The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion / Jonathan Haidt

RATINGS

Overall: 5 / 5 stars

Text Level: Medium

Entertainment: High

Self-Help: High

Page Count: 371

Is this book right for me and my inmate?

Individuals that find themselves getting in conflicts with how different groups of people view the world and politics can find this book useful for mental peace.

Buy on: Amazon

Review By: Blackbird (Inmate)

Understanding how we build our moral foundations to hopefully build compassion for others.

For myself I have been easy to frustrate when it came to things like politics. Even in jail the american political system can lead to arguments that can build hostility and anger. Just because we are incarcerated at the moment doesn't mean that the outside of elections and politics disappears. With all of the extra stress from living a life in jail or prison adding political debates to it most of the time only further harms the mental health of the inmates. This book is a wonderful read for building a better understanding of how political preferences are created and learning to find a compassion towards those we might disagree with.

Reading this book I learned so much about how our moral perceptions as a community are formed and how they can be so different between groups. It was also very interesting to find out that as humans we all share similar belielf we just maybe express them in different ways. This led to a greater level understanding of the patience I need when I meet people that might be viewing the world differently.

In the past I could become quite frustrated or angry when I thought people were making "wrong" decisions on political issues. I would think that they had a flaw of mental character in a way. This created a feeling of righteous superiority that only shut down lines of communication. Looking around the world and in jail I see this way of thinking is very common today. I now see that people for the most part are acting on what they believe is best for us all as a society they just have a different way of wanting to get there. The key I learned to recognizing it through this book is by examining your own thinking patterns to understand your emotional state. Maybe this book can help other inmates learn to pause more and take a level of self reflection when the people around them seem to have wildly different views of the world.

Book Quotes

"We're born to be righteous, but we have to learn what, exactly, people like us should be righteous about."

"Don't bring up morality until you've found a few points of commonality or some other way established a bit of trust."