The Righteous Mind

Why Good People Are Divided by Poliotics and Religion

Jonathan Haidt, 2012 | Cedar Mill 302 HAIDT

• p005 1987 grad student psychology University of Pennsylvania

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Haidt Jonathan Haidt

The main message from this book is there

Introduction

• xiii Human nature is not just intrinsically moral, it is also intrinsically moralistic, critical, and judgmental.

Part 1, Intuitions Come First, Strategic Reasoning Second

• The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider's job is to serve the elephant.

• (David) Humean model

• p004 family dog killed, eaten. Disgusting yes, morally wrong no (to well-educated)
• p004 man buys supermarket chicken, has sex with it, then eats it. MORE disgusting, morally wrong no (to well-educated)
  • everyone else says WRONG

• p005 nativist (Bible, Darwin) morality built in

• p005 empiricist (John Locke) believes babies blank slates, children learn morality from experience

• p005 rationalist (Piaget) children figure it out for themselves

• p006 morality self-constructed during play, improving with age

• p007 rationalist believes moral knowledge from reasoning

• p007 Lawrence Kohlberg quantified Piaget, defined six stages of social reasoning

• p008 Kohlberg claims morally advanced kids learned other's perspectives from "role taking"
• p009 Kohlberg's framework predefined morality as justice, not authority, hierarchy, and tradition
• p010 kids recognize social conventions different than harm prevention

• p012 different moralities: "Ilongot" (Bugkalot), formerly headhunters, channeled in-group tensions to out-group competition

• p014 Richard Shweder quotes Clifford Geertz, westerners think bounded unique individuals, peculiar idea elsewhere

• intuition and emotions rule, strategic reasoning justifies/explains (sometimes)
• p049 Dale Carnegie: avoid confrontation, be a good listener, instead of reverting to combat mode

• p055 brains evaluate threat/benefit very quickly, Robert Zajonc affective primacy

• p072 ring of gyges

• p075 Accountability systems make human beings the world champions of cooperation beyond kinship.

• p075 Philip Tetlock

• p086 people care about their groups, not ideas

• p088 The rationalist delusion / counterargument

Part 2, There is More to Morality than Harm and Fairness

• p096 Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic . a world of objects, not relationships

• p099 Shweder's Three Ethics, Community, Autonomy, Divinity

• p102 Haidt fieldwork in India, adapted to family rather than individual ethics

• p105 feelings of essences emanating from objects -> reverence, ethics of divinity

• p117 Two axis graph, low-high empathizers, low-high systemizers, Kant and utilitarian Bentham systemizers
• p120 psychology descriptive, how the mind actually works, not hour it ought to work.
• p125 Righteous mind mix of (version 1)

  • Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, Sanctity/Degradation

• p146 Armin Meiwes cannibal, Bernd Brandes willing victim

• p148 conservative neophobia, liberal neophilia

• p149 no sense of disgust ... no sense of the sacred

• p150 Silver Ring Thing virginity pledge

• p152 Leon Kass spokesman for Shweder's ethic of divininty

• p155 suggested Kerry speech rewrite: "You gonna pay for that, George?"

  • Kerry could have activated Fairness/cheating

• p156: Republicans understand moral psychology. Democrats don't R's go straight for the gut.

• p156 Bill Clinton knew how to charm elephants.
• p156 after Clinton, R's focus on loyalty, authority, and sanctity

• p158 graph: very liberal, only care and fairness. very conservative, average care and fairness plus loyalty, authority, sanctity

• p166 Mill versus Durkheim

• p169 fairness: for liberals equality, for conservatives proportionality
• p169 sixth foundation, liberty/oppression
• p171 alpha male chimps are bullies, 500kya spears shifted from dominance to morality

• p172 reverse dominance hierarchy

• version 2

  • Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, Sanctity/Degradation, Liberty/Oppression

Part 3, Morality Binds and Blinds

• p187 We are 90% Chimp and 10% Bee
• p191 natural selection multiple levels, groups compete with groups
• p193 multi-level selection

• p196 George C. Williams Adaptation and Natural Selection 1966

• p198 Humans are the giraffes of altruism

• p201 John Maynard Smith, Eörs Szathmáry:The major transitions in evolution , 1997

• p203 Total tonnage of humans: 98% of mammals, including our domesticated animals: 390 MT human, 630 MT domesticated

• p203 Human mass insigificant 12kya

• p204 Michael Tomasello: "... inconceivable ... two chimps carrying log together."

• p205 humans developed shared intentionality

• p208 1.8 MYA Acheulean toolkit

• p211 Self-domestication

• p213 Dmitry Belyayev 30 generations to domesticated foxes

• p215 Holocene very fast human evolution Hawks 2007 . Williamson 2007

• p217 "not war, most efficient at turning resources into offspring" :

  • Lesley Newson: A story of us : a new look at human evolution Multco Central 599.938 N5587s 2021

• p221 William McNeill formation matching 1941, collective ritual, altered conciousness, muscular bonding

• p222 Macedonian phalanx

• p224 collective joy WCCLS Dancing in the Streets, Barbara Ehrenreich 2006

• p225 Durkheim's Homo Duplex: individual, larger society

• p228 "Durhheimogen" hallucinogens

• p233 oxytocin

• p235 Mirror neuron respond to similar intentions

• p239 more organizational hivishness: Increase similarity, synchrony, team competition,
• p241 Fascism is hive psychology scaled up to grotesque heights
• p247 Football and rallies create community

• p249 New Atheism New Atheism Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett + journalist Christopher Hitchens

• p255 Scott Atran Joseph Henrich : cultural evolution of religions

• p257 Richard Sosis 20-year commune survival: 6% of secular, 39% of religious

• p258 David Sloan Wilson social evolution

• p259 Darwin's Cathedral Central 306.6 W747d 2002

• p262 Maypole dancing analogy

• p263 The Faith Instinct 201 WAD Nicholas Wade 2009

• p267 American Grace 2010 Robert Putnam and David Campbell
• p270 "Moral systems are interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, technologies, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate self-interest and make cooperative societies possible.
• p272 paraphrase: religion is principally binding, not supernatural beliefs.
• p274 ch12: Can't We All Disagree More Constructively?
• p274 centrists down from 40%/2000 to 36%/2011

• p275 Chamomile Tea Party Jeff Gates

• p275 Congressional gang behavior, hatred
• p278 identical twins (even reared separately) very similar on almost everything
  • Culture war? : the myth of a polarized America Fiorina 2007 ... 2010

• p279 Dan McAdams dispositional traits

• p281 Minds process stories, not logic

• p282 YourMorals.org

• p283 Moral Believing Animals Christian Smith at PSU Lib

• p285 The political brain 2008 Drew Westen

• p287 tested Moral Foundations questionnaire "think like your opposite"
  • moderates and conservatives accurate, liberals least accurate, especially about their models of care and fairness

• p288 Conservatism Jerry Muller 1997 320.52 C755

• p290 Conservative intellectuals value the importance of moral capital (perhaps not political "conservatives")

• p294 fundamental blind spot of the left neglect of moral capital

• p294 conservative blind spots fail to notice some classes of victims, fail to limit powerful predation, fail to change as times change.

• Figures into table

• p298 Author - Liberals stand up against hidden corporate externalities, regulation needed
• p299 example, lead in gasoline, child IQ rise, half of 1990s drop in crime
• p302 counterpoint: miraculous markets

• p303 2009 David Goldhill The Atlantic How American Health Care Killed My Father

• p304 LASIK self-pay, doctors compete, 80% price drop since introduction
• p305 irony: Liberals embrace Darwin, but not Adam Smith
• p307 John Lennon "Imagine" - no boundaries, conservative "hell"

• p308 E. Pluribus Unum 2007 Robert D. Putnam

• p309 3rd century Persian prophet Mani

• p310 Manichaeism black and white, compromise bad

• p311 Newt Gingrich 1995 Congress "leave your families at home" no more bipartisan socializing
• p311 1976 27% lived in landslide counties, 2008 48% lived in landslide counties

• p311 89% of Whole Foods stores in counties that voted for Obama, 62% of Cracker Barrel restaurants in McCain counties

  • Nearest to Oregon is Nampa, Idaho, almost everything with meat/pork

• p312 If you want to understand another group, follow the sacredness

• p318 Cartoon "Your mother and I are separating because I want what's best for the country and your mother doesn't"

  • https://publicsquaremag.org/cartoon/whats-best-for-the-country/