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When I noticed other people, I wondered what it was like to be alive. They did not know, could not know, how I felt inside. My shell still passed for normal. I felt like I should scream for help, someone should help, but I knew that the
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“it would explain why extreme partisans are so stubborn, closed-minded, and committed to beliefs that often seem bizarre or paranoid. Like rats that cannot stop pressing a button, partisans may be simply unable to stop believing weird things. The partisan brain has been reinforced so many times for performing mental contortions that free it from unwanted beliefs. Extreme partisanship may be literally addictive.”
― The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
― The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
“Religions are moral exoskeletons. If you live in a religious community, you are enmeshed in a set of norms, relationships, and institutions that work primarily on the elephant to influence your behavior. But if you are an atheist living in a looser community with a less binding moral matrix, you might have to rely somewhat more on an internal moral compass, read by the rider. That might sound appealing to rationalists, but it is also a recipe for anomie—Durkheim’s word for what happens to a society that no longer has a shared moral order.63 (It means, literally, “normlessness.”) We evolved to live, trade, and trust within shared moral matrices. When societies lose their grip on individuals, allowing all to do as they please, the result is often a decrease in happiness and an increase in suicide, as Durkheim showed more than a hundred years ago.”
― The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
― The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
“Evolution is a design process; it’s just not an intelligent design process.”
― The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
― The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
“I had escaped from my prior partisan mind-set (reject first, ask rhetorical questions later) and began to think about liberal and conservative policies as manifestations of deeply conflicting but equally heartfelt visions of the good society.28”
― The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
― The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
“If you really want to change someone’s mind on a moral or political matter, you’ll need to see things from that person’s angle as well as your own. And if you do truly see it the other person’s way—deeply and intuitively—you might even find your own mind opening in response. Empathy is an antidote to righteousness, although it’s very difficult to empathize across a moral divide.”
― The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
― The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
Eileen’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Eileen’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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