Jonathan HaidtRecensioni

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS:
(Available as Print: ©12/26/2006; PAGES: 297; Unabridged.)
(Available as Digital: Yes)
*This version: Audio : ©5/23/2018; DURATION: 10:18:00; Unabridged
Other media: I don’t think so.

SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
This book skillfully combines science with philosophy. Among the topics of discussion are passionate vs companionate love, and how one may or may not segue into the other; nurture vs nature studies—is our most pervasive world-view/attitude in our genes; physical indications of pessimism in the brain; and more. I enjoyed this book QUITE a bit.

AUTHOR:
Jonathan Haidt October 19, 1963. According to Wikipedia, Jonathan “s an American social psychologist, Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University Stern School of Business,[1] and author. His main areas of study are the psychology of morality and moral emotions.
Haidt's main scientific contributions come from the psychological field of moral foundations theory,[2] which attempts to explain the evolutionary origins of human moral reasoning on the basis of innate, gut feelings rather than logical reason.[3] The theory was later extended to explain the different moral reasoning and how they relate to political ideology, with different political orientations prioritizing different sets of morals.[4] The research served as a foundation for future books on various topics.
Haidt has written three books for general audiences: The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (2006) explores the relationship between ancient philosophies and modern science;[5] The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012) examines how morality is shaped by emotion and intuition more than by reasoning, and why differing political groups have different notions of right and wrong;[6] and The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (2018), co-written with Greg Lukianoff, explores the rising political polarization and changing culture on college campuses, and its effects on mental health.”

NARRATOR:
Ryan Vincent Anderson. According to IMDb, “Ryan was born and raised in Queens, NY. After a five year architecture degree program at the esteemed Carnegie Mellon university in Pittsburgh, PA, Ryan was accepted into the MFA Acting program at CalArts. There he spent three years honing his craft in theater, film, and voice over. Immediately after CalArts he ventured off to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for two full seasons before returning to his home base in Los Angeles. Aside from being a well-rounded actor, Ryan's passions also lay in art and design.”
Ryan does a wonderful narration of this book.

GENRE:
Non-Fiction; Psychology; Philosophy

SUBJECTS:
Philosophy; Psychology; Science; Emotions; Happiness

DEDICATION:
“for Jayne”

SAMPLE QUOTATION: From Chapter One “The Divided Self”
“At this point in the story, we’ll be ready to ask: Where does happiness come from? There are several different “happiness hypotheses.” One is that happiness comes from getting what you want, but we all know (and research confirms) that such happiness is short-lived. A more promising hypothesis is that happiness comes from within and cannot be obtained by making the world conform to your desires. This idea was widespread in the ancient world: Buddha in India and the Stoic philosophers in ancient Greece and Rome all counseled people to break their emotional attachments to people and events, which are always unpredictable and uncontrollable, and to cultivate instead an attitude of acceptance. This ancient idea deserves respect, and it is certainly true that changing your mind is usually a more effective response to frustration than is changing the world. However, I will present evidence that this second version of the happiness hypothesis is wrong. Recent research shows that there are some things worth striving for; there are external conditions of life that can make you lastingly happier. One of these conditions is relatedness—the bonds we form, and need to form, with others. I’ll present research showing where love comes from, why passionate love always cools, and what kind of love is “true” love. I’ll suggest that the happiness hypothesis offered by Buddha and the Stoics should be amended: Happiness comes from within, and happiness comes from without. We need the guidance of both ancient wisdom and modern science to get the balance right.”

RATING:
5 stars. Well written and narrated.

STARTED READING – FINISHED READING
1/26/2022 – 2/13/2022

A safe book with good arguments

The main arguments definitely provide some clarity and understanding of the PC/virtue signaling/SJW culture that is being embodied by the left especially on many college campuses. The authors do a good job of diving deep into specific instances to show motivations and another side of the story. Unfortunately, this is bogged down by their one sided political view of events in the US. They seem to be quite sympathetic to those actually promoting and causing violence and spend a lot of time explaining their actions, sometimes seeming to blame the victims but put no effort into doing the same for the other side. They conveniently leave specific facts out or unaddressed (Trump, Charlottesville) and include incorrect facts as supporting arguments (McCarthyism). However, this all aligns with the common narrative and does not seem to detract from the primary arguments of the book. That is what makes this book safe, in the sense that the authors use the word throughout. It goes right along with most of the current beliefs of the people they are discussing many of which are very divisive while suggesting that people stop being so divisive.

Recommended by David French essay "Men are from mercury, women are from Neptune". NYT 29 Feb 2024

The point is a fair one and well articulated: that in general universities as apex of societal knowledge should remain open to healthy discourse across many views.

The problem is that the solutions are naive and do not take into account what we might mean by “healthy discourse”.

While the examples drawn appear to be mainly academically sound poiints to the author, at least in some cases I would find the ideas hogwash that only exists because of fetishistic interest in controversy.

For example; as I see the IQ test, and discussion: not only is the test useless, its goal a sort of post-colonial vision, its analisys by Murray statistically flawed.. any university that admits discussion about garbage should not be surprised to get garbage thrown at it. I do not think you can reason around certain levela of idiocy, and so am not surprised idiots attract attract idiots.

Could it also be that the expectations and level of academics is not as high as Universities pursue funding relentlessly.

Nevertheless a good book to read, and very difficult to write, so I appreciate the author’s effort.

The author takes you on a journey through moral philosophy and evolutionary psychology to make sense of what we see as values today. He makes a lot of sense for the most part, and opens an exciting path to rarionalising contemporary socio-political processes and the values they rely on.

The book is near perfect except the end in which he does not spend as much detailed work on motivating his ideas and counterarguments. But nevertheless I found many moments totally enlightening in their candid views, I think this is a must read book.

The themes of this book — including the effects of safetyism, tribal conflict, the distortions of emotions — all ring true to me.

I have seen close friends “cancelled,” I myself heavily censor my opinions online and in public for fear of being outed or my business crushed by reflexive or reactionary forces in the public realm.

The first 8 chapters were good, but maybe a little bit of a theoretical stretch without research to back up his hypothesis in chapter 8 and forward. I liked his idea of the rider and the elephant as an analogy to our selves and life. It may not be completely accurate, but it does encompass a good deal of the research that does back up his hypothesis.

The end fell apart for me with the last few chapters when he tries to balance his atheism with life purpose and happiness. It just seems like believing a falsehood because you know it works. Confusing. Maybe I read into it with my Christian beliefs, and think he is trying to reason his way out of faith even though the evidence is staring him in the face.

I made it to page 200 before my revulsion at the emerging narrative became so intense I couldn't finish. Bogus experimental technique, errors of fact (John Stuart Mill did not justify slavery), treating institutional racism, misogyny and patriarchy as valid "moral" positions just got to be too much. Think Social Darwinism mixed with moral relativism. The "Dark Enlightenment" folks would love this - a virtual blueprint for justifying fascism. Two stars only for the writing which was decent enough and recommended from a know your enemy perspective.

I have watched the politicizing of speech with a sense of bafflement but this book went a long way towards helping me understand this trend. It also gave me some insights into the wave of anxiety that seems to affect every young person I know. A great book for anyone raising kids to read.

I wasn't particularly looking forward to reading this for book club, but it actually turned out to be fascinating. The author's experiments and explanations about how people develop their morality systems and why we can view the world in such different ways made a lot of sense. I especially liked his suggestions for how to communicate more effectively with people who think differently than you do.

This was pretty entertaining and interesting. It is about morale psychology and trying to determine why we believe what we believe. There are some very entertaining study results (some of them pretty humorous) that the author uses as evidence in a debate between emotion/intuition vs reasoning. Later, there is a discussion about Moral Foundations - the basic moral principles we all rate and how they map to our political leanings. There is also a discussion of how our ancestors' anthropology/evolution may be influencing our morality today which also had some interesting points.

It's not overly technical and he has some good metaphors for explaining his theories.

Struggling with a 3 star or a 4-star rating. I think the topics here are worth 4-stars, I think parts of the discussion are worth 4 or even 5-stars... but the whole book ends up being disjointed and a bit repetitive. I would have liked more discussion/details of "safetyism" on campus: maybe more details of polling on attitudes, any stats or details on events and/or activity less dramatic than disinvite/deplatforming (like reporting of professors/TA's/other students for bias incidents, etc.) Some stats about campus life (diversity, student graduation rates, involvement in campus activities, etc.) to put it all in context would be useful, as well. There are tiny bits and pieces of that in there, but not enough.

The book itself seemed like two somewhat incomplete halves, the first about campus issues and the second about child-rearing and social attitudes about parenting and children. Altogether it came off as disjointed. The connecting thread throughout is "safetyism," but it wasn't written that way. The book suffers because of that.

That said, some of this is because the authors set a tall order for themselves. They want to talk about safetyism and its medium-term consequences, but there don't seem to be the complete statistics they would want to do that: a couple or 4 years worth of stats on college campuses, a few more than that on teen depression, etc. I'm guessing a lot of the stats about campus life, bias reports, etc. are also not readily available in any kind of usable format.

Which leaves mostly 2-star reviews from people arguing that the book is terrible because it doesn't talk enough about Nazis, or because it doesn't acknowledge the depth of racism, or because this is just old people complaining about young people, or because the authors don't like social justice (all comments that make me wonder if folks even read the book...) and 5-star reviews from people who seem to have missed all the hesitations and qualifications and the fact that the authors actually don't think that activists are coming for your kids (actually, that's probably a good chunk of the 2-star folks, too.)

I'd really love to split that difference: this really is a 3.5 book, not a 3 or a 4. I'll unhappily settle on the lower end:

3-stars.

recommended to Bryant

interesting first three parts that go into current understanding of the physical and evolutionary basis of human psychology. Really frustrating through this part whenever the author reveals, consciously or not, just how much of a liberal he is. The final part gets to the point, and says that a political atmosphere in which there are both liberals and conservatives is good, almost necessary, as long as they can and do respect and talk across party lines. liberals look at how to improve society, often mostly for those who have no voice or are marginalised, while conservatives remind us not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Really good, but the last few chapters feel weirdly out of place. It goes from super-detailed psychological and biological analysis to political opinion out of nowhere. Otherwise, pretty mind-blowing.

If I had read this in 2018, it definitely would have been 5 stars.

Looking at this book as a self contained argument as to why free speech and exchange of ideas has diminished on college campuses, I really liked it. The first three parts are excellent. One author is an attorney, and you can tell. He lays out three untruths that have pervaded college campuses, provides evidence for them (mostly anecdotal, but compelling and beautifully argued), and then hypothesizes how the current generation (college students from 2013 onward) were inculcated with these misguided values through overprotective parenting and the extremely competitive college admissions landscape.

However, my feeling at the end of the book is that it was about the canary in the coal mine. The focus on the upper middle class may have been merited, but the events of 2020 (election, pandemic, etc.) revealed how these untruths are a lot more pervasive that perhaps they initially appeared to be. The bifurcation of safety and freedom was magnified in so many ways . . .suggesting to me that this book merely addressed the tip of the iceberg.

A 5 not so much because its wonderfully written (though it is well-written), but because of the information it contains and how clearly it is explained.

First, let me state that this is NOT a self-help book. It is a survey of various ideas concerning happiness that cross various cultural, philosophical and religious boundaries.

Each idea is examined in the light of the latest neurological, psychological and sociological science. Some are found wanting, some very accurate and some useful in particular circumstances or cases.

It is a fascinating read, at times depressing because of just poorly our minds work in some cases, but at other times very inspiring. Today we really do have a vast body of knowledge and set of tools to apply to both our own happiness and well-being as well as understand that of others.

The facts and analysis presented are more broadly applicable - in politics most especially, but he dips into other fields as well.

I can't thinking of anyone who shouldn't read this book for the knowledge and analysis it contains alone.

I disagree with the use of Lord of the Flies experiments of school age children as proof of any kind of human nature.

The author maintains a WEIRD (really Sorkin West Wing) view of history and politics. He has failed to reaassess the last 400 years with new information and it makes the final parts of the book a sad drop off from something otherwise interesting. He falls for the false dichotomy of liberals and convervatives and doesn’t even scratch the surface of industrialization beyond an anechdote about leaded gasoline. Quoting adam smith in earnest should come with a trigger warning.½

Jonathan Haidt is psychologist who primarily researches how people come to ethical opinions/actions. This book takes an evidence based look at some big ideas of philosophy and great thinkers through history about how to be happy.


It uses a pretty wide array of illustrations of ideas, referencing scenes from The Godfather to demonstrate social strategies, Edwin Abbott’s Flatworld, and using the Bible, Buddha, and Machiavelli to present the history of ideas, then examines some of the experiments by modern psychologists that are applicable to those ideas. It’s not a perfect book and I won’t claim to agree with every conclusion made, but it’s fairly easy to follow the difference between citing research and conclusions drawn from that research.


I have a hard time judging the approachability of this one because I’ve read a disproportionately high number of books in psychology, but it doesn’t seem to assume that much knowledge. It does get somewhat dense and technical at points, and I intend to give it a second read, but I believe it’s something you can follow without a strong background if you know what you’re getting into.

It covers a wide range of ideas from structural elements of the brain, to childhood development, the role of trauma in personal growth, religious experiences, psychedelics, and how ideas about ethical decision making differ and contribute to happiness. It’s a lot, packed through with citations, but it’s reasonably well structured and presented. Overall, if you read everything printed in psychology you’ll recognize a lot of the research, but might think about some of it in new ways. If you haven’t read much, it might be a bit daunting but even if you miss details I think you could take away a lot of understanding of how our brains work by reading this book.

The psychological observations are probably entirely correct. But the authors try too hard to be clever. Also, the book has aged poorly. In 2020, Democratic politicians encouraged riots that killed 20 people and destroyed neighborhoods for a generation, or perhaps for ever, all to improve their political prospects, or possibly, just so that they could persuade themselves of their own virtue. The book explains, really well, why people would choose to do that, and praise themselves for it into the bargain. But isn't it actually evil to sacrifice the lives and well-being of so many people in that way, for so meager a cause, even when the reason why a person might do so is explained by their upbringing and education?

John McWhorter's "Woke Racism" has the same defects at this book, although published a bit more recently. In that case, though, McWhorter's warm, erudite, and peculiar character still comes through, making "Woke Racism" more than bearable. "Coddling..." is the first book I've attempted by either of its authors, and their characters lend nothing to the book.

4.5 stars.

I found very interesting the hypotheses described in this book, and will definitely study more some of the concepts that the author explained in order to improve my own “happiness level” and become more conscious of my own behavior. I fully recommend this book to anyone that wants to understand more clearly how our mind and emotions work together.

I liked the book a lot but I wish it had a better title. Makes me embarrassed! But the content was very good.

A great book, but not perfect. Haidt addresses questions I'm really interested in and gives reasonable explanations for the way we behave in political and religious contexts. I've never seen a book that better addresses these issues from an evo psych perspective.