Social reality is so complicated that, once you join one team or the other, you become specialized in detecting certain patterns, but you become blind to other patterns.
Jonathan HaidtRead
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
Interpretation
What this quote means
Rituals dismissed by skeptics may actually facilitate human cooperation and community bonding.
In this quote, Jonathan Haidt emphasizes the significance of ritual practices, which are often viewed by New Atheists as cumbersome and illogical. He argues that such rituals might actually play a crucial role in fostering cooperation among individuals who are not genetically related, thereby addressing one of humanity's greatest challenges: forming bonds and working together for mutual benefit despite differing backgrounds and beliefs.
Themes
RitualCooperationHuman BehaviorCommunityAtheism
In practice
Example use cases
During a keynote presentation on the importance of cultural rituals in modern society.
More from Jonathan Haidt
All quotes →Understanding the simple fact that morality differs around the world, and even within societies, is the first step toward understanding your righteous mind.
Jonathan HaidtRead
Suppose you read about a pill that you could take once a day to reduce anxiety and increase your contentment. Would you take it? Suppose further that the pill has a great variety of side effects, all of them good: increased self-esteem, empathy, and trust; it even improves memory. Suppose, finally, that the pill is all natural and costs nothing. Now would you take it? The pill exists. It is meditation.
Jonathan HaidtRead
Trying to run Congress without human relationships is like trying to run a car without motor oil. Should we be surprised when the whole thing freezes up?
Jonathan HaidtRead
If you grow up in a WEIRD society, you become so well educated in the ethic of autonomy that you can detect oppression and inequality even where the apparent victims see nothing wrong.
Jonathan HaidtRead
When you hear someone criticize a policy on the other side, that's 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.
Jonathan HaidtRead
Similar quotes
One who previously made bad karma, but who reforms and creates good karma, brightens the world like the moon appearing from behind a cloud.
Gautama BuddhaRead
Paracelsus At times I almost dream I too have spent a life the sages’ way, And tread once more familiar paths. Perchance I perished in an arrogant self-reliance Ages ago; and in that act a prayer For one more chance went up so earnest, so Instinct with better light let in by death, That life was blotted out — not so completely But scattered wrecks enough of it remain, Dim memories, as now, when once more seems The goal in sight again.
Robert BrowningRead
...two thirds of all sorrow is homemade and, so far as the universe is concerned, unnecessary.
Aldous HuxleyRead
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
Wilfred OwenRead
Every bird which flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw.
Victor HugoRead
PREDESTINATION, n. The doctrine that all things occur according to programme. . . . not be confused with that of foreordination. The difference is great enough to have deluged Christendom with ink, to say nothing of the gore.
Ambrose BierceRead