cara mengubah channel

chris anderson: so, jon, this feels scary. jonathan haidt: yeah. ca: it feels like the world is in a place that we haven't seen for a long time. people don't just disagreein the way that we're familiar with, on the left-right political divide. there are much deeper differences afoot. what on earth is going on,and how did we get here? jh: this is different.

there's a much moreapocalyptic sort of feeling. survey research by pew research shows that the degree to which we feelthat the other side is not just -- we don't just dislike them;we strongly dislike them, and we think that they area threat to the nation. those numbers have been going up and up, and those are over 50 percentnow on both sides. people are scared, because it feels like this is differentthan before; it's much more intense.

whenever i lookat any sort of social puzzle, i always apply the three basicprinciples of moral psychology, and i think they'll help us here. so the first thing that youhave to always keep in mind when you're thinking about politics is that we're tribal. we evolved for tribalism. one of the simplest and greatestinsights into human social nature is the bedouin proverb:

"me against my brother; me and my brother against our cousin; me and my brother and cousinsagainst the stranger." and that tribalism allowed usto create large societies and to come togetherin order to compete with others. that brought us out of the jungleand out of small groups, but it means that we haveeternal conflict. the question you have to look at is: what aspects of our societyare making that more bitter,

and what are calming them down? ca: that's a very dark proverb. you're saying that that's actuallybaked into most people's mental wiring at some level? jh: oh, absolutely. this is justa basic aspect of human social cognition. but we can also live togetherreally peacefully, and we've invented all kindsof fun ways of, like, playing war. i mean, sports, politics -- these are all ways that we getto exercise this tribal nature

without actually hurting anyone. we're also really good at tradeand exploration and meeting new people. so you have to see our tribalismas something that goes up or down -- it's not like we're doomedto always be fighting each other, but we'll never have world peace. ca: the size of that tribecan shrink or expand. jh: right. ca: the size of what we consider "us" and what we consider "other" or "them"

can change. and some people believed that processcould continue indefinitely. jh: that's right. ca: and we were indeed expandingthe sense of tribe for a while. jh: so this is, i think, where we're getting at what's possiblythe new left-right distinction. i mean, the left-rightas we've all inherited it, comes out of the laborversus capital distinction, and the working class, and marx.

but i think what we're seeingnow, increasingly, is a divide in all the western democracies between the peoplewho want to stop at nation, the people who are more parochial -- and i don't mean that in a bad way -- people who have much moreof a sense of being rooted, they care about their town,their community and their nation. and then those who areanti-parochial and who -- whenever i get confused, i just thinkof the john lennon song "imagine."

"imagine there's no countries,nothing to kill or die for." and so these are the peoplewho want more global governance, they don't like nation states,they don't like borders. you see this all over europe as well. there's a great metaphor guy --actually, his name is shakespeare -- writing ten years ago in britain. he had a metaphor: "are we drawbridge-uppersor drawbridge-downers?" and britain is divided52-48 on that point.

and america is divided on that point, too. ca: and so, those of uswho grew up with the beatles and that sort of hippie philosophyof dreaming of a more connected world -- it felt so idealistic and "how couldanyone think badly about that?" and what you're saying is that, actually, millions of people todayfeel that that isn't just silly; it's actually dangerous and wrong,and they're scared of it. jh: i think the big issue, especiallyin europe but also here, is the issue of immigration.

and i think this is wherewe have to look very carefully at the social scienceabout diversity and immigration. once something becomes politicized, once it becomes somethingthat the left loves and the right -- then even the social scientistscan't think straight about it. now, diversity is good in a lot of ways. it clearly creates more innovation. the american economyhas grown enormously from it. diversity and immigrationdo a lot of good things.

but what the globalists,i think, don't see, what they don't want to see, is that ethnic diversitycuts social capital and trust. there's a very importantstudy by robert putnam, the author of "bowling alone," looking at social capital databases. and basically, the more peoplefeel that they are the same, the more they trust each other, the more they can havea redistributionist welfare state.

scandinavian countries are so wonderful because they have this legacyof being small, homogenous countries. and that leads toa progressive welfare state, a set of progressiveleft-leaning values, which says, "drawbridge down!the world is a great place. people in syria are suffering --we must welcome them in." and it's a beautiful thing. but if, and i was in swedenthis summer, if the discourse in swedenis fairly politically correct

and they can't talk about the downsides, you end up bringing a lot of people in. that's going to cut social capital, it makes it hard to have a welfare state and they might end up,as we have in america, with a racially divided, visiblyracially divided, society. so this is all veryuncomfortable to talk about. but i think this is the thing,especially in europe and for us, too, we need to be looking at.

ca: you're saying that people of reason, people who would considerthemselves not racists, but moral, upstanding people, have a rationale that sayshumans are just too different; that we're in danger of overloadingour sense of what humans are capable of, by mixing in people who are too different. jh: yes, but i can make itmuch more palatable by saying it's not necessarily about race. it's about culture.

there's wonderful work by a politicalscientist named karen stenner, who shows that when people have a sense that we are all united,we're all the same, there are many people who havea predisposition to authoritarianism. those people aren't particularly racist when they feel as throughthere's not a threat to our social and moral order. but if you prime them experimentally by thinking we're coming apart,people are getting more different,

then they get more racist, homophobic,they want to kick out the deviants. so it's in part that you getan authoritarian reaction. the left, following throughthe lennonist line -- the john lennon line -- does things that createan authoritarian reaction. we're certainly seeing thatin america with the alt-right. we saw it in britain,we've seen it all over europe. but the more positive part of that is that i think the localists,or the nationalists, are actually right --

that, if you emphasizeour cultural similarity, then race doesn't actuallymatter very much. so an assimilationistapproach to immigration removes a lot of these problems. and if you value havinga generous welfare state, you've got to emphasizethat we're all the same. ca: ok, so rising immigrationand fears about that are one of the causesof the current divide. what are other causes?

jh: the next principle of moral psychology is that intuitions come first,strategic reasoning second. you've probably heardthe term "motivated reasoning" or "confirmation bias." there's some really interesting work on how our high intelligenceand our verbal abilities might have evolvednot to help us find out the truth, but to help us manipulate each other,defend our reputation ... we're really, really goodat justifying ourselves.

and when you bringgroup interests into account, so it's not just me,it's my team versus your team, whereas if you're evaluating evidencethat your side is wrong, we just can't accept that. so this is why you can't wina political argument. if you're debating something, you can't persuade the personwith reasons and evidence, because that's notthe way reasoning works. so now, give us the internet,give us google:

"i heard that barack obamawas born in kenya. let me google that -- oh my god!10 million hits! look, he was!" ca: so this has come as an unpleasantsurprise to a lot of people. social media has often been framedby techno-optimists as this great connecting forcethat would bring people together. and there have been someunexpected counter-effects to that. that's why i'm very enamoredof yin-yang views of human nature and left-right -- that each side is rightabout certain things,

but then it goes blind to other things. and so the left generally believesthat human nature is good: bring people together, knock downthe walls and all will be well. the right -- social conservatives,not libertarians -- social conservatives generallybelieve people can be greedy and sexual and selfish, and we need regulation,and we need restrictions. so, yeah, if you knock down all the walls, allow people to communicateall over the world,

you get a lot of porn and a lot of racism. ca: so help us understand. these principles of human naturehave been with us forever. what's changed that's deepenedthis feeling of division? jh: you have to see six to tendifferent threads all coming together. i'll just list a couple of them. so in america, one of the big --actually, america and europe -- one of the biggest ones is world war ii. there's interesting researchfrom joe henrich and others

that says if your country was at war, especially when you were young, then we test you 30 years laterin a commons dilemma or a prisoner's dilemma, you're more cooperative. because of our tribal nature, if you're -- my parents were teenagersduring world war ii, and they would go outlooking for scraps of aluminum to help the war effort.

i mean, everybody pulled together. and so then these people go on, they rise up through businessand government, they take leadership positions. they're really goodat compromise and cooperation. they all retire by the '90s. so we're left with baby boomersby the end of the '90s. and their youth was spent fightingeach other within each country, in 1968 and afterwards.

the loss of the world war ii generation,"the greatest generation," is huge. so that's one. another, in america,is the purification of the two parties. there used to be liberal republicansand conservative democrats. so america had a mid-20th centurythat was really bipartisan. but because of a variety of factorsthat started things moving, by the 90's, we had a purifiedliberal party and conservative party. so now, the people in either partyreally are different,

and we really don't wantour children to marry them, which, in the '60s,didn't matter very much. so, the purification of the parties. third is the internet and, as i said, it's just the most amazing stimulantfor post-hoc reasoning and demonization. ca: the tone of what's happeningon the internet now is quite troubling. i just did a quick searchon twitter about the election and saw two tweets next to each other. one, against a picture of racist graffiti:

"this is disgusting! ugliness in this country,brought to us by #trump." and then the next one is: "crooked hillarydedication page. disgusting!" so this idea of "disgust"is troubling to me. because you can have an argumentor a disagreement about something, you can get angry at someone. disgust, i've heard you say,takes things to a much deeper level. jh: that's right. disgust is different.

anger -- you know, i have kids. they fight 10 times a day, and they love each other 30 times a day. you just go back and forth:you get angry, you're not angry; you're angry, you're not angry. but disgust is different. disgust paints the personas subhuman, monstrous, deformed, morally deformed. disgust is like indelible ink.

there's research from john gottmanon marital therapy. if you look at the faces -- if oneof the couple shows disgust or contempt, that's a predictor that they're goingto get divorced soon, whereas if they show anger,that doesn't predict anything, because if you deal with anger well,it actually is good. so this election is different. donald trump personallyuses the word "disgust" a lot. he's very germ-sensitive,so disgust does matter a lot -- more for him, that's somethingunique to him --

but as we demonize each other more, and again, throughthe manichaean worldview, the idea that the worldis a battle between good and evil as this has been ramping up, we're more likely not just to saythey're wrong or i don't like them, but we say they're evil, they're satanic, they're disgusting, they're revolting. and then we want nothing to do with them. and that's why i think we're seeing it,for example, on campus now.

we're seeing more the urgeto keep people off campus, silence them, keep them away. i'm afraid that this wholegeneration of young people, if their introduction to politicsinvolves a lot of disgust, they're not going to want to be involvedin politics as they get older. ca: so how do we deal with that? disgust. how do you defuse disgust? jh: you can't do it with reasons. i think ...

i studied disgust for many years,and i think about emotions a lot. and i think that the oppositeof disgust is actually love. love is all about, like ... disgust is closing off, borders. love is about dissolving walls. so personal relationships, i think, are probably the mostpowerful means we have. you can be disgusted by a group of people, but then you meet a particular person

and you genuinely discoverthat they're lovely. and then gradually that chips awayor changes your category as well. the tragedy is, americans used to bemuch more mixed up in the their towns by left-right or politics. and now that it's becomethis great moral divide, there's a lot of evidencethat we're moving to be near people who are like us politically. it's harder to find somebodywho's on the other side. so they're over there, they're far away.

it's harder to get to know them. ca: what would you say to someoneor say to americans, people generally, about what we should understandabout each other that might help us rethink for a minute this "disgust" instinct? jh: yes. a really importantthing to keep in mind -- there's research by politicalscientist alan abramowitz,

showing that american democracyis increasingly governed by what's called "negative partisanship." that means you think,ok there's a candidate, you like the candidate,you vote for the candidate. but with the rise of negative advertising and social mediaand all sorts of other trends, increasingly, the way elections are done is that each side tries to makethe other side so horrible, so awful, that you'll vote for my guy by default.

and so as we more and more voteagainst the other side and not for our side, you have to keep in mindthat if people are on the left, they think, "well, i used to thinkthat republicans were bad, but now donald trump proves it. and now every republican,i can paint with all the things that i think about trump." and that's not necessarily true. they're generally not very happywith their candidate.

this is the most negative partisanshipelection in american history. so you have to first separateyour feelings about the candidate from your feelings about the peoplewho are given a choice. and then you have to realize that, because we all livein a separate moral world -- the metaphor i use in the bookis that we're all trapped in "the matrix," or each moral community is a matrix,a consensual hallucination. and so if you're within the blue matrix, everything's completely compellingthat the other side --

they're troglodytes, they're racists,they're the worst people in the world, and you have all the factsto back that up. but somebody in the next house from yours is living in a different moral matrix. they live in a different video game, and they see a completelydifferent set of facts. and each one seesdifferent threats to the country. and what i've foundfrom being in the middle and trying to understand both sidesis: both sides are right.

there are a lot of threatsto this country, and each side is constitutionallyincapable of seeing them all. ca: so, are you sayingthat we almost need a new type of empathy? empathy is traditionally framed as: "oh, i feel your pain.i can put myself in your shoes." and we apply it to the poor,the needy, the suffering. we don't usually apply itto people who we feel as other, or we're disgusted by. jh: no. that's right.

ca: what would it look liketo build that type of empathy? jh: actually, i think ... empathy is a very, veryhot topic in psychology, and it's a very popular wordon the left in particular. empathy is a good thing, and empathyfor the preferred classes of victims. so it's important to empathize with the groups that we on the leftthink are so important. that's easy to do,because you get points for that. but empathy really should get you pointsif you do it when it's hard to do.

and, i think ... you know, we had a long 50-year periodof dealing with our race problems and legal discrimination, and that was our top priorityfor a long time and it still is important. but i think this year, i'm hoping it will make people see that we have an existentialthreat on our hands. our left-right divide, i believe,

is by far the most importantdivide we face. we still have issues about raceand gender and lgbt, but this is the urgent needof the next 50 years, and things aren't goingto get better on their own. so we're going to need to doa lot of institutional reforms, and we could talk about that, but that's like a whole long,wonky conversation. but i think it starts with peoplerealizing that this is a turning point. and yes, we need a new kind of empathy.

we need to realize: this is what our country needs, and this is what you needif you don't want to -- raise your hand if you wantto spend the next four years as angry and worried as you've beenfor the last year -- raise your hand. so if you want to escape from this, read buddha, read jesus,read marcus aurelius. they have all kinds of great advicefor how to drop the fear, reframe things,

stop seeing other people as your enemy. there's a lot of guidance in ancientwisdom for this kind of empathy. ca: here's my last question: personally, what canpeople do to help heal? jh: yeah, it's very hard to just decideto overcome your deepest prejudices. and there's research showing that political prejudices are deeperand stronger than race prejudices in the country now. so i think you have to make an effort --that's the main thing.

make an effort to actually meet somebody. everybody has a cousin, a brother-in-law, somebody who's on the other side. so, after this election -- wait a week or two, because it's probably going to feelawful for one of you -- but wait a couple weeks, and thenreach out and say you want to talk. and before you do it, read dale carnegie, "how to winfriends and influence people" --

(laughter) i'm totally serious. you'll learn techniquesif you start by acknowledging, if you start by saying, "you know, we don't agree on a lot, but one thing i really respectabout you, uncle bob," or "... about you conservatives, is ... " and you can find something. if you start with someappreciation, it's like magic.

this is one of the mainthings i've learned that i take into my human relationships. i still make lots of stupid mistakes, but i'm incredibly goodat apologizing now, and at acknowledging whatsomebody was right about. and if you do that, then the conversation goes really well,and it's actually really fun. ca: jon, it's absolutely fascinatingspeaking with you. it really does feel likethe ground that we're on

is a ground populated by deep questionsof morality and human nature. your wisdom couldn't be more relevant. thank you so much for sharingthis time with us. jh: thanks, chris. jh: thanks, everyone. (applause)