The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt (Feb 2013)

Question:  Do you ever feel righteous anger?  Like, you KNOW you’re right, and the other guy is WRONG-O reindeer, and there is no doubt that you are perched on the moral high ground.  And, bloody hell, how can people BE so IMmoral?!  Do they have no moral compass?  I had a bad case of this recently.  Something someone (anonymous) did threw me for a loop.  I couldn’t understand her/him.  I had thought she/he had higher principles.  And so I sought help.  I did what many people — especially librarians — do:  I looked for a book.   I found it in “The Righteous Mind”.  It was the perfect antidote.  While the book placated me with the assurance that every single human on the planet is plagued by their own feelings of righteous anger, it helped me get some remove from the emotion as well, by getting some perspective.  I learned the evolutionary reasons that righteous anger is actually adaptive, and has helped our species survive, although for most of our history that was in groups of fewer than 150 individuals.  The emotion seems less adaptive in our highly mobile, constantly changing, global society.  I also learned that I tend to base my moral assumptions on only 2 of the 6 main “modules”, or platforms, that Haidt cites.  Could it be that this person who threw me for a loop, this one so lacking in a moral compass, could simply be basing her/his views of morality on a broader range of “modules” than I?  Could I (in league with most liberals), in fact, be in the moral minority — when looking at how most people globally come to their moral beliefs — by using relatively narrow criteria for deciding what is right and wrong?  After reading this book, I won’t go so far as to think I’m the one who was wrong-0 reindeer.  That would be asking a bit much.  But I’m not quite so convinced I’m righteous.  And I can allow that this someone’s principles might not be bottomed out — just based on values on which I don’t happen to place importance.  In the final analysis, Haidt indicates we all make our moral judgements based on gut intuitions first, and then find intellectual justifications for those intuitions afterward.  So it’s a little bit harder now, after reading Haidt’s book, to be convinced of my superior moral reasoning — even when I KNOW I’m right.  Which I am.

The Liars’ Gospel by Naomi Alderman (March 2013) and The Evolution of God by Robert Wright (June 2009)


If you are easily shocked by unorthodox portrayals of Jesus and all that is precious in the surrounding religious tradition, do not read this book. If you are offended by the suggestion that the historical Jesus is not the Jesus of tradition, do not read this book. If blasphemy is a word that even momentarily enters your general vocabulary, do not read this book. If you are now curious, and can soldier on through descriptions of creative Roman torture and heinous means of delivering slow death, and tend to be delighted when your assumptions are slaughtered . . . do, please, read this book. And to make the experience of revelation even more interesting, read The Liars’ Gospel in conjunction with The Evolution of God by Robert Wright, or a book of its ilk (scholarly research into the historicity of religious belief). I have by day been listening to Wright’s audio book, and by night reading Alderman’s novel. Though Alderman’s work is fiction, it is based on dogged research, and much of how she portrayed Jesus is similar to how Wright described the historical man. I got the same feeling for who Jesus may have been, from both authors. And I must add here that the audio version of The Evolution of God is well worth the time spent on 15 discs. Wright starts with prehistoric religious belief and works his way through the historic origins of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, their connections and conflicts, and concludes with a vision for how the Abrahamic faiths can foster tolerance and peace in place of what we have now in world affairs. His presentation of the historical record is frequently surprising and always engrossing. Pairing his book with The Liars’ Gospel was perfect serendipity (I didn’t actually plan it out). Alderman’s novel is written from four distinct perspectives, starting with Mary (mother of Jesus), then Judas, followed by Caiaphas (High Priest of the Temple in Jerusalem), and concluding with Barrabas. I have used the Anglicized names here, but the book uses their Hebrew names, in keeping with a story that fully immerses the reader in the Jewish world to which Jesus (Yehoshuah) was born, and in which he functioned, under the thumb of Roman rule. This novel is actually more about the politics of Roman Jerusalem than about Jesus, especially in its second half. Nonetheless, if you are well acquainted with the Gospels, you come out of this reading experience thinking about familiar stories is quite a different light: you will question motives, incentives, and the political alignments of players and authors. Although Alderman’s novel was not a fast read — it is not dense, but it IS brutal, and that took some time to breathe and regroup — I highly recommend it, especially as an entre to a nonfiction work such as Wright’s.