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

There are some interesting theories about this. Many argue that humans are predisposed to believe in supernatural things. There is also some evidence that a group that believes a common set of supernatural things may be more highly cohesive and therefore more likely to thrive and survive. (I just finished The Righteous Mind, which is absolutely fabulous, and it talks about this.)

You should really check this book out. It should answer (or attempt to answer) these questions for you.

Jonathan Haidt is brilliant. Look up some of his stuff on YouTube as well, if you're so inclined.

Some humans do that. Not all. And it can be very driven by culture.

If you haven't read The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt then you might find it informative and interesting. It covers his work on how these moral preferences about hierarchy and authority (and others) and how they vary across the political spectrum.

Well how do you define "best"?

For me, it means somebody focused on:

1. Climate change
2. Climate change again
3. A Federally-funded healthcare option
4. More climate change
5. Racial, LGBTQ+, and reproductive justice
6. Clean infrastructure including significant investments in rail
7. Investments in science R+D
8. A bit more on climate change for good measure
9. Positive, functional international relationships
10. Education

However, this list will look very different for other folks. So the "best" candidate for me may not be in the top 3 for you. That's fine, it's how democracy works.

The end result of hundreds of millions of Americans narrowing down the pool of candidates to one person for each party ultimately means that we end up with somebody who only sorta pleases each of us- the candidate who's most squarely in the middle of all our interests. There's simply no way to make all of us happy at the same time.

Add in the fact that very few Americans actually take the time to learn even the basics about economics, history, geopolitics, social issues, basic sciences, etc, let alone advanced perspectives required to compare and contrast differing and nuanced arguments, and it's easy to see why we end up with pretty "meh" candidates on the left.

For those on the right, moral values tend to dominate. So complex, nuanced policy debates matter far less. Conservatives tend to value social cohesion more than liberals, so rallying behind a single candidate, regardless of their ideological or policy agenda, is simply easier. Liberals always have the harder battle to fight in this regard.

Rewatcher

Jonathan Haidt is one of my favorite researchers. He is a psychologist who specializes particularly in moral decision-making. Take this study example from one of his books:

> “Julie and Mark are sister and brother. They are traveling together in France on summer vacation from college. One night they are staying alone in a cabin near the beach. They decide it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love. At the very least, it would be a new experience for each of them. Julie is already taking birth control pills, but Mark uses a condom, too, just to be safe. They both enjoy making love, but decide not to do it again. They keep that night as a special secret, which makes them feel even closer to each other.” - (The Happiness Hypothesis, p20-21)

He then asks the participant whether it is acceptable for two consenting adults, who happen to be siblings, to make love. Predictably almost everybody answers no. When asked why they usually cite birth defects, to which he points out that isn't a concern here. People then fall back on another explanation, like it would ruin the relationship, and again he observes that has been accounted for. Ultimately people resort to simply saying they know it is wrong even if they can't explain why.

Now, the purpose of Haidt’s research isn’t to prove that people’s views on incest are baseless but to figure out where those views come from. He’s not looking for the answer but the process. I feel that Koi Kaze is fundamentally the same, except being a good narrative is more compelling. Art has a way of making these sorts of questions real in a way simple stories like the one above never can. Everybody knows going into this series that incest is wrong, that two people so separated in age can never be legitimately attracted to each other, but it will nonetheless provide you with a circumstance that is unlike the easy explanations you had prepared in your head. I think if taken seriously you find that you don't have the answer like you thought.

As for Koi Kaze itself, I gave it an 8/10, which is quite high considering my scale effectively starts at 9. What propels it up there is the nuance and the psychology, that it knows how to walk the fine line of neither condemning nor condoning the actions of the characters while allowing us to try and figure out what this "experiment" means. There could have been some more detail in the build up, but I don't think it was hurt too badly by this. Even if Nanoka in particular never got the development I thought she deserved, I give series like these credit. Koi Kaze demonstrated itself enough that we can fill in some blanks for it, trusting such isn't unwarranted. If I had to give a reason for my gut-based rating, it's that it was rough in a few patches, and unfortunately those few patches were crucial; whether it be the visual failings in key scenes, or laying it on thick at the end, or some other factor, when it was all said and done I was quite gratified but not enthralled. If it had not been for another lucky experience this last December, it would have been the best series I'd seen in a long while.

Anyway, I had a lot more planned out to write, but oddly I just don't feel in the mood to go through with the rest of it. I will say, though, that this has been a delightful rewatch; I went into it with some trepidation, expecting more raging and/or degeneracy, and ended up with the opportunity to talk to several people taking it seriously. It was quite a pleasant surprise.

And since we're offering recommendations, I'll suggest The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt for those who enjoy books and want to think more on this subject. He also has a few TED Talks if you look him up, but I've not seen them and so can't say whether they get across the points I found most interesting.^(And of course Gunslinger Girl 2003 always for a piece of psychology and profundity)

p.s. I uploaded a few pictures during this rewatch for my posts and while I know the context of these is quite serious... I couldn't help but laugh at this coincidence of these two ending up next to each other.

Something like The Righteous Mind?

If you want to follow up on the morality aspect, you might try the book The Righteous Mind. TLDR Conservatives tend to value things such as loyalty and purity, in addition to caring about care and harm. Liberals tend to only care about care and harm, and reject the other things conservatives care about. Since they reject those things, they think conservatives are evil.

From page 335 (I stole the quote form another website):

>When I speak to liberal audiences about the three “binding” foundations – Loyalty, Authority, Sanctity – I find that many in the audience don’t just fail to resonate; they actively reject these concerns as immoral. Loyalty to a group shrinks the moral circle; it is the basis of racism and exclusion, they say. Authority is oppression. Sanctity is religious mumbo-jumbo whose only function is to suppress female sexuality and justify homophobia.

>In a study I did with Jesse Graham and Brian Nosek, we tested how well liberals and conservatives could understand each other. We asked more than two thousand American visitors to fill out the Moral Foundations Qyestionnaire. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out normally, answering as themselves. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as they think a “typical liberal” would respond. One-third of the time they were asked to fill it out as a “typical conservative” would respond. This design allowed us to examine the stereotypes that each side held about the other. More important, it allowed us to assess how accurate they were by comparing people’s expectations about “typical” partisans to the actual responses from partisans on the left and the right)’ Who was best able to pretend to be the other?

>The results were clear and consistent. Moderates and conservatives were most accurate in their predictions, whether they were pretending to be liberals or conservatives. Liberals were the least accurate, especially those who described themselves as “very liberal.” The biggest errors in the whole study came when liberals answered the Care and Fairness questions while pretending to be conservatives. When faced with questions such as “One of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal” or ”Justice is the most important requirement for a society,” liberals assumed that conservatives would disagree. If you have a moral matrix built primarily on intuitions about care and fairness (as equality), and you listen to the Reagan [i.e., conservative] narrative, what else could you think? Reagan seems completely unconcerned about the welfare of drug addicts, poor people, and gay people. He’s more interested in fighting wars and telling people how to run their sex lives.

>If you don’t see that Reagan is pursuing positive values of Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity, you almost have to conclude that Republicans see no positive value in Care and Fairness. You might even go as far as Michael Feingold, a theater critic for the liberal newspaper the Village Voice, when he wrote:

>>Republicans don’t believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don’t give a hoot about human beings, either can’t or won’t. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they causeany more harm)3

>One of the many ironies in this quotation is that it shows the inability of a theater critic-who skillfully enters fantastical imaginary worlds for a living-to imagine that Republicans act within a moral matrix that differs from his own. Morality binds and blinds.

No. I recommend The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt as an introduction to moral psychology to clear it up for you.

Stick around this sub and read this https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777

Different value systems. I think Jonathan Haidt did a lot of good work on this in The Righteous Mind

He's a social psychologist who studied the psychology of morality across different cultures. He identified several different "moral foundations" which people base their notions of right/wrong upon and identified them as:

• Care/harm
• Fairness/cheating
• Loyalty/betrayal
• Authority/subversion
• Sanctity/degradation
• Liberty/oppression (This was a later addition to his theory)

He likens these foundations to moral "taste buds" noting that different foundations will naturally resonate with different people to varying degrees. In his testing he found that the left prioritized Care/Harm well above all others with Fairness/cheating coming in second and the others barely registering at all. Interestingly Conservatives did NOT place Care/harm significantly lower as liberals might suppose. Rather, they placed all other foundations higher to the point that all of the foundations were roughly equal. In other words by-and-large conservatives are NOT significantly less compassionate than liberals as most liberals might suppose BUT that their compassion might situationally be be tempered by competing moral considerations.

So, to find the liberal position on any issue you can just ask "Is someone not being cared for?" or "Is someone being harmed?" but to find the conservative position you have to further ask "Did they have it coming?" based on some violation of one of the other moral foundations.

You can see these moral considerations play out predictably as Haidt would predict in every single political controversy: Death penalty, welfare, taxes, immigration, kneeling during the anthem, etc. etc. etc.

>maybe I’ll listen.

Isn't that the problem?

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No one is changing your minds. I agree hit and run comments are problematic but when I googled this man and the claims made (that you outlined) I see only reports from the very far right.

I had some friends in Colorado who worked for the marijuana industry who used to rail about the introduction of glycerin into vaping products. I did a little research and brought them a biologist to explain that glycerin was perfectly safe and lowered the burning point making it safer than most carcinogenics materials. All any of them were doing was parroting things they'd heard from their employers and none of them admitted they just dug in deeper with an expert standing in front of them.

​

I think it's extremely weird that the head of WHO isn't a doctor but we elected a businessman with no political experience to lead a government and an army. Actually as a nation we've elected a lot of men to lead the military who actually hated the military and run from commitments. Without cultural context we look like warlords and aggressors to the rest of the world.

What are the duties of the WHO?

In the 1990's the following groups were classified as Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Hamas, Hizballah , Kurdistan Workers Party , Palestine Liberation Front , FARC, and al-Qa’ida. Which of these FTO's has the US Government since funded, or worked with politically?

In late Jan of 2020 Trump's Administration was working with PLO, HAMAS, and Hezbollah/Hizballah for a peace agreement in a two state solution in Israel to counter potential problems with Iran.

Kurdistan Workers Party has been a key allies to the US in Syria fighting against ISIS. None of what I say will change your mind but maybe you'd like to read a book on the subject called The Righteous Mind.

"In his remarkable book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, scholar Jonathan Haidt recalls a telling experiment. He and his colleagues Brian Nosek and Jesse Graham sought to discover how well conservative and what Haidt terms ‘liberal' (ie: progressive) students understood one another by having them answer moral questions as they thought their political opponents would answer them. "The results were clear and consistent," remarks Haidt. "In all analyses, conservatives were more accurate than liberals." Asked to think the way a liberal thinks, conservatives answered moral questions just as the liberal would answer them, but liberal students were unable to do the reverse. Rather, they seemed to put moral ideas into the mouths of conservatives that they don't hold. To put it bluntly, Haidt and his colleagues found that progressives don't understand conservatives the way conservatives understand progressives. This he calls the ‘'conservative advantage', and it goes a long way in explaining the different ways each side deals with opinions unlike their own. People get angry at what they don't understand, and an all-progressive education ensures that they don't understand."

I thoroughly enjoyed 'The righteous mind' by Jonathan Haidt. However the book is more about general morality and research about this subject, and the evolutionary viewpoint is only mildly touched in this book. However, it has a pretty extensive bibliography that might help you find what you are looking for.

Check out The Righteous Mind by Jonathon Haidt. It deep dive into moral psychology and it's effects on politics. It's great for getting perspective on why people believe certain things.

Highly recommend Jonathan Haidt's writing on this subject, specifically his book The Righteous Mind! He talks a lot about completely non-political predictors for people's political leanings. Conservatives tolerate uncertainty less well and demonstrate/express disgust more often than liberals do. Which is kind of telling when you think about it, isn't it? It's absolutely fascinating.

You should read "The Righteous Mind" By Jonathan Haidt

It's very insightful about this exact issue and it's (in my opinion) about as well founded scientifically as social science can be.

I highly recommend.

If that’s your assessment of Trump supporters, I don’t know if I can help you open your eyes. That characterization of Trump supporters is probably a big part of why liberals need to understand Trump supporters; that’s not an accurate portrayal.

Also, not just Trump supporters, but conservatives in general.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0307455777/ref=as_li_tl

On page 334:

>The results were clear and consistent. Moderates and conservatives were most accurate in their predictions, whether they were pretending to be liberals or conservatives. Liberals were the least accurate, especially those who described themselves as “very liberal.” The biggest errors in the whole study came when liberals answered the Care and Fairness questions while pretending to be conservatives. When faced with questions such as “One of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal” or ”Justice is the most important requirement for a society,” liberals assumed that conservatives would disagree.

There’s a reason why this is a popular quote: > If You Are Not a Liberal at 25, You Have No Heart. If You Are Not a Conservative at 35 You Have No Brain

https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777

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

That was a personal opinion but yes, the top negative review of his book implies a heavy liberal bias (which OP admitted)

\>Haidt rejects rational thinking entirely. Indeed, he goes so far as to label those who engage in systematic rational thinking as "autistic" (pg 136). He labels modern, civilized countries as WEIRD (an insulting acronym he made up). He also has no interest in individual rights, such as America's Bill of Rights. Rather, he finds solace in the ignorance of impoverished villagers in northeast Brazil and primitive people of India who wipe their butts with their hands (really! see pg 122). He praises studies which show that ignorant people prefer collectivism and use their intuitions (prejudices/biases) when making moral decisions. Critical thinking? Rights? To Haidt, they're irrelevant. He's openly hostile to critical thinking. He disparages psychological studies of advanced ("WEIRD") countries as "statistical outliers" (pg 112).

For me, I contemplate how every single generation of Christians has had a few convinced it was the end times. They thought it with Y2K, throughout the Gulf Wars, throughout the Cold War, probably also through every natural disaster, plague, economic crash, etc. Every single generation can point to some difficulty happening in the world, in their lifetime, and approximate it to an apocalyptic sign.

Pure, skeptical rationale isn’t always emotionally convincing, I know. It can take some time to discover what really makes sense of the universe for you. For me, reading Jonathan Haidt’s “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion” inadvertently served as the catalyst for my becoming agnostic. After reading and stewing over the book for months, I just couldn’t get over how simply and comprehensively evolution explained human motivation and behavior (no excuses, no mental gymnastics... just data). I’m now at the point where I see the major monotheistic religions as sophisticated belief systems that were extremely effective for social cohesion, survival, and the centralization of political power. It doesn’t make the Bible any less breathtakingly profound in certain places, but I now see the whole as humanly motivated rather than divinely inspired.

There's science about this. The book is called "The Righteous Mind" and it delineates the differences between people's political views. It's not biased or bigoted, great book.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307455777/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_hEFHFb53G6S7P

Recommend “The Righteous Mind” it has helped me considerably (written in 2013, but still relevant)

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion https://www.amazon.com/dp/0307455777/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_tai_TKyvFb25WT0RN

You'd be interested in Jonathon Haid's book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, which attempts to answer your question in a psychological context

Six of one, half dozen of the other.

I wish TOP leadership would read The Righteous Mind. Their approach might work for logical-thinking but emotionally-bereft folks like me (ahem) but not for the other 98.6% of the population.

Politics and religions (or lack thereof) ARE VERY IMPORTANT because it highlights your MORAL FRAMEWORK. That said both can change during the years (for example, people tend to move conservative along with age) so some couple really needs to come to understanding. If you are still dating though, you might want to either talk about it NOW or just go separate ways.

First, watch this TED talk:

https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_the_moral_roots_of_liberals_and_conservatives?language=en

Both of you should read, together, this

https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777

It highlights how liberal and conservative has a different moral framework. Understanding this will make you understand how the other person sees the world, at least.

Both should also inform themselves with news outlets from all over the political spectrum. If you see CNN, see Fox! Both are almost as fake as it can get but both give you clear information about how each side looks at each other. Or look something boring but is a bit more neutral.

What is damning about the current political climate is how both parties belittle and caricature the other beliefs, thinking that there's no way someone reasonable can pick that position. After that people put labels like "dumb, racist and brainwashed" to make it more difficult to have a conversation.

I would recommend that you read The Coddling of the American Mind, The Righteous Mind, and Them.

Because it is clear to me that you do not think the left has even the tiniest blame on our current political divide.

The left is equally to blame.

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> The right has manufactured a narrative that anything left of right wing nutjob is communism and socialism and literally dehumanizes anyone who doesn't think or look like them. When they left has realized this and has determined there is no need to reach out to people who dont see them as people...they're now the bad guys. I find this logic so odd.

Like did you even read what you wrote?

You do realize that only your New York Times article confirms your narrative.
If you look at the archive at UCSUSE they have lost of criticisms of Obama. strange why a bunch of scientists would accuse Democrat of being anti-science.

Pew research says, "Notably, the partisan differences in these views are fairly modest," this bad evince for you claiming one party likes science and the other hates it. I think you are confusing the fact that academia is mostly Democrat with the party being mostly pro-science. However, the two are not connected there are tones of reasons for this correlation and you have demonstrated a few. But you have demonstrated you are too biased to have such a conversation.

Then you send me a link to a bunch of articles on gender dysphoria because apparently you think you can staw man me in claiming gender dysphoria doesn't exist.

You posting this actually explains a lot about the mental trap you are in, you are trapped in ideology. Since you like reading so much you should read The Righteous Mind. https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duckduckgo-brave-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0307455777
It's by Jonathan Haidt, a social phycologist, he is a liberal so you don't have to other him.

Your daddy issues just make you all the less likely to actually understand anything.

As for sources: https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777/ref=sr_1_1

Or if you can't be arsed to read that, a summary of it from the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/the-righteous-mind-by-jonathan-haidt.html

>And in a survey of 2,000 Americans, Haidt found that self-described liberals, especially those who called themselves “very liberal,” were worse at predicting the moral judgments of moderates and conservatives than moderates and conservatives were at predicting the moral judgments of liberals. Liberals don’t understand conservative values. And they can’t recognize this failing, because they’re so convinced of their rationality, open-mindedness and enlightenment.

I am glad you mentioned Dying of Whiteness it is a really good book if often a little repetitive.

I would add The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Hadith to craft the most effective language in these fights. It has really changed my discussions at work with people who cannot help themselves but to bring up these issues.

I will also add Why We're Polarized by Ezra Klein. It is not eye-opening like some you mentioned but it is probably worthwhile so you can know the history of how we got here and where the Democrats and Republicans might be going.

It is not based on Psychology in general; only a small part of it. The book is specifically biased on sociology, which the authors call "Social psychology" (I think we know why).

All in all, it feels like a modern sociologist has tried to make something like their own version of "Hobbes's Leviathan" but was smoking something while they were writing half the book.

These are more reviews of the book.

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Edit: I'm not saying it is like Leviathan, but you'll know what I mean when/if you read it.

That really sucks. I'm sorry.

I don't know the best way to solve COVID. Or systemic racism. Or any of the big problems that are on the horizon. But the only way we stand a chance is by being able to talk about the same reality. And right now, it definitely feels like we are all seeing different realities.

Two books that might be helpful. Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt and How to Have Impossible Conversations by Peter Boghossian

Start with "Righteous mind", it's more interesting and lays a good foundation.

Actually, being bigoted is very much natural. Humans are very "groupish", we have tribalistic tendencies out the wazoo. We've been enslaving those we deem weaker/different than us for as far back as recorded history goes.

Human morality has developed to be so diverse, however, that now a lot of us who are liberal(in the sense that we only really value equity and are the political driving force against suffering) are very much against those notions in certain contexts, more specifically when it comes to identity(although it seems we will are judgemental about others with different values than us, and I don't see how that'll ever change).

Learn more about that sort of thing here -

Moral Foundations Theory - https://moralfoundations.org/

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion - https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777

There's a book called "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion" by Jonathan Haidt that explains it better than anything else I've come across. He explains that people are basically "groupish" not so much "selfish"; this is related to 100 million years of evolution designing us to be tribal. Then he gets to the differences between conservatives and liberals/progressives

In the book, which you should definitely read, he describes how morality is "felt" not "reasoned," so u/Number7373 is off when he opines the difference is feelings versus thinking. Haidt then describes 6 dimensions of morality:

1) Fairness/Injustice

2) Care/Harm

3) Liberty/Oppression

4) Loyalty/Betrayal

5) Authority/Subversion

6) Purity/Degradation.

This is a tremendous oversimplification of his book but if you ask people what is the proper balance of these morals (based on their feelings) you get:

Conservatives 1) one-sixth 2) one-sixth 3) one-sixth 4) one-sixth 5) one-sixth 6) one-sixth

Progressives 1) one-third 2) one-third 3) one-third 4) zero 5) zero 6) zero

Different people have different feelings and opinions on what is fair, and different feeling and opinion on whether it is moral to betray someone (lying in a political campaign) if it will produce a more "fair" result. You should also check out Haidt's other work at https://heterodoxacademy.org/.

https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1F61PM62U43JC&keywords=righteous+mind+haidt&qid=1583246364&sprefix=righteous+min%2Caps%2C151&sr=8-1

I'd start with the underlying factors that shape our political opinion. This is an excellent book, and once you read it, you'll see it in action all over social media.

https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777

I'll second the study of history as well. The West, which I assume you live in based on your post, has come a long way in the last 1,000 years or so, so I'd suggest getting a decent understanding of that.

As for more contemporary political theater, which you're right, it is mostly just a giant marketing racket, I'd get a base level of familiarity with Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals". It will explain a lot of what is going on, as it's going on, around certain issues.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_for_Radicals

Over all though, Id say your best bet would be to look at each issue, and establish how you feel about it. Then, once you feel pretty good you have the right opinion/view/stance for you on that issue, I'd suggest learning enough about the "other side" so that you can make a real, nuanced and factual argument against yourself. Challenge yourself by reading those you disagree with, but don't bother with bad faith, vapid nonsense. (It will be a struggle to find people having nuanced discussions about things, but it happens.)

What you, and the linked article, are talking about is Moral Foundation Theory approached from a psychological perspective, but like MFT, it arises in the biology of the brain. Lifting straight from the wikipedia entry, moral and political values stem from the following axes:

*Care/Harm

*Fairness/Cheating

*Loyalty/Betrayal

*Authority/Subversion

*Sanctity/Degradation

and the most recent addition of

*Liberty/Oppression

If you visualize an equalizer with six little sliders and adjust them up and down you can dial in every essentially consistent political and moral viewpoint imaginable.

Jonathan Haidt has done tremendous work in this field. His

TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_the_moral_roots_of_liberals_and_conservatives?language=en

Book: https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777

and website: https://moralfoundations.org/

are all very interesting.

I feel for you. Do you think you would have joined the Church in the first place if they had been upfront and transparent with you? I'm just curious.

I would like to think that the Church is improving in this regard, but then I remember that in Africa, people are being taught by missionaries every day and not once is the Priesthood ban ever mentioned. The Church is setting those people up for an incredible feeling of betrayal and heartache and pain. These individuals hear the Church offer the notion that God does not care about race in the most recent General Conference, and they're led to believe that this must have always been the case. To me, the justifications for the Church's behavior don't matter - the ends do not justify the means. I'm sure they wish the Internet never existed so the truth could go down an institutionalized memory hole.

I know how you feel about not being able to go forward without the Church. I found solace in many books, including Leaving the Fold, Waking Up, The Righteous Mind, and replacing my old heroes (President Hinckley, Nephi, Joseph Smith, Brigham Young) with people who have truly changed my life for the better (Sam Harris, Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman, and so many others). The fact that these new heroes are seen as purely human, and not simply tools in God's master plan, make their lives and accomplishments even more meaningful and profound to me. Real life is fascinating to me - almost magical - and slowly but surely I am finding a community that sees things similarly.

> Unfortunately for me, church was at the center of my life.

Me, too. This makes it hurt all the more. But once you start to craft your own life, with whatever you choose as the center (including yourself, because you can value yourself more than the Church ever has as a black woman), the pain begins to subside and life becomes richer.

I'm usually not one to post links but this site helped me a lot- https://openmindplatform.org/

Also, this book is excellent and helped my understanding about why people think the way they do. I highly recommend- https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=the+righteous+mind&qid=1603390164&sr=8-2

Moving goalposts here man. I’m not disagreeing with any of that. I am saying that all of the problems you care about are symptoms of the real problems, such as breakdowns in communication, and generalization. Focusing and making generalizations is an example of the problem.

The left being anti-intellectual and having anti-intellectual problems stems from the same thing that is causing you to be defensive and aggressive about pointing out their problems all the time. We know that the left is getting dumber every year. You/anyone constantly pointing it out is only driving people to experience negative affect instead of trying to talk to those with different opinions and try to understand them. Ideologies in ever political corner are doing this to each other. Check out Haidt’s The Righteous Mind.

You can argue that the people you find problematic are “stupid, selfish, immoral” or any negative adjective. But that just tells me you have not met or befriend many people that disagree with you. Are you interested in problems, or are people the problems to you?

I’m not trying to be dishonest. You’ve not made a single attempt to ask me a question and have only hurled accusations and petty insults. You are free to refute anything I said, but you are choosing to be defensive. Make sure you are cognizant of this.

The most insightful lens to view issues between liberal v. conservatives is to understand that their views of morality are different. There are a lot of bad reactionary takes on R v D, but without this model a lot will be missed. Does that mean R's are not grossly in the wrong about Trump? Of course not, but other issues can be understood this way.

​

>There it is. Clear as daylight. We are talking past each other because of our moral foundations. The Democrats say that attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act show that Conservatives don’t care about low-income Americans while Republicans say that it infringes on their liberties. Democrats say that kneeling for the national anthem is a valid protest against a government that does not treat African Americans fairly while Republicans decry that lack of national loyalty and defend the sanctity of the national anthem. Read the Righteous Mind, and the attendant body of scientific literature, if you are not convinced.
>
>Such is the state of our politics today, but there is hope. Haidt notes that, like taste buds, our moral foundation are “organized in advance of experience,” meaning preformed at birth, but that they are refined through the experiences of our lives.

https://dividedwefall.com/2018/07/15/the-righteous-mind-moral-foundations-theory/?gclid=CjwKCAjww5r8BRB6EiwArcckC0Air7rjGD0ekE0A4rxULmA3t-qbfHO-h6EgiMeg6IDTDn0kXwUyeBoCTjcQAvD_BwE

https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=righteous+mind&qid=1602690045&sr=8-1

I'm not sure a truly concise answer is possible but the closest I can get is to say that the main reason that there is a difference is a consequence of differing perceptions of what is true about the world, how people actually operate, make decisions, and how that changes at scale, etc.

Here's a good video playlist that should keep you busy with a very in-depth response to your question.

For a single book, I would read Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt

If that piques your interest, then I would also recommend Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell, Free to Choose by Milton Friedman, and The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek.

For WHY and HOW these two tribes see things differently, checkout The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker, A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell, and The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt.

In fact, I think you would find The Blank Slate and A Conflict of Visions to be the most useful of everything I have listed here. These two books turned my world upside down. I find that's a common experience for encounters with these two works. I can't recommend them enough. If you're enjoying this, there's plenty more that the perceptual lens of the "left"/unconstrained filters out of view but is interesting and worthwhile thinking about.

I was once very far left. Reading - mostly in economics, political philosophy, history, and evolutionary biology - was instrumental in changing my political affiliation.

Unrelated but relevant for you (and me)

בהצלחה ושלום, אחי

Prosecutor will lose their job (I'm assuming their reputation as a prosecutor will suffer heavily)... so, is there a way to prevent that?

It is true that facts are facts, if and when they are true. But there are some things, such as statistics, that are used to perpetuate a narrative as factual. The other issue is better explained by a guy named John R. Wood Jr. (I'll try to bold the underlying points)

https://quillette.com/2018/08/13/the-problem-with-facts-not-feelings/

>Differing opinions, even disagreements about facts, are not necessarily what leads to polarization. As Shapiro himself has noted, hostility is inflamed when our differences are perceived to be threatening to the validity of our identities and experiences. When disagreements are framed in a way that does not delegitimize the experiences of our opponents they cease to be emotionally threatening. And when disagreements cease to be emotionally threatening, it puts people at ease and affords them the space to consider new perspectives and ideas.
>
>This observation echoes the main thesis of Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind, in which he argues that our faculty for reason labors to validate our intuitions (including our moral impulses), not vice versa. In Haidt’s analogy of the Rider and the Elephant (elaborated in the clip below), the Rider represents ‘strategic reasoning,’ whose direction is determined by the much larger and more powerful Elephant, which represents intuition and emotion. Haidt explains why so many debates fail to persuade, writing, “You can’t change people’s minds by utterly refuting their arguments…If you want to change people’s minds, you’ve got to talk to their elephants.”
>
>Ben Shapiro’s tendency has not been to talk to elephants so much as make them stampede. Take, for instance, the now-infamous tweet he sent in September 2010 which read: “Israelis like to build. Arabs like to bomb crap and live in open sewage.” A fair-minded look at the tweets sent immediately after this one reveals that Shapiro’s assertion was made in reference to the Israeli and Arab political leaderships—not to these populations as a whole. Shapiro reiterated this explanation in a recent defense of the tweet at the Daily Wire, in which he describes the Left as “idiotic” for its collective failure to appreciate context.
>
>But what Shapiro is really criticizing in his article is the willingness of people to be led by their elephants, even though this is inevitable and therefore entirely predictable. Regardless of any technical defense of the tweet disqualifying it as racist, if Shapiro’s objective as a good faith interlocutor is to invite people to consider new perspectives, then it is strategically unjustifiable. If, on the other hand, his intention is solely to enrage his opponents and electrify his supporters, then he is engaging in demagoguery and should not complain when people react exactly as intended.
>
>If we are to talk to one another’s elephants in an effort to convince, we have to retain a capacity for empathy. If we discard empathy or treat it with boastful contempt, we sacrifice our ability to persuade, and reduce polemical prowess to an exercise in vanity. Eric Weinstein warned against this on Joe Rogan’s podcast saying (in reference to the Intellectual Dark Web) “I believe that fundamentally we are in danger of breaking empathy with people who do not express themselves in our idiom.” Indeed. The ‘facts don’t care about your feelings’ mantra is fair enough as a statement of the obvious. But as a moral statement, it is itself an expression of this very rupture of empathy.

​

How we feel about a set of facts has everything to do with how we interpret them. And how we interpret facts is, in part, a matter of values.

i.e. Black people commit crime at disproportionately higher rate statistic = how do people interpret that data based on their existing feelings.

Every side of the fence has elephants. I'm not aware of any tribe, group, religion, race or country, not even the infamously polite Canada (and its government/people/us), is exempt from the elephant. If you know of one, please show me...

>"Right now "the police" are the thing being blamed when it's our society and culture causing the main issues."

I don't really see a point in blame, but that's why I keep wondering who the hell benefits at the end of the day, and how. Here's how my simplistic layman-like brain works:

If there is an issue. Trace the source. Fix it. It doesn't matter who or what it is. If it cannot be fixed, find out why. Everything has to be as specific and accurate as possible throughout the entire process, otherwise we are back at square one. Being unable to pinpoint exactly where, why and how a bottleneck is occurring and who exactly is responsible for it, is creating a crossfire-effect.

The blame keeps moving around like a pinball. And if that's our biggest issue, our first bottleneck is then, how do we establish an environment where we can actually start some sort of list, a fair one, where we layout the perceived issues on behalf of either sides of the fence and highlight shit. Y'know a scientific but meaningful approach towards a common goal of "let's go home alive and drink a beer???".

The activist->press/media->commissioner->??? unions ??? ->police members way of extremely separated communication isn't working. It's almost pathetically sad to say that reddit is one of the only methods of possible genuine discussion between a civilian and police without either or feeling threatened. Unless I'm wrong and there's a better place for this type of conversation. My current understanding is that dedicated police forums/websites are always private.

>"Money. You need nurses willing to go out and need them avaliable. Resources for mental health in my county (besides the ER) are avaliable Monday through Friday 9-5 and that's people on the phone or people in a building you can talk to, not someone coming to you. So after 5 or on the weekends you have the police, which really sucks if you are into criminal things. You also need society to give a shit so they support the reform."

Okay. That seems to be a common problem in almost every job/profession. So if teachers, nurses, cops, developers, farm workers, child care professionals, restaurant staff, ~~the people who work for disney~~ could all use more money, how would that be possible? Eat the rich? Or deploy, experiment and transition to Orwellian-like methods of establishing a social value system to track and distribute wealth more transparently and fairly? Or rely on current existing traditions, and hope that people who are making more money than they should be decide to wake up one day and share it?

Well... fixing apathy and lack of compassion is an even bigger problem. I'm a cynical optimist though, so praise whoever.

Politics is a really broad topic and you're going to get a lot of books recommended that stem from the users ideology, so it's probably best to try to read some things from both sides. I'm politically right, but I'm going to give you some recommendations from both sides and also some centrist, as well as some books about the sources of our division. (Disclaimer: I haven't read all these books but I'm familiar with the writers from youtube and other sources) I'm going to give you a few video links too, because they're also very informative (and free) Hope these help and good luck!

Books

View from the right: https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-America-Three-Easy-Steps/dp/006300187X/ref=mp_s_a_1_33?dchild=1&keywords=politics+books&qid=1593754899&sr=8-33

Defense of classical liberalism: https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Burn-This-Book-Thinking/dp/0593084292/ref=mp_s_a_1_42?dchild=1&keywords=politics+books&qid=1593754899&sr=8-42

A progressive vision: https://www.amazon.com/Justice-Coming-Progressives-Country-America/dp/1250272793/ref=mp_s_a_1_45?dchild=1&keywords=politics+books&qid=1593754899&sr=8-45

Critique of socialism: https://www.amazon.com/United-States-Socialism-Behind-Evil/dp/1250163781/ref=mp_s_a_1_48?dchild=1&keywords=politics+books&qid=1593755601&sr=8-48

Economics: https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730/ref=mp_s_a_1_179?dchild=1&keywords=politics+books&qid=1593756007&sr=8-179

Finally, two books on the sources of political conflict:

https://www.amazon.com/Conflict-Visions-Ideological-Political-Struggles/dp/0465002056/ref=pd_aw_sim_14_4/130-7360417-4202248?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0465002056&pd_rd_r=94a8b318-6057-4152-af84-732df67667f2&pd_rd_w=3KRLx&pd_rd_wg=RtrRA&pf_rd_p=3fdfe4d1-5a48-4529-9c62-7ad3c5bf0b5d&pf_rd_r=D7YCM88nVTSHZY2GCFCSS&psc=1&refRID=D7YCM88VTSHZY2GCFCSS

https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-Religion/dp/0307455777/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=righteous+mind+haidt&qid=1593756537&sprefix=righte&sr=8-3

---------------Videos------------

Here's a lecture by Jonathan Haidt, the last author:

https://youtu.be/Gatn5ameRr8

Lecture on the evolution of postmoden thought: https://youtu.be/xoi9omtAiNQ

China and US relations: https://youtu.be/130c3hI4Kns

Wealth, poverty, and politics interview: https://youtu.be/JyufeHJlodE

Interview with ex KGB Operative from the 80's: https://youtu.be/ti2HiZ41C_w

Lecture by David Horowitz, who moved from left to the right. https://youtu.be/gRUP5yEm1WE

Lastly, a debate between a conservative and a progressive: https://youtu.be/v4sULDNpvqs

NPR Hidden Brain: Red Brain, Blue Brain

The Righteous Mind

https://www.amazon.com/Predisposed-Liberals-Conservatives-Political-Differences/dp/0415535875

Moral Politics: How Conservatives and Liberals Think

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bargh

Conservative, Liberal and Radical Brains

https://www.academia.edu/23822628/Threat_causes_liberals_to_think_like_conservatives

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0052970

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092984/