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The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
- The central metaphor of these four chapters is that the mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider’s job is to serve the elephant. The rider is our conscious reasoning—the stream of words and images of which we are fully aware. The elephant is the other 99 percent of mental processes—the ones that occur outside of awareness but tha... See more
from The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt
- “Please, we can get along here. We all can get along. I mean, we’re all stuck here for a while. Let’s try to work it out.”
from The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt
BORN TO BE RIGHTEOUS
from The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt
I described three common ways in which people flip the hive switch: awe in nature, Durkheimian drugs, and raves. I described recent findings about oxytocin and mirror neurons that suggest that they are the stuff of which the hive switch is made. Oxytocin bonds people to their groups, not to all of humanity. Mirror neurons help people empathize with
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The Fairness/cheating foundation evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of reaping the rewards of cooperation without getting exploited. It makes us sensitive to indications that another person is likely to be a good (or bad) partner for collaboration and reciprocal altruism. It makes us want to shun or punish cheaters.
from The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt
The ethic of autonomy is based on the idea that people are, first and foremost, autonomous individuals with wants, needs, and preferences. People should be free to satisfy these wants, needs, and preferences as they see fit, and so societies develop moral concepts such as rights, liberty, and justice, which allow people to coexist peacefully withou
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In moral and political matters we are often groupish, rather than selfish. We deploy our reasoning skills to support our team, and to demonstrate commitment to our team.
from The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt
Philosophers have long disagreed about whether it’s acceptable to harm one person in order to help or save several people. Utilitarianism is the philosophical school that says you should always aim to bring about the greatest total good, even if a few people get hurt along the way, so if there’s really no other way to save those five lives, go ahea
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In other words, under normal circumstances the rider takes its cue from the elephant, just as a lawyer takes instructions from a client. But if you force the two to sit around and chat for a few minutes, the elephant actually opens up to advice from the rider and arguments from outside sources. Intuitions come first, and under normal circumstances
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By many different measures religiously observant Americans are better neighbors and better citizens than secular Americans—they are more generous with their time and money, especially in helping the needy, and they are more active in community life.
from The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt