Ted Talk Three W11 P1

How Common Threats can Make Common (Political) Ground - Johnathan Haidt
-Morality is a important value to people’s subconscious brains; similar to how the brain likes consistency in everyday things, it also likes to stick to it’s morals.
-There morals are usually taught by the people around a specific person, and their personal experiences.
-Morality binds and blinds; it binds people to specific groups, and blinds them to the truth of a matter.
-Unity without kinship is something that goes back to the origin of the human species (the few other species that cooperate on a large scale are usually insects like bees that are the children of a single queen).
-The general consensuses that brought humans together to cooperate was done through worship of a god, and the morals that came with that worship; the things that they should do to appease that god.
-Nowadays, similar ideas can be seen in governments; although plenty of governments aren’t built around the worship of a god, they are built around a set of morals that need to be upheld by the people running it. (That being said, plenty of government officials don’t do a very good job of this).
-In America, many of these morals are being split into two; the red and the blue. They bind groups together, and make them blind to the real issues at stake by pressuring them into specific moral alignments.

-While the best way to stop this would be to undo many of the changes that took place during the 1990’s, but that isn’t exactly possible.
-It starts with talking to people. Building relationships outside of the battle that’s being fought; building friendships despite the moral differences. Done of a governmental scale, this might stop politicians from solely focusing on winning their personal battles and actually get things done. If done in a single community, this can bring people together to make a change. This kind of thing happened during World War Two; although people didn’t always see eye to eye on the war itself, they knew that they had to band together to make life better. And this worked! Liberty gardens were implemented, women took over the workforce, and so much more.
-Although it’s difficult to ask people to sacrifice pride for the greater good, its important to notice that most divides like the ones we’re seeing are really two sides of the same coin; people are noticing the same issues, but they aren’t looking at them the same way; thus, conflict arises.
-Two issues may be better dealt with together instead of apart, thus satisfying both sides while getting the problem taken care of.