Politics in Mind, Chapter 1:

The Elephant Whisperer

So, the year was 2013:

I was working in Montreal, and would remain there for about one more year. In our free time, my wife and I were enjoying the city together.

And that whole time, we were enjoying our temporary disconnection from the USA. 

Even back then, I was sick of the toxic political atmosphere that seemed to be getting worse with every passing election. I was sick of the aggression and shamelessness of the Republican Party and their base.

From stoking fears about immigrants via “terror babies,” to depicting a murdered black teenager as a thug ‘who got what he deserved’, it was getting ugly. More than anything, I was sick to death of being incensed all the time, and so I was grateful for the respite that this research appointment in Canada provided.

But all the while, I was ruminating on my home country’s political predicament.

I would read books on the history of the American Right, trying to understand the motivations and dynamics of this movement. Somewhat separately, I was also keeping abreast of popular arguments about reason, truth, secularism, science, and religion in America. This was all in the hope of finding some way, any way, of communicating across the aisle. I wanted to know how to reach the people who scoffed at notions of reason, evidence, expertise, secularism, etc—to try to get them to see the light.

This was a personal matter for me, as most of my family was seated across that aisle, snugly immersed in their right wing bubble, with no intention to budge.

Initially, my search for ideas brought frustration more than anything. The so-called New Atheist authors and the liberal theologians who pushed back against them weren’t even interested in having discussions with one another. If potential allies for secular pluralism can’t even communicate, how could I expect any communication across more substantial cultural divides?

Thankfully, I stumbled on a book that took a very different approach to the matter. This book explored morality and tribal dynamics from the lens of social psychology.

The book was The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt. As I mentioned last time, this book really changed how I saw everything about human morality and behavior. Including how I saw my *own* sense of morality and behavior. Needless to say, I highly recommend the book to everyone reading this post.

In this tnocs.com series, I will give some thoughts about the four main sections of Haidt’s The Righteous Mind. The rest of this post will be dedicated to Part One. Hopefully it will inspire commenters here to explore the book on their own. But even if not, I’m hoping to provide some takeaways that can prove useful to others as they try to navigate their own predicaments of political, religious, or cultural divides. Because it’s even more relevant now than it was just ten years ago!

Okay, so Part One. Here is the central theme, or central lesson: 

“Intuitions Come First, Strategic Reasoning Second.”

What does that mean?

In short, it means:

the notion of humans as essentially rational creatures is comically, tragically mistaken.

It means all of that time and energy you put into debating family members, coworkers, or randos on the internet – to get them to recognize a solid argument, based on reasonable assumptions, sound logic, and verifiable facts – was a complete waste. Nothing but a futile effort. Congrats!

Now, you must have felt that sense of futility many times, just as I did. But you probably ended up judging those people who wouldn’t hear you out as deeply flawed in some way. “They’re fools, they’re biased, they’re trapped in a cult, they’re narcissistic, they’re delusional, maybe they should be committed?”, etc.

But the fact is that *we* were the fools for not getting our priorities straight. The priority is not facts, logic, or reasoning, whatever Sam Harris may tell you. 

If you want to get someone to really understand you and accept your reasoning, you must first work to shift their intuitions.

These are the small flashes of judgment that we experience constantly as we interact with people and situations, the stream of barely conscious mental processes that help us make sense of the world around us. It’s easy for us to be aware of our own mental reasoning processes, while it’s often hard to notice our intuitions. But don’t be fooled into thinking that reason keeps these “lower” processes in check. It’s the opposite that’s true!

Haidt’s central metaphor for this section is a human rider on top of a large elephant.

For extra effect, maybe picture the human as a wonkish “DC” type, dressed in formal business attire, with a poker face that can’t hide their constant discomfort. And picture the elephant draped in royal purple, with a crown on its head.

• The crowned elephant symbolizes our unconscious and barely conscious moral intuitions.
• The human represents our conscious reasoning, and this dude works to serve the elephant.

Specifically, he serves as a sort of press secretary for the elephant, providing justifications for what the elephant wants to do, or what the elephant has already done. The elephant is king, and it does what it likes. The press secretary just provides some perfunctory arguments after the fact, some convenient rhetorical fictions.

Haidt goes into great detail about the research that supports this theory, and it’s great fun to read.

Just think: all of those times that your brilliant arguments failed to earn you debate trophies among your family members, you failed to notice that the press secretaries you were talking to were in fact sitting atop elephants that had been facing away from you from the very start. Their riders smugly mumbled some garbled nonsense to justify their elephants walking away—which those elephants had in fact already begun to do. Without the king interested, there’s no point in holding court.

It’s also important to digest the fact that this elephant and rider represents the moral reasoning of all humans—including us, the brilliant know-it-alls who appreciate facts and logic!

So those failed debates we’ve all encountered didn’t simply result from the elephants of other people leaning away from us. All those times, even when we were appealing to them to listen to reason, our own intuitions were likely leaning away and eventually walking away from the very people we were talking to. We doom ourselves from the very start in those situations.

I’m talking to you, Richard Dawkins.

And yes, I’m talking about me, too.

Lest you fall into despair, let’s not forget that kings can be persuaded. Just not via the typical appeals. Influencing intuitions is not easy, and it takes time, but it can be done. Just as you don’t straight out demand something from a king, lest you trigger his wrath, coaxing our royal elephants often requires more indirect engagements, often requiring the avoidance of certain terms and debate frameworks that accentuate divisive moral identities (e.g., culture war buzzwords).

Much more often: it requires spending quality time together, establishing mutual trust, adopting common language, etc. Basically, one needs to activate and cultivate bonds of a shared tribal identity, to be citizens of a shared moral universe.

Or, to use another of Haidt’s clever metaphors: for each of you to join a shared moral Matrix: a consensual hallucination that orders both of your lives. Truly, this is the stuff of heroes.

Okay, we know that people are divided across moral lines, and we now know what the *dynamics* of division and bonding can look like. But key questions remain:

• How and why do human moral perspectives differ?
• What does the righteous mind of the conservative typically look like, versus the liberal? 

If such questions turn you off or bore you, feel free to take the blue pill, and skip the next few installments of this series. You’ll find yourself just the same as you were before.

For those who want to dig deeper into moral psychology, to examine your own morals and the morals of your enemies, I encourage you to take the red pill.

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