The Righteous Mind

It sounds a worthy idea, doesn’t it? In a volatile society, to draw on findings that promise to help ordinary people to coexist? If your idea of credible scientific methodology is for researchers to codify their own prejudices and then strive to promulgate and prove the resulting slapdash hypotheses through prematurely declared Theories and in unintentionally but laughably rigged experiments (rather than to test through attempts at disproving), the writing of Jonathan Haidt may be for you!!

Like Simon Baron‐Cohen is for him! “I do not want to suggest that utilitarianism and Kantian deontology are incorrect as moral theories just because they were founded by men who may have had Asperger’s syndrome,” writes Haidt, after invoking the spectre of Those Insensitive Autistics totally out of the blue for no other apparent reason, and while continuing to diligently lay out precisely the argument on which he claims not to want you to think he is relying (across pages 136–141, all‐inclusive). Presumably the key word was “just”, but it’s pulled tenuously thin by the masses of import that he makes it bear here.

Consistently full of a love to snap pathologise and shove aside whatever minds and whatever ethics to which Haidt personally has not come to relate, this book about humanity regularly betrays an intellectually fatal hypocrisy. Haidt is only at pains to insist that dedicated conservatism among voters (particularly within the United States of America) must not be considered misguided or malevolent. Policies of liberalism, he cautions, often undermine their own aims. Conservatives, he asserts, have a more sophisticated, complete grasp of human morality.

For instance, both ends of a left‐right spectrum dislike harm. We know this because chucking a tantie over not quite getting to possess everything you possibly can, is fundamentally equivalent to being upset about folks refusing necessities to anybody denied their society’s established survival tokens. This example also demonstrates that everybody values this other one same irreducible thing we all call fairness: the perniciously disadvantaged do not work nearly as hard as the hypercushioned, hence proportionate punishment and reward; every body is equal, hence uniform entitlement to all protections.

(Haidt may employ different phrasing, but the tenor of the logic remains. Does this parade of absurdity encourage people to take each other more seriously?)

But right‐wingers attend quantifiably more comprehensively to The conveniently prepackaged, shrinkwrapped foundations of morality — here’s some he prepared earlier! — which all things U.S.A. left neglect. By way of demonstration, we can presuppose what preachers of contrasting Christian denominations talk about (at page 188). Liberals wouldn’t be invoking concepts of sanctity more through words like “peace” than firey Baptists; they would just outright care less for the sacred.

It is immensely disheartening to read as over and over Haidt endorses dictionary‐definition rigidity, saucer‐shallow readings, and the misappropriation of mathematics to the most simplistic of measures in order to determine that an assumption aligns with itself. As though this supplants the work of genuine philosophical enquiry, literary analysis, theological examination, political study, or, heaven forbid, interview.

For most of its length, The righteous mind tries very hard to obfuscate its author’s political sympathies. Despite my criticisms, amicability and a kind of hopeful thoughtfulness do shine through Haidt’s words much of the time, but the caution can come off a touch manipulative. Haidt lowers his ineffectual guard in stages, where confident that reactive, partisan readers will have been pacified by his deliberate progression through dopey self‐help metaphors and naïve, self‐defeating anecdotes.

Finally, he pretends to legislative insight. Examples of where three partisan traditions ought to follow their opponents are given, along with a vague blessing of a Moral Science.

So take freely of such edicts as a libertarian moment (from pages 353 through 356), in which we (presumed Americans all, now) are asked to imagine a can of peas attracting a vertiginous price, after the fashion of basic medical needs in the U.S. Wouldn’t it be a preposterous burden, he steams, for “all of us [to be] paying” a 25% tax on income to cover a complete food insurance system! That getting even remotely adequate nutrition for such small portions of their money is currently impossible for many Americans does not, in this moment, occur to him. Indeed, he selectively forgets the notion of externalised costs and quite possibly has no clue whatsoever about, say, food deserts. That the wealth and ready thrift of those whose 25 percents constitute higher dollar figures has been subsidised by the actively imposed starvation of masses of unwaged, disenfranchised, and enslaved people across nonstop hundreds of years, just maybe affecting consumer and corporate expectations? No, no, the limited‐access cheap canned pea economy has all been effortlessly “arranged for [humanity’s] benefit”. Somehow he decides that the allegory of the grocery store has comprehensively destroyed the legitimacy of health insurance and not implicated the profit motive. “Success in the supermarket and insurance industries depend[ing] primarily on maximizing [businesses’ financial] yield” in a linear trajectory is cast as some kind of inevitable, innocent bystander, a byproduct very nearly implied to be specific to social security. Haidt redeclares Adam Smith’s invisible hand “miraculous”. By that standard, so’s poliomyelitis, but, look, me, personally, I don’t invite any old gobsmacking function to (a share in a platform of) ideological supremacy.

And to be fair, Haidt is doggedly against fundamentalism — at least as he interprets it. Unless that fundamentalism is rooted in the ultracompetitive killing field of evolutionary psychology.

Footnote to last para: Which is what it sounds like going off Haidt’s presentation of the contemporary literature.

What a great blend of philosophy, sociology, psychology, and biology this book has. It was interesting, challenging, and no doubt over my head at times. I still felt like I encountered some pretty obvious fallacies, especially once the book transitioned from psychology to political philosophy, but few books have made me think this much about my feelings of it after finishing. On one hand, it covers so many interesting subjects, and it was great to think about what fundamentally shapes our moral reasoning. On the other hand, it tries to neatly categorize human nature into the author's moral framework of six categories. This seems to have led to blind spots and biases, subconscious or otherwise, in order to stick to the framework.

The three main principles of The Righteous Mind:
1. Intuition comes first, strategic reasoning comes second.
2. There’s more to morality than care, fairness, and liberty (i.e., there's more than just the supposed morals that progressives value).
3. Morality binds and blinds. We like to make something sacred, we circle around it, and then we can’t tolerate any criticism about it, whether it’s true or not.

Haidt's six areas of moral judgment:
- Care/Harm
- Fairness/Cheating
- Loyalty/Betrayal
- Authority/Subversion
- Sanctity/Degradation
- Liberty/Oppression

The sixth area, Liberty/Oppression, was added after experiments with the first five "proved incomplete". And these areas of moral judgment hold equal weight in the book, despite one or two jumping out as historically not cool to prioritize.

Haidt got the idea for this book after the 2000 US election, when he wondered why conservatives seem to have a consistent advantage in elections. Through his research, he found that conservatives appeal to a broader moral palate (all six areas), while progressives only appeal to three (care/harm, fairness/cheating, liberty/oppression). Now if you look back at the six areas of moral judgment above, that might seem to fit into place somewhat initially. But you can also probably think of aspects of human nature that the list oversimplifies, or misses entirely.

Example of oversimplification: I don't agree that support for pro-choice and same-sex marriage issues should cast progressives under degradation, surrendering the moral high ground to conservatives with a religion-approved version of sanctity.

Example of missing entirely: there's no version of a Truth/Hypocrisy, Reality/Fiction, or Rational/Irrational area of moral judgment. I believe that any addition like this would throw a wrench into many of the book's conclusions.

To try and summarize, looking at Haidt's thesis again: progressives tend to underperform politically because they cede the moral landscape politically. They’re only appealing to three of the moral foundations instead of the six that conservatives do. Valuing authority, religion, loyalty, and obedience makes conservatives more sensitive to disturbances in social order. This affords them a more reliable cohesiveness that progressive secularism can't reach, because they're emphasizing tolerance (i.e., subversion, degradation, and betrayal in the established moral framework).

I feel that an expansion and reframing of the moral matrix would help this book a lot. As it stands, it claims that conservatives see and value moral senses that progressives lack. Progressives still obviously have gut/moral judgments (fear, disgust, outrage, etc), but I think the difference is they often pause and reflect on those intuitions, instead of following them on a base level. I think they're better able to say "I don't think these initial reactions are a good foundation to rest on, and definitely not something that should be imposed on others".

My notes from [b:Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst|31170723|Behave The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst|Robert M. Sapolsky|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1517732866l/31170723.SY75.jpg|51808259] by Robert Sapolsky helped here. It's a great book to pair with The Righteous Mind—or read in place of—as it specifically discusses this book while including counterarguments to paint a fuller picture of the moral landscape. Sapolsky discusses snap judgments vs situational explanations between conservatives and progressives, and concludes "In other words, conservatives start gut and stay gut; liberals go from gut to head." He goes on to clarify that both camps are equally capable of thinking past the gut, but one is more motivated to push toward situational explanations.

Sapolsky also discusses a key difference that I wish was covered more in The Righteous Mind: how conservatives tend to be resistant to equality (and all discomfort associated), while progressives tend to be resistant to authority (and all discomfort associated). He says "...for example, the classical liberal view is that everyone has equal rights to happiness; rightists instead discount fairness in favor of expedient authority, generating the classical conservative view that some socioeconomic inequality is a tolerable price for things running smoothly."

The Righteous Mind was published nine years ago. A lot, to put it lightly, has happened since then. I wondered how Haidt was doing and what he thought about his six areas of moral judgment now. Luckily he sat down on the Rationally Speaking podcast on 2/18/21, and guess what? Still rock solid according to him. Our paragons of authority and loyalty are apparently still appealing to sanctity, fairness, and liberty, no problems here!

Wish I could've enjoyed it more, but I found it too long and too dry. I'm not sure he knows his target audience: much of what he covers will only be new to the kind of people who wouldn't read his book anyway. That said, I'm glad I persevered. His elephant-and-rider metaphor (for our primitive brain, which pretty much guides our lives, and the neocortex which is often just along for the ride) is useful. His 6-axis classification of morality is elegant and promising. His political suggestions for picking the best from the left, right, and libertarian camps are shockingly close to the political views I've grown to adopt. His "hey, the other side are people too" reminder is welcome.

But I don't feel any closer to achieving a less polarized country. I don't think his message will get through to many people on any side of the rift. In fact, I actually feel much worse: Haidt posits that the Right are strongly aligned on the Loyalty to Authority and to Tribe axes (which the left identify as abhorrent, as do I even though I'm far from left). What Haidt doesn't cover is the corner case where Authority is batshit crazy. A very bad combination: sheep led by wolves. I think we're in trouble.

Couldn't decide between five stars (because of how important this material is) and three (because of my difficulty reading it) so I compromised. If you're the kind of reader who can skim easily, I urge you to pick this up and give that a try. Let me know how it goes.