And it’s not just that ‘we all need somebody to lean on’; recent work on giving support shows that caring for others is often more beneficial than is receiving help. . . . We need the give and the take, we need to belong. An ideology of extreme personal freedom can be dangerous because it encourages people to leave homes, jobs, cities and marriages in search of personal and professional fulfillment, thereby breaking the relationships that were probably their best hope for such fulfillment.
Jonathan HaidtWe can tolerate great diversity in our aesthetic beliefs, but we can't tolerate much diversity in our moral beliefs.
Jonathan HaidtAnytime we're interacting with someone, we're judging them, we're sharing expectations, we think they didn't live up to those expectations.
Jonathan HaidtTrying 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 HaidtPeople are wrong when they say that everything should be more diverse, even, say, rock bands. It's an error, an overgeneralization.
Jonathan HaidtI think the greatest truths, the ones that you find in every culture that has any sort of history of reflection of writing, the greatest truth is that there's nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so. That's the way Shakespeare put it. But you get basically the same idea from Buddha, from the Bhagavad Gita in India, and from the Stoics in ancient Greece and Rome.
Jonathan Haidt