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

religion is (probably) an evolutionary adaptation for binding groups together and helping them to create communities with a shared morality.

moral reasoning was often a servant of moral emotions,

the rider’s job is to serve the elephant.

collapse of cooperation across party lines.

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.

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.

human beings are 90 percent chimp and 10 percent bee.

“reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”

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.