Audible Book Review: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt

This helps me to see and understand other views.

The Righteous Mind
Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
By: Jonathan Haidt
Narrated by: Jonathan Haidt

Length: 11 hrs and 1 min
Release date: 07-23-12
Publisher: Gildan Media, LLC
Genre: Nonfiction, Psychology
My Rating: 4.75 of 5.0 Overall; Story 4.75; Narration 4.75.

Publisher's Summary
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. Download the accompanying reference guide.
©2012 Jonathan Haidt (P)2012 Gildan Media LLC

Review:
I often find myself struggling to understand how others view policies and political persons with such a different view from mine. I bought this book with the hope that it might give me insight…and I am happy to say it did.

Haidt presents his material in a clear essay format. He states the point he wants to make, discusses it with examples, shares supporting and opposition views, and then summarizes the evidence that he has argued. I found this helpful particularly since it has been 40 years since I studied sociology, psychology and religion in college. It helped to have the information laid out in a manner that I could process and understand.

I was surprised to hear Haidt discuss evolutionary psychology which I didn’t know existed. I am not a proponent of evolutionary theories, but I found his arguments of moral intuition, basic foundations and adaptations very interesting.

Haidt explains that the terms “left” and “right” came from the 1700s during the French revolution. When the National Assembly met to put together a new constitution, the participants sat on either side of the table. Those who wanted more change were on the left and those who wanted to stay closer to tradition were on the right.

Haidt shares a matrix of six “foundations of morality”: 1. Care/Harm (cherishing and protecting others); 2. Liberty/Oppression; 3. Fairness/Cheating (proportionality); 4. Loyalty/Betrayal (ingroup); 5. Authority/subversion (respect); and 6. Sanctity/degradation (purity). He also argues that humans are ‘groupish’. Haidt presents sound basis to support this theory that was apparently abandoned for many years. He notes that the groupish nature of man has aided in his survival.

Haidt shares which of the moral foundations are the strongest and most relevant to American liberals, Libertarians and social conservatives. Among the points, Haidt notes that our foundations “bind and blind us”. One of the most pointed things that Haidt shared was in the last chapter where he points out that some people, who score very high on the care morality foundation, often cause damage by tearing down their group supports. The example is ‘trying to help the bees even if it means burning the hive’. Haidt makes it clear that it is important for all insights to be shared and to seek compromises. If you want to understand others better, I recommend you read this book!

This definitely helped me understand the mindset of the other views. It still doesn’t help me understand the basis for the hate and violence. I don’t always agree with other policies or views but that doesn’t mean I hate the people or want to destroy them. That to me falls in the ‘cutting off your nose’ or “burning the hive” mentality.

Audio Notes: Jonathan Haidt narrates his own work and I thought he did a great job. He clearly cares about the information and wants to make it understandable while supporting it with other psychological citations or testing and surveys. I enjoyed listening but I suspect that having the print version would allow the reader to go back and be reminded of arguments. The pdf support of the described figures is helpful for the audio listener.

Source: 10/16/19 September 2019 Audible Credit. This qualifies for 2020TBR and 2020Audiobook goals.