A few thoughts on Jonathan Haidt's The Rigtheous Mind

One of the very best social science books I've ever read.

Jonathan Haidt explains why it is so difficult for people across the partisan divide and the faith divide to understand and be persuaded by each other.

He discusses different moral languages and different moral values that different political and religious groups espouse. For example, educated, industrialized Westerners often think that morality should be based on whether or not actions harm others; but poorer, more rural, and more religious communities tend to take other factors into account in determining what is moral, such as whether the behavior aligns with the community's traditions or God's will. The rhetoric that liberals use emphasize the values of care and compassion; libertarians emphasize freedom; conservatives emphasize several different values including sanctity, authority, loyalty and fairness.

Haidt self-identifies as an atheist in the book, but he is a persuasive advocate of religion. He looks at religion through the lens of Darwinian evolution, arguing that religion is a group-level adaptation. (This is hilarious because atheists won't like his conclusion that religion is good for society and many of the faithful won't like his justification that evolution is the way religion got to us). He says that religious groups were/are more likely to succeed than nonreligious groups, ceteris paribus, because religion provides the best way to unite people and to make self-sacrifice on behalf of a group of people meaningful.

Haidt concludes the book by bringing up a few of the important arguments that liberals (companies need to be regulated), conservatives (helping a few of the bees doesn't always benefit the hive), and libertarians (concerning health care: if you don't pay for something, you will abuse it) make. He hopes that different opinions work together in yin-yang fashion in society, but the fact that we are speaking different moral languages to each other and are increasingly polarized makes this harmony difficult.