The Psychological Trick Behind Every Political Argument | Jonathan Haidt

[00:00:01]Well, hello everyone. As I promised yesterday when I talked about Daniel Carneaman, who inspired this book, Shakespeare and Cognition, my most obscure and least read book. Um, I said that I would also talk about Jonathan Height who inspired this rather larger uh book Shakespeare's moral compass uh which is uh a little bit again judging by royalty checks a little bit less obscure. I think more people read this one although I do occasionally come across people who've read this one and uh it surprises me to be honest. Uh but it of my 10 books, it's definitely the hardest uh or or the or the least read in in my view. Anyway, um Jonathan height uh is somebody who I have always uh thought expanded on the work of Daniel Carneaman even though he's working in a nominally unrelated field namely that of um kind of ethics with the intersection of sociology and psychology something like this whereas Daniel Carneaman is seen as an economist or a behavioral uh economist. So he they're coming at it from slightly different angles but height in his book the righteous mind uh another one of those books that I would say uh you know caraman's thinking fast and slow you know if it's you know started me on the journey uh of really transforming my view of everything as I explained in the video yesterday uh Shakespeare's uh not Shakespare be his moral compass. Although that was the book where I most seriously engaged with Jonathan height. Heights, the Righteous Mind, uh, I would say really was the book that stopped me being a liberal, which is ironic because Jonathan Height writes that book from the perspective of being a liberal, uh, as we all get get into, but he made me realize that many of the values I thought I held or many of the the kind of things I took for granted were actually misguided uh as judged against uh the benchmark of history, tradition, our ancestors, uh cultures around the world, the test of experience and many many other things. And I will get into exactly uh why I thought that as we get going. Uh before this is a bit of an extended intro, but time is running out uh on picking up a course at the academic agency using the 25% off code promo code scorcher. There are only days left in July and I think I will play the ad today and when we come back I'm going to talk all about Jonathan Heights righteous mind the intuitive elephant versus the rider or the little lawyer as I like to call him.

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[00:04:03]It gets me every time. All right. So, let us now have a look at Jonathan Height.

[00:04:11]His big idea really is that reason is the servant of intuition. Now obviously Jonathan height was not the first person ever to say this uh historically. I would argue that the Stoics who I may do a full week on at some point. I mean among other things uh this book Shakespeare's moral compass which even though it's more read than the other one considering the amount of work I put into it could be more read I would say um has a whole chapter on moral philosophy specifically moral philosophy in Shakespeare's time. But in that in the course of that I have a look at four schools of uh ancient ethics or moral systems including Aristotle's virtue ethics uh and the stoics. So when I wrote that I became particularly interested in uh stoical uh philosophy. uh but uh Height's work really gives a kind of I guess you could say a empirical underpinning to things that the ancients uh or people have been saying uh from the time of the ancients.

[00:05:25]I should also mention uh David Hume as somebody who had this insight that you know uh reason is is a slave to the passions as Hume put it.

[00:05:40]Uh also Vilfredo Parto who I've mentioned several times and I did the whole video on uh and I wrote about in populist illusion also had this basic insight that human beings are nonrational. uh and of course Daniel Carnean who who I talked about yesterday. So he is by far not the first person to point this out. But what height does which is interesting is argue that our moral positions, our moral reasoning, our sense of what is right and wrong actually deres from these intuitions in the first place.

[00:06:19]We like to believe that we arrive at moral positions through careful rigorous analysis and reason and rationalism.

[00:06:30]Pike shows almost the reverse is almost always true. We feel first and then we rationalize.

[00:06:40]During the course of researching this book, I read lots and lots of books on ethics and on morality in general, including the worst book I have ever read uh on such topics which was by Sam Harris. Sam Harris. Yeah. The same Sam Harris uh that has the big podcast and that you may know of. [snorts] He wrote a whole book arguing that he can derive uh you know all of his all of his ethical codes from reason and reason alone. Okay, he was probably doing this in the service of his atheism when he was going through that whole uh phase.

[00:07:22]And uh I have a good go at Sam Harris in this uh book uh using Jonathan Height who is much much more convincing uh on these sorts of questions.

[00:07:35]Uh and it's so easy to see actually how Sam Harris is basically coming up with post hawk justifications for his own uh intuitions or his own emotional reactions. As Sam Harris has continued through the social and political me to forward now to 2026, it is super duper easy to see how basically everything he says is downstream from his emotions regardless of what he argues.

[00:08:10]This is why moral and political debates rarely change minds. Both sides are exchanging evidence. Both are deploying arguments in defense of conclusions that have already been reached by the emotional elephant. I'll talk more in a second about what he means by the elephant and the rider. The implication is that if you want to change someone's mind, you must speak to their intuitions first. Logic alone seldom persuades. Now this is something that I have known for a very long time and uh I don't want to say that I have been able to speak to people's intuitions. I am frequently accused of being too dry, too rational, too analytical and so on and so forth.

[00:09:02]But it is something I've always had in the back back of my mind which is why I always try to provide concrete examples things that people can kind of see and feel around them uh in order to try to do my own kind of little bit of persuasion.

[00:09:18]Uh and if you uh pick up foundations of rhetoric I talk much more about this side of things. uh there people are very seldom moved by um facts and logic.

[00:09:31]Sorry Ben Shapiro but that that is the case.

[00:09:36]Now when he talks about the elephant and the rider uh what he's talking about his his refrain throughout the book is intuition comes first and reasoning follows.

[00:09:49]And he c he basically uh embodies our intuition as a giant elephant. Okay. As a giant elephant which sways this way and that way and has a strong kind of feeling one way or the other. Uh a very good example I would say is and again this will be true regardless of who who you are watching this. If you come across a newspaper headline and the newspaper headline says too many immigrants, okay, now your emotional elephant will sway one way or the other.

[00:10:28]It could sway this way and be like, "Yeah, I really agree with that statement. I'm angry about it as well."

[00:10:34]Okay? Or it could sway this way and be like, "Oh, I don't like that. That seems a little bit racist. Oh my god, the Daily Mail." Okay? And the point is, whichever way your elephant sways, your reasoning mind, the little rider sitting on top starts to generate post hawk rationalizations for your initial sway. Okay, you sway this way or you sway that way without even thinking about it, right? It's you're just your emotion talking and then after the fact you have to say well why do I think that I need to justify it now I need to come up with all sorts of reasons for why it is that I think there are too many immigrants or why it is that I don't think there are too many immigrants and you can see in the world around you that people whether on they're on this side of the argument or this side of the argument frequently fail to come up with coherent justifications in either case and uh that is why they frequently just resort to calling each other names or getting very emotional heads up because it starts with emotion. Okay. But the point here, the deeper point by height is that the rider, okay, you think that the little rider, the cognitive, the rational brain is in control. That the elephant sways this way. And the rider will be like, "Oh, come on. Come back to the left or come back to the come back to the center of the path, elephant."

[00:12:15]But it doesn't. It doesn't do that.

[00:12:18]It very seldom does that. The the little rider, the best analogy I I I have thought of for the rider is as a lawyer. It's like your p. It's like the elephant's personal defense lawyer that is paid enough basically that it's going to come up with any old BS to justify what the elephant does. So, you're going along the path and the elephant swerves wildly to the left, the little riders on top. Instead of going, "Come on, we we need to get back to the center. We're never going to get to our destination if you keep on swerving to the left all the time. Come back to the come back to the middle."

[00:12:58]Instead of doing that, the rider goes, "You know what? It's a really good reason. It's really good idea to go left. Here are the reasons. I have gone left because of A. I have gone left because of B. I have gone left because of uh EFG and therefore and so on and so forth. Okay. So it has the appearance of logic. It has the appearance of coherent rational argumentation and it also tells a narrative that fundamentally isn't true. The narrative of the rider wants to tell is I as the rider have decided to turn left for these reasons and I acted for this this this this and this and that is why we are taking this course. Whereas the real reason is because the elephant lurched left. the elephant basically was gonna do it anyway and the rider spectacularly failed to pull the elephant back on course and literally just was like, "Yep," it's almost like a parent that makes excuses for the behavior of their child because they've, you know, failed to discipline them or they failed to bring them back into, you know, norms of acceptable social codes and whatnot. So they make excuses instead.

[00:14:18]That is the relationship between the elephant and the rider most of the time according to Jonathan height.

[00:14:29]Height argues that there are six moral foundations pillars if you want to put it that way.

[00:14:38]He calls it moral foundations theory that human morality is built on six innate psychological foundations found in all known cultures. These are care and harm, loyalty and betrayal to promote group solidarity, sanctity or degradation to promote purity and the sense of the sacred.

[00:15:03]fairness and cheating which promotes justice and reciprocity.

[00:15:10]Authority and subversion which uphold hierarchy and order and liberty and oppression which is freedom from dominance.

[00:15:21]Now, Jonathan Height then argues that modern-day liberals in the West are basically morally defective, that they actually most people in most times, in most places have all six of these. And conservatives have all six of these.

[00:15:40]But leftists in the West, liberals only really have the care harm one.

[00:15:49]You could say, well, they got the the fairness one as well as well. But height argues that the fairness that the liberal believes in, which is equality of outcome, equality in that sense, isn't a real moral foundation.

[00:16:04]That the fairness that is universal, the fairness that is known in all known known cultures is based on reciprocity.

[00:16:11]That is people getting their just desserts. Okay? If if we work on a project together and I do 90% of the work and you do only 10% of the work and I get 90% of the income and you only get 10% of the income, you're going to feel hard done by because you didn't get your just dessert. Okay, that is different from the equality of outcome which says that no matter what we should get 50/50.

[00:16:38]Okay, that is not so the equality of outcome that the liberal believes in is not a real moral foundation according to height but the reciprocity is also uh they have done all sorts of interesting experiments with children and with adults uh showing that uh these notions of fairness tend to be relative that uh there's a kind of selfishness in human beings right where you know it's like they've done experiments with like suites you things like this all you know there are 10 coins that need to go amongst these three different people how we going to split them up and but really people look at themselves relative to others okay relative to others as opposed to in absolute terms.

[00:17:32]So, it matters more to most people whether that guy's got five and you've got nothing, right? Or uh you know it what's a better way of putting this?

[00:17:46]What's a better way of putting this?

[00:17:49]Let's pretend there's a street and everybody down the street has got a swimming pool apart from you. You're the only person who lives in your street that doesn't have a swimming pool. Now for most people that would start to bother them because everybody else is the expectation is everybody has a swimming pool. Now the fact the fact that most people don't own their own home or the most lots of people in the world don't even have a home and there are homeless people is neither here nor there to you because what you're doing is comparing yourself to all the other people. Okay, on your street. That's the level that most people are thinking on. So anyway, I don't want to get too caught up on this, but Height has got all sorts of reasons why the liberal notion of equality of outcomes is not an actual moral foundation, whereas the reciprocal sense of justice is really where this comes about is against cheating, right? If you're on a, you know, remember there was that show the island where people were trying to like live together on a desert island. In a scenario like that, if somebody is cheating the group, they could kill the entire group. And so the cheat must be punished.

[00:19:05]That that is why it's a moral foundation because it's just like, you know, somebody who's going to somebody who's going to be cheating the rest of the group. Let's pretend it's water. Okay, they take more than their they take more water than you know they've earned for the group. That could mean somebody else starved for example. Okay, so this is what we're talking about with the fairness and the cheating principle.

[00:19:30]Um, also height mentions at some point or he mentions in one of his subsequent essays that libertarians are also basically morally defective because they only have one uh of these moral foundations as well. The liberty oppression uh one uh you know all they care about is freedom freedom from.

[00:19:55]Now many libertarians will say well that's not true. I care about this this and this. I just don't think it should be in the remit of the state blah blah blah. The the fact is you subordinate all other things and elevate freedom as the summon bonum, the highest good.

[00:20:10]Okay? And the liberal or the leftist elevates the care harm to the highest good. And lo and behold, Sam Harris's book, his awful book, is all about care and harm and nothing else. The only thing he cares about. and and and un unless he's talking about Palestinians, funny enough. So you can see that uh all six moral foundations are the basis of most cultures, most traditions in history.

[00:20:43]Height says that in the west we are weird that is western educated industrial rich and democratic and that weird societies generate this new class of strange person who who is defective who doesn't have loyalty betrayal doesn't have sanctity and degradation doesn't have fairness treating and doesn't have authorities uh subversion i.e a basic belief in hierarchy and order.

[00:21:14]Now I was actually in regular touch with Jonathan height when I was writing this book and uh over the course of it I actually I actually argued back with him and I think he subsequently conceded this in various different things. I don't know if he credited me with it but certainly he came to admit. I said, "Look, I I think you're actually selling the left a little bit short because they do have their own ingroup loyalty betrayal metrics. They do have their sense of sanctity, okay? But it's just different from the normal way it the normal way it shows.

[00:21:50]So, for example, if you're a woke leftist, you can be morally contaminated by something like racism or sexism. Okay?

[00:22:01]Now, they're not normal morals in the overall scheme of human history. Okay?

[00:22:08]But within the framework of the liberal, it does take on the sanctity degradation dimension. I also said that look at how vicious uh liberals are to the heretic right to one who they think who has betrayed the cause. So they do have their sense of group solidarity. It's just different from how it usually manifests. You could say it's been perverted or it's different. But and I I went back and forth uh with height on this and he um I wish I still had the emails because they'd probably make for interesting reading for some later scholar who would be interested in this. Um but he he basically conceded that he may have kind of overlooked this element which became more and more obvious during the socalled woke era. So anyway that is the moral foundations. uh in the interest of time I must uh move forward.

[00:23:10]Uh so yeah I basically covered the different moral matrices of the liberal and the conservative. Uh another key insight uh that height has is that because of the moral deficiency of the liberal and the more obvious uh kind of leaning into these six pillars of the conservative.

[00:23:31]Conservatives have an advantage in most uh democratic elections, a natural advantage. Why? Because conservatives tend to be tough on, for example, benefits cheats. Okay, that well that's hitting the fairness cheating one. They tend to want to be tougher on law and order. Well, that gives you authority subversion. They tend to be against things like degeneracy, right? And because most people in most places kind of innately have these different senses, it gives conservatives a certain advantage in most elections.

[00:24:16]And height as a liberal was basically trying to tell his f fellow liberals that if they want to win more elections, they're going to have to lean into these moral foundations more. Okay. He didn't want to stop being a liberal. He didn't want to stop being a Democrat. He was a, you know, a New York intellectual academic type. Of course, he's going to have that kind of outlook. I don't actually know where Height is now. I think I think Height would probably be considered a conservative by most people in 2026, especially since his book on helicopter parents and letting children play and things like that. And also just just because of our polar polarized time, I think he generally people would see him as a conservative now, although he thinks of himself as a liberal and that is important to bear in mind. Um, but I I think he was trying to give the Democrats tips basically on how to do better in elections.

[00:25:14]Uh, I talked about the weird outlier.

[00:25:17]Um, so we don't need to linger too much on that. Um, one thing I think that is interesting though is that as [clears throat] uh kind of a western style uh prosperity and also western style liberal democracy spreads around the world. Uh, we could start to see quote unquote weird people in other countries. Maybe South Korea has its kind of share now of quote unquote weird people. Maybe Japan has got quote unquote weird people. Uh maybe South America, you know, these are traditionally more conservative places.

[00:25:58]Uh but as the influence of the West spreads around the world, uh maybe more people become quote unquote weird.

[00:26:06]Obviously, they'd never become Western.

[00:26:08]They remain eastern, but they could inherit those other bits of it. Uh so far, some of those cultures has been more resilient. uh in in holding on to some semblance of their traditions and their old their old morality. Uh but there's something about liberalism that almost acts as a corrosive acid as I said many times. So, you know, it hasn't taken long for some of those same pathologies to take root. Uh I always think of South Korea as the best example because their birth rate has plummeted.

[00:26:46]uh they've had all sorts of issues with uh men checking out of the system and feminism and and many other things. Uh so you you then start to see a kind of eastern version of of the weird as well.

[00:26:59]I don't know how eared I guess you'd say. Uh but this is obviously you know now talking almost 20 years on from when he wrote this book or 15 years on.

[00:27:14]morality evolved for cohesion and not for truth. The righteous mind evolved to help us navigate social relationships, build loyalty within groups, and condemn rivals and skills basically essential for survival in the tribal species. And again, that show that used to be on the the island, I don't know if it's still on where they put the people on the desert island and you know, then they fend for themselves, you know, be bear grills, that show um that is a very good microcosm of what height is talking about because without the six moral foundations, uh those groups would perish. They would perish if they did not have good social cohesion. One of the really interesting things is that the outliers, the people who don't play ball, the people who want to hold on to their kind of weird values and so on, uh they tend not to do well.

[00:28:14]I I always remember and longtime fans of the channel will know this because I've mentioned it several times. There was one there was this guy called James right on what he was a doctor I think and um all through his life he'd he'd struggled with social groups he'd been bullied in school he didn't have many friends he always felt like he was rejected for various reasons and he thought to himself look this is a chance this island is a chance to make new friends this island is a chance for me to kind of uh you know just start again and make new relationships and maybe this time it won't go so badly.

[00:28:58]And basically this guy James is such a pain in the ass during the course of this show that even though voting people off the island was not actually a mechanism of the show, right? There was no, this wasn't like a reality game show where you you voted people off.

[00:29:16]The island in this case voted James off the island and they kicked him out.

[00:29:23]Basically, if it was real life, i.e. if it wasn't a bear grill show, if it was a real life, they would have killed him.

[00:29:29]Right? That is basically they would have killed this guy because he was that much of a pain. And I will never forget after he was kicked off, this guy James is sitting on a log and he's like, "All my life I thought that it was other people that was the issue and now I know it was me. It was me. There's a problem with me." And he kind of breaks down into tears. Amazing moment, but also a kind of moral lesson as well.

[00:30:06]for James and for the group and for humanity at large.

[00:30:10]So I guess what we're saying is that you know modern culture modern culture has developed in such a way that a person who would literally be killed in a survival scenario like James actually has a chance of living some semblance of a life where he's not just cast out cast out. Now, clearly uh it didn't work out that well for James because he's gone through life very lonely and kind of feeling sorry for himself and thinking that nobody likes him because nobody does like him. But he's also managed to be a doctor and to earn a decent living and you know not to be cast out. He's actually found some use for himself. Now there's two ways of looking at this. You could say well this is good. This is like social evolution. We have progressed. Harrah. But also maybe not also maybe if there are too many James's in a society the society will start to not be as cohesive anymore. The foundations the moral foundations of that society will start coming apart because James is a threat to social cohesion. If there are too many James's basically selfish people basically people who can't can't think of the group people who you know or for whatever reason are just repulsive to to the group. If there are too many of those then the society will start to suffer all sorts of mythologies.

[00:31:45]And what's interesting about height is that he takes a very kind of um neutral evolutionary lens on all of this. Through Jonathan height, I got interested in evolutionary psychology in particular in uh David Sloan Wilson, Eo Wilson and various other practitioners of evolutionary uh biology and psychology.

[00:32:14]not, I might add, Richard Dawkins and uh people who perpetuate the idea of the quote unquote selfish gene and of the kind of um insane selfish individualism that seems to go along with it. uh but rather I guess a renegade strain of evolutionary psychology which argues that um group the human beings are adapted to the group level and that groups and that even the religions perform a really important social function. If you're interested, David Sloan Wilson's book is called Darwin's Cathedral where he basically comes up with an evolutionary defense of religion as something that human beings have needed fundamentally needed to survive and to prosper historically.

[00:33:11]Now, it may I'll come back to some of those evolutionary guys in another one of my themed weeks here. Uh but the point I'm want to make is these things evolved because they have a use not because they were true not because this religion or that religion is true or not because this hierarchy or that hierarchy speaks to some eternal you know eternal metaphysical or or whatever although arguably they do uh but that is a topic for a different height's point is these things evolve because they have a because they have a utility for human beings and for human groups to thrive. And if they're not there, then the opposite will tend to happen.

[00:33:59]If that group on the island didn't get rid of James, maybe they would have maybe the whole group would have fallen.

[00:34:05]They needed to get rid of him.

[00:34:06]Basically, it's not a very nice thing to say, not a very nice realization, but it is what it is.

[00:34:15]This is and when you start thinking about it, right, when you start thinking about it, it's like, well, this is why we lock people up in jail. This is why we don't just allow murderers and rapists rampant on the street. This is why we, you know, have laws to mitigate against psychos, against absolute psychopaths.

[00:34:34]One of the studies that height looked at, which I have never forgotten, was on chickens. He was saying look um I can't remember the specific name of this chicken study now but they were saying that uh hens alpha hens a psych a psychotic they bully other hens kill other hens and yes they have quite a good uh per [snorts] unit output of egg laying. Okay. But the damage they do to the other hens with with their bullying and their cajoling and their killing and their destruction of other eggs and so on uh actually can be a detriment. So they ran an experiment. They were like what would happen if we took out these psycho alpha hens? Just take them out.

[00:35:24]And what they found is is that in a couple of generations so it didn't happen straight away. Okay? It didn't happen straight away, but after a couple of generational cycles when there were no more of these psycho hens killing each other, okay, the average group egg yield was higher without the alpha hens there than it was with them there.

[00:35:51]So what we're saying is sometimes it is necessary to remove the psycho hen right and we understand this with murderers and psychos but sometimes it sometimes those kind of uh types that don't quite fit in like James on the island right also sometimes we may need to deal with them as well for the good of the all.

[00:36:21]Now, why am I stressing this so much?

[00:36:24]I'm stressing this because our entire lives in the aftermath of the 1960s countercultural revolution and with the uh you know the uh individualism, American style individualism being seen as the highest good uh have not been taught to think in this way. Certainly, I was not taught to think in this way and I didn't think in this way. Remember, I'm an individual. I listened to Pink Floyd. Remember all of that? So, individualism in and of itself rubs up very badly with this, okay?

[00:37:05]Because individualism, okay? Uh tells people, look, screw you guys. I do what I want.

[00:37:16]Remember South Park? Screw you guys. I do what I want. Do you remember? Go Jerry. Go Jerry. Who are you to tell me what to do? Remember all of that? That was the culture that was dominant in the 1990s. It was a culture that said, "F you. I'll do what I want. Damn it. I'm an individual."

[00:37:41]Well, if you get so many people being all individuals with no mechanism to rein them in, you're going to get more James's. You're going to get more people who don't really fit in anywhere. And you're going to get more people who are disagreeable. You're going to get more people who, you know, are aren't actually a net benefit to the group.

[00:38:04]You're going to get more alpha alpha hen psychos as well.

[00:38:10]And so the argument is that we want to find a nice a nicer balance really between having uh you know too much individualism.

[00:38:22]No, obviously we wouldn't like a completely conformist society where everybody is an ant, right? We are not ants. We are people. I am not a number, right? We don't want that.

[00:38:34]Everything in moderation. But we also have seen the drawbacks of too much individualism.

[00:38:41]And this comes through extremely strongly uh in Jonathan Height's work.

[00:38:46]It had a I will come up again. It really did have a profound effect on me because I had not really considered any of these things before I read height. I was really up until that point again just turning 30 just turning 29 30 I had more or less been just a I'm an individual right I'm just a I'm just another liberal you know yeah I was a clever guy of course I was a clever guy right but you understand what I'm saying I I hadn't really it really made me confront all of my own values what I valued why we have moral morals, the lack of the morals in our time. Uh so so height is a very valuable person for confronting all of these things and also pinpointing exactly where things have gone a little bit wrong. Okay. And what I want to say is an unmititigated disaster.

[00:39:47]Um you know, we I kind of enjoy being an individual, you know, uh I like my Pink Floyd records, etc. But at the same time, you can see where it's gone too far. And there's an argument to say that a certain element of the quote unquote woke or, you know, uh, liberalism gone too far, uh, is now the point where we're at the absurd we're at the we're at the absolute absurd level now of people who are like, look, I I identify as a dog. I identify as a dog. It's my sexual fetish to identify as a dog. And therefore, you need to respect that and you need to respect my pronouns and uh uh yeah, you know, screw you guys. I do what I want, but also I am a dog and you must respect the fact that I'm a dog and I, you know, dog rights. And so, you can see how runaway individualism is actually a real issue. uh if it is unmed from a greater sense of the moral foundations and if the care harm principle is your only principle then everything comes back to h yes but wouldn't it be a bit you know you'd hurt that person's feelings you'd hurt their feelings to say actually love you're not a dog you're just a person or look it doesn't really matter who you sleep with I don't really care but stop making such a big deal of it you you know, or or or whatever else. Then it was the whole thing of the snowflake snowflake generation if you remember that. All of all of this is a little bit old-fashioned seeming now, right? But it was really important for coming to terms with uh you know these things that were happening and also for making me realize certain things about myself. Like for example, I was very um ambivalent about my political views for a long time. You know, for all of my 20s, for example, I would have said, well, yeah, I can kind of see arguments on the right and I can see arguments on the left. I can see arguments for the Lib Dems as well. I mean, I I was just kind of, you know, I didn't know any better really. I was like, well, some of these Marxist ideas are quite good, but there they've gone a bit far. And, you know, if it works, it works. Like, I was kind of, you know, that was my genuine view. Um, but I kind of knew in the back of my mind that, uh, you know, the Guardian kind of bugs me. There's something about the Guardian Easter that's really quite annoying. Uh, kind of kind of bugged me. I [snorts] kind of knew in the back of my mind that hardcore feminists kind of wind me up.

[00:42:29]people banging on about racism kind of winds me up somewhere, right? It kind of rubbed me up the wrong way somewhere in the back of my mind and I kind of always knew that. Um and height basically made me think well yeah those are strongly felt intuitions that I have but like why am I you know and he kind of gave me a way of saying well maybe in many ways I have natural conservative traits dare I say now I hesitate to call myself a conservative because if you've been watching this channel for a long time you will know that conservatives are stone cold losers. Uh but small C conservative generally speaking I've probably always been one dispositionally dispositionally i.e without even knowing it. Uh and in fact when I came to this realization I was then thinking oh I remember a school report where my drama teacher once wrote that you know I'm I'm a small C conservative uh and uh you know a person of Catholic tastes right and again he meant that in this in the small C sense and various other little comments that people had made in the past. I was thinking hm ah Jonathan height has made me understand why I why I feel the things I do. So re really he um he helped me a lot in seeing my own my own views in many ways now because growing up in Wales I've it's kind of you're not meant to like dies or conservatives. It took me a very long time to kind of admit this. Um, and uh, you know, coming back to the moral foundations here, I went through a whole phase of being like, well, am I really though? I I kind of I'm kind of a libertarian. Yeah, that's it. I'm a I'm I'm not one of those stinking consider I'm a libertarian. That's it. I'm a libertarian. Damn it. I'm a libertarian after all. Right. And I remember I wrote this book after I wrote this book. Um, the reason I'm going on this kind of extended personal tangent is because height really does make you confront yourself and make you ask serious questions about yourself. Now, looking back, my whole time as a libertarian was a kind of cope. It was a cope against accepting a label that I've been taught my whole life was a bad thing, quote unquote Tory or quote unquote conservative.

[00:45:10]Funny enough, I've now been through the whole cycle where I've come to kind of see those things as I kind of accept, yeah, they are Tory is a bad thing and a conservative is a bad thing. But you understand what I'm saying that dispositionally uh height kind of gave me a political awakening.

[00:45:30]Uh like I said, he ruined my life. Uh anyway, let us get back to the next uh point here, which is that the power of moral disgust is incredibly uh strong.

[00:45:49]Modern secular liberals tend to reduce all morality to harm and fairness. The disgust response and sanctity drive a vast range of moral judgment including sexuality, the body, sacred objects and communal rights. These judgments have steep psychological and societal uh and social functions. Now I seem to remember a study maybe it was done by height or one of his colleagues that suggested that liberals are completely deficient in the discuss response that where most normal people right uh have an inbuilt you know that that Bonnie blue woman who's been in the news recently you know having sex with a thousand men or whatever or just doing like truly disgusting things after she had a child. Most people have a revul they are literally repuls disgust response.

[00:46:46]And why do they have the disgust response and again if you think it about it evolutionary uh in an evolutionary sense it makes sense that you know well that person's probably more likely to carry STDs. That person is probably going to bring harm to the group. That person you know is trouble or or whatever. And and so the disgust response is a kind of innate mechanism against things that are going to bring harm to the collective. Not necessarily harm to yourself, but also to yourself, but to the collective. It's like a kind of antenna that you've got.

[00:47:25]And that is why in almost every single society ever, there have been prohibitions on promiscuity. There have been prohibitions on you know uh certain types of sexual relations. There have been prohibitions on there have been codes and laws around uh around sex.

[00:47:46]There have been codes and laws around hygiene uh and cleanliness you know cleanliness is close to god godliness and all of this sort of stuff. But height argued that uh or or one of his colleagues did produced a paper this is not in the righteous mind I think it's afterwards this came out that liberals are almost entirely lacking in this that they they just don't have this antenna and so they tend to like you know in the worst cases like not wash not look after their bodies not have a sense for not have a sense for these sorts of things. There's kind of like a deficiency.

[00:48:28]Now, I would argue that they do have their own form of sanctity and degradation, but it's based around uh morals that are either new or false.

[00:48:40]You know, things like sexism and racism and so on and so forth. People kind of feel that those are a contaminate contaminating force. There was a quite a lot of sanctity and degradation, morality uh alive and well during COVID 19 uh pandemic and the uh the left on that occasion really did activate their kind of you know they did go into a bit of a purity spiral. Although many people would argue it was just the power that they you know if you wanted to pathize them it'd be like well they ju they just kind of were getting off on the power of it all right. Uh maybe one day we'll look at Ted Kazinski. You would certainly say, well, yeah, that was really a kind of Machavelian type who just thrives on thrives on having one over on other people. Uh you know, Dutton talked about spiteful mutants.

[00:49:31]Again, maybe it's a spite response in some cases and not a genuine sanctity uh response. Although I would say many people did have um you know when there was the whole thing about the vaccinated versus the unvaccinated there were some people who became very puritanical uh about being uh you know it's almost like they're the unclean they're the unwashed they have not taken the they have not taken the the the shots or whatever. Okay. So you can see how these things come up in in in myriad ways. Um now to understand both sides height urges a practical message. He says to reduce polar polarization in society where this requires understanding the moral psychology of those we disagree with and recognizing the limits of quick moral dismissal. Each side has blind spots. Liberals undervalue loyalty and authority. Conservatives can undervalue care for outsiders.

[00:50:40]Uh each side has genuine strengths.

[00:50:43]Moral diversity uh is a resource not a problem to be eliminated according to uh height. And I have actually echoed these sentiments. I did a an interview with Peter McCormack where I spoke along these lines. I actually did a talk um on my new book uh foundations of Shakespeare, my 10th book where I returned to Shakespeare uh saying that look this is something that Shakespeare himself was incredibly good at. Uh understanding the point of view of a person that he hated.

[00:51:20]Frequently Shakespeare writes characters who you know that deep down he doesn't like and yet he manages to find within himself a kind of human empathy right an empathy for the other person.

[00:51:36]Now many people might think well we've had rather too much empathy. Well you could say that's a kind of pathological misplaced empathy. what height is talking about and what I am talking about here is is a genuine attempt to understand that there's a real person there and one of the problems uh that we have had in polar you know these polarized times is that people have tended to see each other as truly enemies to go back to Carl Schmidt the friend enemy distinction in its real realest sense has uh erected itself. And if we think seriously for a second, that is not tenable in a society, right? The friend enemy distinction cannot really exist at large between members of the same family, between husband and wife, between father and child, between neighbors on the same street. What? You want to kill each other because you disagree?

[00:52:42]This historically has been the pretext for civil war. If we come back to Shakespeare, we come back to Shakespeare and I'll show you uh beautiful book uh foundations of Shakespeare, but I also talk about this uh in in moral compass as well.

[00:52:58]The doomsday scenario in Shakespeare was you know people in such a fervor that the father would kill the son or the son would kill the father uh you know in the name of some political cause. This is civil breakthrough.

[00:53:19]When this happens, what discord follows according to Shakespeare, this happens for example in Henry V 6th part three.

[00:53:31]This happens in Titus Andronicus. This happens in King Leo.

[00:53:37]And when this happens, you get the worst sort of social disorder and social disintegration.

[00:53:48]Now, because Shakespeare was writing after the War of the Roses, he had known or that society had understood what civil strife was. And you don't want it.

[00:54:01]So what we can take height in a way warning us of is that if we don't develop this they called John Keats called it Shakespeare's negative capability but if we don't develop some sense of how do we bridge these divides how do we talk to each other how do I talk to that bluehead feminist who thinks I I'm an evil this that or the other And let's face it, they do for they did.

[00:54:34]And at some point in my worst moments, I hated them as well.

[00:54:40]But there's not that's not a way forward. There's just no way forward there. Ultimately, me and her have to be able to try to understand where we're coming from and that actually there's not a bad person at the other end of it. It's just another person.

[00:55:01]Will we get there? Well, there's reasons to be skeptical, but you know, I do feel that some of the bite, some of the spite and the bite has been has lessened over time. It's not as bad as it was in in the in the real height of it. um you know six seven eight years ago people forget what a fever pitch there was what a fever pitch there was uh so I do think people are calming down a little bit but I don't I don't yet think that we're at the point where people are having this conversation that height was calling for even before the so-called you know height of the culture wars height talks about happiness Happiness, meaning and the limits of individualism.

[00:55:53]Well-being depends on relationships, engagement, meaning, and connection to something larger than oneself.

[00:56:01]Modern individualism and therapeutic culture focus on the self often corrode the foundations of a meaningful life.

[00:56:10]One of the things that height is particularly interested in uh is this test that they give people where people have to um uh fill in the blank. Okay.

[00:56:25]I am I am and uh you know this is something they've done with students and volunteers you know in their in their various empirical tests. So you have to write down I am.

[00:56:39]Okay. And westerners tend to answer that question like this.

[00:56:45]I am a Jazz fan.

[00:56:48]I am a Manchester United supporter.

[00:56:55]I'm not, by the way. I'm not a Jazz I'm not a Jazz fan or a Manchester United supporter, but this is just an example.

[00:57:01]you know, I am into Game of Thrones, whatever, right? Media stuff, uh, hobbies. I am um, uh, um, cigar enthusiast. Right.

[00:57:26]Right. So all of these things that I've written, all these statements that I've made here are individualistic, right? They are have reference to nothing outside of myself and my interests, my my narrow interests.

[00:57:44]Whereas people in the east tend to do something like this.

[00:57:50]They'll say, I am a father.

[00:57:53]I am a husband.

[00:57:56]Okay, I am a community leader or whatever. Okay, the point is is that this is talking about relationships with other people in a social context. This is only talking about yourself.

[00:58:17]And height is saying that look if you don't have this you can't really find as a human being happiness and fulfillment.

[00:58:27]You can't.

[00:58:30]And you know these are some of the things I've talked about over on the uh academic agent mindset channel because I'm very I've always been interested in these things. But I have tried, believe me, to, you know, be defined by my record collection, by my knowledge of, you know, experimental progressive art rock from the60s or obscure delta blues from the 1930s.

[00:59:04]been down all of those routes or, you know, uh, becoming the film buff who knows every single, you know, uh, obscure horror movie or, you know, my criterion collection and all of that sort of stuff or whatever else it is. Okay, now those interests, don't get me wrong, you enjoy them, okay? But they can't fill in, they cannot substitute for these things that height is talking about. And it cannot in many cases give you that meaningful connection to something quote unquote larger than yourself.

[00:59:52]The only thing that even remotely comes close on this list that I wrote is being the Manchester United supporter. It sounds strange but Height says look in modern sports uh events uh some people when they're part of the crowd feel ecstasy. They can feel ecstasy when they're part of that crowd.

[01:00:13]Now obviously that comes with all of the other problems that I mentioned in Gustav Leon video and that Leon identified that people are going to lose their senses in the crowd. Yet, it's something, isn't it, that for most people, the closest they'll even get to that feeling is something as kind of commercialized and tright as a football game.

[01:00:40]So, something has gone out of balance in western life.

[01:00:45]Finally, height argues that a healthy society needs all six foundations. No single moral foundation is sufficient in in of itself. Societies have uh which overindex on one whether it's care, liberty, authority, etc. become unstable or dysfunctional and I think I've really kind of covered that over the course of this video. Now, forgive me today, folks. It was a little bit more personal and I rambled uh on or I went off on several tangents today, but I think that in a strange way, Height, if he ever watched this, would appreciate that he would know. He I kind of let my intuitive elephant kind of lead on a couple of occasions here because this book helps you understand not only human beings and not only kind of group dynamics and politics and morality. It helps you understand yourself as well.

[01:01:54]Helps you get to know yourself better.

[01:01:58]uh and you know eventually you may even develop skills to uh start controlling that emotional elephant and start actually uh kind of empowering uh or or empowering yourself a little bit more. Uh and I've explored several of these things on academic agent uh mindset which I encourage you to subscribe to. I talk about many many different topics on there, but they're all related to kind of living a better life. So, and again, I would say that Jonathan Height kind of started me on that road as well. So, I have a lot to be grateful to him for. He is a modern-day great thinker.

[01:02:43]If you haven't read Righteous Mind, I would read it. My summary obviously did not do the book justice.

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