Social reality is so complicated that, once you join one team or the other, you become specialized in detecting certain patterns, but you become blind to other patterns.
Jonathan HaidtRead
Groups create supernatural beings not to explain the universe but to order their societies.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Societies create gods and myths not for understanding reality but for maintaining social order.
This quote by Jonathan Haidt suggests that the mythological and religious frameworks that groups construct are primarily aimed at establishing and enforcing social cohesion and norms. Rather than serving as mere explanations for natural phenomena, these constructs play a crucial role in organizing human relationships, behaviors, and cultural structures within communities.
Themes
SocietyMythOrderSupernaturalCulture
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the role of religion in society, one might quote Haidt to illustrate how beliefs can serve societal functions.
More from Jonathan Haidt
All quotes βUnderstanding the simple fact that morality differs around the world, and even within societies, is the first step toward understanding your righteous mind.
Jonathan HaidtRead
Suppose you read about a pill that you could take once a day to reduce anxiety and increase your contentment. Would you take it? Suppose further that the pill has a great variety of side effects, all of them good: increased self-esteem, empathy, and trust; it even improves memory. Suppose, finally, that the pill is all natural and costs nothing. Now would you take it? The pill exists. It is meditation.
Jonathan HaidtRead
Trying to run Congress without human relationships is like trying to run a car without motor oil. Should we be surprised when the whole thing freezes up?
Jonathan HaidtRead
If you grow up in a WEIRD society, you become so well educated in the ethic of autonomy that you can detect oppression and inequality even where the apparent victims see nothing wrong.
Jonathan HaidtRead
When you hear someone criticize a policy on the other side, that's fine. But when you start hearing motive-mongering and demonization, stand up to it just as you would if it were something that was racist or sexist. If we avoid the demonization, disagreements can be positive.
Jonathan HaidtRead
Similar quotes
Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party
Winston ChurchillRead
Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?' To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.' The dog did nothing in the night-time.' That was the curious incident,' remarked Sherlock Holmes.
Arthur Conan DoyleRead
How can the mind take hold of such a country? Generations of invaders have tried, but they remain in exile. The important towns they build are only retreats, their quarrels the malaise of men who cannot find their way home. India knows of their trouble. She knows of the whole world's trouble, to its uttermost depth. She calls "Come" through her hundred mouths, through objects ridiculous and august. But come to what? She has never defined. She is not a promise, only an appeal.
E. M. ForsterRead
An act cannot be defined by the end sought by the actor, for an identical system of behaviour may be adjustable to too many different ends without altering its nature.
Emile DurkheimRead
I did not volunteer for the Waffen SS, but was, as were thousands of my year group, conscripted. I did not then know as a 17-year-old that it was a criminal unit. I thought it was an elite unit.
Gunter GrassRead
The rich are always advising the poor, but the poor seldom return the compliment.
Lord ChesterfieldRead