you've not been paying attention.
Brings to mind Frank Bruni's book
The Age of Grievance I cited last July, along with some other topically relevant works.
UPDATE
I finished Kurt's book. It could scarcely be more timely, given current chaotic events. From the Science Magazine review:
Navigating conflict is difficult in the best of circumstances. It becomes even harder when our disagreements are deeply rooted in opposing moral convictions about the directions in which our collective lives are moving. When these tensions are embedded in contexts involving existential threats such as a changing climate that brings devastating storms or low wages and high prices for everything from grocery staples to health care and housing, fighting naturally erupts over the best way to fix a broken system. Political polarization seems inevitable.
In his compelling book, Outraged: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to Find Common Ground, moral psychologist Kurt Gray uses stories and science to help readers understand why people are so angry at each other about almost everything. The reason, in his view? They feel threatened. They are afraid of what the future holds for them and for those they love. They feel as though the things that might ease their daily struggles are being ignored or even mocked by “the other side.”…
Dr. Gray is one busy research scholar. Impressive.
About the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding
Political intolerance is high. People dread turning on the news and discussing politics at the dinner table. This intolerance not only poisons our everyday interactions, but also imperils the health of democracies. How do we increase tolerance and civility? Some scientific work has examined how to bridge divides across people, but it is often scattered into disconnected disciplines, and current funding climates make it difficult to create momentum. The Center for the Science of Moral Understanding seeks to unite this work and catalyze a new science of moral understanding. The CSMU will then translate these new discoveries into societal change, creating a set of empirically based ways of increasing tolerance.
The Center harnesses a key insight—that much political disagreement is moral disagreement. To increase tolerance and civility, we need to understand the nature of moral judgment and the interpersonal processes that transform divergent moral judgments into conflict. The Center therefore connects moral and social psychology with related disciplines of neuroscience, political science, sociology, history, philosophy, economics, and legal studies.
Of particular timely relevance:
Five stars.
UPDATE: QUICK TANGENTIALLY RELEVANT DIVERGENCE
The qualification of the noun "liberties" by the adjective "personal" is unfounded. Any qualification is unfounded. This particular one suggests that we can become free people without society, which is absolutely not true. We all begin life as helpless infants. Whether we can become free or not depends on circumstances beyond our control. No amount of declaiming "personal liberty" will create the conditions in which a baby grows up with the capacities and structures needed to be a free person. That effort to create a person must be social, beginning with the parents, and extending to friends, teachers, child-care workers, and others. A child needs a special kind of time at a special time of life, and that time will only exist if we recognize that the entire situation is about freedom and that freedom requires cooperation. If we want liberty, in other words, we cannot limit ourselves to the personal. The example of the newborn is important, because it is what we all share, but also because it suggests a truth that continues throughout life. In one way or other, we are always vulnerable, and our ability to be free will always depend on cooperation.
The use of the plural "liberties" (rather than "liberty" or "freedom" in the singular) is not an extension but an unwelcome qualification, in fact a limitation. The use of the plural suggests that there is a finite list of specific liberties, rather than freedom for all people as such. This indicates that liberty is constrained for people. Interestingly, no such constraint is placed upon the inhuman abstraction that also figures in Jeff Bezos's editorial line, "the free market." What has unqualified freedom, according to Bezos? Not people. The market. And this, as we shall see, is not only incoherent but authoritarian.
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SOME OTHER RELATED POSTS
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KURT GRAY SUMS UP
Moral Understanding
Moral understanding is hard won, and can be easily lost, especially because of the allure of the three myths debunked in this book. Myth 1 is that humans are more predators than prey. This misconception about human nature poisons our perceptions of our political opponents, who we wrongly assume want to watch the world burn. Fortunately, the truth is that people are more prey than predators; we are less motivated to destroy and more motivated to protect ourselves and society.
Myth 2 touches on the idea that people with different politics have deeply different minds. One theory suggests that liberals care only about direct physical and emotional harm and the harm of unfairness, while conservatives care about these concerns plus “harmless” morality like loyalty to group members, respecting authorities, and protecting purity. But the notion of “harmless wrongs” is a myth, grounded in the misconception that harm is an objective fact. It is not.
When it comes to our moral psychology, harm is a matter of perception. Everyone’s moral judgments are grounded in intuitive perceptions of victimization, and moral differences arise from different assumptions about who or what is especially vulnerable to victimization. Despite our different moral stances, this shared focus on harm provides common ground with our opponents, which can help us bridge divides.
To best harness this common ground and connect across political disagreement, we need to let go of a third myth: that facts are the best way to achieve moral understanding in contentious conversations. Ever since the Enlightenment, facts have (understandably) held a privileged position in our society, but our minds are better suited to connect over stories, especially those that center on suffering. Sharing stories of harm is more effective at bridging divides than launching statistics at our opponents. When we combine this advice with practitioner-tested steps for having better dialogues—connect, invite, and validate—conversations with political opponents go much better than expected.
This book has been about the psychology of our moral disagreements, because I believe that understanding the mind is crucial to understanding our human condition—and we are all humans, no matter our moral positions. When we appreciate how our minds work, it is easier to sit with the central tension of moral conflict: that other people can disagree with you and still be good people. Like my family in Nebraska, people can vote for different candidates and still be caring, compassionate, and moral people.
Despite having different moral convictions, people on the other side still care about their loved ones and still feel threatened by the modern world. In fact, it is because people care about their loved ones and feel threatened that they hold fast to their moral convictions. People with different politics might disagree with you about how best to protect society from harm, but we all genuinely care about preventing victimization.
Whether in politics or everyday life, most of us are trying our best to uphold morality. It can be hard to remember this, especially when someone insults you on social media, comparing your side to the Nazis—or when someone corners your car in a dark loading dock, like when I was a teenager on the way to the movies that night. But everyone—even the man who slapped me around—wakes up in the morning striving to do right. Each of us shares a human nature built upon detecting threat and a morality focused on preventing harm, and each of us wants our experiences of suffering to be heard.
It is true that many of us today are outraged. But most of us want to be less outraged, and understanding the truth about our moral minds will help.
Gray, Kurt. Outraged: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to Find Common Ground (pp. 366-368). (Function). Kindle Edition.
You really should buy this book and study it closely.
More to say shortly...
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