The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion

cultures: all societies must resolve a small set of questions about how to order society, the most important being how to balance the needs of individuals and groups.

moral reasoning was often a servant of moral emotions,

We also have the ability, under special circumstances, to shut down our petty selves and become like cells in a larger body, or like bees in a hive, working for the good of the group.

that altruism is mostly aimed at members of our own groups.

the most cohesive and cooperative groups generally beat the groups of selfish individualists.

But human nature was also shaped as groups competed with other groups.

the rider’s job is to serve the elephant.

Moral intuitions arise automatically and almost instantaneously, long before moral reasoning has a chance to get started, and those first intuitions tend to drive our later reasoning.

human beings are 90 percent chimp and 10 percent bee.