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    The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
    The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
    The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
    Audiobook11 hours

    The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

    Written by Jonathan Haidt

    Narrated by Jonathan Haidt

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Why can't our political leaders work together as threats loom and problems mount? Why do people so readily assume the worst about the motives of their fellow citizens? In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and points the way forward to mutual understanding.

    His starting point is moral intuition-the nearly instantaneous perceptions we all have about other people and the things they do. These intuitions feel like self-evident truths, making us righteously certain that those who see things differently are wrong. Haidt shows us how these intuitions differ across cultures, including the cultures of the political left and right. He blends his own research findings with those of anthropologists, historians, and other psychologists to draw a map of the moral domain, and he explains why conservatives can navigate that map more skillfully than can liberals. He then examines the origins of morality, overturning the view that evolution made us fundamentally selfish creatures. But rather than arguing that we are innately altruistic, he makes a more subtle claim-that we are fundamentally groupish. It is our groupishness, he explains, that leads to our greatest joys, our religious divisions, and our political affiliations. In a stunning final chapter on ideology and civility, Haidt shows what each side is right about, and why we need the insights of liberals, conservatives, and libertarians to flourish as a nation.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAscent Audio
    Release dateJul 17, 2012
    ISBN9781469001289
    The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

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    Reviews for The Righteous Mind

    4.5/5

    212 ratings20 reviews

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    • 4/5
      A really, really great read. Although he ends up in the place of (essentially) utilitarianism he does it with enough finesse and nuance that it will satisfy most people.

      Highly recommend everyone who engages in the debates of mortality to read this book. Also read the Bible and particularly the wisdom books (Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Psalms). They will help provide the moral foundation that Haidt is borrowing from.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Absolutely brilliant, essential reading for event adult in the 2020s. We need to stop fighting and understand each other better. Everyone has legitimate concerns about the future that need to be taken into consideration. I recommend Boghossian's "How to have Impossible Conversations" after this.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Simply fantastic. Every chapter is full of wisdom to better understand politics and religion. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and would recommend it passionately to anyone.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This book was, for me, enlightening. Covering with broad sweeps (and fascinating detail) the latest thinking in moral psychology from an evolutionary perspective, Haidt proposes a theory of Moral Foundations. These (it is claimed) sit beneath the observable moral systems, and provide a framework which guides the development of the social manifestations of morality. As is the intent of the author, this elucidation of the drives behind people's feelings of right and wrong offers tremendous insight into actions which might otherwise be written off as incomprehensible, or driven by "tribalism" or "the wrong sort of politics". An understanding of Haidt's ideas may genuinely increase empathy and the ability to communicate across religious and political divides - strong stuff!In addition to the bigger-picture theory, there is copious and fascinating data on the experimental results which motivated it. This makes the book one of the most thought-provoking works I have recently seen, where even peripheral concerns are worthy of a great deal of reflection.Recommended for anyone who has ever felt human.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This is a great book that culls the best from philosophy, psychology, sociology, political science and anthropology, to come up with a truly original and truly scientific take on morality and politics. He starts with an insight into people's brains that he likens to an elephant (intuition) with a rider (reason), whereby the rider is needed to justify where his elephant is going to the other elephants and riders. No other species is encumbered in this "public relations" way. He then speaks of six foundations of morality that he found to be universally recognized across cultures, and how the cultures used these foundations differently and used different combinations of different subsets of these foundations, making "the morality" of different cultures seem much more different than they really are.The third and final part is on the idea that morality is primarily used to make uniquely coherent groups of people out of what would otherwise be ape-like individual actors (two chimps will never cooperatively carry a log together; hunting by chimps is more coincidental than cooperative), bound to each other in a way that's good both for the group and the people in it.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I loved this book. Dr. Haidt sheds alot of light on a complex and difficult subject. I plan to study this one.
    • 3/5
      Really hard to get it going, but once in to the zone, there are good conclusions to make about the world.
    • 5/5
      I loved it because Jonathan Haidt has a way of expressing controversial ideas in a logical, non-threatening and compelling way. I especially appreciate how he makes a convincing argument that liberals have a few things wrong. In this culture, liberals have been on the ascendant and yet at the same time have never seem more illiberal. It's fascinating how Jonathan explains how and why this happened. Demanding that people be kind and inclusive carried to the extreme is just another form of totalitarianism. We're treading in extremely dangerous waters when we abandon all conservative values such as tradition, personal responsibility and honouring a power higher than ourselves.
    • 5/5
      This book should be required for anyone with even the slightest interest in politics.

      Easy to follow, well-reasoned, and fascinating!
    • 5/5
      Absolutely wonderful. Densely packed with interesting ideas and references to studies. Highly recommend
    • 5/5
      Explains everything about the present political situation and why it's so polarised. Also just what is needed for a more flourishing system.
    • 5/5
      Amazing book, I really enjoyed this book, give it a try
    • 5/5
      Great book and an eye opener. Going to read it again
    • 5/5
      Fantastic. This book should be required reading in schools and colleges. Anyone and everyone in America who is interested in politics should read this book- wether you’re left, right or center, extreme or moderate. Read it now! It contains messages that everyone in US politics today needs to hear.
    • 2/5
      So while the book does present some good ideas and theories, I feel it skimmed the surface of a lot of the under lining aspect of ideology and the absolute power of those in charge. Liberal and Republican aren’t really that different, they are meant to keep those on top happy and well fed. This stems from years of institutionalization and under educated public; they need producers and consumers, not thinkers. We can’t be so naive to not see this for the grand design that it is, especially now as we are dealing with the consequences. Another point he misses is how ideology is created and fixed on you based on what kind of world you are born into and are raised in. The only way to really break away from this is to see the world at large, every aspect of it, understanding the rich and great life of the North is through the raping and destruction of the South.

      I respect the concept though for sure, but I think any new system of governing will not come from the past, but from the future.
    • 5/5
      This book provided me with insight into my own thinking and more understanding of why others make different decisions.
    • 4/5
      This is an important but exasperating book-- it is gives real insights into the psychological determinants of American politics, but it also overstates and oversimplifies its central points. Nonetheless, I strongly recommend it, particularly to blue-state Democrats like me, who have spend years wondering how the Republicans manage to fool so much of the electorate into voting against its own self interest. Mr. Haidt's first key point us that people don't really vote their own self interest, at least not in the rational economic sense. Rather, we vote for the kind of society that we would like to live in. Our preferences are based on underlying moral assumptions are intuitively and emotionally formed, not based on reason. For your average blue state Dem (particularly the more intellectual variety) that is not an appealing thought. It does, however, find support in a lot of the psychological research that has been done over the past thirty years. In economics, the idea of the rational "homo economicus" whose choices reflect self-interest is losing its grip, courtesy of Daniel Kahneman et al (also courtesy of the financial crisis). Mr. Haidt brings the same view to issues of political choice, convincingly challenging the notion of the "rational voter". He isn't the first to have done so, but instead of focusing on why non-rational voters are wrong, he focusses on what drives them.In doing so, he gets to his second key point -- that liberals and conservatives differ in their underlying moral assumptions. Liberals, he argues, focus strongly on two imperatives -- avoiding harm, and achieving fairness. Conservatives, he suggests, respond to those but also to other factors -- justice, hierarchy, and sanctity. Liberterians bring in another moral base -- liberty. He is not saying that any of these views is right in an absolute sense, just pointing out that they are there. He also argues that they derive from very basic patterns in human social arrangement, patterns that go far back into the past of our species.Here I began to have real problems with Mr. Haight's arguments. The orderly arrangement of moral principals seems simplistic, as does the argument that liberals are focused on two of them, conservatives on six, etc. Mr. Haight does tie these arguments to a survey that tries to relate moral bases to political attitudes. It would be gratifying to see more research, perhaps deeper research, on these issues. Also, several of Mr. Haight's arguments that link his moral bases to evolution seem to me to amount to a chain of assumptions producing a less than convincing conclusion. Still, I found this a very illuminating book -- so much so that I am recommending it to various other blue-state intellectuals. (Some have already assured me that they won't be convinced by it, because it is wrong. Hmmm.) I also found it in many ways a convincing book. Many things that people do, particularly things involving groups, seem to me based on deep emotional forces that may not be rational, but are powerful. As an intellectual, I don't like the argument that most of what people do (me included) isn't determined by reason. But I think that it is true. And if we blue-state Dems are to see anything like our idea of a good society, we have to listen to the other side, rather than dismiss them as stupid.

      4 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This book was written 10 years ago, which makes it all the more remarkable and prescient. Sadly the exhortation to “work it out” and the optimistic tone that we might do so has not proved to be accurate. The trends of division, tribalism and lack of trust between the possessors of the different moral matrices has been accelerated during the Trump and Brexit era. This does not undermine the accuracy of Jonathan Haidt’s analysis, on the contrary it seems to provide the empirical evidence to support it. If only we could put his formula to better use. A very clear exposition and a useful and thought-provoking book. Highly recommended.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Subtitled - Why good people are divided by Politics and Religion, this is an interesting book that starts out well, but ends up a little less convincing. Haidt makes several good points: his first theme is that intuitions come first and reasoning second. He uses the analogy of reasoning as a very small rider on a very large elephant of intuition. He gives great examples and won me with this one. His next theme is to develop 6 "foundations" of the moral psychology of people generally: care/harm; liberty/oppression; fairness/cheating; loyalty/betrayal; authority/subversion; and sanctity/degradation. I was mostly convinced by this one, and again there were good examples. He makes the point that the Left is only really moved by the first 3 foundations, while Conservatives apply all 6. Great point. Haidt then tries to bring in the evolutionary influence of group living - as he says, we are "90% chimp and 10% bee". I liked the theory, but his attempt to build on group evolution was less than convincing. Group evolution may be a factor, but it would need better arguments than were used here.He also shows how religions are not really about the belief, it is the belonging that matters. For example, he starts with an analogy of a college football game in the lead-in to religion discussion. This section was poor. Although he addressed the benefits that flow from the sense of belonging, he avoided any discussion of the problems that can flow from partisanship, and the negatives of the in-groups dealings with all out-group members.The final chapter is an attempt to find some common ground in politics, starting from the knowledge of the 6 foundations. Nice idea, but not likely to work with anyone other than an open-minded US college professor. :)So, good book, thought provoking, but not all the content is as good at the first two themes. Read May 2012.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I really enjoyed this title. For the longest time I failed to understand those on the opposite side of my political leanings. This book opened my mind. It reveled to me the righteous mind we all share plus the sensitives of those with different political perspectives. I feel less animosity to the others side after reading this. A pertinent message for today's divided times...

      1 person found this helpful