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NOTE: We're discussing "The Righteous Mind" for a second time! First time was in 2012.

#169: Dec. - Mar. 2020 & #109: Jul. - Sept. 2012 (Non-Fiction)
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Chris OConnor

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NOTE: We're discussing "The Righteous Mind" for a second time! First time was in 2012.

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We're discussing "The Righteous Mind" for a second time!

As many of you know we read and discussed The Righteous Mind back in 2012. Many of you wanted to pull this book discussion out of the archives and give it another shot so that is exactly what we're doing. As you can see this forum is already filled with posts. Those are from the 2012 discussion. So you can either create brand new threads or reply to those older threads. The choice is yours. If you reply to older threads those threads will get bumped right up to the top of the forum.

EDIT:
I've locked the older threads so that we can start this discussion off with all fresh content. The older threads are still in this forum for reference of quoting. They are just temporarily locked.
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Dexter

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Re: NOTE: We're discussing "The Righteous Mind" for a second time! First time was in 2012.

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Just my two cents, there aren't that many old posts, but I think it's better to start from scratch.

Having an old conversation up there just makes it more difficult to jump in with a new point. Who wants to respond to a point from 7 years ago?
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DWill

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Re: NOTE: We're discussing "The Righteous Mind" for a second time! First time was in 2012.

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If anyone wants to catch up with Jonathan Haidt, a good place is https://www.disruptorawards.com/2017-ho ... than-haidt. He did the work on The Righteous Mind while at the University of Virginia. I was a little bummed when he jumped ship for NYU's Stern School of Business, but that was definitely a promotion for him. He made two lists of most influential world thinkers after the book was published. He now has an interesting project called the Heterodox Academy, which aims to make academic intellectual life more open to diverse opinions.

The tone he shoots for in the book, successfully I think, is exemplified by the epigraph from Baruch Spinoza: "I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, not to hate them, but to understand them." In his own words in the introduction, he writes, "My goal in this book is to drain some of the heat, anger, and divisiveness out of these topics [politics, morality] and replace them with awe, wonder, and curiosity. We are downright lucky that we evolved this complex moral psychology that allowed our species to burst out of the forests and savannas and into the delights, comforts, and extraordinary peacefulness of modern societies in just a few thousand years."

The last part of that statement echoes a thread pursued recently by Stephen Pinker: that civilization reduced violence and that we continue to evolve more and more peaceful societies. Many people, perhaps most, have the opposite impression about levels of violence.

In 2012, when the book was published, Haidt addressed the divisiveness of that time. One worry he doesn't have is that 8 years later his book is dated. It's more relevant than ever.
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Chris OConnor

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Re: NOTE: We're discussing "The Righteous Mind" for a second time! First time was in 2012.

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Dexter, you're probably right. I'll lock the old threads and leave the Chapter threads up and open. The older threads will still be readable but you won't be able to post in them.
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Harry Marks
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Re: NOTE: We're discussing "The Righteous Mind" for a second time! First time was in 2012.

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I have the book on the shelf, and have wanted to finish it for some time now. I will make a real effort to take part.
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