared that freedom of religion re government will be seen as saying that religions don’t matter much. And I have to admit that this does seem to have been a trend. We have in fact tended to become more liberal about X in Y as we’ve cared less about X. We like to be “multicultural” re surface things like language, food, music, and holidays, but not re deep values. 

In fact, liberal norms against forums like firms or states favoring sides of consideration X have often escalated into non-liberal libertine norms saying that everyone should accept that all X options (among some set) are valid and moral. Previously it was okay to have private moral opinions on race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation, if you didn’t try to use government or large scale social pressure to get others to go your way. But we now see norms against such private opinions; instead of being liberal on X, we now have norms that all must accept all X as okay.  

Note that this key concept of “X should not be a direct consideration in Y” is a network concept like the concept of “X is not directly connected to Y” in Bayesian probability networks. Humans manage many conceepts via network representations.

Added 2Sep: Rising liberality has likely been caused by the first industrial nations being unusually liberal, and others copying them to not be left behind. Liberality also plausibly helps large diverse societies to keep an internal peace. But as the world converges on a monoculture, I expect that benefit to decline, and liberality to decline.