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
The very ritual practices that the New Atheists dismiss as costly, inefficient and irrational turn out to be a solution to one of the hardest problems humans face: cooperation without kinship
Interpretation
What this quote means
Rituals dismissed by skeptics may actually facilitate human cooperation and community bonding.
In this quote, Jonathan Haidt emphasizes the significance of ritual practices, which are often viewed by New Atheists as cumbersome and illogical. He argues that such rituals might actually play a crucial role in fostering cooperation among individuals who are not genetically related, thereby addressing one of humanity's greatest challenges: forming bonds and working together for mutual benefit despite differing backgrounds and beliefs.
Themes
RitualCooperationHuman BehaviorCommunityAtheism
In practice
Example use cases
During a keynote presentation on the importance of cultural rituals in modern society.
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