The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, Jonathan Haidt

"A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life."  John Stuart Mill (as quoted by Jonathan Haidt in The Righteous Mind).

"Every community is exposed to two opposite dangers: ossification through too much discipline and reverence for tradition, on the one hand; on the other hand, dissolution, or subjection to foreign conuest, through the growth of an individualism and personal independence that makes cooperation impossible."  Bertrand Russell (as quoted by Jonathan Haidt in The Righteous Mind).

This book attempts to explain the moral psychology which motivates liberals, conservatives, and libertarians.  Haidt claims to be a former liberal whose studies of different political philosophies eventually turned him into a moderate.  Certain of his asides, however, reveal that he's still largely liberal at heart. (For a conservative like myself, there is something extremely humorous but bittersweet about Haidt's descriptions of his astonished reactions to his first readings in conservative philosophy, which he had managed to arrive at well-educated adulthood without ever being exposed to from an actual conservative writer.  It certainly reinforces the common conservative complaint that liberalism has so taken over the universities and the media that it is possible for liberals to live their lives simply and completely unaware of what conservatives believe, beyond the standard liberal caricatures of those beliefs.)  As such, this book can be seen as a mostly liberal writer's take on much of the same territory covered in conservative Thomas Sowell's book, A Conflict of Visions.

Haidt's focus, unlike Sowell's, however, isn't on differing visions of how the world works, as the source of different political philosophies.  Rather, Haidt's focus is on the underlying moral intuitions  (think of what, intuitively, makes you angry, or disgusted, or feel a sense of reverence) which compel us to see the world a certain way. According to Haidt, these emotional intuitions (the elephant) come first, and the arguments and reasoning we come up with to justify those feelings (the rider on the elephant), come second, as post hoc justifications.  Liberals' intuitions are largely based on caring and fairness.  Conservatives rely on these moral intuitions as well, but also rely on additional moral intuitions which liberals often reject: loyalty, authority, sanctity, and liberty.

Haidt is a gifted writer and this engaging book is fascinating reading for anyone interested in politics and the culture wars, from either side of the aisle.  I never felt I was reading a polemic, and felt my own moral feelings and political beliefs from my side of the aisle were, for the most part, fairly represented.  As an explanation for differing political viewpoints, this could be, for many readers, a paradigm-shifting book, that can enlighten every political story we read. 

I do have two criticisms: I didn't care for Haidt's treatment of religion, and, as a person of faith, found his football game metaphor offensive.  I also didn't care for how much of the book was spent discussing how humans evolved to develop the moral intuitions Haidt examines. On these questions (of how things came to be), Haidt's arguments are not nearly as convincing as his descriptions of the much more interesting and relevant descriptions of how things are. As Haidt himself notes, "theories are cheap.  Anyone can invent one.  Progress happens when theories are tested, supported, and corrected by empirical evidence."  The problem with Haidt's theories of evolutionary psychology is that they are only theories, or more properly just hypotheses, which, absent a time machine or a million year long lab experiment are untestable and therefore pat and unhelpful.  Nevertheless, this book was otherwise completely worth the read.

Completed: 2012
Rating: 9/10

Civilization, The West and the Rest, by Niall Ferguson

According to Ferguson, Western Civilization prospered due to its six "killer apps": namely, competition, science, democracy, medicine, consumerism, and work.  What's more, the cold war was won because the Soviet Union was incapable of making a decent pair of blue jeans.  I'm not sure if I completely buy all of this, but, like most books willing to tackle big subjects and macro-questions, it is fun and fascinating reading. 

Completed: May 2012
Rating: 7/10

The Storm of War, by Andrew Roberts

"The real reason why Hitler lost the Second World War was exactly the same one that caused him to unleash it in the first place: he was a Nazi."  (That may be the best final sentence in any book I've ever read.)  It was, in short, the shortcomings of Nazi ideology which led to Hitler's stupidest decisions of the War.  These would include Hitler's belief that his soldiers were racially superior to the slavic foes they would face in the East, and the anti-semitism which led his nation's brightest Jewish scientists to defect to and assist the West during the conflict.

I've always wondered about the central paradox of WWII.  In fighting to free Western Europe from a totalitarian dictatorship, why did we ally with another totalitarian dictatorship, and allow that dictatorship to take over Eastern Europe?  This book's anglo-centric, and therefore euro-centric, view of the war went a long way to helping me understand the whys and the wherefores that led to that particular outcome.  The Soviets suffered 90% of the Allied casualties, and inflicted the vast majority of the casualties suffered by the Germans, during the war.  In short, the Allied Nations couldn't have won WWII without Hitler forcing the Soviets' involvement by launching a premature and ill-fated invasion of that nation, whose citizens suffered terribly under Nazi siege, and whose soldiers would ultimately avenge that suffering in terrible acts of retribution against the women of East Berlin.  (Plenty of war crimes to go around in this, at times, extremely depressing read.)  At the end of WWII, who would have wanted to suffer the same fate the Germans had just suffered by launching a war against the Russian empire?  Better to contain and hold them at bay as best we could for another 60 years of cold war. 

This was an amazing book about a subject that we can never do enough to understand: the costliest and bloodiest conflict in all of human history.

Completed: 2012
Rating: 8/10

Coming Apart, by Charles Murray

"When you get down to it, it is not acceptable in the new upper class to use derogatory labels for anyone, with three exceptions: people with differing political views, fundamentalist Christians, and rural working-class whites."  Charles Murray, Coming Apart

A fascinating but nevertheless sad and disheartening look at the many ways in which Americans of different social, economic, and educational classes have "come apart" from each other, and from the traditions of earlier generations, in their adherence to the values that traditionally kept us together, namely marriage, honesty (or, for statistical purposes at least, lack of criminality), industry, and religion.  Must reading to understand the modern world, including things I'd rather not have lived to see.  A book about class, a book about values, a book about the virtues of snobs and the vices of the  lower classes, as well as the vices of snobs and the virtues of the lower classes.  A book about religion and education and marriage. A book about social bubbles, geographic and social, and their consequences.  Fascinating, fascinating, fascinating. 

After being accused of racism for his book The Bell Curve, it is rather unbelievable that Murray would give this book the subtitle that he does ("The State of White America").  But his point is that we cannot assume ethnic minorities are skewing the statistics on crime, illegitimacy, and other modern social pathologies.  We can look solely at whites and see the same trends, at least among a certain socioeconomic class, and at the end of the book, when he brings in the statistics for the nation as a whole, including minorities, there's no real difference.  These have become, in other words, issues of class and education more so than issues of race.

But the best parts of the book are when Murray addresses deeper philosophical issues than the current differences between American classes, and explains why the four virtues he espouses are central to living a satisfying life.  As in:

“Once you start to think through the kinds of accomplishments that . . . lead people to reach old age satisfied with who they have been and what they have done, you will find (I propose) that the accomplishments you have in mind have three things in common. First, the source of satisfaction involves something important.  We can get pleasure from trivial things, but pleasure is different from deep satisfaction.  Second, the source of satisfaction has involved effort, probably over an extended period of time. . . .  Third, some level of personal responsibility for the outcome is essential  . . . .  You have to be able to say, ‘if it hadn’t been for me, this good thing wouldn’t have come about as it did.’  There aren’t many activities in life that satisfy the three requirements of importance, effort, and responsibility.  Having been a good parent qualifies.  Being part of a good marriage qualifies.  Having done your job well qualifies.  Having been a faithful adherent of one of the great religions qualifies.  Having been a good neighbor and good friend to those whose lives intersected with yours qualifies.  But what else?
 
Let me put it formally: If we ask what are the domains through which human beings achieve deep satisfactions in life--achieve happiness--the answer is that there are just four: family, vocation, community, and faith . . . .  It is not necessary for any individual to make use of all four domains, nor do I array them in a hierarchy.  I merely assert that these four are all there are.  The stuff of life occurs within those four domains."Charles Murray, Coming Apart

"Responsibility for the consequences of actions is not the price of freedom, but one of its rewards.  Knowing that we have responsibility for the consequences of our actions is a major part of what makes life worth living." Charles Murray, Coming Apart

Completed March 13, 2012
Rating: 9/10.