I just started a book I bought a few years ago. I wish I had
read it then. This has the potential to be my “best book of the decade” – like
I have never said that before. The book is The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan
Haidt. If you liked Thinking Fast and Slow by Kahneman,
this book applies those ideas to morals and politics. Research indicates that we
act mostly from our instinct, not our reasoning.
When I watch the presidential candidates on the news, I always say to myself, how on earth can
these idiots be so popular? They are clearly lying through their teeth. Don’t
these people know about PolitiFact?
They cannot possibly believe what they say. They are not in touch with reality,
they are rude, uncouth idiots. People must be crazy to support them. Ahhhhh!
Come on – you’ve thought that too, haven’t you? Of course
you have, and I KNOW I am right –
just as you do.
When you look at the result of that in the political arena, and
mix in a bit of brutish incivility, we end up with the current nightmare of
idiots on both sides, unable to even talk to the other side, or treat them with
respect. How on earth will we ever get out of this divide that is destroying
our country? Other developed nations seem to be making good headway on
important things, like health care and education. And they all seem to have a
healthier attitude toward national defense spending. What is wrong with US? We
are the most threatened people on the planet. We spend more on defense than the
next 7 nations combined – and 5 of
them are our allies!
This book will help you understand a bit what is going on
here with those “idiots”. It will help you see where these fears come from, and
how people deal with them. It also offers a possible way out of this craziness.
There is some hope – not much, but some. It may also help you to have a civil conversation
with your neighbors across the back yard fence. They seem like nice people –
what is wrong with them?
I will share more as I read the book – I’m only one third in
– but I wanted to get this out there. Just watch the videos below. They say it
pretty well. The first one is Steven Colbert in his old character, so it’s good
fun, and it’s short. Colbert picks up on the important stuff in the book.
We make snap judgments. We lose sight of the truth. Not me!
But, yes, me and you. Absolute certainty? Hmm. I may have said that on
occasion.
Next, watch this TED talk by the author. It’s a bit longer,
but it is well done. The genius of this is that he uses what he learned in
writing the book to present the information. He is appealing to your
“elephant”, not your “driver”. The metaphors are wonderful, and so are the
stories. They will stick with you.
All of this comes from experiments with people around the
world. I am NOT making this up, and neither is the author. Here
are the key ideas:
- We are right! They are wrong. We are by nature self-righteous bigots. And that’s NOT a problem – it’s normal! We are always absolutely certain that we are right.
- We go with our gut. Evolution has given us this gift of rapid decision making. If we weren’t so primed to jump to rapid conclusions, we would never make any decisions.
- Thinking comes after the fact. We marshal other ideas only to support our gut call. Rational arguments on the other side just confirm our belief. You can’t make the dog happy by wagging its tail.
- We tend to be a bit more conservative than not. It’s what worked! The guy who first tried that strange mushroom didn’t leave any kids.
- We work off 5 basic moral imperatives that are in our genes. They pretty much govern how we work. The flavor of the imperatives changes a bit given our “world view” or social culture, but they are key to our rapid decisions.
- Progressives / Conservatives are different. Progressives tend to use just two of our moral rules, while most Conservatives seem to use them all.
- We are Tribal. Team or tribal membership is a big part of us. And then our tribe blinds us to the real world. We take our values from the tribe, the culture we live in, the group we identify with.
The five foundations
of morality:
- Harm / Care.
- Fairness / Reciprocity.
- In Group Loyalty. Only humans can form very large groups, which was a major step in enabling us to create civilization.
- Authority / Respect.
- Purity / Sanctity. Sex on the right, food on the left.
The “liberals” or “progressives” work more from the values
of harm / care and fairness / reciprocity. Conservatives tend to use all 5 more
equally. The big insight for me was to understand that they feel that “order tends to decay”.
I am usually on the progressive side – we need to move forward, to change adopt
new technology and ideas. I tend to ignore the risks that this carries. The basic
conservative position tends to be that civilization is pretty fragile, and we
could lose it all if we are not careful. They see order as really precious, and
anything that goes counter to the present structure is dangerous. It was also
interesting to me that punishment seems to be a key part of our moral
motivation – including religion and the threat of hell.
In another conversation, the author sums up his findings in
this way:
But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death. People vote Republican because Republicans offer "moral clarity"—a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world.Jonathan Haidt
https://edge.org/conversation/jonathan_haidt-what-makes-people-vote-republican
Finally, here is a longer interview with the author by a
Wharton School professor. This one focuses a bit on Business Ethics – which is
another interest of mine. Where was this guy when I was teaching that course? This
one is longer, but you will learn a lot more.
That said, I promise to come back and share more after I
finish the book. Let me know what you think. The author also has a website and
many other resources out there.
http://righteousmind.com/
http://righteousmind.com/
I trust this helps a little bit to understand the "crazies". Later.
I finished this book some time ago - forgot that I promised to return and finish this. The book is GREAT. It offers tremendous insight. One thing it did NOT offer is how on earth one can "overcome" this propensity for but reactions instead of thinking. The author does not offer any advice along those lines, outside of a weakened "try to seek a common ground". Unless we come up with something better, we are pretty much doomed to a VERY conservative future! And look where that has gotten us!
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