The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt changed the way I view morality and disagreement.

The book is presented in digestible prose, making it great for audiobook consumption. That’s an amazing feat, considering this book addresses what I consider to be the most important subject for the future of humanity: reconciling our few differences.

The elephant represents moral intuitions, which guide the majority of moral decision making. The rider represents human reason, which can influence the lumbering elephant but with difficulty and typically after the elephant has decided the path. This framework illuminates several properties.

First, our sense of morality, in practice, is influenced by factors beyond reasoning, such as our genetics, culture, and environment.

Second, if one aims to understand other’s beliefs they must appeal to their intuitions and emotions instead of reason. Haidt connects this point to Dale Carnegie’s 1936 classic How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Third, and perhaps most important, reason (the rider) will often be employed to justify the intuition retroactively. At the individual and societal level, cognitive resources are spent to generate logic that justify the predetermined moral intuitions. To clarify, the logic is creatively crafted after a society determines a morality. This realization should, in theory, give pause to the tendency of people to morally condemn other cultures. Though by the same reasoning don’t expect the “rider” to be so capable!

Haidt’s argument that reasoning is primarily used to justify preexisting moral intuitions reversed my prior views. I have admired Immanuel Kant and his rigorous Categorial Imperative, and have felt myself drawn to the logical system of Utilitarianism. There is something comforting about a logical system of ethics, even if I recognize it is fantasy. These systems are too rigid for Haidt, who argues that they say more about the atypical eccentricities of their creators than of human nature.

The ring has the power to make its wearer invisible, and is a likely influence for the One Ring of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. In Plato’s Republic, his brother Glaucon argues to Socrates that justice is a social construct rather than an inherent value. He argues that the wearer of the Ring of Gyges would have no incentives to act morally, because they bear no risk of social cost, and therefore would act purely to maximize their self interest. Haidt agrees with this point, dismissing Socrates’s rebuttal that to act justly has inherent value by improving the health of a persons spirit. Our morality exists in relation to and for the sake of our peers. To wield the Ring of Gyges is to be cursed to moral decay, as Tolkien poetically displayed. Interestingly, only after the wearer of the One Ring is forcefully separated from it can the repulsive decomposition of them be seen by others. It is safer and more realistic to acknowledge the inherent danger of such power, than to believe that reason or character could overcome it.

Haidt’s moral foundation of politics is presented by another useful metaphor; that of taste buds. Every person has the same array of taste receptors, but a person’s relative sensitivities for each taste is unique and determines their preferences.

The “tastes” of moral judgement exist, according to Haidt, on the following spectrums:1) Care/Harm 2) Fairness/Cheating 3) Liberty/Oppression 4) Loyalty/Betrayal 5) Authority/Subversion 6) Sanctity/Degradation. A person’s genetics, culture, and environment (the elephant) situate them within a matrix of these moral spectrums. In this morally relativistic framework, convincing someone to change their moral judgment is as difficult as convincing them of the deliciousness of fertilized duck egg!

The general “taste” of Americas political alignments are illustrated below. As we get ready for an election in the coming days, and as America trends toward greater political polarity, this framework will go far to contextualize our differences. It is important to remember that both sides ultimately desire goodness. This division that we see is emergent as a feature in our genetic code to help our species navigate toward our various ambitious goals. It is not a flaw. As long as we avoid violence while exchanging ideas I have faith that America will use this balance productively, and even appreciate its necessity.

As Haidt puts it, “We are 90 percent chimp and 10 percent bee”. Humans are exceptionally social creatures, and notably so when compared to our nearest genetic cousins. The (relative) success of our species stems from this collaborative ability. When animals cross the “evolutionary rubicon” and develop shared intentionality an individual can then specialize in tasks that allow the group to function as a superorganism. This gives the species a tremendous advantage in competition for finite resources. 150 million years ago, before ants and termites developed social altruism, they were likely existing as independent bodies like wasps or cockroaches do now. They would compete against each other for food and were much more vulnerable to predation. Now ants make up about 20% of the terrestrial animal biomass, and termites make up about 14% which is close to that of humans. Cattle, which have been bred to serve humans, make up about 27% of such biomass. The benefits that sociality conveys on a species is clear, and much of our ethical framework goes toward supporting this gift. Rightfully so.

The book also covers interesting subjects including the role of hallucinogens in group cultures, religion and its social utility, and “myside” bias, where it appears high intelligence does not necessarily endow a person with a greater ability to discern objective truth but instead to generate more creative justifications for their prior opinions. This summary covers just a few of my favorite points, and the entire book is worth reading for those who wish to learn more about morality and human nature.

Some of the science referenced by Haidt is new and may change over time, and like any theory of morality his is speculative. That being said, I think it appropriately builds off of previous work in the field and offers new, fair, and exciting perspectives for understanding our human world.