The Moral Foundations of Politics – The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion – Jonathan Haidt
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Trigger warning: – i cinque pilastri – perché vince la destra – equivoci sull’ “appello alla paura”
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Care (hurting a child), Fairness (profiting from someone else’s undeserved loss), Loyalty (criticizing your nation to outsiders), Authority (disrespecting your father), and Sanctity (acting in a degrading or disgusting way).
Note:CINQUE PILASTRI DELLA MORALE
A NOTE ON INNATENESS
The brain is like a book, the first draft of which is written by the genes during fetal development. No chapters are complete at birth, and some are just rough outlines waiting to be filled in during childhood. But not a single chapter—be it on sexuality, language, food preferences, or morality—consists of blank pages
Note:IL CERVELLO È COME UN LIBRO
“Built-in” does not mean unmalleable; it means “organized in advance
Note:DEFINIZIONE DI INNATO
The list of five moral foundations was my first attempt to specify how the righteous mind was “organized in advance of experience.”
Note:MORALITÀ INNATA
1. THE CARE/HARM FOUNDATION
Mammals make fewer bets and invest a lot more in each one, so mammals face the challenge of caring for and nurturing their children for a long time.
Note:LA PROLE DEI MAMMIFERI
attachment theory, a well-supported theory that describes the system by which mothers and children regulate each other’s behavior so that the child gets a good mix of protection and opportunities for independent exploration.
Note:TEORIA DELL’ATTACCAMENTO
The moral matrix of liberals, in America and elsewhere, rests more heavily on the Care foundation than do the matrices of conservatives,
Note:LIBERAL E CURA
2. THE FAIRNESS/CHEATING FOUNDATION
Altruism toward kin is not a puzzle at all. Altruism toward non-kin, on the other hand, has presented one of the longest-running puzzles in the history of evolutionary thinking.
Note:ALTRUISMO
Trivers noted that evolution could create altruists in a species where individuals could remember their prior interactions with other individuals and then limit their current niceness to those who were likely to repay the favor.
Note:TRIVERS E LA CORRETTEZZA
Human life is a series of opportunities for mutually beneficial cooperation.
Note:COOPERAZIONE
On the left, fairness often implies equality, but on the right it means proportionality—people should be rewarded in proportion
Note:EGUAGLIANZA E PROPORZIONALITÀ
3. THE LOYALTY/BETRAYAL FOUNDATION
The male mind appears to be innately tribal—that is, structured in advance of experience so that boys and men enjoy doing the sorts of things that lead to group cohesion and success in conflicts between groups (including warfare).
Note:TRIBALISMI
The Loyalty/betrayal foundation is just a part of our innate preparation for meeting the adaptive challenge of forming cohesive coalitions.
Note:LEALTÀ E COESIONE TRIBALE
The love of loyal teammates is matched by a corresponding hatred of traitors, who are usually considered to be far worse than enemies.
Note:IL NEMICO
The left tends toward universalism and away from nationalism,26 so it often has trouble connecting to voters who rely on the Loyalty foundation.Indeed, because of its strong reliance upon the Care foundation, American liberals are often hostile to American foreign policy.
Note:I PROBLEMI DELLA SINISTRA CON LA LEALTÀ
4. THE AUTHORITY/SUBVERSION FOUNDATION
The urge to respect hierarchical relationships is so deep that many languages encode it directly. In French, as in other romance languages, speakers are forced to choose whether they’ll address someone using the respectful form (vous) or the familiar form (tu).
Note:GERARCHIA E LINGUAGGIO
The obvious way to begin thinking about the evolution of the Authority foundation is to consider the pecking orders and dominance hierarchies of chickens, dogs, chimpanzees,
Note:ALTRE SPECIE
As the primatologist Frans de Waal puts it: “Without agreement on rank and a certain respect for authority there can be no great sensitivity to social rules,
Note:GERARCHIA E SOCIALITÀ
When I began graduate school I subscribed to the common liberal belief that hierarchy = power = exploitation = evil.
Note:PROBLEMI A SINISTRA
5. THE SANCTITY/DEGRADATION FOUNDATION
Liberals score higher on measures of neophilia (also known as “openness to experience”), not just for new foods but also for new people, music, and ideas. Conservatives are higher on neophobia; they prefer to stick with what’s tried and true, and they care a lot more about guarding borders, boundaries, and traditions.
Note:NEOFILIA NEOFOBIA
The emotion of disgust evolved initially to optimize responses to the omnivore’s dilemma.39 Individuals who had a properly calibrated sense of disgust were able to consume more calories than their overly disgustable cousins while consuming fewer dangerous microbes than their insufficiently disgustable cousins.
Note:IL DISGUSTO DEGLI ONNIVORI
It’s a lot more effective to prevent infection by washing your food,
Note:LAVARE PULIRE PURIFICARE SANTIFICARE
The original adaptive challenge that drove the evolution of the Sanctity foundation, therefore, was the need to avoid pathogens, parasites,
Note:PARASSITI
Cultures differ in their attitudes toward immigrants, and there is some evidence that liberal and welcoming attitudes are more common in times and places where disease risks are lower.41 Plagues, epidemics, and new diseases are usually brought in by foreigners—as
Note:IMMIGRAZIONE
If we had no sense of disgust, I believe we would also have no sense of the sacred.
Note:SACRO E DISGUSTO
American conservatives are more likely to talk about “the sanctity of life” and “the sanctity of marriage.”
Note:DESTRA E SANTITÀ
On the left, however, the virtue of chastity is usually dismissed as outdated and sexist.
Note:ESEMPIO CASTITÀ
You can see the foundation’s original impurity-avoidance function in New Age grocery stores, where you’ll find a variety of products that promise to cleanse you of “toxins.”
Note:IL SACRO A SINISTRA: CIBO
If you dismiss the Sanctity foundation entirely, then it’s hard to understand the fuss over most of today’s biomedical controversies. The only ethical question about abortion becomes: At what point can a fetus feel pain?
Note:BIOETICA E SENSO DEL SACRO
The philosopher Leon Kass is among the foremost spokesmen for Shweder’s ethic of divinity, and for the Sanctity foundation on which it is based.
Note:KASS
Kass argued that our feelings of disgust can sometimes provide us with a valuable warning that we are going too far, even when we are morally dumbfounded and can’t justify those feelings by pointing to victims:
Note:RIPUGNANZA COME SEGNALE
The message of my talk to the Charlottesville Democrats was simple: Republicans understand moral psychology. Democrats don’t.Republicans have long understood that the elephant is in charge of political behavior, not the rider, and they know how elephants work.
Note:IL VANTAGGIO DELLA DESTRA NEL CAMP DELLA PSICOLOGIA SOCIALE
Republicans don’t just aim to cause fear, as some Democrats charge. They trigger the full range of intuitions described by Moral Foundations Theory.
LA PAURA NON C’ENTRA