It seems timely to post a review of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
Jonathan Haidt is a moral psychologist who has studied how our moral decisions are formed. The book has a strong academic bent, which means it is meticulously researched and laid out for his fellow professors. That can be a bit tiring as a reader, but it’s worth pushing through it so you capture the full extent of his claims.
And what are those claims? Well, among other things, Haidt claims that our emotions drive our moral foundations in ways that our reason cannot. We intuitively feel things are right or wrong more than we think them through. This is a highly controversial position, of course, but it’s explained well in the book.
Another point that Haidt makes is there are a half dozen core foundations upon which our moral standards are built. Those foundations create the guidelines we use to sustain a functioning society. In other words, we have to all agree on certain foundational moral values or we will splinter apart. The foundations we choose to put a priority on, say justice versus compassion, determine what kind of viewpoints we might have about politics, religion, economics, and so forth.
Liberals tend to focus on a fewer number of these foundations, with their heaviest emphasis on compassion. Conservatives more evenly distribute their focus onto a broader number of foundations. This gives conservative politicians a wider target to aim for. And because a conservative mind would incorporate things that a liberal mind emphasizes, whereas a liberal mind pays little attention to issues that conservatives value, the conservative is much more likely to fully understand the liberal agenda than vice versa.
Haidt is at his best toward the end of the book when he identifies different political viewpoints and describes the strengths of each. What I took away from that is how each viewpoint — whether liberal, conservative, libertarian, or whatever — has some excellent points about issues that matter to them. Or as Haidt says in an interview, each side is right on a lot of points, it’s just a matter of which one you emphasize.
I will leave it to the academic community to critique the quality of Haidt’s research. But I will say that his conclusions seem exactly right. We are a divided nation on many points. But if we stop and listen to each other, we will often find that we agree on far more than we disagree. The challenge is simply understanding that each of us is going to emphasize different moral foundations.
An excellent book that is very timely. Not an easy read, but well worth the time in this election season.
By the way, if you want to buy the book, click the link above and PathLight will get a percent of the sale.