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The very ritual practices that the New Atheists dismiss as costly, inefficient and irrational turn out to be a solution to one of the hardest problems humans face: cooperation without kinship

Jonathan Haidt

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Jonathan Haidt
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: October 19
Psychologist
University Teacher
Writer
New York City
New York
Jonathan David Haidt
Without
Problems
Practices
Turn
Irrational
Practice
Ritual
Face
Cooperation
Inefficient
Turns
Solution
Dismiss
Faces
Atheist
Kinship
Problem
Hardest
Costly
Humans
Solutions
Atheists

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Let me say it diplomatically: Most religions are tribal to some degree.
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To understand most important ideas in psychology, you need to understand how the mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict. We assume that there is one person in each body, but in some ways we are each more like a committee whose members have been thrown together to do a job, but who often find themselves working at cross purposes.
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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.
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Liberals are my friends, my colleagues, my social world.
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Legalizing homosexuality is not the first step on a slippery slope to legalizing everything.
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The psychological origins of love are in attachment to parents and sexual partners. We do not attach to ourselves we do not seek security and fulfillment in ourselves.
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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.
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In college, I was dead set on being a philosophy major, because I wanted to figure out the meaning of life. Four years later I realized philosophy had really nothing to say about the meaning of life, and psychology and literature are really where it's at.
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Economic issues are just as much moral issues as social issues.
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The rider evolved to serve to the elephant.
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The most powerful force ever known on this planet is human cooperation - a force for construction and destruction.
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Sacredness binds people together, and then blinds them to the arbitrariness of the practice.
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The extreme self-sacrifice characteristic of group-selected species such as ants and bees can often be found among soldiers.
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I think that moral philosophy is useful for framing questions, but terrible at answering them. I think moral psychology is booming right now, and we're making a lot of progress on understanding how we actually work, what our moral nature is.
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If you get something for nothing, part of you may be pleased, but part of you moves your hand to give something back.
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science is a smorgasbord, and google will guide you to the study that's right for you.
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Reciprocity is a deep instinct it is the basic currency of social life.
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America is very much about individual happiness, the right to expression, self-determination. In America you do need to point to harm befalls victims before you can limit someone else's rights.
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We can tolerate great diversity in our aesthetic beliefs, but we can't tolerate much diversity in our moral beliefs.
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When you hear someone criticize a policy on the other side, thats 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.
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