The Righteous Mind and Measuring Your Life

I've requested How Will You Measure Your Life from my local library, but I don't think it'll be available for another few weeks. Maybe Jesse would be willing to drop by Brother Christensen's house and get the inside story on the book, for those who aren't able/planning to read it.

I did just finish an interesting book called The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. The author, Jonathan Haidt is a Professor of Psychology at UVA. His research has focused on how we make moral decisions, and he summarizes what he's learned in his career. It's fairly standard social science written for a broad audience.

The three core principles he attempts to establish are:
- Moral 'reasoning' is really moral intuition followed by logical justification, which is why debate and dialogue so seldom sway people's opinions.
- Our moral senses have many dimensions, but (industrialized, Western, educated) society only recognizes a few as valid bases for moral judgements.
- While we usually consider moral judgements individually, occasionally we can be turned to a 'hive' view, with a more group-level perspective.

In all, I found a lot of the book to match very well with my own feelings about how and what we choose to value, as individuals and as a society. I particularly liked Haidt's attempt to broaden the moral matrix (2nd point above); this is something I think rationalists in both parties largely neglect. Liberal (or libertarian) legal justification admits only 'harm' as a valid mechanism for determining whether something is 'right'. Haidt began his research by relating stories to college students, narratives which most people would agree were 'wrong', but which couldn't be categorized as such by an appeal to them having caused harm. Repeatedly, students would attempt to introduce new elements into the narrative, in order to inject some harm, in order to provide what they felt was a justifiable reason for finding the behavior in the narrative immoral. Haidt's prescription, and I think I agree with him, is that we should recognize that our moral vision is much broader than can be encompassed by the concept of harm, and that we should be moral 'pluralists' in the sense of recognizing the varied mechanisms by which we deem things 'immoral'.

To that end, Haidt established a website called yourmorals.org. You can go and register to participate in a variety of questionnaire-based studies. The primary study, called the 'Moral Foundations Questionnaire', asks you to rate how much or little you take various things into account when making a moral decision, and then provides a personalized 'rating' based on five moral dimensions identified by Haidt's research, as well as providing comparison to the average ratings for self-identifying liberals and conservatives. You should all go do it; it doesn't take long and I think it can provide interesting insight. Here are my scores:

Harm - 2.7
Fairness - 2.8
Loyalty - 3.3
Authority - 3.5
Purity - 3.3

Jackson 5

It’s been a good day. New little girl (#5), my first author manuscript was accepted by JAALAS, I got a phone interview invite for a civilian position with the Army (Aberdeen Proving Ground), and I finished my summary/future studies chapter in my dissertation. What should I do next?

Christopher Beesley and the Return of the PVS Bookclub

Greetings and salutations!  I just got back (about an hour ago) from Southern California.  I attended a stats conference in San Diego, where I had the chance to visit with the one and only Christopher Beesley.  While he claims to have gained and lost a lot of weight, he still looks like the same Christopher we all know and love, with the addition of a few gray hairs and perhaps even more solid muscle.

The gray hairs likely come from being bishop and having to preside over 20 funerals in 4 years.  Incredibly, Christopher is bishop of the ward he grew up in, and he appears to love every minute of it.  I think he secretly gets the most joy out of the combination of bishop and ward music chair and ward organist, which allows him to move back and forth between the pulpit and the organ requiring the ward to sing whatever hymn suits his fancy.

Christopher and his amazing wife, Mary, were incredibly accommodating, feeding us, chauffeuring us around town, and even giving us their guest passes to the San Diego Zoo.  Their four kids (ages 2 to 11) are all well-behaved and appear to be quite smart.  No surprise there.

Christopher shared the story of his faith and bravery in following a prompting that led to his dream job of playing Javert, and prosecuting criminals (or at least shooting down their appeals) from the comfort of his desk.  At night he sits on the board of directors of his children's German immersion school.  I tried working on getting him to participate in the PVS book club, but he has some legitimate claims on his free time.

I am so grateful to Christopher for his help this last week and for his example of happy service, self-discipline, and seeking after things that are good and praiseworthy.  I'm also grateful for a network of friends around the country.


With all of that preamble, I would like to take the initiative to choose a new book. 

I've really enjoyed some of Christensen's talks/articles, and I've been waiting to get this book from the library for a long time.  Before it came, my mom sent me a copy in the mail saying she wants all of her children to read it.  I think it has advice for your careers as well as your personal life, so I think it would be great for even you really busy people.

Can we kick the discussion off on Labor Day weekend?  Is that too soon?  Let me know if you want more time.