Quotes from Jonathan Haidt

Religiosity developed because successful religions made groups more efficient at turning resources into offspring." (including art, cathedrals, cities, earthworks, etc?)

Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.

oxytocin made men more willing to hurt other teams (in a prisoner's dilemma game) because doing so was the best way to protect their own group.

the wise man "chooses not the greatest quantity of food but the most tasty.

Because men and women in a relationship have many conflicting interests, evolutionary theory does not view love relationships as harmonious partnerships for childrearing; but a universal feature of human cultures is that men and women form relationships intended to last for years (marriage) that constrain their sexual behavior in some way and institutionalize their ties to children and to each other.

No one can live happily who has regard to himself alone and transforms everything into a question of his own utility; you must live for your neighbour, if you would live for yourself. —SENECA

Darwin, writing in Victorian England, shared Glaucon's view (from aristocratic Athens) that people are obsessed with their reputations.

What is new today is the premise that students are fragile. Even those who are not fragile themselves often believe that others are in danger and therefore need protection. There is no expectation that students will grow stronger from their encounters with speech or texts they label "triggering." (This is the Untruth of Fragility: What doesn't kill you makes you weaker.)

happiness formula:" H = S + C + V The level of happiness that you actually experience (H) is determined by your biological set point (S) plus the conditions of your life (C) plus the voluntary activities (V) you do. 34

Americans are now easily exploitable, and a large network of profit-driven media sites, political entrepreneurs, and foreign intelligence agencies are taking advantage of this vulnerability.

Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it."5

Events in the world affect us only through our interpretations of them, so if we can control our interpretations, we can control our world.

It is easy to see the faults of others, but difficult to see one's own faults. One shows the faults of others like chaff winnowed in the wind, but one conceals one's own faults as a cunning gambler conceals his dice. —BUDDHA1

There is a principle in philosophy and rhetoric called the principle of charity, which says that one should interpret other people's statements in their best, most reasonable form, not in the worst or most offensive way possible.

Good and evil do not exist outside of our beliefs about them.

adverse fortune is more beneficial than good fortune; the latter only makes men greedy for more, but adversity makes them strong.

Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it."7

Many university students are learning to think in distorted ways, and this increases their likelihood of becoming fragile, anxious, and easily hurt.

If you think about religion as a set of beliefs about supernatural agents, you're bound to misunderstand it.

If only it were so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.23

singing in choruses, performing in marching bands, listening to sermons, attending political rallies, and meditating. Most of my students have experienced the switch at least once, although only a few had a life-changing experience. More commonly, the effects fade away within a few hours or days.

More specifically, moral capital refers to the degree to which a community possesses interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, and technologies that mesh well with evolved psychological mechanisms and thereby enable the community to suppress or regulate selfishness and make cooperation possible.

Webster's Third New International Dictionary defines delusion as "a false conception and persistent belief unconquerable by reason in something that has no existence in fact."45 As an intuitionist, I'd say that the worship of reason is itself an illustration of one of the most long-lived delusions in Western history: the rationalist delusion.

Let's assume that every commune was started by a group of twenty-five adults who knew, liked, and trusted one another. In other words, let's assume that every commune started with a high and equal quantity of social capital on day one. What factors enabled some communes to maintain their social capital and generate high levels of prosocial behavior for decades while others degenerated into discord and distrust within the first year?