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When the moral history of the 1990s is written, it might be titled Desperately Seeking Satan. With peace and harmony ascendant, Americans seemed to b… - Jonathan Haidt
" "When the moral history of the 1990s is written, it might be titled Desperately Seeking Satan. With peace and harmony ascendant, Americans seemed to be searching for substitute villains. We tried drug dealers (but then the crack epidemic waned) and child abductors (who are usually one of the parents). The cultural right vilified homosexuals; the left vilified racists and homophobes. As I thought about these various villains, including the older villains of communism and Satan himself, I realized that most of them share three properties: They are invisible (you can’t identify the evil one from appearance alone); their evil spreads by contagion, making it vital to protect impressionable young people from infection (for example from communist ideas, homosexual teachers, or stereotypes on television); and the villains can be defeated only if we all pull together as a team. It became clear to me that people want to believe they are on a mission from God, or that they are fighting for some more secular good (animals, fetuses, women’s rights), and you can’t have much of a mission without good allies and a good enemy.
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About Jonathan Haidt
Jonathan David Haidt (born October 19, 1963) is an American social psychologist, Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University Stern School of Business, and author. His main areas of study are the psychology of morality and moral emotions.
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Jonathan David Haidt
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Dr. Jonathan Haidt
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So now we have three models of the mind. Plato said that reason ought to be the master, even if philosophers are the only ones who can reach a high level of mastery. Hume said that reason is and ought to be the servant of the passions. And Jefferson gives us a third option, in which reason and sentiment are (and ought to be) independent co-rulers, like the emperors of Rome, who divided the empire into eastern and western halves. Who is right?
If thinking is confirmatory rather than exploratory in these dry and easy cases, then what chance is there that people will think in an open-minded, exploratory way when self-interest, social identity, and strong emotions make them want or even need to reach a preordained conclusion? 3. WE LIE, CHEAT, AND JUSTIFY SO WELL THAT WE HONESTLY BELIEVE WE ARE HONEST
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Psychologists often approach personality by measuring basic traits such as the “big five”: neuroticism, extroversion, openness to new experiences, agreeableness (warmth/niceness), and conscientiousness.15 These traits are facts about the elephant, about a person’s automatic reactions to various situations. They are fairly similar between identical twins reared apart, indicating that they are influenced in part by genes, although they are also influenced by changes in the conditions of one’s life or the roles one plays, such as becoming a parent.16 But psychologist Dan McAdams has suggested that personality really has three levels...
The third level of personality is that of the “life story.” Human beings in every culture are fascinated by stories; we create them wherever we can. (See those seven stars up there? They are seven sisters who once . . . ) It’s no different with our own lives. We can’t stop ourselves from creating what McAdams describes as an “evolving story that integrates a reconstructed past, perceived present, and anticipated future into a coherent and vitalizing life myth.”18 Although the lowest level of personality is mostly about the elephant, the life story is written primarily by the rider. You create your story in consciousness as you interpret your own behavior, and as you listen to other people’s thoughts about you. The life story is not the work of a historian — remember that the rider has no access to the real causes of your behavior; it is more like a work of historical fiction that makes plenty of references to real events and connects them by dramatizations and interpretations that might or might not be true to the spirit of what happened.
Adversity may be necessary for growth because it forces you to stop speeding along the road of life, allowing you to notice the paths that were branching off all along, and to think about where you really want to end up.
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