The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion Jonathan Haidt Pantheon Books, 2012One has likely heard that, for the sake of decorum, religion and politics should never be topics of conversation with strangers. Even amongst friends or even when it is known that others hold opposing political or religious views, why is it that discussion of religion and politics leads to visceral-level acrimony and that one's views are right and the other's views are wrong? Professor Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia examines the psychological basis of our "righteous minds" without resorting to any of the pejorative labeling that is usually found in a book on politics and religion and eschews a purely comparative approach. Haidt proposes the intriguing hypothesis that our visceral reaction to competing ideologies is a subconscious, rather than leaned, reaction that evolved over human evolution to innate senses of suffering, fairness, cheating and disease, and that moral foundations facilitated intra-group cooperation which in turn conferred survival advantages over other groups. These psychological mechanisms are genetic in origin and not necessarily amenable to rational and voluntary control - this is in part the reason debating one's ideological opposite more often leads to frustration rather than understanding. Haidt also suggests that morality is based on six "psychological systems" or foundations (Moral Foundations Theory), similar to the hypothesized adaptive mental modules which evolved to solve specific problems of survival in the human ancestral environment.While decorum pleads for more civility, it would be better, as Haidt suggests, dragging the issue of partisan politics out into the open in order to understand it and work around our righteous minds. Haidt suggests a few methods by which the level of rhetoric in American politics can be reduced, such that the political parties can at least be cordial as they have been in the past and work together to solve truly pressing social problems.There are a number of fascinating points raised in the current book, but most intriguing is the one that morality, ideology and religion are products of group selection, as adaptations that increased individual cooperation and suppressed selfishness, thereby increasing individual loyalty to the group. That morality, political ideology and religion buttress group survival is probably highly intuitive. However, given the contemporary focus on the individual as the source of adaptations, to the exclusion of all else, to suggest that adaptations such as religion and political ideology arose to enhance survival of groups is heresy or, as Haidt recounts, "foolishness". While previous rejection of group selection itself was due in part to conceptual issues, one could also point out the prevailing individualist social sentiment, "selfish gene" mentality and unrelenting hostility against those who supported the view that group selection did indeed apply to humans and not just to insects. Haidt gives a lengthy and convincing defense of group selection, his main point being that humans can pursue self- interest at the same time they promote self-interest within a group setting - humans are "90 percent chimp, 10 percent bees". One can readily observe in the news and entertainment mediate that religion is a frequent target of derision, even within the scientific community - Haidt points to the strident contempt that the "New Atheists" hold for religion. They claim that religion is purely a by-product of an adaptive psychological trait and as a mere by-product religion serves no useful purpose. However, the religious "sense" has somehow managed to persist in the human psyche. One explanation by the New Atheists of how religion propagated itself is that it is a "parasite" or "virus" which latches onto a susceptible host and induces the host to "infect" others. As a "virus" or "parasite" that is merely interested in its own survival, religion causes people to perform behaviors that do not increase their own reproductive fitness and may even be detrimental to survival, but religion spreads nonetheless. …

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

Ecology Without Nature, Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics

The proponents of late modern war like to argue that it has become surgical, sensitive and scrupulous, and remotely operated Unmanned Aerial Vehicles or 'drones' have become diagnostic instruments in contemporary debates over the conjunction of virtual and 'virtuous' war. Advocates for the use of Predators and Reapers in counterinsurgency and counterterrorism campaigns have emphasized their crucial role in providing intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance, in strengthening the legal armature of targeting, and in conducting precision-strikes. Critics claim that their use reduces late modern war to a video game in which killing becomes casual. Most discussion has focused on the covert campaign waged by CIA-operated drones in Pakistan, but it is also vitally important to interrogate the role of United States Air Force-operated drones in Afghanistan. In doing so, it becomes possible to see that the problem there may not be remoteness and detachment but, rather, the sense of proximity to ground troops inculcated by the video feeds from the aerial platforms.

/pdf/from-a-view-to-a-kill-drones-and-late-modern-war-1qrg2d4fhh.pdf

From a View to a Kill: Drones and Late Modern War

economy. There is also a spatial element to all of the proposed social and economic indicators recommended in the book. It is argued that the focus cannot be solely at the national level as the development of ‘national economic indicators’ are not adequate to represent a comprehensive picture and there is a need to take regional and local level into account (44). In the remaining chapters, these concerns are negotiated and suggestions given on how improvements can be made. Morrissey looks at both spatial and locational evidence when connecting the marine economy, which has ‘traditionally been seen as part of the peripheral economy’, to urban areas (70). The work of Porter (1990) is used to re-examine the idea of ‘marine clusters’ and the context within which we use them, and Morrissey looks at understanding competitiveness from a ‘collective result’ of sectors rather than ‘individual processes’ (109). The Irish Maritime and Energy Resource Cluster is used as an example to explain how appropriate methods can be used to ‘evaluate the relative strengths of the cluster’, which highlights holistic ways of dealing with the multifaceted sector (111). In the chapter ‘From National to Regional to Local: A Spatial Microsimulation Model for the Marine’ a definitive way of incorporating scale and spatial referencing into the scenario is discussed and how this might inform policy is examined. Indicators aim at bringing the focus from the national to regional to ‘local level analysis’ and supporting the importance of understanding the impact of policies not only at the macro level but also at the local level is highlighted (140). A positive of the book, is that it recognises the weaknesses within certain models and applications and that one indicator may not be enough to answer these. Each chapter builds on the next, and by the end, tools with which to deal with ‘Blue Growth’ and the ‘Blue Economy’ effectively have been gained (43). In this evolving field of research, certain approaches are not perfect but identifying these voids and determining how to rectify them can help to improve future projections about the marine sector. As there is no definition of what ‘constitutes a national marine sector’ Morrissey does a capable job of helping to define it and taking it to different levels of analysis (7). Informing policy and managing marine resources in a sustainable way are what underpin the book. Each chapter highlights how policy makers and practitioners might be able to apply the information for future application. This interdisciplinary book is of use to those who are interested in developing and supporting the marine economy in a sustainable manner.

Bodies of water: posthuman feminist phenomenology

Introduction Crystal Bartolovich Part I. Eurocentrism, 'The West', and the World: 1. The rise of East Asia and the withering away of the interstate system Giovanni Arrighi 2. The fetish of 'the West' in postcolonial studies Neil Lazarus 3. The Eurocentric Marx and Engles and other related myths August Nimtz 4. Karl Marx, Eurocentrism, and the 1857 revolt in British India Pranav Jani Part II. Locating Modernity: 5. Liberation theory: variations on themes of Marxism and modernity Benita Parry 6. Misplaced ideas? Locating and dislocating Ireland in colonial and postcolonial studies Joe Cleary 7. Sex, space and modernity in the work of Rashid Jahan, Angareywali Priya Gopal 8. Was there a time before race? Capitalist modernity and the origins of racism Helen Scott Part III. Marxism, Postcolonial Studies and 'Theory': 9. Postcolonialism and the problematic of uneven development E. San Juan 10. Marxism, postcolonialism and The Eighteenth Brumaire Neil Larsen 11. Postcolonial studies between the European wars: an intellectual history Timothy Brennan 12. Adorno, authenticity, critique Keya Ganguly.

/pdf/marxism-modernity-and-postcolonial-studies-4b225sch6b.pdf

Marxism, modernity, and postcolonial studies

Foreword Itinerary I. On the Universal II. On the Uniform III. On the Common IV. From the advent of the State to the cosmo-political extension of the common V. The other level: the universal as a logical category of philosophy VI. First encounter of the universal and the common: Roman citizenship extended to the Empire VII. Paul and the matter of going beyond all communitarianism in Christian universalism VIII. Does the question of the universal arise in other cultures? IX. Are there universal notions? A cultural universal having ideal status X. On Human rights - the notion of universalising XI. If it is neither synthesis nor denominator nor foundation, from where does the common arise? XII. On Cultures : divergences of language - the resources of thought XIII. To construct the dialogue between cultures to counter the surrounding uniformisation human self-reflection

On the Universal: The Uniform, the Common and Dialogue between Cultures

The climate catastrophe to come is traumatically affecting, whether in its micro and macro manifestations, in the threat it poses to existing ways of life, in its upending of entrenched understandings of the workings of the world, or in the injury it is doing to particular lives and wider ecologies. It works on ecologies and bodies alike as a kind of wounding, one not simply or solely to the everyday stuff of biological life but to the very constitution of experience and expression. Critiquing and extending writing on climate, trauma, and aesthetic experience by E. Ann Kaplan (2016), Timothy Morton (2013), and others, this article argues that these affects of climate catastrophe are traumatically affecting without necessarily being traumatizing: they are jarring, rupturing, disjunctive experiences of future crisis in the now. This article traces these affects of apocalypse as they circulate traumatically in three texts: George Miller’s film Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), Marina Zurkow’s animation Slurb (2009), and Briohny Doyle’s novel The Island Will Sink (2016). Climate catastrophe, that most threatening yet elusive of hyperobjects, marks and emerges irresistibly from within these works, not simply as theme, setting, or symbol but as the form of their affectivity. This intensity presses into the present from the future, shaping how the catastrophe to come is felt today and exposing crucial tensions between aesthetic expression and lived experience.

/pdf/climate-trauma-or-the-affects-of-the-catastrophe-to-come-1lg38ldk78.pdf

Climate Trauma, or the Affects of the Catastrophe to Come

A convergence of four genealogies reveals drone power. Environmentality describes the contradictory uses of drones in conservation. Humanitarianism articulates how control is enacted and challenged...

/pdf/drone-power-conservation-humanitarianism-policing-and-war-2dmi4goi28.pdf

Drone Power: Conservation, Humanitarianism, Policing and War:

The Ethnics of Surrealism@@@Formless: A User's Guide@@@La ressemblance informe, ou le Gai-Savoir visuel selon Georges Bataille@@@Refusal of the Shadow: Surrealism and the Caribbean

In "This Strange Idea of the Beautiful", Francois Jullien brings together ideas of beauty from both Eastern and Western philosophy in order to challenge the assumptions underlying our commonly agreed upon definition of what is beautiful and offer a new way of beholding art. Jullien argues that the Western concept of beauty was established by Greek philosophy and consequently became embedded within the very structure of European languages. And due to its relationship to language, this concept has determined ways of thinking about beauty that often go unnoticed or unchecked in discussions of Western aesthetics. Moreover, through globalization, Western ideals of beauty have even spread to cultures whose ancient traditions are based upon radically different aesthetic foundations, yet these cultures have adopted such views without question and without recognizing the cultural assumptions they contain. Looking specifically at how Chinese texts have been translated into Western languages, Jullien reveals how the traditional Chinese refusal to isolate or abstract beauty is obscured in translation in order to make the works more understandable to Western readers. Creating an engaging dialogue between Chinese and Western ideas, Jullien reassesses the essence of beauty.

This strange idea of the beautiful

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

Michael Richardson

Author Tools

Chat about Author