It’s not often that I come across a book that answers such a number of questions in a way that truly resonates with me as with this book. While reading through The Righteous Mind, I’ve often found myself stopping to think about what I’ve just read and how that can be applied to myself personally and how it enriches my understanding of the world and the people in it.

As I grow older, I’ve changed many of my opinions, some were stronger than others, but if I was pressed to derive how my thinking has changed to a single point it would be that everything exists in relation to everything else. That’s quite broad and inexact I admit, but such is our nature.

Of individuals

Early in a book the author proposes a metaphor for understanding human behaviour which is the elephant and it’s rider. The elephant is the feeling and emotion, they have an enormous power and once they set off they are difficult to make them change direction, and the elephant rider sitting on top as the rational part of us, who has the power to suggest a direction but not the power to enforce it’s opinion over the elephant and needs to earn the elephant’s trust so that they both can strive to reach a shared objective. Once either of them loses that trust in one another, neither of them are going to be happy.

We often use our intelligence to reaffirm our beliefs and call it logic, in arguments we press others on our reason and expect them to change their opinion while at the same time believing of our own as infallible which they obviously are not. I can only conclude that we ought to constantly keep alert of our human and personal tendencies, keeping an open mind means being aware that our intelligence and reasoning built a fence around itself to protect us from being wrong. After all, being proven wrong triggers the same areas in the brain as being physically harmed, in the book, this is further reaffirmed by pointing out research which suggests that “extreme partisanship may be literally addictive”, so we should treat our biases almost if not exactly the same as drugs.

When people know in advance they’ll have to explain themselves they think more systematically and self-critically. They are less likely to jump to premature conclusions and more likely to revise their beliefs in response to evidence.

From this it makes sense to try have more monologue within ourselves to explain our reasoning to a imagined other person, creating a requirement of explaining my thoughts might make my day to day decision making more robust, at least, I believe, it will make me less susceptible to the confirmation bias where I instinctively accept any evidence however consequential or insignificant as true without questioning it as long as it fits my own pre-existing narrative. This is unlike the opinions of others, whose logical fallacies I’m much more likely to question and dissect than my own.

We do all care about other’s opinions weather we like to admit it or not, I certainly like to think that I don’t but I’ve come to understand that I do, so I see no point in trying to pretend otherwise and just go with it. The book further raises the point that in psychology and more broadly in working with people, it’s necessary to take an observational approach rather then one of reason. It’s hard to be certain how people will react to different situations and the places our minds will go to, yet when I make decisions I largely fail to account for the messy nature of my own mind, motivation and beliefs meaning I often skip observing my own feelings and streams of consciousness when going through hardships. Understanding this makes it easier to accept.

Of society

The second part of the book is focused on discussing the basic values and moral foundations of people, these are:

• care/harm
• fairness/cheating
• loyalty/betrayal
• authority/subversion
• sanctity/degradation

It argues that politically left leaning people or liberals tend to hold more idealistic ideas that don’t give enough importance to the latter 3 of these moral foundations, while right leaning people or conservatives tend to equally value all 5. I don’t personally like the naming that we have for these two points of view, they make it sound as if liberals are the only ones who wish for freedom, and conservatives wish for everything to stay the same, but it is the wording that we have right now.

The fact that conservatives value equally all 5 of the moral foundations does give them more appeal with the broader number of people, especially in more difficult times as we have lately observed with the right leaning politics enjoying a sort of a renaissance, same as it has throughout history when difficult times emerge. Liberal politicians today still tend to ignore the needs of people who are feeling threatened and wish for some sort of protection when they either think or actually really are experiencing a drop in quality of life.

One of the examples to illustrate this observation is how liberals pursue the goal of equality sometimes to the point of equality of outcomes for all, an extreme position not achievable in a capitalist system, not to mention that it goes against reciprocity which most people do see as a necessity for a functional fair society. I personally identify more as a liberal, and I do see that we often expect people to behave in a certain way the same way that conservatives do, and we are quick to judge when they do. Irrational opinions come from all sides.

Although we did develop laws and institutions that are supposed to keep our society fair, it’s up to the individual to feel the moral obligation to follow most of those laws. There is research indicating that when an individual pays a fine for something wrong they did they believe themselves to be fully absolved of the crime, compared to when the crime triggers a feeling of shame or possibility of expulsion from the community which is a far stronger and evolutionarily proven incentive to behave nicely. Religions are much stronger in the latter, they give a moral exoskeleton for a community to rely on and this makes the individuals in that community more trusting of one another.

Another point brought in the book is that the genes are a strong predictor of weather the person will be liberal or conservative, same as it can differentiate aggressiveness, intellect, physical ability and many other aspects. This might somewhat contradict the thought brought up earlier in the book that humans are born with only the first draft of the book written which is then filled further with experience.

Conclusion

In the end, both liberal and conservative powers are needed for a healthy society, they keep each other in check, they require that both sides keep explaining themselves and steer each other away from the extremes. History does forget the moderates unfortunately, an overwhelming majority.

The entire book keeps a strong momentum throughout, with numerous research, commentary and opinions and is a strong recommended to anyone willing to understand our world a little better.