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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights how one's upbringing in a Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) society shapes their perception of autonomy and justice.
Jonathan Haidt's quote emphasizes the influence of cultural context on individual awareness of social issues. Those raised in a WEIRD society often develop a heightened sensitivity to concepts of oppression and inequality which may not be recognized by individuals from different cultural backgrounds. This suggests that cultural upbringing heavily influences our ethical frameworks and the way we interpret experiences related to injustice.
Themes
Cultural AwarenessAutonomyInequalityOppressionEthics
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about social justice, one might quote Haidt to illustrate the importance of understanding different cultural perspectives.
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
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
We humans are really good at forming groups to compete, and then dissolving the groups and reforming them along different lines to compete in a different way.
Jonathan HaidtRead
Similar quotes
Capitalists are no more capable of self-sacrifice than a man is capable of lifting himself up by his own bootstraps.
Vladimir LeninRead
The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit ... Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do ... He does not keep "protecting" you by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that.
Lysander SpoonerRead
A miracle is not the breaking of physical laws, but rather represents laws which are incomprehensible to us.
G. I. GurdjieffRead
We are born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Everything in-between is a gift.
Yul BrynnerRead
Live the actual moment. Only this moment is life.
Nhat HanhRead
First, he realized that the sea was blue and that there was an enormous quantity of it, and that it roared and roared-really all the banalities about the ocean that one could realize, but if any one had told him then that these things were banalities, he would have gaped in wonder.
F. Scott FitzgeraldRead