The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
by Jonathan Haidt
Rating: 5.0 / 5 · Read · Finished 2021-01-28
You should read this if you think politics has gotten too divisive or you find it next to impossible to understand where the other side is coming from. This book approaches the problem from the perspective of psychology. And it’s really well-written and clearly organized. It uses several easy-to-remember catch phrases to sum up its main points that turn into mantras throughout the book.
- Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second. You tend to trust your gut on whether or not to like or agree with something. Then you employ your reasoning to justify your opinion. The more educated you are, the more sophisticated your justifications.
- There’s more to morality than harm and fairness. Just like cuisines emphasize the fives tastes (sweet, salty, bitter, sour, savory), moralities emphasize different values (care, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity, liberty). Liberals focus on care, conservative value each more equally.
- Morality binds and blinds. Morality, religion, group loyalty, tradition, etc are actually good for a society because they increase trust within the group and let societies work together more easily. On the other hand, they make people basically immune to logical arguments against their beliefs.
A couple neat tips and tricks:
- The easiest way to change your mind is to see someone you like who also holds the new opinion.
- How to motivate people to be unbiased: Tell them ahead of time they will have to have to justify their decision to people whose opinions they don’t know.
- If you don’t understand the views of the other side, try having at least one friendly interaction with that side, or better yet, make friends with someone on that side.