Habits of the Heart
Why do people do what they do
Writing both adventures and mysteries requires changing gears. Some are big changes, others small. One of the most important is the need to explain motivations better in a mystery. Kurt Hunter, the fictional special agent in charge of Biscayne National Park, in my Kurt Hunter Mystery Series, is always searching for the why.
To solve a mystery the sleuth needs to work through the triad of investigative work: means, motive, and opportunity. Means and opportunity are mundane in that they generally require physical evidence or alibis. Motive is a bit trickier. In the latest story, Backwater Squall, I started with the Razor Laws and in the process ran across an interesting idea set forth by Alexis de Tocqueville called “habits of the heart.” Tocqueville was a 19th-century French aristocrat, political scientist, sociologist, diplomat, and historian.
It’s a great way to figure out motive but also a concept that I wish had more currency in our current politicians’ view than Twitter is the world or that we are the Twitterverse.
Ideas and concepts do matter, but most people don’t get out of bed, get married, stay married, help their friends, work hard, or refuse to work at all—or risk their lives because of abstract ideas. They do so because they are embedded in a specific culture, a rich cobweb of personal, familial, and communal expectations, instincts, and, well, habits written into their hearts.
It would be wise for detectives and politicians to really understand their suspect or electorates’ real inner drive, their Habits of the Heart, before making assumptions.
Recently, the backbone shown by the Ukrainians is a Habit of the Heart that, so far has unified Europe and surprised Russia.
The question I have is should it have?
I have used Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory in explaining motivation as well. In a complicated way, he simplifies the world into a linear progression in four separate quadrants: Intentional, Behavioral, Cultural, and Social. The social quadrant shows how groups of people develop. Groups and families become tribes, which become villages, which become states, and nation-states. In order to understand a culture, you need to understand where they fall in this progression. One of our big mistakes in Iraq and Afghanistan was failing to identify that they were essentially tribal societies. In Iraq, the division was religious, with Sunni and Shiite Muslims split. Iraqis as we lumped them together didn’t care about their country (which was simply a division of property after WWI).
Ukraine is a nation-state whose people consider themselves Ukrainian and will fight for their country because that is how they identify in their hearts.
There are numerous other examples, many along the climate change front.
Kurt didn’t use the concept in Backwater Squall, but it’s rattling around in his head and sure to surface soon.
Food for thought, thank you.