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

[lovemydog]

is a recent book by Jonathan Haidt. It's gets good reviews from folks I respect like Bill Moyers. I just uploaded it to my kindle. Wondering if anyone else has read it yet. And what you think of it. Here's the description from amazon:

Why can’t our political leaders work together as threats loom and problems mount? Why do people so readily assume the worst about the motives of their fellow citizens? In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and points the way forward to mutual understanding.

His starting point is moral intuition—the nearly instantaneous perceptions we all have about other people and the things they do. These intuitions feel like self-evident truths, making us righteously certain that those who see things differently are wrong. Haidt shows us how these intuitions differ across cultures, including the cultures of the political left and right. He blends his own research findings with those of anthropologists, historians, and other psychologists to draw a map of the moral domain, and he explains why conservatives can navigate that map more skillfully than can liberals. He then examines the origins of morality, overturning the view that evolution made us fundamentally selfish creatures. But rather than arguing that we are innately altruistic, he makes a more subtle claim—that we are fundamentally groupish. It is our groupishness, he explains, that leads to our greatest joys, our religious divisions, and our political affiliations. In a stunning final chapter on ideology and civility, Haidt shows what each side is right about, and why we need the insights of liberals, conservatives, and libertarians to flourish as a nation.

Here's a talk he gave about the subject of the book.

All comments are welcome!

[s-cubed]

1. Excellent book. Highly recommend it. nt

[lovemydog]

2. Thank you.

Glad to hear another DUer read it and recommends it.

[Samantha]

3. Head versus heart

We are divided politically because that is stoked by politicians and their strategists. There is a belief that it is easier for politicians to control the masses if the people are divided.

We are divided religiously because that is born from what is in our hearts (sewn there by a myriad of sources and influences).

IMHO

Sam

[lovemydog]

4. That's an interesting way of looking at it.

Thanks Sam.

[Samantha]

7. Hmmmm, that is a logical response

from someone whose screen-name was inspired straight by the heart. You must be a well-balanced person!

Thank you so much!

Sam

[lovemydog]

8. Haha!

[Fumesucker]

5. It's interesting that he puts the inflection point in 1980

When basically America elected an empty suit, a washed up second rate actor, as President.

He manages to completely avoid the influence of hate radio/Fox News on the national conversation. I've read many stories here on DU and elsewhere of people who have changed their entire personalities after falling under the influence of right wing talk radio and Fox, that seems to call into question his statement that we get our politics from our internal moral sense. In my view he vastly underrates the influence of propaganda on our mental processes, in fact he doesn't even mention it. I'd be willing to bet he's never actually listened to talk radio to any extent.

I had an OP up recently pointing out that talk radio at least is driven more by profit based on audience share than it is strictly by ideology. I listened to talk radio as a commuter for about a decade and I'm convinced that the hosts seldom believe the crap they are spouting, the main reason I think that is because I joined a forum specifically started on Compuserve by one of my local talk hosts and destroyed most of his arguments without really even trying that hard. I'd listened to him for years, shouting at the radio and I knew every weak point in every argument he made, getting him in a situation where he couldn't cut my mic and couldn't shout over me took away the advantage that the talk host had and put us on an even playing field where he lost badly.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10027331457

[lovemydog]

6. Very interesting comments Fume.

I'll think about them as I read the book.

[Fumesucker]

9. I had several specific disagreements with his talk that I managed to forget by the end of it

I'm way too ADD to keep them in mind for that length of time and my short term memory is getting worse as I get older. I guess I'd have to watch it again and pause for each point, write down my thoughts and then continue the video. A lot of times when someone replies to one of my posts it comes as a surprise to me what I've written.


I think Dennis Miller is a good example of someone who changed their personality from a liberal leaning person to far right, I used to find him pretty amusing, watched his late night show and laughed a lot. Now he's about as much fun as a colonoscopy.

[lovemydog]

10. LOL, I do that too!

Most definitely agree with you about Dennis Miller. He went from funny to unfunny.

I've noticed some criticisms of this book from others too. I'll keep them in mind when I read it.

Hope you enjoy a good evening.

[Fumesucker]

11. I had another thought, conservatives are seldom really funny and they usually are bad at satire too

There is no conservative equivalent to the Daily Show except maybe the now gone Colbert Report and that was liberal satire.

If conservatives can navigate all the dimensions of personality better than liberals shouldn't they be even better at comedy than liberals?

[lovemydog]

12. Oh, that's a great point.

I agree.