4.5 stars

Very occasionally, I read a book that changes the way I view the world. | read quite a bit and am highly influenceable, but there are only a handful of books that have changed the filter through which
I see the world. Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind is one of  books.

Each one of us want to protect our families, care about our friends and want to make our country better but we seems to have different ideas on how to reach these goals. Why do some people's solutions seem unkind and oppressive to us? And why do we seem to be talking in different languages or sometimes having completely different conversations?

For example: The issue of immigrants. One side see them as a threat to their family, economy and welfare, the other see them as people need to be protected. How is that two groups can have such different opnion? And how can we reach a shared opnion when we are seeing things from two completely different perspectives?

The Righteous Mind attempts to  answer this question. It's an amazing and fascinating book that I highly recommend. It's a paradigm shifting book that will transform your perspective and help you understand the other side of the story. It has great examples, and is well argued and structured.

The first part of the book postulates a theory that reason is a servent of intuitions which goes on to prove that, when it comes to the matters of right or wrong, we take decisions based on our instincts and then we rationalize those decisions after the fact.  Haidt argues that our entire reasoning process evolved not to find truth, but to convince others that we are right. He uses the metaphor of an rider on an elephant. The elephant is our intuitive reasoning -that is the mostly subconscious automatic processes that drive most of our behavior. The rider is our reasoning and, basically, is just along for the ride. It is like a press secretary whose sole job is to defend the policies of a Prime Minister or a President no matter how bad they are.

There are times when we cant even think of any rational explanations, but we still stand by our intuitive choices -this is called moral dumbfounding and is quite common once you start looking for it. Apparently, the higher your IQ, the more arguments you can generate on the side your elephant is already leaning towards. But higher IQ doesn't necessarily mean you get any closer to the truth.  Another point that he makes in the chapter is that, contrary to popular belief, our morality isn't innate. We are born with a first draft version of morality and then our experiences and culture shapes that draft into its final form.

In the second part Haidt introduces us to a Model Foundation Theory. The important point here is that humans are predisposed to be either conservative or liberals, based on their personality. And most of our decisions and preferences are shaped by these personality traits. Haidt identified six cross-cultural moral foundations which he referred to as taste buds of a righteous mind. We all have them but we all assign different value to each on of them. For example: some people like sweets others don't. It doesn't mean that their taste buds are incapable of enjoying sweet flavor, it just mean that they give more value to something else.

These moral foundations are the basis of our different moral values. Out of six moral foundations, identified by Haidt, liberals only use three of them, while conservative use all six of them. However, Haidt doesn't go in detail as to who is right and who is wrong, he just explains why we have different moral values. Liberals, according to Haidt, are outliers whereas conservatives are more common and constitutes a larger part of the population.  Liberal are more common in WEIRD (western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic) countries where individualism is more common than collectivism.

The three values liberals use to make moral decisions include: care/harm, fairness/cheating and liberty/oppression. Conservatives also use these foundations in addition to three other foundations: loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversivenes and sanctity/degradation. These last three foundations are linked with collective altruism that help create and maintain tight cohesion within a group and help ensure that if a group faces an attack, it's members will be able to fend it off. 

In a nutshell, conservatives are more sensitive towards traditions and religion. They believe that loyalty should be rewarded and and disloyal people should be punished. They care less about individuality and focus more on the collective benefits.  Conservative politicians/Republicans understand moral foundation better and are able to trigger all six moral foundation in people. Democrats lack this level of manipulation.

In the last chapter Hadit compared humans with bees and chimpanzees. He says that we are 90% chimapnnzees - who are selfish and self-serving, and 10% bees - who work in teams. However, our loyalty lies with only our group. We don't see or understand the opposing groups.

This book elevated my understanding regarding morality and helped me understand why and how people think what they think. The good thing about moral foundtion concept is that you can apply it to any issue and it will help you understand how people come to a certain conclusion.

However, I think neither conservative or liberal can see the bigger picture. We need to develop cross-group bonding and need to work on understanding each other better. We don't have to be more like bees, we need to be better. There were certain things that were said about religion that I don't completely agree with. I know long battles have been fought in the name of religion (rivalry between Christian sects, forcing of Christian beliefs and so on) but I don't think modern atheism can solve all our issues and  bring peace. Almost all wars have been fought for just one thing - power. And we can't escape this vicious circle until we learn to create more cohesive in and out group bonding.