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" I got interested in the American culture war back in 2004, and it's one of the only growth stocks I've ever invested in. "
Jonathan Haidt
War
American
Culture
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" Morality binds people into groups. It gives us tribalism, it gives us genocide, war, and politics. But it also gives us heroism, altruism, and sainthood. "
Jonathan Haidt
Heroism
Morality
People
" Politics is really religion. Politics is about sacredness. Politics is about offering a vision that will bind the nation together to pursue greatness. "
Jonathan Haidt
Vision
Religion
Greatness
" When I began my work on how morality varies across the political spectrum, there was a partisan, manipulative element to it. I wanted to help the Democrats win. "
Jonathan Haidt
Work
Win
Political
" The big breakthrough for me was, once I stopped disliking conservatives and could actually see what they were right about, they showed me a lot of things that liberals were wrong about. But at the same time, I think there are some things that liberals are right about that conservatives have trouble seeing. "
Jonathan Haidt
Time
Think
Seeing
" There's an enormous difference between voting for a candidate because you hate another ethnic group and voting for a candidate because he's a member of your ethnic group. "
Jonathan Haidt
Voting
You
He
" 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
Start
Choices
Environment
" Trying to run Congress without human relationships is like trying to run a car without motor oil. Should we be surprised when the whole thing freezes up? "
Jonathan Haidt
Car
Trying
Run
" If you have high IQ, you're really good at finding post-hoc arguments to support your feelings of truthiness. "
Jonathan Haidt
Finding
You
Support
" Democrats talk about programs like Social Security or Medicare, but it's not clear to most voters what Democrats' core moral values are. "
Jonathan Haidt
Talk
Values
Security
" Liberals tend to be much more concerned about business and corporations as the oppressors. They look to government as the solution. On the Right it's the opposite. They see business as good, as what generates wealth in society, and they see government as the oppressor, which makes it hard for especially small businesspeople. "
Jonathan Haidt
Society
Business
Good
" On the religious Right and religious people in general have the feeling that the world is not just material, the world is not just there for us to do what we want with. That our bodies, things have an immaterial essence, a spiritual essence that God is in all of us. "
Jonathan Haidt
Feeling
God
World
" I began graduate school in the late 1980s, and my goal was to understand how morality varied across cultures and nations. I did some research comparing moral judgment in India and the U.S.A. "
Jonathan Haidt
School
Morality
Moral
" I did say that in-group, authority and purity are necessary for the maintenance of order, but I would never give them a blanket endorsement. "
Jonathan Haidt
Give
Authority
Maintenance
" 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
Kind
Country
Voting
" My early research - I'm a social psychologist, and my early research was on how people make moral judgments. When I entered the field in 1987, everybody was looking at moral reasoning - how do kids reason about a moral dilemma? Should a guy steal a drug to save his wife's life? "
Jonathan Haidt
Looking
Life
People
" People can believe pretty much whatever they want to believe about moral and political issues, as long as some other people near them believe it, so you have to focus on indirect methods to change what people want to believe. "
Jonathan Haidt
Change
Long
People
" 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
End
Friends
Down
" Most of our social nature is like that of other primates - we're mostly out for ourselves. "
Jonathan Haidt
Social
Like
Nature
" When you hear someone criticize a policy on the other side, that's fine. But when you start hearing motive-mongering and demonization, stand up to it just as you would if it were something that was racist or sexist. If we avoid the demonization, disagreements can be positive. "
Jonathan Haidt
Stand
Start
Stand Up
" Congress is full of good, decent, smart people who have devoted their lives to public service. "
Jonathan Haidt
Good
Congress
Smart
" Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into teams... but thereby makes us go blind to objective reality. "
Jonathan Haidt
Reality
Morality
Blind
" 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
Values
Will
Copy
" 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
Blind
Complicated
You
" We humans are really good at forming groups to compete, and then dissolving the groups and reforming them along different lines to compete in a different way. "
Jonathan Haidt
Then
Along
Different
" 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
Liberal
Emotions
Country
" 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
Achieve
Precious
Lose
" In accounts of men in battle, there is an incredible adrenaline rush from group-versus-group conflict. The fervor and passion of partisans is clearly rewarding; and if it's rewarding, it involves dopamine; and if it involves dopamine, then it is potentially addictive. "
Jonathan Haidt
Men
Conflict
Battle
" Liberals are my friends, my colleagues, my social world. "
Jonathan Haidt
Colleagues
Liberals
Friends
" It really is a fact that liberals are much higher than conservatives on a major personality trait called 'openness to experience.' People who are high on openness to experience just crave novelty, variety, diversity, new ideas, travel. People low on it like things that are familiar, that are safe and dependable. "
Jonathan Haidt
Experience
Travel
Personality
" Economic issues are just as much moral issues as social issues. "
Jonathan Haidt
Social
Moral
Economic