We’d never get through the world if we knew it as it is: enormous and chaotic. We’d need a brain so large that we couldn’t keep our heads off the ground. The brain’s simplification of reality means that anything that gets into the mind is immediately overemphasized, whether it is an emotional slight, a change in the weather, or a matter of statecraft. So we give the most recent news that greatest weight in decision making. This leads to frequent and dramatic fluctuations in our thoughts and moods, and our fragile minds almost leave us little choice but to delude ourselves most of the time.
NO ONE FACES REALITY.
We all react to a simplified, filtered model of the world, a personal story we tell ourselves with respect to the world and our place in it.
From Healthy Pleasures by Robert Ornstein and David Sobel.
Conservatives and liberals – different moralities
October 13, 2008Good article from Steven Pinker in the NY Times magazine.
http://nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html?pagewanted=all
The ranking and placement of moral spheres also divides the cultures of liberals and conservatives in the United States. Many bones of contention, like homosexuality, atheism and one-parent families from the right, or racial imbalances, sweatshops and executive pay from the left, reflect different weightings of the spheres. In a large Web survey, Haidt found that liberals put a lopsided moral weight on harm and fairness while playing down group loyalty, authority and purity. Conservatives instead place a moderately high weight on all five. It’s not surprising that each side thinks it is driven by lofty ethical values and that the other side is base and unprincipled.
Posted in Politics, Social Commentary, The Immoral Brain | 3 Comments »