Tag Archives: Jonathan Haidt

I think Republicans need to take income inequality more seriously. Not because I favor equality of outcomes. I do not. I think the Right is correct to stress merit and earned rewards, not handouts and forced equality. But I think what Republicans are blind to is that power corrupts. Jonathan Haidt

The most important thing to realize is we're not blank slates at birth. We don't start off with nothing in our heads, and then get imprinted entirely by our environment. There's something in our heads on the day we're born, and then we grow up and make choices. Jonathan Haidt

Social reality is so complicated that, once you join one team or the other, you become specialized in detecting certain patterns, but you become blind to other patterns. Jonathan Haidt

If you have high IQ, you're really good at finding post-hoc arguments to support your feelings of truthiness. Jonathan Haidt

The great conservative insight is that order is really hard to achieve. It's really precious, and it's really easy to lose. Jonathan Haidt

By temperament and disposition and emotions, I'm a liberal; but in my beliefs about what's best for the country, I'm a centrist. Jonathan Haidt

If you have a personality predisposed to liberalism, you might gravitate more to the artsy crowd or the anti-establishment crowd. And then those peers will affect you, and they will give you values, and you will copy them. Jonathan Haidt

Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into teams… but thereby makes us go blind to objective reality. Jonathan Haidt

People are voting for the kind of country they want to live in, and there are different views about what kind of country we should have. Jonathan Haidt

Even if you have a brain predisposed to liberalism, you might end up with some conservative friends or find inspiring conservative role models who could be very influential on you, and that could send you down a different track in life. Jonathan Haidt