The social intuitionist model offers an explanation of why moral and political arguments are so frustrating: because moral reasons are the tail wagged by the intuitive dog. A dog’s tail wags to communicate. You can’t make a dog happy by forcibly wagging its tail. And you can’t change people’s minds by utterly refuting their arguments.
~ Jonathan Haidt
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People bind themselves into political teams that share moral narratives. Once they accept a particular narrative, they become blind to alternative moral worlds.
~ Jonathan Haidt
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Our moral thinking is much more like a politician searching for votes than a scientist searching for truth.
~ Jonathan Haidt
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People who devote their lives to studying something often come to believe that the object of their fascination is the key to understanding everything.
~ Jonathan Haidt
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Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.
~ Jonathan Haidt
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Happiness is not something that you can find, acquire, or achieve directly. You have to get the conditions right and then wait. Some of those conditions are within you, such as coherence among the parts and levels of your personality. Other conditions require relationships to things beyond you.
~ Jonathan Haidt
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The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor.
~ Jonathan Haidt
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Anyone who values truth should stop worshipping reason.
~ Jonathan Haidt
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Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it.
~ Jonathan Haidt
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The social intuitionist model offers an explanation of why moral and political arguments are so frustrating: because moral reasons are the tail wagged by the intuitive dog. A dog’s tail wags to communicate. You can’t make a dog happy by forcibly wagging its tail. And you can’t change people’s minds by utterly refuting their arguments.
~ Jonathan Haidt
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