Post
by DevilsAdvocate » 25 Jul 2020, 09:03
I actually read through this entire book again a second time. A big part of the book that I didn't talk about before was the question of, "Why are we so groupish?" Haidt explained this as a product of evolution where he thought it made sense that groups that were more cohesive and able to work together as a team better would have had a distinct competitive advantage over groups full of people that were more individualistic, selfish, etc. and would tend to do a better job of converting available resources into offspring meaning that more of their DNA would survive over time. He describes it by saying, "We are 90% chimp and 10% bee" which I thought sounded kind of silly and hard to buy into at first but I guess it was just his way to make it easy to understand and remember the general idea that people have instincts for teamwork and sincere group loyalty that look more like what we see in bees than chimps even though we are physically something like 98% the same as chimps in terms of DNA.
I think the book does a good job of explaining the actual human behavior we see in real life because it seems like regardless of the reasons why people can be easily emotionally influenced to basically go along with the crowd quite often against what they would normally think and/or do if it was entirely their own decision. And the influence can be good or bad depending on the situation, your perspective, which group you identify with or not, etc. For example, look at things like groupthink, witch hunts, and mass movements like fascism and communist revolutions. It reminds me of the explanation for witch hunts by C.S. Lewis to the effect that it was basically an error of fact rather than faulty moral intentions because the average person's natural moral instincts haven't changed and the main difference is simply that most people nowadays don't really believe that there are witches in league with Satan that have magical powers to do real harm. I think there is something to this but I think there was also some heavy group dynamics influence behind it as well.
Basically being surrounded by others that think and act a certain way makes it easier for others to go along with as well and harder for isolated individuals to question the group. I also think this does a good job of explaining some of our experiences in the Church. For example, some critics have accused the Church of being a "cult" due to characteristics like heavy emphasis on the idea of us-versus-them, that the outside world is evil, scary, etc. and we are the only ones that know the full truth, along with other supposed warning signs many of which are related to group identification and loyalty. But looking at other religious groups like the Muslims, Amish, Orthodox Jews, and JWs some of this doesn't seem nearly as unusual, sinister, or by design as some critics try to make it sound but rather only human to some extent if you are raised in a culture like this.
"Truth is what works." - William James
