Quotes from Jonathan Haidt

Safetyism is the cult of safety—an obsession with eliminating threats (both real and imagined) to the point at which people become unwilling to make reasonable trade-offs demanded by other practical and moral concerns. Safetyism deprives young people of the experiences that their antifragile minds need

there's a deeper reason so many young psychologists began to study morality from a rationalist perspective, and this was Kohlberg's second great innovation: he used his research to build a scientific justification for a secular liberal moral order.

The ethic of divinity is based on the idea that people are, first and foremost, temporary vessels within which a divine soul has been implanted.12 People are not just animals with an extra serving of consciousness; they are children of God and should behave accordingly.

figure, said Freud.) Durkheim argued, in contrast, that Homo sapiens was really Homo duplex, a creature who exists at two levels: as an individual and as part of the larger society. From his studies of religion he

Many societies therefore develop moral concepts such as sanctity and sin, purity and pollution, elevation and degradation. In such societies, the personal liberty of secular Western nations looks like libertinism, hedonism, and a celebration of humanity's baser instincts.

A Liberal authority is someone or something that earns society's respect through making things happen that unify society and suppress its enemy.

The Penn students spoke almost exclusively in the language of the ethic of autonomy, whereas the other groups (particularly the working-class groups) made much more use of the ethic of community, and a bit more use of the ethic of divinity.14

Emile Durkheim, who warned of the dangers of anomie (normlessness) and wrote, in 1897, that "man cannot become attached to higher aims and submit to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which he belongs.

Conservatives, in contrast, are more parochial—concerned about their groups, rather than all of humanity.

ProjectImplicit.org

Reasoning was merely the servant of the passions, and when the servant failed to find any good arguments, the master did not change his mind.

Las circunstancias locales pueden hacer que aumente el tribalismo, que descienda o que desaparezca. Cualquier tipo de conflicto intergrupal (real o percibido) hace que aumente inmediatamente el tribalismo, y que las personas presten mucha atención a las señales que revelen en qué equipo están las otras.

The result is a fragile state of political egalitarianism achieved by cooperation among creatures who are innately predisposed to hierarchical arrangements.

We're born to be righteous, but we have to learn what, exactly, people like us should be righteous about.

In this world, equality and personal autonomy were not sacred values. Honoring elders, gods, and guests, protecting subordinates, and fulfilling one's role-based duties were more important.

we see faces in the clouds, but never clouds in faces, because we have special cognitive modules for face detection.

Simplemente, no sentimos tanta empatía hacia los que vemos como -los otros-

David Hume, who wrote in 1739 that "reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.

The keys to flow: There's a clear challenge that fully engages your attention; you have the skills to meet the challenge; and you get immediate feedback about how you are doing at each step (the progress principle). You get flash after flash of positive feeling with each turn negotiated, each high note correctly sung, or each brushstroke that falls into the right place.

For most of us, it's not every day or even every month that we change our mind about a moral issue without any prompting from anyone else. Far more common than such private mind changing is social influence.

In the ethic of divinity, there is an order to the universe, and things (as well as people) should be treated with the reverence or disgust that they deserve.

Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason. We all need to take a cold hard look at the evidence and see reasoning for what it is.

If the hive switch is real—if it's a group-level adaptation designed by group-level selection for group binding—then it must be made out of neurons, neurotransmitters, and hormones.

La conclusión es que la mente humana está preparada para el tribalismo. La evolución humana no es sólo la historia de unos individuos que compiten con otros dentro de cada grupo; es también la historia de grupos que compiten contra otros, a veces con violencia.