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

Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say.

Understanding the simple fact that morality differs around the world, and even within societies, is the first step toward understanding your righteous mind.

next step is to understand where these many moralities came from in the first place.

The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider’s job is to serve the elephant

PART IIntuitions Come First,Strategic Reasoning Second

world without moralism, gossip, and judgment would quickly decay into chaos. But if we want to understand ourselves, our divisions, our limits, and our potentials, we need to step back, drop the moralism, apply some moral psychology, and analyze the game we’re all playing

in Europe and elsewhere, the word liberal is truer to its original meaning—valuing liberty above all else, including in economic activities.

liberal refers to progressive or left-wing politics,

People bind themselves into political teams that share moral narratives. Once they accept a particular narrative, they become blind to alternative moral worlds.

Darwin’s ideas about group selection fell out of favor in the 1960s, but recent discoveries are putting his ideas back into play, and the implications are profound.