The Righteous Mind: My Summary and Takeaways

Описание: In this video, I’ll share some of my summary and takeaways from the paradigm shifting book The Righteous Mind by moral psychologist, Jonathan Haidt.

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*** A truncated transcript follows. A full transcript can be found at www.marblejar.net. ***

Hi, everyone! This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll share some of my summary and takeaways from the paradigm shifting book The Righteous Mind by moral psychologist, Jonathan Haidt.

Very occasionally, I read a book that changes the way I view the world. I 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 things — these are some of those books (Egoscue, Attachment, Paradox of Choice). Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind is one of those paradigm shifting books for me.

It helps that I read it at a time when I was puzzling over the polarization our political discourse. I’m a dyed in the wool liberal, but I enjoy talking to people with different views. And not just to yell at them that they are wrong — I like to hear WHY people think what they think. I grew up in a very conservative town and have lots of friends of very different political persuasions. Some of my very favorite people vote differently than I do. Underneath it all, we seem to love our families, care about our friends, value hard work, and want to make our country better. Why do we seem to have such different solutions? Why do some people’s solutions seem unkind and oppressive to me when I don’t think of them as unkind people? And why do we seem to be talking in different languages or sometimes having completely different conversations?

Here’s an example of what I’m talking about: the controversy over NFL players kneeling during the anthem. One side is talking about police brutality, the other about honoring our veterans. How can we possibly come to any shared conclusions when we seem to be having totally different conversations and arguing about completely different things? And how is it that two people can take such different meanings away from the same action?

The Righteous Mind answers this question for me, but let’s come back to this example later. If i haven’t made it clear yet, i highly recommend this book. It’s interesting, has great examples, and is well-argued and structured. His book is split into 3 parts — Haidt presents a different theory in each part.

The first part of the book presents the theory that, when it comes to moral decision making — that is, matters of right or wrong — we tend to make decisions based on gut instinct and then we rationalize those decisions after the fact. In 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. When you feel a flash of negative feeling — that is your elephant. Sometimes your rider can wrest decision making away from the elephant, but rarely. Mostly our reasoning just rationalizes the decisions the elephant has already made. Kind of like a spokesperson frantically explaining the mouthing off of an erratic politician. And sometimes we can’t even think of any 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. For the purposes of this video, I’d like you to notice any flashes of negativity — if you are a liberal, you may feel some while watching! And continue listening to see if your rider can ultimately influence your elephant. . .