Al Owski’s Reviews > The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion > Status Update

“Durkheimian higher-level sentiments is "collective effervescence," which describes the passion and ecstasy that group rituals can generate. As Durkheim put it: "The very act of congregating is an exceptionally powerful stimulant. Once the individuals are gathered together, a sort of electricity is generated from their closeness and quickly launches them to an extraordinary height of exaltation." ”

“Durkheim frequently criticized his contemporaries, such as Freud, who tried to explain morality and religion using only the psychology of individuals and their pairwise relationships. (God is just a father figure, said Freud.) Durkheim argued, in contrast, that Homo sapiens was really Homo duplex, a creature who exists at two levels: as an individual and as part of the larger society."

“Ehrenreich was surprised to discover how little help she could get from psychology in her quest to understand collective joy. Psychology has a rich language for describing relationships among pairs of people, from fleeting attractions to ego-dissolving love to pathological obsession. But what about the love that can exist among dozens of people?”

“Ehrenreich argues, collective and ecstatic dancing is a nearly universal "biotechnology" for binding groups together. She agrees with McNeill that it is a form of muscular bonding. It fosters love, trust, and equality. It was common in ancient Greece (think of Dionysus and his cult) and in early Christianity (which she says was a "danced" religion until dancing in church was suppressed in the Middle Ages).”

“If the hive hypothesis is true, then it has enormous implications for how we should design organizations, study religion, and search for meaning and joy in our lives. Is it true? Is there really a hive switch?”

“In the last chapter, I suggested that human nature is 90 percent chimp and 10 percent bee. We are like chimps in being primates whose minds were shaped by the relentless competition of individuals with their neighbors. …But human nature also has a more recent groupish overlay. We are like bees in being ultrasocial creatures whose minds were shaped by the relentless competition of groups with other groups.”

“Darwin believed that morality was an adaptation that evolved by natural selection operating at the individual level and at the group level. Tribes with more virtuous members replaced tribes with more selfish members.”

“Lesley Newson read an early draft of this chapter, she sent me this note: "I think it is important not to give readers the impression that groups competing necessarily meant groups being at war or fighting with one another. They were competing to be the most efficient at turning resources into offspring. Don't forget that women and children were also very important members of these groups." ”

“If genetic evolution was able to fine-tune our bones, teeth, skin, and metabolism in just a few thousand years as our diets and climates changed, how could genetic evolution not have tinkered with our brains and behaviors as our social environments underwent the most radical transformation in primate history?”

“The coevolution of tribal minds and tribal cultures didn't just prepare us for war; it also prepared us for far more peaceful coexistence within our groups, and, in modern times, for cooperation on a vast scale as well.”