my name is jackie and i'm the director of osha programming here. we always like to begin by asking, by chopin, or how many of you is this your first time here? so a good number of you. i'll tell you briefly about history so you understand about the significance of where you are today. the building opened in 1908 and it was home to a synagogue for about 45 years. then when they relocated, capote became home to turn a memorial. when they decide to relocate, the building was put up for sale at the highest bid was from someone who wanted to bite and turn it into a nightclub. so thankfully that did not happen, and the building was safe. within 24 hours, and it was turned into a nondenominational nonmembership and nontraditional synagogue. and also a center for arts and culture to host events like this one here tonight. we have a great lineup of

authors including tonight, stopping here. next week in will be a new cook book. aj jacobs is coming. madeleine albright, and john irving, among others. we are happy to jonathan haidt here tonight and i want to begin by congratulating them on the release of "the righteous mind: why good people are divided by politics and religion." i think it's always fitting to have an author speak about policies here is given that we're in d.c. and also for an author speaking about religion because we're in a synagogue. so given that domination of the two, if like we hit the bull's-eye in having you here. "the righteous mind" is creating great reviews. you can also see the book reviewed in the new york times this coming weekend. jonathan is a professor of psychology and a visiting professor at the nyu stern school of business. is often mentioned in david

brooks near time column and you probably heard him on npr talking about his studies in moral psychology. jonathan is also a partner speaker. i was watching a video yesterday that had over one dainties but it's nice that we get to have you in an intimate setting here tonight. his research focuses on morality by understanding more about our moral roots johnson soap is how we can learn to be civil and open-minded. he began his career studying negative moral emotion but then moved on to the understudy positive moral emotions like admiration, all, and moral elevation. this move got johnson and bald in positive psychology and let him to write his first book, "the happiness hypothesis." so i will invite him up in just a moment. there will be time for q&a toward the end of jonathan stock. and for that we ask that you please come to the microphone in the center of the room because we are coming tonight. and fund the program will have a book signing in that corner so

we just ask that you line up along the back wall. that is it for me. if you please join me in welcoming jonathan haidt to sixth and i. [applause] >> thanks so much, jacqui. and thank you all for coming up tonight. so as jackie mentioned, michael, it just came out last week, and the cover was designed by a graphic designer in new york, and i'm thrilled with it. the original version of it was supposed to be a little tight, a slit in the book but at the last minute three weeks before going to press the sales team said we can't do that. it's going to rip on some people and amazon will stop selling it but what you have is an optical illusion to i loved it because it captures what feels like to be an american these days. it feels like something is torn, something is ripped, something is wrong and we have to somehow fix it, put it back together. the book comes out in one week in the uk.

and i think the uk cover also partly captures what it feels like to be an american. [laughter] they could work just as well. for a while i thought it was funny. sometimes i been walking around with. i'm glad it's in the uk and not it. anyway, i'm just going to give you a brief overview of the book and i will draw out a few implications for policy and politics to how many of you are involved in a fairly direct way in politics or anything about politics? please raise your hand. i would say about 30 to 40% of the. how many of you have at least general vague interest in politics or policy, racial and? okay. we are about to face the largest policy challenge in our history. i don't know if you saw the news this afternoon. i've been tracking this story for a few weeks, arizona state

university that faced asteroids that crossed the orbit. they said and asked about 85 miles across, one that is bigger that killed the times was, is scheduled to hit the earth on april 24, 2022. the estimate there's a 90% chance of impact and it will not destroy all life. they suspect will be able to have breeding populations of humans can probably a couple thousand people on every continent underground for a couple of years but this is what is going to look like. this is what they estimate the impacts would look like. and then after a few years, humans will be able to come up above graphic this is what they estimate it will look like when people emerge from their hole in the ground. now, there is one hope that

scientists say that if we embark on a crash course right now, don't delay, we can build a fleet of new heavy lift rockets with new technology. we can create a new kind of space by nuclear bombs that will blow with direct force it would to hundred of these rockets launched into weapons in space and we can get them out beyond the orbit of jupiter, while at the same time right next to the astrid we can deflect about a 10th of a degree, that's all we need to make it miss the earth. but they say that if we don't get started, if we wait a year, then it's going to increase the odds and the odds of success will drop by about 20-30% of what i just given is actually a very easy public policy problem. it's huge in size but it's actually a very easy problem to solve because, by the way, i made up the part about the astrid. don't worry. but i gave a version of this talk yesterday and people were

checking their phones, is this real? i think they're calling their brokers, sell, sell. anyway, this is an easy problem because basically it's a technical problem where we just have to know the odds and the cost, we can work on it. is actually even easier than that because from a psychological perspective is a public policy problem that solves itself. if there really was going to be an asteroid hitting the earth wiping out almost all of us, we would all fall together as a team, all the nations which you can, left, right, center. everybody would be behind it, and we would get the problem be solved. i'm going to give you two harder problems. because there really are to asteroid headed for the earth, and by really company metaphorically, not really, but metaphorically there are two asteroid headed for the earth, and these asteroids don't unite

as. they divided the each side of the political spectrum sees one and recognize the danger, and the other side is blind to it. so the first time you might've guessed, is global warming. i gave a talk to ago, and we were treated to a number of doom and gloom talks. jim henson, a nasa scientist who publish one of the first papers in 1981 predicting, co2 is rising and here's what might happen. and history seems to have borne them out fairly well. he is the scientist, his words were edited heavily by the bush administration leading into object into really go off and become someone who sounded the alarm. so what hansen told us is county showed us can use talking about his craft, this is the rise in co2 is predicted based on various scenarios. the top line being if we do nothing, at the very bottom line if we couldn't stop the growth right now at this level, then

that's what things would be. the expectation given that the earth track record doing something about this is, not zero but pretty close. we're looking somewhere near the top line. if that happens scientists are estimating a five-meter rise in sea level. let me read this quote from hansen. this is what he said. he told us about the feedback. so as temperature goes up, ice caps melt and as they melt there's less white surface and more dark water to absorb are likely get these intensifying feedback groups. what he said was the official prediction is for one meter sea rise by the end of the center. he thinks it will be five baby pink into account all the sea level. so if we get a five-meter sea rise, this is an artist conception of what florida would look like. basically everybody would have to go onto the roller coaster at

disney world. now, let's see, so what do you guys think let's do you think that we should embark on very costly existing programs to do something about this, to change our economy, our fuel sources? do you think it's worth investing trillions of dollars from both private and public sector of the next 10 or 20 years to address this? before i ask your opinion at firstly, please raise your hand in this audience if you say you're liberal or on the left. racial hand right now. strong majority. among those who just raised their hands, to you think that we should take very substantial and expensive steps to of her this and having, please raise your hand. and just the liberals, please raise your hand if you don't think we should take difficult steps to do something. one, two. okay. that's almost a perfect predictor on the left. raise your hand if your industry when you consider yourself to be conservative or on the right.

ratio hand. 14. [inaudible] >> i know your answer. [laughter] so just the conservatives. raise your hand if you think we should take very expensive and costly steps to avert this. raise your hand. one, two, three, four. raged your hand if you think we should not embark on a program. so it's not as dense don't have a very strong party that we can predict people's feelings about the libertarians pick regime if you're a libertarian in the audience but libertarians at least tribal people and will. why are you sitting together? this is weird. [laughter] >> we are all friends. >> i did no libertarians -- know, nevermind. [laughter] raise your hand if you think we should take rapid, quick and expensive steps to avert this? i knew your answer.

so, let's see, i don't want, i'm not saying that those who say we shouldn't do anything are somehow deniers or wrong. i think my sense is most people acknowledge that global warming is caused, -- in terms of what we should do about it, i don't want to do anyone to are wrong. i just want to point out there's a very good chance a terrible thing will happen and were completely divided by politics as what to do about it. here's another problem. so i got back from the conference and three days later i went to dinner party in washington. i men newt york this year and it took the train down. in preparation for meeting him i read this article that he will

come a really extraordinary article called beyond the welfare state, and i'll just read you the first paragraph of it. all over the developed world nations are coming to terms with the fact that the social democratic buffer state is turning out to be satirical to the reason is part institutions of the administrative state is dismal inefficient and unresponsive, the reason also cultural and moral predictions to rescue this is the burden of responsibility as undermine the family and health self reliance and self governance. but in practice it is above all fiscal. the welfare state is turned out to be unaffordable, depend upon dubious economics and all who, depend upon dubious economics of the model of bygone heirs. it is completely consistent. perhaps your unpersuaded by that one paragraph but perhaps you think we can simply raise taxes on the rich to make the books

balance. but you're wrong. i give any sort of fight against this thesis like a to page three and so this graphic what this shows is the percentage of, if you look at the national debt as a ratio or a percentage of the total gdp of the nation going back to the revolutionary war, what you see issues he basically a rise in all of our major wars but it starts off sort of high, 25, 30% of the revolution and in the pay off. can have the civil war. a bigger prize, and then gradually paid off. in of world war i, about the same size as the civil war, they were beginning to pay it off and then the depression it. been that big spike is world war ii. world war ii created a monstrous rise of about 150, 118% of gdp which is enormous. but that is completely towards by the biggest fiscal in history which is the retirement of the baby boomers with a government guarantee. dwarfs all of our previous wars

are it simply cannot be done. in fact, this is an artist conception of what the streets of american cities will look like in 2030. you might notice that we will have adopted greek as our language. [laughter] and from there things get worse and worse and this is an artist perception of what american cities will look like in 2050. >> okay, now, let's see. so you might actually notice that the grants that i showed is actually the same as the hansen crap they are the same crap, not in terms of x and y's axes waving like that but in a more publications what they portend, which is doom, unbelievable destruction and unaffordable costs. but they are also similar in that the two graphs both point the finger at the other side.

the global warming graph says, and here i will translate, we've got to act now. the longer we wait the more costly it will be. what's wrong with you conservatives? you climate change deniers but if you will help him get the hell out of the way. that's what the top graph says if you would translate into, if graphs could speak that's what it was a. the deficit graph on the other hand has a very different message. it goes like this. we've got to act now. the longer we wait the more costly it's going to be. what's long with you liberals? if you won't help, they get the hell out of the way. so you see a very different sort of message. both of these public policy problems are hard because they don't activate the psychological systems that will lead to a solution. they do the opposite. we will see you and fight about them while our planet and our treasury follow out those kirkuk

that's what would happen if we can't change what's happening. so i think both of these problems demonstrate the need for us all as americans to learn something about moral psychology to understand again that we often. and it is a game. politics i is a game. morality is again. it's a game that, well, i'll explain to you, but i think i'm digging out in terms of, me and my colleagues and others, what i think we're learning about moral psychology i think can help us talk to each other and understand why the other side is so blind to what we see so clearly. so, so on to the book. so the book is actually very simple to summarize because it's divided into three parts based on three principles of moral psychology. 1975 edward wilson, 1975 he predicted that someday they

would be a new synthesis in ethics, that ethics will be taken out of the hands of the philosophers, and handed over to the scientists and social scientists who have a crack at it, and he predicted can come up with a much better explanation or a much better story. when i entered graduate school in 1987, i'm sorry, here are the three principles to the first one is in commissions come first. when i entered graduate school in 1987, moral philosophy a moral psychology were both very much on a platonic rationalism footing. the assumption was morality is something that we think and reason about. we need to understand people's reasoning and then we need to help them. the metaphor that plato gave us is that the soul is like a charioteer. the charioteer is reason, and if

he is strong and firm and well educated, trained in philosophy, control goes to unruly forces. so that was the model that we got from philosophy. the dominant view has a generally, tends to be worshiping reason, our most notable quality. the one we can adjust more of when we do well. when i was in graduate school, i resonate much more to a very different philosophical tradition than minor strand or smaller strand from david hume. so david hume famously disagreed with his rationalist approach and said, reason is, and ought to be, passion, and you pretend than to serve and obey them. so hume rejected this reasoning.

hume argued that reason is good at one thing but serving the passions if you want to do something, they will figure out the best way to do it. so i think let's update is metaphor it is a rather awful metaphor, but also reasoning isn't quite as late but i think more of a servant to it is still a servant. it takes orders from passions or what i will call intuitions morx broadly. now, it's not just a servant like -- the best metaphor in this town is like a press secretary. this is gibbs. what was his first win? robert gibbs, obama's first press secretary. the press secretary, whose job is to explain things. his job is to not say why the obama asked to decide something. his job is simply to find the best possible reason.

you are never as long as you, but doesn't what you say to contradict what you say yesterday question will never ever get the presents i my god, you're right. i should rethink this but i will go tell the president. .com not -- that cannot happen. that's not the way the political system is set. so the first sort of the book is basically hume's right. it is not pretty. i'll summarize it with his past but i'll read about a page and a half of the book. so this is a section called reasoning and google can take you where ever you want to go. when my son max was three years old i discovered he's allergic to must. when i would tell him he must get dressed, we must go to school, he was down and went to the word must is a vote for will handcuff and tradition to decide

to squirm free. the word and is so much nicer. can you get dressed so we can go to school? to be certain that these two were tonight i tried an experiment but after dinner one night i said max, you must eat ice cream now. to which he said but i don't want to. four seconds later i said max, you ice cream if you want. i want some. the difference between can and must is the key to understanding profound effects of self interest on reason but it's also the key to understanding many of the changes believes people hold in ufo abductions, clock ethical treatment and conspiracy theories. the social psychologists studied the cognitive mechanisms of strange believes the simple formulation is that when want to believe something would ask ourselves can't i believe it. they search for supporting evidence and if we find peace of evidence we can stop looking because we found evidence.

we have a justification if anybody asks we have something to say to back ourselves. we have permission to believe. in contrast we don't want to believe something we ask ourselves, must i believe this? and we search for contrary evidence. if we find a single reason to doubt the claim, we can dismiss it. you only need one key to unlock the handcuffs of must. psychologist now have five captains for the funnies unmotivated reasoning shown that many tricks people used to reach the conclusion they want to reach. when subjects are told that intelligence has given a low score and in a given the choice of what to read while waiting for the next step of the study, they choose to read articles criticizing rather than supporting the validity of iq test it when people read a thick tissue scientific study the report a link between caffeine consumption and breast cancer, these are undergraduates, and the cuban descent and they are told what you think what you see any flaws? who do you think finds flaws?

men or women? women. if you're threatened by the result you say must i believe it? there is a flaw. you find something to you always find something. the difference between mustang versus cannot is so profound. subjects without their give something good if a computer flashed a letter than a number were more legacy ambiguous figures such as this as a letter be. that if they're going to be reinforced or paid every time they spotted a number fleshing out they would call that out as 13 because that's what they wanted to see. if people can literally see what they want to see, is it any wonder scientific studies often fail to persuade the general public? there is no such thing as a study you must believe. it's always possible to question methods, find an alternative repetition of the data, or if all of this, question the

honesty or the ideology of the researcher. now that will have access to search engines honor cell phones we can call of a team of supporters scientist from almost any conclusion 24 hours a day. whatever you want to believe about the causes of global warming or whether a fetus can feel pain, just google your belief. you will find partisan websites. science is a smorgasbord. who will take you to a study that is right for you. so i think that a lot of applications for politics and public policy. so the first point is you can't persuade with reason and evidence if people are leaning intuitively the other way. if you really don't care at all, they have no precise and attitudes, then yes, you can reason with him. but if they are leaning one way, you give them reasons, they will ask must i believe, or can i believe your for those of you read my previous book, "the happiness hypothesis" were i talk about the mind, the writer

conscious reason, if you want to change people's minds got to talk to the elephant first. the second implication is that each of us is flawed and biased in our reason. good thinking, we are blind blind our biases, good thinking comes to well constituted groups and institutions. scientists are not, they have a high iq but it's not that they are more rational or better reason is. it's about institution of science was invented in europe and a 17th century and develop an 18th century, and it's a system in which everyone is trying to prove themselves right. despite the idealization of, we all try to prove ourselves right. with peer review and we argued against each other. there are other people to ask must i believe, chemically? so if an institution is wasn't a good thinking and rationality emerged from flawed, imperfect

device individual but it's crucial to thinking about our courts, our congress and, of course, the framers were very aware of this. they set up institutions to be deliberative, to challenge each other. didn't have to talk about this, are they working, which ones are? which ones are not? so that's the first principle of moral psychology. here's the second. there's more to more rowdy than fans. this is mostly liberal audience, i think i can summarize the most important principle of them around by saying it has something to do with the care or compassion or not hurting people for helping people or protecting people. behind every progressive policy lies a single moral value, empathy. to the extent there is a religious leader who is loved on the left is the taliban because he is basic -- he has one

foundation, one principle of morality, compassion. this is a very important moral value, a very important virtue, but in graduate school i began by studying the world of moral diversity. i did research in brazil and i work in india and tibet a lot of other cultures but it's hard to find a place on earth where morality is pretty much exclusively on care and compassion. what i set out to do is to identify the best candidate for being the comedy in the foundation for human rowdy. that is, if you look around the world, look at all the terms of size, what other kinds of things they care about and punished each other for a new look at evolution psychology. so i set out to identify the foundations, and with my colleagues we identified the

candidates which we think are the best candidates. there's more rowdy than the six babies six to an awful lot of work. here's the first. issues of care and home. we are mammals, and being a mammal means your brain and body specialized for taking care of young humans for a long, long time. so we are sensitive. this virtue, these virtues are overwhelming evidence that liberal defense. even though the dominant theme is fairness as equality, i was really surprised, there so me signs about compassion, empathy, free hugs, empathy centers, compassion center. you don't see anything like this at the tea party. [laughter] the second foundation is fairness and cheating. hear a breaking of a we thought fairness and for now we're

finding that the quality seems to go along with compassion. the clearest meaning of fairness is per portion out of. fairness isn't really important psychology that we humans have to allow us to engage in cooperative endeavors and to monitor each other for cheating. anybody who works in office, anybody who works with other people knows that for some people who don't pull their weight, they are slackers. ..

>> on the right, at a tea party rally, you find is all over the place. stop taxing productivity. stop rewarding those who make bad decisions. of course, the tea party was to launch by rick santelli. how many of you want to pay for an extra battery can afford it? everybody cares about fairness, but the rightly focuses on fairness with personality. now, even in the uk and david cameron, let's cut benefits for those who refuse work. it sounds perfectly republican. the third foundation is liberty

and oppression, all americans care about liberty come up with a care in different ways. the breakthrough for me was finding this wonderful book by the into the apologist christopher bowen. he studied groups that were gathered herein. chimpanzees that were always able to be referenced. this question was are we gathered herein? the answer is no, we are not. they hate being dominated and they hate alpha males. when one person rises up and acts like he's the better hunter, they tried to take them down. especially if he persists, then they try to take them down. we are innately opposed to being dominated and bullied. now, you can understand. how many of you live in virginia? i am at uva. and we have the weirdest live in a world?

it is bizarre. it is bizarre and so you understand this book. how many flights have murder on him? [laughter] it's not murder that we celebrate its transvestism. that is what john wilkes booth said and that is what is underlying are filling. very important in his/her country. now you can understand this image from occupy wall street. a very common image at occupy wall street. most of you, i assume, support occupy wall street. did you ever pause about images like this? is the 99% get-together but they can crush this like a bug.

the 1% are bullied and dominating and we need to band together to take them down. of course, the tea party is all about this reflects. don't tread on us. the government equals less freedom. everybody cares about this, but they handle it in very different ways on the left and right. here is the situation. we have a moral foundations questionnaires. there are pics questions of the foundations. here is an item. compassion for those who are suffering as the most crucial virtue. people who registered desk when they register, when they say they are very liberal, you can see plotted on the left. liberals on the left, conservatives on the right. the y. axis is how much you endorsed for those sorts of items.

compassion is the most crucial item. lobos endorse a much more than conservatives. that's why this slope started to go to the right. here's another right item. and please you work the hardest should be paid the most. what you think? do think everybody should be paid regardless of how hard they work? even liberals agree at ambivalently and mildly. here is an item about economic liberty. people who are successful in business have the right to enjoy the wealth as they see fit. if it is about economic liberty, and the right endorses it. if it is about sexuality, then the left does. both sides care about liberty but about different sorts of issues. once you understand this, just to some these three lines, you can understand a lot about the

new culture that erupted in 2009. basically you have liberals who prioritize care and conservatives who prioritize fairness and liberty. when push comes to shove, which one do you go it? if you see that, now you can understand this amazing moment from that famous tea party debate were mr. blitzer poses the question about a young man who doesn't have insurance. he figures, why should i pay? i'm very healthy. and he's in a coma. what should happen? should we let him die? than ron paul says that is what freedom is all about. the idea is to take care of everybody. are you saying that society should just let him die? paul didn't say yes. to his credit, he gave a nuanced answer. don't worry. he did a gig job on that answer. he did a great job on the answer. the point is, during the pause, three audience members shouted out, yes.

[laughter] is it just that they love telling people? no. once you understand, you can understand the story is the ant and the grasshopper. he gave a story. the ants are toiling along. one says come join me come in the winter won't be long. one grasshopper knocks on the other store. one answer is fairness and liberty. this is one of the central points that i think we really need to understand about the tea party. it's not that the government. they like social security, they like other programs. they hate government that they see as subverting fairness is

personality. in other words, the welfare state. that is what they hate. that is the new culture war that ran from 2009 until january 15 of this year when the obama mandate on catholic hospitals went into effect. then, all of a sudden, we went into the old culture war. here's the way to think about that. the three remaining foundations are really about finding groups together -- finding groups together and keeping them strong and coherent. the first is loyalty. they're animals that can hunt in packs. only human can create large groups of non-family. we work together beautifully with people that were not related to and often that we've never met before. those that work in corporations -- you can work with people that you've never met because you're all part of a team. there are all sorts of virtues that go along with it. we look group versus group untrimmed group conflict. so much that we invented voice.

he didn't publish anything, but it is fun because our minds while that sort of stuff. in fact, we love it so much that we created. [inaudible] it's fun because we love that sort of thing. what we find over and over in our website is that the right really values this and does it well. the left is quite ambivalent about loyalty. i couldn't believe this ad, which appeared in a lot of leading journals. in a month or two before the midterm elections, here we are. obama has been in a year and one third. a bunch of leading liberals said crimes are crimes that obama is still killing children in iraq. he's just as bad as bush. liberals are great of a sort of thing. tearing down their own, because especially if obama is found hurting people, than he is just

as bad as bush, right? contrast that to republican commandment thou shall not speak ill of any republican. especially after his current institution to be reelected after the election. [laughter] conservatives value these group loyalties much more. which job would you rather have? democratic or republican? [laughter] here are two displays the respect, submission, rather come , from two very closely related species. what we find is that on the left, authorities about them. if you question it. if there is an authority, you should question it and often subverted. this isn't a real coffee cup, but it is an ad. it's as insubordination. on the left, insubordination is a good thing. it's a virtue. on the right, this is the church

and charlottesville, it says god is in charge, so shut up. [laughter] i assure you it was not a unitarian church. [laughter] [laughter] last, the idea of the that the world is not just there for pleasure. there are things that must be treated as sacred and holy. this is a painting. the outpouring of chastity. it shows the virgin mary locked up with a stream of pure water. all the other symbolism is over-the-top. it speaks to the idea about female chastity and virtue. on the left, his images resonant. this is from madonna's book, sex, celebrating all kinds of whatever. if it feels good, period here is a car with a bumper sticker that says your body may be a temple, but mine is a bemusement park. [laughter] here's a sign that i

photographed that says no thing is sacred. i will give you a guess if that was occupy wall street or tea party. i have no idea what it meant, but you'd never see that at the tea party rally. to put this together, here is the data that showed you with three foundations. everybody values all three, but there is a difference. the other three foundations are very different. it looks like this. people on the right who said they are very conservative, they value all foundations. what that shows is basically -- essentially, people on the right that all six matter. worst people on the left say three of the matter, three don't, and of the three that matter, care matters most. okay. the metaphor that i use in the book, which i think might be helpful, especially if any of you are advisers to the democratic party, this is the

take-home message of the evening. this image is not literally true. many be learned in school that there are different kind of taste buds. sour, salty, bitter. pretend that the older map is true. imagine that the six foundations i told you about are like six different kinds of taste buds. moral taste buds. imagine that the moral tongue with more mind is prepared to taste care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, sanctity. what do the democrats offer? sweetness is the most pleasurable taste, so let's offer the voters to sugar. let's talk constantly about care and compassion for victims. but try to get them to vote for us. 20% to find themselves -- 20% of americans identify as liberal and 40% as conservatives, roughly. here's what the conservatives offer. they connect with all of the moral foundations. liberals have trouble understanding them, respecting

them, but since reagan, they have done a better job of connecting with americans and their morals. implications for politics, learn about it and try to respect it. on the left, you care for policies that violate loyalty and sanctity. those foundations are needed to preserve moral capital. if you are constantly challenging authority, saying that students consider teachers, saying that -- focusing on the rights of the accused rather than those of the prosecutors -- i'm just saying if you are constantly challenging authority and subverting the forces of order, eventually you get more chaos. this is a mistake of the left often mix. okay. we are nearly done. i just want to point out there are so many of its on the left to do framing by using

conservative words and concepts. it just shows that the left -- support our troops is what they said during the iraq war. bring them home now. i don't want them to get killed. violence is bad. i support them. i want to bring them home. that shows you have no clue -- no clue what it means to be fighting a war. you have no clue what it means to support your team when it is playing an away game. come home, we don't want to break your ankle on the basketball court. [laughter] [laughter] okay. the third sensible of the book, morality binds and blinds. that is the third morality. it is often said that the world's greatest wonder is the grand canyon. all of these wonderful and amazing things on these planets. the grand canyon is trivially easy. wind and water and a lot of time, and you have the grand canyon.

it's not all that interesting to me. what is very interesting to me is that there are people surviving in it. and then all kinds of survival around the world. you get between about 4000 -- five or 6000 years ago in 2000 years ago, you get things like babylon. babylon rising in the point of an eye. in the blink of an eye you get giant cities popping up. these, to me, the most amazing things on earth. how how did this ever happen? out of civilization happened? why are we sitting here today? if you look at the history of life on earth there's no way we should be sitting here cooperating peacefully. but we are. how did that happen? well, we have this amazing trick done by -- never before -- i'm sorry, but these and the

termites can build great things. but they are all can. our answer is that we developed reality. we developed the ability to have norms, punish each other, but it's not all negative. a lot of it's positive. one of the great abilities we developed is the ability to come together around sacred objects. if we circle around him, we trust each other and we cooperate. here is an animation showing what happens when people first came together around campfires. around a half million years ago, we find the first evidence of campfires. you get campfires. what that means is there is a division of labor among men and women. the men were hunting and working together in the women were tending the fire and cooking and tending children. there was a division of labor and there was trust. and you have a large group that wasn't just a nuclear family -- that were hunters and gatherers,

so when we got this ability to work together, that was the giant leap forward. a big part of that, i believe, there were many others -- i'm part of a group that believes that religion is an adaptation and evolution of our history. i believe it is for cooperation. we have the ability to circle around sacred objects, sometimes literally. any religious practices circle around these practices. literally circling around. it would be impossible we were just self-interested creatures. but we circle around sacred objects, flags, standards -- sacredness means no trade-offs. aiming to defend the thing that you circle around. this is why the flag and the bible are so important on the right. the left has sacred objects to. how many mlk jokes have you heard in your life?

probably zero. if i were to tell one now, you would hate me because that would be sacrilegious. everybody, if you're part of a political movement, you circle around them and then you can trust each other and work together. i will just read one paragraph from near the end of my book. morality binds and blinds. this is not something that happens to be one the other side. we all get sucked into more communities. we circle around sacred values and we share post- talk arguments about why we are so right and they are so wrong. we think the other side is blind to truth, reason, science, and common sense, in fact, everyone goes blind when talking about sacred objects. reality bites is into teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depends on the outside winning each battle. it points us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say. just to close up this section of the talk, and locations of

policy, follow the sacredness. around it, you will find a ring of ignorance. if your group hold sacred, you know they cannot think straight about. you will then find him denying the age of the earth. if you make the bible sacred, you're committed to thinking badly about geology. if you think the earth is sacred, you are committed badly to the earth. the left will make a lot of mistakes, because everybody -- it is a sacred issue that the left fights were together. follow the sacredness. lastly, politics is more like religion than it is like shopping. you have to understand the sacred element of politics. politics is like religion, is there anything we can do to get us all into the same congregation? well, yes. i'm hoping that we find that password. thank you. [laughter] [laughter]

[applause] [applause] >> we have time for questions. please come up to the microphone if you'd like to ask anything. this is being recorded for "book tv" on c. then. let me say that again. this is being recorded for "book tv" on c-span. i've done this sort of thing before. >> given that all 20 libertarians from nbc are actually in this room, i was wondering how libertarians fit into the big master graphic? >> i'm so glad you asked. the world -- they force you to

say left and right. they don't give you the option of saying libertarian. we have 200,000 people of whom we have about 14,000 libertarian. we have their moral profile. here's the answer. a on original survey story asked about the private foundations other than liberty, we found that they didn't care about reality. they scored on everything. then when we added the liberty item, we added the liberty item through the roof. so they have one conditionality -- you value liberty. here are the cool findings. there is this really important personality bearable called systemizing versus empathizing. simon baron cohen, he does this work. it is a strength, it's not a bad thing. libertarians are by far the highest on that. then there is another trait called empathizing. which is the ability to put put

yourself in other peoples perspective into what they are feeling. libertarians are the lowest. libertarians emerged and -- they emerge as the most rational, low motion people. the really cool thing is that when i tell libertarians about that they say that's cool. i love it. [laughter] [laughter] >> i know a lot of libertarians and we actually take it as a compliment. [laughter] [laughter] >> my general view about politics, is actually a liberal, and now i am a centrist. but i had a dean being here. i think left, the right, the libertarians are important. i love reading things from all three perspectives. thank you. >> i have two questions. one is in the form of your book. you use them very provocative statements and comments and stories, which really -- the reader, which is myself in this

case, efforts to kind of are forced into the arguments and to take on the mind? >> i am an intuition is. something i learned from teaching psych 101 at university of virginia, if you want to be a good teacher, don't just lay out the facts. you have to make it into a story and memorable. it happened to listen to listen to emotions along the way. for example, at thing that i talk about, the asteroid, if you thought i was serious for two seconds, raise your hand. okay. ten years from now, that's what you're going to remember about me in this talk. emotions really help make things memorable. i put a lot of care in the book into -- basically everything i know to make the readers -- for the purpose of getting the idea across, what's your second question? >> in 2012. >> i have no idea what it is.

i don't know anything about taxes. >> } exec, i have seen people on the left and right who are attuned to this video and supported -- >> i haven't seen the video, so i can't comment. >> all right. >> if you are talking about these six moral principles, how do you explain people have certain affiliations to some and not what the other. just as an add-on, based on your own etching of your book formation come how do you explain to people from having one group of these moral beliefs -- >> those are the million-dollar questions. in chapter 12 of the book, i directly try to answer exactly those questions. the way to think about politics and personalities is to take what is called a lifespan personal development perspective.

thirty to 50% of the people are separated by genes. as soon as they got college, they're going to change a lot and they will converge. whether you are on the left or right, to a large extent -- environment matters overall, but it is close. what has been found that people whose genes build brains that are really tight and open to experience, they love to try tex-mex restaurants, thai fusion restaurants -- they love new experiences versus those that like to eat at applebee's that will predict who they're going to vote for. there are some psychological differences that are partially inheritable. what is interesting, is that that is just your predisposition, not your destiny. typically, people with a liberal disposition will gravitate

toward artists and professors and sorts of people who live in certain ways, and that will make them more liberal. they might have an express of different people, and we are socialized by her peers. people can take radical turns. in my case, i am temperamentally illiberal, and it really was -- it's in the book. it really was in india where i was trying to understand a traditional hierarchal, sex segregated cult culture. i was trying to understand it in a different society. that expense allowed me to be passive. when i came back to america, suddenly i understood the right. i didn't think they were crazy or evil. we can have two directories that will change us. i don't think i'll be very conservative, i might not ever be conservative. but if you can move your

previous position, that's good. >> this might be an unfair question because of listening to your presentation and asking the next logical step, which must be your next book. what should we do about it? which is the framework -- and maybe in your answer provided this, which may be therapy. you might have to be put in a situation where you're not around people and like groups that reinforce these ideas. the concern i have is that -- the equation on the left, so closely related politics to religion -- talking about the sacred, that's where the rational -- the rational weights are. it is hard to have a discussion and convince someone of your point of view if their beliefs are irrational or if yours are. i think of it as talking in religious terms when you meet

someone who is very religious and they say to you, look, no matter what you say to me, you're not going to shape my face in jesus. my faith in jesus. it seems to me at that point on the conversation is over. some have said, i don't care what you say. >> do we have any chance of dialogue? >> absolutely. when you put this is very good. if you're thinking about this writer to writer and reasoning to reason, the odds of agreement are poor. i don't get all agree. my goal -- but i'm hoping we can do is take our normal group -- because groups are not always bad. we need those groups. the problem is when we go to sports and reveille and sports who want to beat the heck out of each other -- that's what happens in politics. that is what happened before in

history as well. there has been a lot of research as to what has gone wrong. a lot of it is due to changes we can't undo. things like the realignment when this -- these southern democrats were very conservative. for the first time, we had this certain parties we could no longer have a liberal republican teaming up with a liberal democrat. anyway, that had to happen. there are cultural changes that are happening where we tend to live in enclaves. it is very hard to reverse. among the things we can reverse, the key thing to keep in mind your is that we don't need to agree. what we need to do is get to the point where we can interact with each other and disagree civilly and respectfully. that happens through indirect means when you have human relationships. i had human relationships with people in india. i really like them. that enabled me to say, can i believe? can i believe there is something good about having sex segregation. i said, okay, i can understand what they are doing. the relationship has to come

first. for those who want some hope in something to do, go to no labels.org. they have great suggestions. here's my favorite one. change the calendar. there is no relationships anymore, and of course, they hate each other. the suitable to drink together. i was at a panel with david brooks yesterday. he said a lot of our problems is the decline of bourbon. there used to be so much drinking together, and they don't do that anymore. we did a lot of things happen through congress. second, there is a site called living conversations.org. you can get a conservative person and liberal person to invite their friends. you have a conversation. if you have other things in common, and the new model this

-- it's very important to get together. you can build those relationships. if you have a relationship, you can listen to each other. it's not going to change her mind, but you will stop demonizing, and that's what i'm hoping we can do. >> yes? >> by very much enjoyed your talk tonight. -- i very much enjoyed your talk. my question is about good selection and some of the dynamics of group selection and religion coming around as an adaptive trait make groups work together. i am wondering what your thoughts are on the sources. is it something genetic within the group. is it the norm. is it something in the environment passed down. i am also wondering what, if any role, do you think this is the place in that? is there a way to think about this type of cooperation in terms of his? >> first, let me check the time.

that could take about an hour to answer. where are we on time? okay. very good. group selection is very complicated so i'm not going to get it into it here. in social sciences, there have been enough for it is simple by things and document the newtonian methods of physical sciences. individuals, maximizing self-interest, and build up and show how individuals might cooperate. can get pretty far back, but i don't think you can get all the way. in my book, i explain why think you would need to see evolution is working on multiple levels. everybody agreed that genes compete with jeans, groups of groups. the idea that groups compete with groups and that we are descended -- that has been a hierarchy since the 1960s. her to institutions will talk about that.

there are so many new ideas and new ways of thinking about human history -- i try to cover those in the book and explain why i think it is clear that we are just tribal, group motivated creatures. we are often quite selfish. a lot of people say that we are not selfish, we are all terrific. really what we are is selfish and groupish. as for sympathy and adam smith, i will say that yes, darwin and smith -- a lot of people have pointed to sympathy as the foundation stone was morals. liberals try to say, what is the foundation stone? you can't get to work she and authority from sympathy. i think that there are five other foundations, not just one. >> have a question that has puzzled me since grad school about 40 years ago. i'm wondering whether your work would shed any light on it. >> the question is why is drug

policy so immune to reason? there's essentially no correlation between how dangerous the drug is and how it is treated by the law. it has been confirmed by commissions and studies. there is no study that shows that marijuana is worse than other drugs. >> which should we tell the gentleman to try? what principle, if you want to understand, is crazy, rationality, why do they do this. what's wrong with them? are they insane? follow the sacredness. on the right, the body is a temple. on the left, the body is a playground. a drug that doesn't hurt anyone and feels good -- what could possibly be wrong with that? but there are all kinds of ideas about the body being sacred, and these are not exclusive

preserves of the religious right's. have you been into an international food store ever? those people are wacko. the idea that the body is a temple. -- [laughter] [laughter] >> there are a lot of people -- they believe in essences, toxins, invisible substances, and of course, many drugs to involve a loss of control. on the right, self-control is an important virtue. on the left, it is invalid. that is my answer. >> last question. >> i was a psychology major. >> good for you. when did you graduate? >> a while ago. [laughter] [laughter] >> one of your six ambitions, and it was fairness, i notice the structure of the question. should people who work the hardest repaid the most? i was struck by the word hardest. what does that mean? i grew up in a blue-collar

household. my father i thought worked very hard, should paid much more than he was. what does this mean? is there any definition in the terminology, or do you think that how people grow up affects their answer to their question? >> bright. great question. it is it's actually a very deep question. fairness is probably the most single important policy issue. fairness is where most of the action is these days, at least. there are many kercher for saying something is fair. bob worked the hardest tomaselli tried hardest -- one could be within such and such a company, and people doing the exact same job, while works harder than building should be paid more.

another way to put it would be people should be paid according to develop what they produced in the overall economy. that would be the common sense, economic libertarian view. it is not about how hard he worked. it is about your putting something out there and are you being paid market rate for that? we can talk about this market rate is sure. that's what the left and right talk about. there are big social class differences. that was actually a part of my dissertation. the differences between america and brazil were interesting. lower social class people -- they are much more interdependent. they are much more vulnerable and therefore, they tend to be -- they tend to have stronger ties. wealthy people can be much more independent. they tend to be more autonomous, individualistic, and more selfish, which shows that rich people are more likely to cut

others off in traffic. money does all sorts of things. it is not all bad. money and class are hugely important for understanding reality or it thank you. and thank you all. [applause] [applause] [applause][inaudible conversati] [inaudible conversations] >> for more information, visit the authors website. people.virginia.edu. local oklahoma author bob burke tells us about the book writing process now from oklahoma city. >> when i wake up in the morning, because i am an old farm boy, i'm ready to go. i don't want to lay around in the bed and do nothing. i immediately get up. i can get out of my house in 19 minutes.

freshly shaven and freshly showered. i want to come to the office. it is usually in the shower in the morning, when i know that i want to spend three hours writing, i developed the title to the next chapter. that is something i do in the shower. rather than singing, because i do so very badly, i come up with a title for the next chapter. i try to write one chapter of some book every morning five days a week. except for vacation times during the year, because my goal is always to preserve oklahoma history are mostly biographies. reports of my books are biographies. the others are institutional books like a history of the state capital. the history of the governor's mansion. a book that i just completed the 75th anniversary of the oklahoma highway patrol. or, for example, the sentinel of some of -- of the university of virginia. if i can put out five or six or

at your, i have to be disciplined. once the research is done in the afternoons or perhaps an evening, i devote myself each morning to writing. no one is in my law office. my personal has not shown up. no clients. somebody knocks on the door, i ignore them. that is my time when i sit with my research in front of my big screen -- my computer, and i type away. i have my research behind me here. there are some shelves that, the current book i'm writing on, which is the centennial history of the journalism school, researches and folders by a decade. for example, writing on the 1920s, here is the folder while my research on what happened at the journalism school at the university of oklahoma in the 1920s. when i complete back, it is an orderly -- in a very orderly fashion, put it on the box on the floor.

for every boxers in the office, that means there is a book project. it doesn't overwhelm you a lot of information. if it is about someone's life, i am often asked, how did you put all the information about a former governor or united states senators like -- but not overwhelm you? it doesn't if you divide all of the research into decades of one's life. then you just work on one folder at a time. my desk is not very messy. one folder at a time. when a folder is completed, goes into the box, i did the next folder and proceed with the story. perhaps my most famous among my most famous book nationally was riley post. by the great post was a young man from southern oklahoma who had a sixth-grade education. lost his eyes in an industrial accident, and so became the world's greatest pilot in 1933. he was the first two solo around the world. in 1934, he discovered the jet

stream over barboursville, oklahoma, while attempting to fly at 50,000 feet the first time. to fly that high in an airplane that was not pressurized, he invented the pressurized flying suit. tom stafford writes that the same basic design that does sixth-grade dropout, riley post, used in developing the space suit in 1934, it is the forerunner of the modern space suit. the same desires, visit revisited premise. my only guiding force is that every five books, i want to write about someone that no one has heard of. for example, if your ears back -- a few years back i wanted to write about a lady named kate bernard. the only thing we have named for her at oklahoma is a little

halfway house. it turns out she was our first commissioner of charities impressions. not only that, a little 5-foot 9 inches dynamite woman who was the only ones spoke at the constitutional convention. and she was the first woman elected to statewide office in america. it was incredible. of course, no one heard about her. she died and how many children -- she was unheard of. she didn't have a tombstone for 50 years. so i wrote a biography that made her famous -- kind of made her famous, and she ended up with a wonderful bronze statue of her sitting in a bench in our state capital. every fifth book, i'm going to write about somebody that nobody has heard of. an oklahoman who made some kind of contributions. >> omni books total heavy rain, and on average, how long does it take you to write them? 106 have been published. i have another a coming out for the end of this year.

some have been written in past passers, and simply are in production. sometimes -- it takes as long as six months. the publisher of a newspaper 10 or 15 years back a publisher said when she read on baseball? because we have had many major league starts. and i thought oh, that their 200 guys that play baseball. i was way off. one out of every 10 men who ever played major league baseball in america came through oklahoma. they had been born here, died here. we have long summers -- mickey mantle, johnny bench, they'll play baseball in the summer. that was so much research. it took six months. but i wrote a book that was nominated for a pulitzer prize. the biography of ralph ellison. he was a young african-american men who grew up here in oklahoma city, very poor, lost his father

in an accident when he was three years old. the music teacher takes him under her wing and gives him a chump at scholarship to tuskegee. then he goes to new york, he gets involved with some writers. he writes invisible man. one of the greatest novels in americana. i was asked to introduce him when we inducted him posthumously into the oklahoma hall of fame. i thought i will go to the library, and i need to read a biography about him. there was none. this is just 15 years ago. there had never been a robber for you. but perhaps one of our greatest writers. i teamed up with a lady who literally was the manager of the ralph ellison library in oklahoma city system and had known mr. allison. we, in about six weeks, mr. ellison was gone, his wife had dementia and could not help us in new york.

none of the people who he we found -- none of them is yet gone to school with were still alive. he had written hundreds of short stories and magazine articles and the number of books that were published after his death. that simply told the story of him growing up in oklahoma city. him going off to tuskegee and wanting to be a trumpet player, but ending up as one of the world's greatest writers. i guess it goes to six months. i have never taken more than six months. another project is i was asked by the fbi to write the story of the investigation of the oklahoma city bombing in 1995. i took that as a very solemn thing. my two coworkers were fbi agents who literally investigated that in oklahoma and kansas within 30 minutes of a crime. they knew it all.

the fbi provided me all 30,000 documents. copies of of 30,000 documents of evidence that have been collected that had been used in federal trials and that ultimately ended in the execution of timothy mcveigh. with an open mind, as a lawyer, i told them if i conclude that there is someone else involved, -- there are books written about foreign involvement and air connections, i concluded that it was only timothy mcveigh and nichols. that took six months, also. that's all i did for six months. i did not practice law assembly because that was a huge, huge amount of interviewing people. some of the victims, interviewing -- the book is not about the victims, but interviewing other fbi agents who participated in the investigation, even interviewing some of the lawyers who

represented some of the defendants. this is my basic -- what i call my a team library. if i am writing a book, there is hardly any oklahoma history question that i can't find the answer to hear. for example, we had a very famous governor back in the 1930s named alfalfa bill murray. he was quite a character. well, bill murray wrote a history, or as he calls it, memoirs of governor murray and the true history of oklahoma. lester, i wrote about our constitutional convention. bill murray was the chairman of the constitutional convention. often, in writing that book, i would have to come to his history to see what his words were. there are so many books just in this -- probably 200 bucks, that

refer to several times per week. 200 books that i refer to several times per week. in my home, i have many other books about oklahoma or written by oklahomans. for example, there was a gentleman who wrote so many mysteries. i might have in my collection all of tony hillerman's books. inviting, you can't have just original ideas. harry truman said there is nothing new in the world except for history that you have not read. i would never pretend to know why alfalfa bill murray did something in the constitution. even if i'm reading the journal of what happened at a particular day in the constitutional convention, i can't really interpret that without looking to the other sources. i'm going to look at his own

book, for him telling about that time of his life. the number and look at other books -- books that other historians have written, six years ago a professor -- professor leighton wrote a two volume history of oklahoma of that time. i'm going to go back and see what doctor leighton said about that particular. i may draw my own conclusions, but i want to do so after i read several secondary sources. oklahoma is an incredible story come which is not about places and events, but it is about our people. it's really not about the land runs. it is really neat, but art story is not about that event. it is about the people who strode off on a horse or foot or on bicycles or even jumping from slow-moving trains, with a

hammer and a stake in their hands, they simply planted a stake in the ground and found for themselves a new home. the trail of tears is a very unique history. oklahoma and eastern territory. in the 1830s, the five civilized tribes were removed from the southeastern united states to indian territory. that is unique. that is our story. our story is not about that event, though. it is about the people. some of who were german here like animals, who literally made up for for themselves a new home out of the forest of indian territory. there is always research going on. it is never finished until it is printed. >> objects from oklahoma city, george henderson details the challenges he faces one of the earliest african-american academics at oklahoma university. his book is raised and the

university. >> at first i thought, well, i finally made it, mom. here i am in a nice quiet suburban university, no problems. life will be idyllic. wrong. i found out that we were not allowed to be here after dark. we could come and work, but african-americans have to get out of town before the sun went down. i also found out that we were the first african-americans to own a home. there were some people who didn't want us there, lot who didn't want us there. then there was the issue of students. some of them had never been exposed to an african-american professor. they were not sure they were going to get a quality education from me. >> what you resist? >> 1967. i was living in short. my family was in detroit.

and i was offered a job. i took the job because i want to wanted to see the football stadium where the soonest plate, and i wanted to see indians. then i would be sears about my employment. i came. i talked talk to students and faculty. one student in particular -- one graduate student send you know, doctor henderson, you know that you are going to give better -- you're going to get better offers elsewhere. but we need you to talk to us about culture and diversity, life outside of just the white bubble. and i said well, and then he said something else. he said do you want to be eight small fish in a big pond or a big fish in a small pond? and that was the beginning. i did tell my wife barbara that i was going to accept the job. she knew that i was comment

here. then we got sears about the other universities. when i got back to norman and told her that i had given a verbal agreement that i would teach there, she asked me one question. how much does it pay? let me put that into perspective. we had seven children. i took a 5000-dollar pay cut to come to the university of oklahoma. i'm sure my wife was thinking now is the time to commit him to be silent. he has really lost it. as a workout, every job that i've had, every opportunity that i've had, has allowed me to provide extra income so that my children, all seven of them, never wanted very much. that was my blessing. that was our blessing, really. i always tell people that god sent hearing god took care me. it didn't take the students won't realize that i, indeed, was not only competent, but it was extremely competent.

i always had high self-esteem. otherwise, i would question should i be doing this? my mother told me you have to be twice as good as the white progressives if you're going to get anywhere. i took that to heart. they knew this and i mean this -- my colleagues. you know when you are going to play against someone -- when you are an athlete. well, i meant outstanding teacher. my students found that i'm very serious. i was nominated for an outstanding teacher award by students for five consecutive years. that was not an issue. my colleagues, that's a different matter. they were split. there was a small group of faculty members here who were committed to racial desegregation. some of them were beyond that, they wanted integration. they wanted us to be part of the interval diversity. others were sure that i was a carpetbagger from detroit and i had just come down to make

trouble. one of the first public meetings that i attended -- i asked a question to the panel, and a the young man said, where are you from? is that from detroit. he asked y. and z. are. i said i'm here to teach. i'm from detroit, as i told you come the black people had a national meeting in detroit and i got oklahoma. so here it was, people were not sure. is he real or what is he? well, i was serious. i was dead serious. i believed that it was my opportunity to show, not only do we need to be a diverse faculty, but a committed one. within the first six months that i was here, my powerbase, that's what you want to call it, became students. african-americans, white

students, american indian students. i had, perhaps, the largest on the students because they said it is time. it's time that this institution that is predominately white, became multicultural. i was privileged and honored to be a voice for the students at a time in which they were trying to find their own voices. i talk for -- i taught school for several years from 1967 onwards. i retired kind of, i still teach fall and spring every semester one class -- an undergraduate course. i'm doing what i always do for considerably less money. it was never about the money anyway. it was about the students and the opportunity to use another perspective and view to the pledge that we make.

one nation with liberty and justice for all. we were able to do whatever we have to do to make it happen here. slowly but surely, it started happening. >> this weekend, but to be takes a look at the literary culture of oklahoma city. now, joe foote, the dean of oklahoma university, gives his thoughts on the current state of journalism. >> we are in the dean's office of beautiful new building on the campus of the university of oklahoma. it houses the gaylord college of journalism and mass communications. a building that opened in 2004, and then was expanded in 2009. we are very fortunate to have one of the most modern, beautiful facilities in the united states.