TLDR: The Righteous Mind - Jonathan Haidt

TLDR

@tonysheng

Book summary Because affect trumps rationale, we naturally group, and ignore evidence we don’t agree with

Jonathan Haidt

Morality made civilization possible.

1  Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second

2  There’s more to morality than harm and fairness

3  Morality binds and blinds

Moral psychology

1 Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second

Our Mind Is Divided.

99% Elephant Impulsive, Automatic Mental Activity

1% Rider Concious Reasoning

Conscious reasoning functions like a press secretary who automatically justifies any position taken by the president.

Solution Acknowledge human limitations Expose biases to counterbeliefs (e.g. scientific communities)

Problem Worshipping reason is a delusion

Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason.

2 There’s more to morality than harm and fairness

Our moral mind is like a tongue with six taste receptors.

1  Care/ harm

2  Fairness/ cheating

3  Loyalty/ betrayal

4  Authority/ subversion

5  Sanctity/ degradation

6  Liberty/ oppression

Liberals have a three-foundation morality, whereas conservatives use all six.

Moral dimensions Liberals Conservatives

1  Care/ harm

2  Fairness/ cheating

3  Loyalty/ betrayal

4  Authority/ subversion

5  Sanctity/ degradation

6  Liberty/ oppression

✔ ✔ ✔

✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔

They’re voting for their moral interests. They’d rather vote against their economic self-interest than live in a nation devoted solely to care of victims and pursuit of social justice

Why do rural and working-class Americans vote Republican?

3 Morality binds and blinds

Human Nature is Split.

90% Chimp Individually focused 10% Bees Group focused

Most of human nature was shaped by natural selection operating at the level of the individual. Most, but not all.

The Hive Switch Simply part of the whole

Transcending self-interest and letting something larger than ourselves consume us

All mean ego-tism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I felt that I was caught up in the vastness of Creation… Sometimes you would look up and see the light on the altar and it would just be a blinding sort of light and radiations… We took such an infinitesimal amount of psilocybin, and yet it connected me to infinity.

A test subject of Alex Maslow’s

I was surprised to find myself swept with an overwhelming sense of spirituality—not in the religious sense, but a sense of deep connection with everyone who was there as well as the rest of the universe

Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos)

Awe in Nature Psychedelics Raves

Comon Hive Triggers

Happiness comes from between… from getting the right relationships between yourself and others, yourself and your work, and yourself and something larger than yourself.

TLDR About

I love to read and I love to share. These short, sub-20-page summaries help me explain to my busy friends why my favorite books moved me.

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