M. Rez. Isolationism during the 1900's was a good thing for America though, especially after the Civil and Spanish American wars. It was only until the Nazi's came along did globalism through imperialism became pertinent with organizations like the UN and then NATO. Isolationism is necessary sometimes, if you have a dirty back yard, you shouldn't be trying to clean up your neighbors, no?
I've seen a bunch of Jonathan Haidt's talks and he is amazing. This stuff is so fascinating to me. What goes on in people's heads and how it relates to everything we do is AWESOME.
"It's not about race, it's about culture".....Yessss!!!!! FINALLY!!!! Correct. The elephant of truth in the room. Most people aren't racist towards others, we often don't like different Cultural practices.
Too many people love shouting "racist" to understand this really obvious point. The number of people in the UK who voted for the explicitly racist party was about 1% of the population. The number who want less immigration is about 70%, last I checked. It's so clear there's a big difference between culture and race.
British people don't want less immigration because of culture though, they want less immigration because the tabloids tell them to hate immigration. That's it.
Luigi Camp works for india as well. we have loads of regional parties with specific agendas for particular communities who come together with the major parties and form coalition govt.
AWESOME..first think of something positive about your "enemy" ...then attempt a conversation all the while keeping empathy in mind. This guy is a genius.
it isn't easy, he never said it was easy. To look someone dead in the face and say "I am sorry for having a different opinion, how can we forgive each other and find compromise?" it takes courage and a commitment to what i feel is a sound set of personal morals and values.
empathy is a bad thing taken to an extreme just like anything else. this has the potential to cause people to get a long, it also has the potential to allow the establishment to severely abuse their power
fierce tribalism cannot be defeated until human brain chemistry is changed. your insight into this comment section is incredible. can you please tell us when the biological singularity will occur?
RedEyes I don't know where you are from, but this same kind of extreme partisanship is on the rise in pretty much every country in europe as well. While he is making the case for the US, I believe this is applicable to some extent to every country.
Not every country, just Western countries. That is a good thing for the rest of the world. Westerners would be tearing each other apart, instead of banding together and murdering and plundering the rest of the world.
Conscious Being Just westerners? yeah if you count Ukraine in the west, if you dismiss yellow shirts and red shirts in Thailand, if you ignore tribalism across African culture, if you turn a blind eye on all the warring factions in Syria. Yeah just westerners.
Wow! I love what he says at the end about talking with Uncle Bob. I do that all the time! I don't like debate, I like to share ideas though. I find that if you find common ground you can expand from there and share ideas, the other person will actually hear you and will try to understand. When you start to go too far away from where you agree you just bring the conversation right back around to something you agree on. This is the only way I survive not being left or right lol I'm so grateful for this talk and that all you people enjoyed it! Now get out there and spread the word and spread the love! #spreadthelove
Thank you for this talk. I hope we can all move towards thinking, empathy, love, more than disgust and lizard brains of primitive creatures. I think we can choose to rise above what manipulating people want us to fall into in order to control. We can be more. We have to be more in order to have an assemblance of peace and any sort of resolution with anything.
I can't argue with your point. Except, some of the comments in the comment section say otherwise or say something that has nothing to do with this talk
I'm moderate and I can see both sides. I can't wait for respectfulness to be a part of our country again. I can't participate in hate slinging from either party. When the dust settles tomorrow I can finally relax. I am sad about 2016. How the world sees us makes me embarrassed! This is my first time voting and I won't stop because this year was ridiculous. AMERICA NEEDS COUNSELING!! 😨
Respect for self and for others is sadly lacking. I would like to see respect and integrity in people again instead of this degenerate state they have sunk into. It does not help when people play into agenda stirred through mass media and by politicians and greedy corporate people. There are many problems and they go very deep.
Gabriella Dean when was America respectful? When they held people slaves? When they captured and drugged people so that railroads could be built? When they water hosed children fighting for their rights? I believe the issue is that we believe that America has even been unified or respectful, at least with all its people. Hopefully 2016 woke you all up to what has already been here
A.F. TV: Thinking ... "We are The Sane and Sensible Few who can see through all this petty-@ssed tribalism. Thus, we are the anointed special group that stands head and shoulders above the mass of 'them'... the Anti-Tribalism Tribe™!" Could be onto something here. Gotta go make an interminable, majorly s#!tty think-piece video about it. :-) Sincerely: "Really now ... " indeed. Well observed, Sir!
I'm stunned about how many ignorant people there are here in the comment section saying "No" or denying the most reasoned and educated opinion that has ever been said on this topic, regardless if you vote Douche or Turd
I think you are uneducated and don't know 1 thing on American politics. You're making great points for say I dont know, Venezuela or Vietnam or North Korea. Maybe you should look into moving to one of those places so your points actually make sense.
Hope you're not calling me an SJW you fuckface moron. I'm a social moderate and an economic liberal. I believe SJW's are fucking idiots, getting used by the Democratic Party to fight for things that cost the oligarchs and plutocrats absolutely nothing...so that people can pretend they are making progress while nobody does a fucking thing about the number one issue that effects working class conservatives, moderates and liberals the most: not earning enough money to live because the ultra rich have taken it all....combined with essentials like health care and education costing them too much because of the bloodsucking crony capitalist middle men taking their huge cut.
I'd wager the biggest obstacle is the difference between American original form of democracy vs social democracy. I'm not disagreeing with social programs, namely structural, that are fiscally responsible and have a realistic goal... I am not seeing a fiscally sustainable social agenda being promoted. And absolutely, this is about culture not race, but in America, society = culture + government. The cultures some immigrants come from do not have an independent culture from government and they are not assimilating because a great number of Americans now also believe in humanist social democracy that is authoritarian in nature. We need to increase trust and start learning to communicate, commentary online seems to actually be helping this.
It's misleading to ask, "Are we drawbridge-uppers or drawbridge-downers?" The more relevant question is, "Should the drawbridge be always down, regardless of the dangers? Or should it be sometimes up and sometimes down, depending on the dangers?"
That's the point of keeping both political perspectives. That way we have a better understanding of when to put it up and put it down. It's a metaphor regarding the dangers of polarization. I think the question you posed is exactly what Jonathan was getting at. You want BOTH bridge uppers and downers.
Yeah there's truth in both, the truth of charity and the truth of wariness. It's our job to discriminate which truth is applicable to the situation as we see it as an individual, then come together as a collective and talk about it. We're a group animal, we grew this way :D
Jonathan Haidt is an inspiration! "We need a new form of empathy, that reaches across divides..." "Start by appreciating something about the despised other". I loved his book "The Righteous Mind" -we all like to see our values as right, and ourselves as righteous.
I would like to recommend that a way to end the division is to have a national conscription for everyone. Choices are military, Peace Corp, or something similar. One of the reasons for the cooperation of the "Greatest Generation" was the fact that so many people were moved around. Midwest met South, Brooklyn met Peoria, and so on. With the Internet and narrow casting facilitating echo chambers and bubbles of sameness, it seems the only solution for a decent future is to mix up people just like a cake. Separated ingredients =ecchh. Mixed =yum. By becoming aware of others who are very different from yourself and working with them it might help. There are better examples and better ways to say this and I hope you can do it.
i hate to try and correct someone who's been studying this stuff for longer than I've been alive, but our intelligence and speech evolved, by definition, to help us survive. I would imagine that both perceiving reality as it actually is and being able to justify yourself to other people would be selected for, so it's probably some of each. I hope that didn't come off as too decisive.
I'm stunned to see that less than 1/3 of comments reacted with partisanship and rejection of what is clearly objective science and social theory. Well done Chris... your audience seems to be filled with moderate liberals and not new age "leftists". I am pleasantly surprised. As well, once again very impressed with Dr. Haidt, to tackle such a sensitive issue in such an empathetic and honest way. Didn't think he could beat his last TED talk. Hurray to the two of you!
i get where you are coming from but i think the general stigma on partisanship is unwise. we should be able to be partisan, bias, and still manage to be honest. personally i do not think the political sides are remotely equal in america as far as using manipulation tactics and corruption. they both do so but it's obvious that one side has done a great deal more than the other. i do not wish to get along with that party, though i'd be happy if i could get along with those who vote for that party. it is a very real threat and it is pitting people against each other on purpose. we should not be reasonable toward it
Johnathan gives brilliant insights into the psyche behind modern socioeconomics. Speaking on his last point near the end about stepping briefly outside the matrix, I read an article the other day that made me realize something similar, that I couldn't believe I never realized before. That the genre of Sci-fi especially Star Trek, and a few of the newer shows, have been doing that for decades. I never questioned why Star Trek was the show that aired the first interracial kiss, or put a spotlight on a particular injustice currently happening through the lens of ancient history of the Star Trek universe, I just applauded them for being ahead of their time, which I still do. Part of the reason they could pull off that type of progressive themed episode though, was because, like Johnathan said, it allowed the viewer to step outside their matrix! It was no longer an African American Black woman kissing a white man, it was just two space travelers from a different time so far in the future it felt unlike anything in our present. So the other worldly, unfamiliar feeling allowed most people to drop their personal feelings since they didn't have any preconceived bias of a world so foreign to them.
This is such a brilliant comment! Do you have any ideas on how people nowadays can do to step out of their matrix? Personally, I think former 2020 Democratic candidate Andrew Yang's approach of talking to primarily conservative truck drivers and persuading them about the beauty of UBI (universal basic income) is one way for two people (Yang and the truck driver) to step out the matrix. And do you mind sharing the article or telling me the publisher of the article? Again, your insights are greatly appreciated as I'm writing a political science paper lol
This elusive new form of empathy they speak of has existed for a long time. The problem is thatost of the modern world has largely abandoned it. Those of you saying respect I say no, as by definition respect means to have high admiration for or of. This is akin to putting people up on a pedestal. Instead this abandoned form of empathy is more commonly known as civility and suggests that we acknowledge our differences,agree to disagree and most importantly treat each other fairly and equally despite said differences. Do unto others as you would want done unto thy self! Indeed civility is the beating heart of a properly functioning and thriving species!
TheDMBfan Yes, what yoga can offer is a lifelong journey. Yoga is not a physical/mental exercise program that fits into one's lifestyle. Yoga is a life path... What does (your) life look like inside a yoga commitment?
+Nick Reed Emotions are neither good or bad. They ALL exist as brilliant intelligence that have each helped us survive throughout human evolution. Invitation: learn what the genius of healthy emotions really means. There is really much that is incredibly useful, to discover.
TheDMBfan Those are yoda quotes bro, here's a fitting one. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate, leads to suffering! I'm not triggered at all.
I like that this video is being retrospective on the subject rather than slamming one side over the other. I think everyone's ready for things to calm down over the next little while. I'm not even American and the last few weeks have been stressful.
The part at 18:20 about getting people to raise their hands is somewhat interesting. I know anger and worry are generally viewed as negatives, but I think a lot of people also get enjoyment out of finding things to be angry about. People like controversy. If you want to rouse the masses into doing something good, find a way to do something good which also sticks it to the person they hate.
This man has described America's 'new' social problem and he is spot on! The 'producer' and/or the director of this set-up however is very much an amateur; the mikes are on the downstage side of the speakers head, the stools are too high as well as too close to the front seats and there is too much lighting on the empty space behind the speakers.
"Without mutual trust and understanding than all that will remain in this world is fear and terror." "A 'Peace' where people understand each other is nothing but fiction."
Anyone attempting civil discourse in our culture is not praised but condemned for being civil to someone in the "deplorable" caste. It takes courage and tolerance to listen.
It is just as Tulsi Gabbard said a year ago. We can heal and go forward in unity when we stop the division, the name-calling, and all the other rascality that has been encouraged by the MIC that wants to keep us all divided.
I we on different parts of the political spectrum would even sit down in person to discuss a topic--that would be the first step. Or, if discussing over the internet--with the goals of being intellectually honest with ourselves and one another and trying to understand the other person's premise--where she/he is coming from--and to find out what we have in common. Often on the internet (here too), it appears that some people posting view postings as a debate to "win"--with that kind of attitude--nobody wins, nobody learns.
That is the human conditions, naturally we don't argue to solve a problem, we argue to prove our superiority to heighten our chances of spreading our genes. It's a mating ritual gone haywire, like almost all things humans do. Why do you think it hurts us so much to be wrong? It's not just imagined pain either, studies done show that the same parts of our brain lights up when we're proven wrong as when we're pricked by a needle. Our brain will always try to avoid pain, and the easiest way of doing that is to ignore evidence or rational arguments and just believe you're right no matter what. That's the default a lot of people will go with, a lot of the time because they just don't have the energy to keep arguing or look up the facts or get involved in the whole convoluted system these facts are often contained in. Like the guy in the video said, we're playing completely different videogames. And although all of us could understand the other persons game, and some do, a lot of people are just not going to have the time and energy to do this when it's so much easier to just think "that person is evil and a liar". We have stuff to do you know. I know that in the world of a gun tooting bible thumping racist capitalist Trump supporter he or she is right, just and good. And even though it would probably be better for all of us if I tried to understand them it just so tempting to just declare that person an evil moron and move on. I for one think this has gone beyond the point of talking, this is headed for divorce, and divorces get messy. Another TED talk called The Math of Love or something like that talks about how similar what happens when people get divorces is to countries going to war, pretty interesting stuff.
What is needed for this country is respect for each other's sides. We all need to approach our neighbor of different political opinions and start disintegrating the sense of gap. We live in a country of Americans, and each one of us is our people.
By putting a premium on their use, we all tacitly agree on science’s huge value and reason’s huge value, and by protesting successfully when we don’t receive equal societal treatment, we tacitly agree that nobody is inherently better than one another. Given that these things are largely responsible for our coming out of millennia of tyranny and misery, I think we have better reasons to unite than we have to divide.
if the president were not about being the shiniest turd and US voters were *somehow* able to hold back their tribalism for 1 election cycle the result would be an extremely bland middle of the road president-elect that would focus on legislation and all kinds of boring stuff that might actually help the middle and lower classes. trump got elected because his politics are super sexy provocateurism and he got enough poorly-educated whites riled up to out-vote the dems. simple as that.
well for one side i can see that argument; but to the other trump is not a turd at all. actually the best president in my life and most old school republicans i know think the same
this guy knows what he's talking about. Sweden is so successful because of their homogeneity. take that away and you take away trust in the social system
Yes, which is quite unfortunate. Swedes are proud of their "helpful" nature and society, but when it gets overloaded it breaks from within and without the trust it turns to hostility.
Adam Jacobs I’m a white American. My best friend is half Arab. He absolutely supports keeping the homogeneity of countries at the 90%+ of whatever race is there. Yet, it’s not about skin color, it’s about culture- stop twisting it to mean “racism will destroy us” when it’s really “people who have completely different morals will destroy us”.
@Oppranator.. So your half Arab friend wants to keep it 90%+ white and him being one of the lucky 10% that got a chance for his immigrant Arab father or mother moving to America.. lol
Two leaves in the wind: 1 The interviewer cannot ask a neutral question; 2 When Haidt starts to spell out why the left might be wrong or the right might be right, he changes the subject. This is normal and proves Haidt's point.
I invoke Love, Peace, Racial and Ethnic Unity in the whole World of the past, SPECIALLY THE PRESENT, future, in between times, outside time, in all timelines and transcending all space and time. By the Will of the Infinite, for the Good of the All.
Isn't it possible that we could emphasize as a society that all humans are the same, without taking an assimilation approach? Isn't there some value in recognizing the beauty in other cultures?
No, I am afraid, based on what I have read it is likely that tribalism will be at the forefront of human psychology as it has always been since the beginning of social mammals.
I was wondering when he would hit on the topic of the size of a tribe. A few years ago my tribe was America and all Americans. Today my tribe is those that share my ideology, morals, values, and culture
Both sides are right. One in the spirit of charity and one in the spirit of protection. Everything has pros and cons, projections of positivity and negativity of our understanding. Everything is both, how you see things changes with the way you approach them.
I dare all politically active people... to... Go to someone's Holiday party who happens to be of another party application from yours; and just become a part of their family. All members in a family are similar, but all are so different.
I hate how divided America is. I really want people to come together again, with love, good faith, and honesty so that we can go back to civil discourse.
Humans ARE different, in mind and/or body. There is no legitimate question about that. But we must still figure out how to live together in a pluralist society, which means we must tolerate 'others', not embrace or respect whatever lunacy they happen to believe or practice in contravention of necessarily secular law.
Empathy begins with praying for your enemy. Choose the first person that you can think of that you demonize and then pray for them every day until you love them. I'm not talking about the person who is voting for the candidate you don't identify with. Pray for the candidate you don't identify with. See how tolerant you really are, and see how much hate you really embrace.
Wars, instabilities, deprivation of resources are the driving force for the people to leave from one place to another. I don't think people want to go to a place where they would get discriminated intentionally, but if only we could stop causing all of these things in the first place, then we would not be seeing so many people from less stable regions fleeing from wars or economic miseries to a much stable wealthy countries to save their own lives. But again, developed countries preyed on less developed countries in order to make their own society wealthier and advanced. Colonialism, slavery and imperialism have been the most shameful reasons why the West enables to enjoy much higher quality of lives and civilizations than the rest of the world.
Truth. Fact is there just isn't enough resources to go around, if nobody is poor nobody will be willing to harvest sugar for next to nothing, sugar will become really expensive, companies won't make much of a profit selling it anymore, same goes for every single product in the world. Wars are almost always fought over resources, and the only way we can get the equality we need to avoid it is by all of us who live in developed countries to sacrifice that for a lower standard, much lower, in order to raise the masses up to an equal level. It's easy to think that with all the money there is in the world we could all just share and everyone would be rich, but the truth is that the only thing that would do would be to make money worthless. The whole idea of money makes it very hard to see what we actually have to work with, most people don't even think about it. Almost everyone knows what a liter or gallon of gasoline costs in their area, but how many takes the time to figure out how much there would be for each human if we were to divide all the oil reserves of the world between us equally? I haven't either, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be very much. It reminds me of when a casino trade in your money for chips, it doesn't look like money so it's easier to throw it away, same thing Microsoft did when they traded your money for points on the Xbox 360, it obscure the actual value. Money does this for everything we have in the world, including human labor and it totally obscures the issue that we don't have enough to sustain the entire population of the world at the level of consumption we have here in the west. And I'm not talking about the rich, but the average person, or even those who live conservatively and feel like they don't consume very much. We're always talking about how green living will solve things, but it won't really, because we still require consuming a lot of resources on making those solar panels, or fixing those wind turbines or making and disposing of those batteries, it's actually going the opposite direction despite peoples best intentions. A nuclear power plant is far more resources effective than any green energy. Growing food using distilled chemical toxins to ward of pests or genetically manipulated live stock is far more effective than "ecologic" food. If we we're going to convert everything to "ecological" food we'd have to let two thirds of the planet starve to death. Same is true for green power, it would cost at least 10 times as much resources as a nuclear power plant in everything from space to materials used. So while we're patting ourselves on the back for going solar someone else is working in terrible conditions mining the materials used and constructing the components of that panel. If they didn't the average person simply wouldn't be able to afford it. It sucks, and I really don't know if there is any solution to it. But I think a good start would be to get rid of money and take stock of everything we have on Earth and start working on a plan to raise production with minimum labor and distribute the resources more fairly world wide. Which I guess is kind of what a lot of us are doing with the exception of getting rid of money, money which now servers mainly to keep a large portion of the population blind to the catastrophe we're walking into.
We've had a divide in this country many times throughout our history. How about the slavery issue? Or the Vietnam War? The assassinations in the 60's. It was not rainbow and butterflies. The American Revolution was a country divided. This is another such time. Upheaval causes major changes. In our present state the bitterness will result in a major shift. Which side prevails will determine what country we live in
Ya but each of those had clear historic vindication. What are we battling on that history will view among the great examples you gave? Cheers to your comment.
What's interesting about his point of the "purification" of the two major US political parties, is that it seems that their rhetoric especially on social issues is more divided and "purified." But, when you look at issues regarding war and the general structure of political and economic heiracrchy, I.E. imperialism and corporatism, both parties have never been more united.
Jonathan Haidt is brilliant, but he's missing one very important thing: This is no longer a "left vs. right" issue. I've seen tons of panels in debates and such, upon which sat both Liberals and Conservatives. To understand our current division, we have to abandon the old left-right di-polar political spectrum. We need to adopt the Y-axis into our old X-axis. At the top of the Y-axis is "Authoritarianism," which gives power to an increasingly centralized government, eventually resulting in a total dictatorship; the Tyranny of one. A single, all-powerful leader who uses censorship to oppress and manipulate speech to prevent the spread of seditious ideas and unite the people into a single party, united through ultra-nationalism. At the bottom of the chart, you find "Libertarianism," which increasingly weakens a centralized government, eventually resulting in total anarchy; The tyranny of the many. It creates a lawless situation in which the most numerous group has the power to enact their will any where, at any time, upon any one. It is as destructive as Authoritarianism, but it is destructive because of the total lack of civilization, whereas total authoritarianism uses the control of civilization to totally restrict individuals and control everything about their existence. That's why we need to start talking in terms of "authoritarian" and "libertarian" aspects of the "left" and "right." Taking these aspects of political ideology into consideration allows us to understand why Authoritarian progressives (Top left corner) claim to fight "fascism (top right corner), but are doing so for the same reason, and using the same tactics as those fascists. Because they are both form of authoritarianism. They are both in support of absolute control of the populace through an absolute government. Both are short-sighted and foolish, thinking that they are in the right because the other type of fascist is bad, therefore their form must be good. Incorrect. Both forms are destructive of not just individual identity and liberty, but of the entire sum of human civilization. So no, it's not a "left vs. right" issue. It's an "Authoritarian vs. non-authoritarian" issue.
One concern is that while it is true that paining the Population of the opposing party with the 'disturbing/disgusting' characteristics of the Candidate, there is a complex inter-relationship between them. Political Identity has been found to be a core-level identifier for individuals. So perhaps the characteristics of representatives start to filter into the identities of the voters?
JP is actually a hack tho? He spouts complete nonsense so does Haidt? They both have great careers but they use it to pivot as if they know all about everything it's wild. Haidt calls all atheist dogmatic and spouts many racist dog whistles
This is why America should not be united. People are supposed to be separated, not forced to live together. If you love people you'll encourage them to freely associate and freely dissociate.
